St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner
written by Kurt Hofmann
Wednesday November 9, 2011
It has become clear that for administration apologists, the favored approach for dealing with the "Project Gunwalker" fallout is to loudly shout "Bush did it too!" (as if that would somehow mitigate the atrocity of our government aiding in the murder two of federal law enforcement officers and hundreds of Mexican citizens). If this had not been obvious before yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General Eric Holder, it certainly is now, with Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) enthusiastically beating that drum.
In 75 seconds of pointed questioning of Attorney General Holder (see sidebar video), Senator John Cornyn has perhaps left the excuse makers scrambling for something better. In that time, he asked Holder if he knew that Operation Wide Receiver (the Bush-era operation) actually did involve an attempt to track the firearms, while Fast and Furious did not. Cornyn then asked Holder if he knew that Operation Wide Receiver was run in conjunction with the Mexican government--Fast and Furious was kept secret from not only Mexico, but from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) attaché to Mexico, Darren Gil. Gil, in fact, after discovering on his own what was going on, was basically pushed into retirement when he balked at the near act of war of "walking" guns into Mexico without the Mexican government's knowledge or permission.
Holder was eventually forced into the position of having to put the "Bush did it too" excuse out of its misery himself:
Senator, I have not tried to equate the two--I have not tried to equate Wide Receiver with Fast and Furious. . . . Again, I'm not trying to equate the two.
Hmm . . . "not trying to equate the two"? As Andrew McCarthy points out in National Review Online, Holder certainly didn't seem averse to such equating when Schumer was the questioner.
While we are on the subject of "Operation Fast and Furious" being kept secret from the Mexican government, and even the BATFE's own attaché to Mexico, let's look at one implication of how Darren Gil discovered that something was going on. Back in late March, CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson interviewed Gil, and asked about that:
Gil first found out something was amiss in early 2010 when serial numbers from a flood of guns used in cartel crimes were all tracing back to the same case in Phoenix: "Fast and Furious." But when Gil's analyst checked ATF's computer files to find out more, he hit a brick wall.
The CBS story focused on Gil's difficulty in getting the BATFE to acknowledge, even to him, that this was all according to plan. Today, though, let's consider another aspect of this information. When "Gunwalker" apologists decide they need some variety in their excuse making (and with "Bush did it too" looking less viable all the time, they certainly need some variety), they often argue that even the 2,000+ "gunwalked" guns are a drop in the bucket of U.S.-sourced firearms used by the drug cartels.
How does one reconcile that argument, though, with the fact that Operation Fast and Furious caused "a flood of guns used in cartel crimes," this flood being what tipped Gil off to the fact that something strange was going on? If a couple thousand guns over a couple years is a "flood," then how could the so-called "iron river" of guns from U.S. gun shops and shows to Mexico be more than a trickle?
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