Thursday - July 07, 2011

It’s Getting Higher

But only if you keep the pressure on. Write, email, phone your reps. Do the same for the media. Demand an honest, open, and huge investigation. AG Eric Holder ACTED UNDER ORDERS, as did the BATFE, FBI, DEA, and who knows who else? Probably the damn Parks Department too. And who has the power to coordinate those departments? President Obama and the Director of Homeland Security.

Americans have DIED because of this con!! And the whole bleeding thing was done to advance the Democratic Agenda: more gun control. Plain and simple.

Yesterday, Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson answered questions from Rep. Darrell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley surrounding Operation Fast and Furious. Melson voluntarily participated in the interview and appeared with personal counsel, meaning although the Justice Department has prohibited Melson to testify before Congress on behalf of the DOJ about the scandal, he can in fact come forward with information as an individual informant outside of the DOJ and separate from DOJ interests.
...
Melson revealed the scope of Operation Fast and Furious reaches far beyond ATF and the Justice Department. He said the FBI, DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) and other agencies were heavily involved:

We have very real indications from several sources that some of the gun trafficking “higher-ups” that the ATF sought to identify were already known to other agencies and may even have been paid as informants. The Acting Director said that ATF was kept in the dark about certain activities of other agencies, including DEA and FBI. Mr.Melson said that he learned from ATF agents in the field that information obtained by these agencies could have had a material impact on the Fast and Furious investigation as far back as late 2009 or early 2010. After learning about the possible role of DEA and FBI, he testified that he reported this information in April 2011 to the Acting Inspector General and directly to then-Acting Deputy Attorney General James Cole on June 16, 2011.

The evidence we have gathered raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities. While this is preliminary information, we must find out if there is any truth to it. According to Acting Director Melson, he became aware of this startling possibility only after the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and the indictments of the straw purchasers, which we now know were substantially delayed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Main Justice.

Looks like it’s finger pointing time in DC as all the little scumrats scurry around trying to squeak “not me! not me!” Snap a trap on their asses. The top crimefighters in the country, working hand in glove with known alien criminals in hopes of pulling a fast one on the American people? Son of a bitch.

Of course, those words have yet to be spoken. It’s going to take some more heat before the big rats squeak that line out. But you know that that is the real truth. For now the focus is merely on everyone in DC with a suit and a badge being involved with a highly illegal straw purchasing scam. We’ll get around to motives eventually. Right now we’re still turning over rocks looking for worms.

Oh, and merely as an aside, when asked about this by the Mexican government, our big honchos denied everything. Do you know what purposely arming a huge group of organized criminals in a foreign country is, to the point where they effectively become a standing army strong enough to topple the local government and law enforcement agencies? It is an act of war. Straight up subversion. Casus belli. See, toldja is was bigger than Watergate.

The October 27, 2009 email from ATF Phoenix Field Division Special Agent in Charge (SAC) William Newell regarded a Southwest Border Strategy Group meeting that focused on Fast and Furious. It contained a laundry list of high ranking Justice Department officials that attended the meeting, including:

* Assistant Attorney General (Criminal Division) Lanny Breuer,
* Kenneth Melson, Acting Director, ATF
* William Hoover, Acting Deputy Director, ATF
* Michele Leonhart, Administrator, DEA
* Robert Mueller, Director FBI

Four other Justice Department directors or their representatives came from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), Bureau of Prisons (BOP), U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), and the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA). The chair of the Attorney Generals Advisory Committee (AGAC) also attended the session. Their names were redacted in the released document. U.S. attorneys for all four southwest border states also attended.

Operation Fast and Furious, now known to many by the more accurate name of “Gunwalker,” was a multi-agency operation that allowed and — in some instances — approved the purchase of firearms destined for Mexican drug cartels by so-called “straw buyers.” The purchasers, who had clean criminal records, would buy firearms from U.S. gun stores for drug gangs. While most gun smuggling involves small quantities of weapons, a small number of high-volume straw purchasers each bought hundreds of firearms for the cartels.

ATF agents were told by their supervisors to ignore their agency’s charter and training and allow the guns to be smuggled into Mexico without interdiction. Roughly 2,000 firearms — ranging from pistols and AK-pattern semi-automatic rifles to .50 BMG sniper rifles — were smuggled into Mexico under Gunwalker and without the knowledge of Mexican authorities. Hundreds of smuggled weapons have turned up at crime scenes across Mexico and the U.S. border states and at least 152 law enforcement officers and soldiers have been killed with Gunwalker weapons.

While it has been known since the beginning of the investigation that the ATF, DOJ, DHS, and the IRS were heavily involved in Gunwalker, the Newell email confirms that every major agency within the Department of Justice was briefed on Gunwalker, including the AGAC, which has the formally ordered functions of giving U.S attorneys a voice in department policies and advising the attorney general.

Also known as Project Gunrunner, the Arizona-based operation was supposed to be a sting, under which the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is part of the Justice Department, allowed “straw purchasers” to transfer weapons from gun shops in Arizona to Mexican drug cartels to trace and halt crossborder arms-trafficking.

That’s the official version, anyway—but it’s crumbling, fast.

The ATF’s acting director, Kenneth Melson, has been singing like a canary to congressional investigators as he pushes back against administration pressure for him to resign and take the fall for something that, at the very least, had to include the US Attorney’s Office, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and possibly the Homeland Security Department.
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“The evidence we have gathered raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons, but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities,” they wrote.

“It is one thing to argue that the ends justify the means in an attempt to defend a policy that puts building a big case ahead of stopping known criminals from getting guns. Yet it is a much more serious matter to conceal from Congress the possible involvement of other agencies in identifying and maybe even working with the same criminals that Operation Fast and Furious was trying to identify.”

That’s the key to this mess—and the reason that Operation Fast and Furious might turn out to be the biggest Washington scandal since Iran-Contra.

As Issa and Grassley note in their letter, had the other agencies shared information—theoretically the goal of the post-9/11 revamp of the intelligence and law-enforcement agencies—“then ATF might have known that gun trafficking ‘higher-ups’ had already been identified.”

So if the identities of the Mexican criminals were known to the feds, what was the point of Project Gunrunner—and why is Holder so desperately trying to stonewall by withholding hundreds of documents from Congress?

Law-abiding gun owners and dealers think they already know. With the Obama administration wedded to the fiction that 90 percent of the guns Mexican cartels use originate here—they don’t—many suspect that “Fast and Furious” was a backdoor attempt to smear domestic gun aficionados as part of its stealth efforts on gun control by executive fiat.

“I just want you to know that we’re working on it,” Obama was quoted as saying to gun-control advocate Sarah Brady in March. “We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”

Unfortunately for the administration, this one’s out in the open now.

And the cover up and the stonewalling that’s been going on for months now? Gosh, glad you asked:

Mr. Melson said that he told the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) at the end of March that the Department needed to reexamine how it was responding to the requests for information from Congress.

According to Mr. Melson, he and ATF’s senior leadership team moved to reassign every manager involved in Fast and Furious, from the Deputy Assistant Director for Field Operations down to the Group Supervisor, after learning the facts in those documents. Mr. Melson also said he was not allowed to communicate to Congress the reasons for the reassignments. He claimed that ATF’s senior leadership would have preferred to be more cooperative with our inquiry much earlier in the process. However, he said that Justice Department officials directed them not to respond and took full control of replying to briefing and document requests from Congress. The result is that Congress only got the parts of the story that the Department wanted us to hear.

Acting ATF Director flat out lays the blame for the smokescreen at Holder’s doorstep:

“If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand,” Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder. “That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation.” (news video at link)

Your taxpayer dollars were spent to buy those guns you know. $10,000,000 to be exact:

[ text of HR1 stimulus bill of 2009 ] For an additional amount for ‘State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance’, $40,000,000, for competitive grants to provide assistance and equipment to local law enforcement along the Southern border and in High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas to combat criminal narcotics activity stemming from the Southern border, of which $10,000,000 shall be transferred to ‘Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Salaries and Expenses’ for the ATF Project Gunrunner.

Can’t blame Bush for this one.

Now watch it be utterly buried by the MSM. I already checked CNN.com. This story does not exist. AT ALL. The only thing remotely similar is one story on ATF head may quit from TWO WEEKS ago which does outline Gunwalker somewhat, and another one in which idiot Rep Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland) says how Fast & Furious shows the need for more gun control.

Most honest and transparent government, evah!

Posted by Drew458     on 07/07/2011 at 11:10 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Government • Guns and Gun Control • Stoopid-People •  
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