2009–2011: Operation Fast and Furious
[source: wikipedia]
Investigations and fallout
In the Congress, Representative Darrell Issa (R–CA–49), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Senator Chuck Grassley (R–IA), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have been investigating "gunwalking" operations. On January 27, 2011, Grassley wrote a letter to ATF Acting Director Kenneth E. Melson requesting information about the ATF-sanctioned sale of hundreds of firearms to straw purchasers. The letter mentioned a number of allegations that walked guns were used in the fight that killed Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. A second letter from Grassley on January 31, 2011 accused the ATF of targeting whistleblowers.
On February 4, 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote a letter to Grassley in response to statements by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, Dennis K. Burke and others. Weich said claims "...that (the) ATF ‘sanctioned’ or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them to Mexico [are] false. ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.” Also in February 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder requested that the Department of Justice's Inspector General begin an investigation of Fast and Furious.
Reports on Operation Wide Receiver surfaced in March 2011. On March 23, President Barack Obama appeared on Univision and spoke about the "gunwalking" controversy. He said that neither he nor Attorney General Holder authorized Fast and Furious. He also stated, "There may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made, and if that's the case then we'll find out and we'll hold somebody accountable."
On May 3, 2011, Attorney General Holder testified to the House Judiciary Committee that he did not know who approved Fast and Furious, but that it was being investigated. He also stated that he "probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks," a claim which would later be questioned.
In June, ATF Agent Vince Cefalu, who helped to publicize Fast and Furious, was served with termination papers, in a move by the agency he described as politically motivated retaliation. He had been at odds with ATF management since he filed a complaint over tactics in an unrelated case in 2005. The ATF denied that the firing was retaliation, and Cefalu's termination letter noted that he leaked documents to the Internet and showed a "lack of candor" in other operations.
On June 14, 2011, a preliminary joint staff report was released by Representative Issa and Senator Grassley. Among the findings: agents were told to stand down rather than interdict weapons, they complained about the strategy and were ignored, and Fast and Furious led to increased violence and death in Mexico. Agents were panicked, certain that "someone was going to die."
Representative Issa continued to hold hearings in June and July 2011 where ATF officials based in Phoenix and Mexico, and at headquarters in Washington, testified before the committee. ATF agent John Dodson stated that he and other agents were ordered to observe the activities of gun smugglers but not to intervene. He testified:
Over the course of the next 10 months that I was involved in this operation, we monitored as they purchased hand guns, AK-47 variants, and .50 caliber rifles almost daily. Rather than conduct any enforcement actions, we took notes, we recorded observations, we tracked movements of these individuals for a short time after their purchases, but nothing more. Knowing all the while, just days after these purchases, the guns that we saw these individuals buy would begin turning up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico, we still did nothing. ...I cannot begin to think of how the risk of letting guns fall into the hands of known criminals could possibly advance any legitimate law enforcement interest.
A second joint staff report was released by the Republicans on July 26.
In August 2011, three important Fast and Furious supervisors were transferred to new management positions at ATF headquarters in Washington: William Newell and David Voth, field supervisors who oversaw the program from Phoenix, and William McMahon, an ATF deputy director of operations. The transfers were initially reported as promotions by the Los Angeles Times, but the ATF stated that they did not receive raises or take on greater responsibilities. In late August, it was announced that ATF Director Melson had been reassigned to the Justice Department, and U.S. Attorney Burke announced his resignation after being questioned by Congressional investigators earlier that month.
In October 2011, documents showing that Attorney General Holder's office had been sent briefings on Fast and Furious as early as July 2010, prompted questions about his May statement that he wasn't sure of the exact date, but had known about it for only a few weeks. The briefings were from the National Drug Intelligence Center and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer. The Justice Department said that those briefings were about a different case started before Holder became Attorney General, and that while he had known about Fast and Furious, he didn't know the details of the tactics being used.
On November 8, 2011, Holder stated for the first time in Congressional testimony that "gunwalking" was used in Fast and Furious. He remarked that the tactic is unacceptable, and that the operation was "flawed in its concept and flawed in its execution." He further stated that his office had inaccurately described the program in previous letters sent to Congress, but that this was unintentional. Reiterating previous testimony, he said that he and other top officials had been unaware that the "gunwalking" tactic was being used. Holder stated that his staff had not showed him memos about the program, noting, "There is nothing in any of those memos that indicates any of those inappropriate tactics that are of concern. Those things were not brought to my attention, and my staff, I think, made the correct decision in that regard."
In December 2011, documents showed that some ATF agents discussed using Fast and Furious to provide anecdotal cases to support controversial new rules about gun sales. The regulation, called Demand Letter 3, would require 8,500 firearms dealers in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas that "have a significant number of crime guns traced back to them from Mexico" to report multiple rifle sales.
Investigations by Congress and the DOJ Inspector General continued into 2012. In January, Patrick Cunningham, who was the criminal division chief at the Phoenix office of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona and has since resigned, asserted his innocence and his constitutional right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying. Cunningham worked directly under Burke during Fast and Furious. He was subpoenaed because of the role he might have played in the operation, and in the letter sent from the DOJ to Senator Grassley in February 2011 that claimed the ATF did not allow weapons to be trafficked to Mexico.
On January 31 2012, Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released their own report, "Fatally Flawed: Five Years of Gunwalking in Arizona." The report concluded that there was no evidence of involvement by high-ranking appointees at the Justice Department in "gunwalking." Rather, "Operation Fast and Furious was the latest in a series of fatally flawed operations run by ATF agents in Phoenix and the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office."
What's fatally flawed is the Democrats report. Obama's Fast and Furious operation is very different from Bush's Operation Wide Receiver. Operation Wide Receiver actually did involve an attempt to track the firearms, while Fast and Furious did not. Fast and Furious was kept secret from not only the Mexican government, but from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) attaché to Mexico, Darren Gil. Operation Wide Receiver worked directly with the Mexican government.
The Democrats are throwing ATF agents under the bus. It will be revealed that the Obama administration and the US Dept of Justice were aware of "Operation Fast and Furious" from its inception. They authorized it. The orders came from the top. How else was the name changed after Pres Obama took office and federal funding provided? Think about it. Oh and don't forget the Democrats were in control of both the house and the senate back in 2009 and 2010 and therefore knew and allocated the funds for "Operation Fast and Furious". Follow the Federal money. They are ALL covering their own asses. (emphasis mine)
On June 7, 2012, under the threat of being held in contempt of Congress, Attorney General Holder appeared at his seventh Congressional hearing, where he continued to deny knowledge of "gunwalking" by high-level officials. By then, the Justice Department had turned over about 7,000 pages of documents. On June 20, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted along party lines to recommend that Holder be held in contempt. At issue were 1,300 pages of documents that had not been turned over to Congress by the DOJ. Earlier that day, President Obama had invoked executive privilege over those documents, marking the first time the privilege has been asserted during his presidency.
Then Senator Barack Obama said in an interview with CNN in 2007, "You know, there's been a tendency on the part of this (Bush) administration to try to hide behind executive privilege every time there's something a little shaky that's taking place. And I think, you know, the administration would be best served by coming clean on this."
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