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Operation Fast and Furious

XJEEPER

XJEEPER

NAXJA Member # 13
NAXJA Member
Location
Wasatch Range
AG Holder gets lit up in the hearing on May 4th. This is how the Obama Admin is handling our Southern border security, by funneling guns into Mexico.......and gambling with Agents lives.



What Attorney General Holder Won’t Tell on Controversial Gun Operation, Documents Do


WASHINGTON- At a House Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa confronted Attorney General Eric Holder on the DOJ’s Operation Fast and Furious, a highly controversial operation where federal authorities facilitated the purchase of assault weapons for drug cartels and chose not to interdict them before being transported to
Mexico.

While Attorney General Holder was unwilling to provide answer about who at the Department of Justice authorized, knew about, and even whether he still defended Operation Fast and Furious, three new documents provide information that Attorney General Holder did not address in response to questions posed by Rep. Issa.

“Two federal agents are dead,” said Chairman Issa. “While Attorney General Holder and other top officials at the Justice Department have refused to address the reckless decisions made in Operation Fast and Furious that have created a serious public safety hazard, investigations led by Sen. Charles Grassley and I continue to receive information from deeply concerned insiders who believe those responsible for what has occurred cannot be trusted to investigate themselves.”

What the documents say that Attorney General Holder wouldn’t:

US Attorney for the District of Arizona Dennis Burke was in full agreement with the investigative strategy of allowing the transfer of firearms to continue

A January 8, 2010 memo from the ATF Phoenix Field Division Office on Operation Fast and Furious noting the involvement of US Attorney for the District of Arizona Dennis Burke who was in “full agreement with the current investigative strategy.” The memo states that “currently our strategy is to allow the transfer of firearms to continue to take place … in order to further the investigation and allow for the identification of additional co-conspirators who would continue to operate and illegally traffic firearms to Mexican [Drug Trafficking Organizations].”

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer knew about and even approved a wiretap application for suspects targeted in Operation Fast and Furious over a year ago

A March 10, 2010 memo from Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer authorizing a wiretap application and revealing his participation in and knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious.

As Pressure from Congress has risen, DOJ officials are now scrambling to stop the practice of letting guns walk into Mexico

A March 10, 2011 e-mail referencing a directive from the Deputy Attorney General ordering law enforcement agents not to “design or conduct undercover operations which include guns crossing the border.” The e-mail clarifies that this includes “cases where we are working with the Mexican government to have them follow the vehicles once they are in Mexico.

Watch Rep. Issa’s exchange with Attorney General Holder:

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?deskto...e.com/watch?v=4NqH88cSBqI&v=4NqH88cSBqI&gl=US



Key Moments:

Holder: This operation has gotten a great deal of publicity.

Issa: There are dead Americans as a result of this failed and reckless program. So I would say this hasn’t gotten enough attention, has it Mr. Attorney General?

—-

Issa: Mr. Attorney General, we’re looking at you. We’re looking at your key people who knew or should have known about this and whether or not your judgment was consistent with good practices and whether or not, instead, the Justice Department is basically guilty of allowing weapons to kill Americans and Mexicans. So will you agree to cooperate with that investigation, both on the House and Senate side?

Holder: We’ll certainly cooperate with all the investigations, but I’m going to take great exception to what you just said. The notion that somehow or other, this Justice Department is responsible for those deaths that you mentioned, that assertion is offensive. I want to tell you that -

Issa: But what if it is accurate, Mr. Attorney General?

—-

Issa: So what am I going to tell Agent Terry’s mother about how he died at the hand of a gun that was videotaped as it was sold to a straw purchaser fully expecting it to end up in the hands of drug cartels?

Holder: Well, you know, what we’ll have to see exactly what happened with regard to the guns that are at issue there. And I’ve attended funerals, you know? This is something that – This isn’t theoretical. It’s not political. This is extremely real from me, as Attorney General.

Issa: It is for us too.
 
US ATF Agent Dodson speaks out about Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning that ultimately got Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry killed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvRzrSXota8
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/03/eveningnews/main20039031.shtml

Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano claims that the US/Mexico border is safer than it has ever been........Pentagon officials say this is bullcrap. http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/35668


International Terrorist organization, Hezbollah, who receives much of its funding from Iran, is actively operating in Mexico.

http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/2011/04/15/hezbollah-working-with-cartels/

http://interamericansecuritywatch.c...considered-to-be-more-advanced-than-al-qaida/


Mexican Police are complicit in terrorist activities in Mexico
 http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/2011/04/28/can-security-reform-save-mexico/
 
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They shipped over a half million M16A2's down to Mexico and they were issued to their troops, over 300,000 deserted and took them with them when they went. I think the ones coming from sporting goods stores are only a drop in the bucket.
 
Did the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), an agency of President Obama's Justice Department, operate a program that deliberately allowed some 3,500 guns bought in the U.S. to be "walked" across the Mexican border and into the waiting hands of the murderous Mexican drug cartels?

At first, President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder denied such a program existed.

Four ATF agents who worked in the program, called Operation Fast and Furious, however, answered yes this week in testimony before the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.).

Special Agent John Dodson testified that he was assigned to the Phoenix office of ATF and specifically to Group VII, the designation of the Fast and Furious team. There Dodson found that ATF agents had been following 40 individuals who were known "straw purchasers" of guns for the cartels from federal government-licensed gun shops in the U.S. Gun shop owners who called the ATF with concerns, to report suspicious buyers, were told to complete the sales.

In 2009, Obama, Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Dianne Feinstein had all charged that the increasing violence in Mexico was caused by guns purchased too easily in the U.S. They called on Congress to act to tighten gun control laws.

Obama specifically claimed 90% of the weapons in the cartels’ hands were purchased in the U.S.—sheer nonsense. Of the 100,000 or so guns recovered by the Mexicans at crime scenes at the time, 18,000 were found to be manufactured, sold or imported from the U.S. Of those, 7,900 came from federally licensed gun shops. Of those, up to 3,500 came from Operation Fast and Furious.

Was Operation Fast and Furious an Obama program to create a self-fulfilling prophecy and accomplish a gun control objective? Again the agents' testimony was clear.

Over 10 months in 2009 and 2010, Dodson testified that on an almost daily basis, he was ordered to take notes, record conversations, videotape gun purchases, make reports and track the movements of these straw buyers but nothing more.

With everyone knowing the guns were headed for Mexico and the drug cartels, Dodson and his fellow agents were ordered to not stop or arrest the suspects or impede the flow of weapons.

When the straw buyers handed the guns off to third parties, ATF agents were told to follow the straw buyers, not the third parties who headed for the border with the guns. When the agents objected, they were told to "get with the program" and that "higher-ups" including "senior ATF officials" had sanctioned the operation.

In a Jan. 25, 2011, Phoenix press conference, Special Agent in Charge William Newell was asked whether ATF agents were ever ordered to allow guns to "walk" into Mexico. He answered, "Hell no!"

Leaked e-mail traffic from spring 2010 documents show that ATF management from Acting Director Kenneth Melson on down were personally briefed in Phoenix on Operation Fast and Furious by Newell.

One of these e-mails describes Melson's intense interest in the program, including getting the IP address for the hidden cameras located in a gun shop in Arizona so he could watch the straw buyer buy guns on a screen in his Washington, D.C., office.

Melson later said Fast and Furious was really a sting operation "gone wrong." The agents had been ordered not to stop the little fish (the straw buyers) so that the guns could be traced to the big fish (the cartel bosses).

This lame explanation ignored the fact that ATF agents were ordered to not follow the guns and that ATF had no jurisdiction to take down anyone in Mexico. In fact, no "sting" ever occurred, no arrests of cartel bosses ever happened. ATF made no effort to trace the guns after they crossed the border.

ATF agents feared that one day one of these guns would show up at a crime scene. That day came one night last December when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, armed with a bean bag gun, was killed by an AK-47 armed cartel bandito in the Arizona desert. The serial numbers on two AK-47s found at the site of the shooting identified them as coming from one of the straw purchases that the ATF agents had been tracking but were ordered not to stop.

The Mexican government has linked 150 of its police or military casualties to Fast and Furious guns. As Issa pointed out, referring to a State Department report, in the last year 111 Americans were killed in Mexico—victims of the drug war.

After bloggers started talking about what they called Project Gunwalker, CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson began a series of reports that blew the story wide open. On-air interviews with the ATF agents made Gunwalker a big story on both sides of the border.

At this point, Obama said neither he nor Holder had authorized the program, but admitted "mistakes had been made" and vowed to "hold the responsible parties accountable." Holder ordered an internal investigation.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R.-Iowa) repeatedly sent letters to Holder demanding information. In a February 4, 2011, response letter to Grassley, Justice Department Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Ron Weich described as "false" Grassley’s assertion that ATF had knowingly allowed guns to be purchased and walked into Mexico.

Weich, a former aide to Sen. Harry Reid, told Grassley that "ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally, and prevent their transportation to Mexico." Challenged on the truth of this statement, the Justice Department says that because the straw buyers themselves did not cross the border but handed the weapons off to third parties, the statement was true. Huh?

In 2009-'10, the ATF agents were ordered to not arrest the "little fish." Following revelations of the Gunwalker program, the Justice Department indicted 20 of the straw buyers who were known to ATF before Fast and Furious began. Then Justice stonewalled answering any more letters seeking information on the program from Issa or from Grassley and refused to respond to Issa's committee subpoenas on the grounds that there was an ongoing criminal prosecution!

Rahm Emanuel, when he was Obama's chief of staff, famously said that no crisis should ever go to waste if it could advance the agenda. Did Obama go Rahm one better, advancing the gun-control agenda by manufacturing a crisis caused by gunrunning into Mexico, where one of the gunrunners was the U.S. government?

Members of the Mexican Congress think the answer is yes and have opened their own investigation. From the Mexican standpoint, Operation Fast and Furious was an act of war on Mexico.

For Americans of a certain age, the next question is, "What did the President know, and when did he know it?"


http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=44246
 
I've seen the government pull crap like this for years, as a communicator I had to proof read intsums [intel summaries] daily and weekly, some of it made me want to puke. That the feds would allow a program to exist that would forward their goals I have no doubt, part of this goal was to forward gun control. Note no one has even mentioned the over 300,000 Mexican army deserters that took their US supplied M16 A2's with them.
 
John Dodson, an ATF agent who complained about Fast and Furious to Grassley’s office, told the committee that “although my instincts made me want to intervene and interdict these weapons, my supervisors directed me and my colleagues not to make any stop or arrest, but rather, to keep the straw purchaser under surveillance while allowing the guns to walk.”

“Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals – this was the plan,” said Dodson. “It was so mandated.”

In one case, Dodson said, he watched a suspect receive a bag filled with cash from a third party, then proceed to a gun dealer and buy weapons with that cash and deliver them to the same unidentified third party. In that and other circumstances, his instructions were to do nothing.

“Surveillance operations like this were the rule, not the exception,” said Dodson. “This was not a matter of weapons getting away from us, or allowing a few to walk so as to follow them to a much larger or more significant target.”

ATF agent Olindo James Casa said that “on several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms.”

“We were told to just fall in line,” said Casa.

On many occasions, “the surveillance team followed straw purchasers to Phoenix area firearms dealers and would observe the straw purchasers buy and then depart with numerous firearms in hand,” said Casa. “On many of those occasions, the surveillance team would then follow the straw purchasers either to a residence, a public location or until the surveillance team was spotted by the straw purchasers. But the end result was always the same – the surveillance was terminated” by others up the chain of command.

ATF agent Peter Forcelli said that “when I voiced surprise and concern with this tactic … my concerns were dismissed” by superiors.

“To allow a gun to walk is idiotic,” said Forcelli. “This was a catastrophic disaster.”

Forcelli said that “based upon my conversations with agents who assisted in this case, surveillance on individuals who had acquired weapons was often terminated far from the Mexican border.”

He said that while case agents believed that the weapons were destined for Mexico, “the potential exists that many were sent with cartel drugs to other points within the United States.

In a email dated March 10, 2010, the assistant special agent in charge of Phoenix field operations wrote to the supervisor of the “Fast and Furious” operation and said, “Not sure if you know, but Mr. Melson and Mr. Hoover are being briefed weekly on this investigation and the recent success with [redacted] so they are both keenly interested in case updates.”


Here's an interesting opinion on subject..........
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/06/20/gunwalker-the-fast-and-furious-scandal-expands/
 
Well, it looks like dropping the "B" from the front, then adding an "E" at the end was the exact change the BATF/ATF/ATFE needed. No need getting rid of all the dirtbags that work there. That's not necessary at all.
 
Sharing this link here as well, because it applies. Truth is much different than what we are hearing from the anti-gun supporter in Washington, including Obama, who is still claiming ignorance, which is also a lie.

http://www.nra.org/mexico/
 
Hmmm... looks like "conspiracy theory" proving conspiracy fact: the left rewarding a job well done in attacking the 2nd Amendment.
 
Head of ATF removed from office, AZ AG resigns........

The head of the ATF has been removed after months of speculation about his role in a botched gun-tracking operation that could have contributed to the death of a Border Patrol agent.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Tuesday that acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Kenneth Melson was being replaced. Melson is being transferred to the Office of Legal Policy, where he will be a senior adviser.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Todd Jones will take over as acting ATF director, according to the Department of Justice.

In a simultaneous move, the U.S. Attorney for Arizona, Dennis Burke, announced his resignation on Tuesday. Burke oversaw the legal aspects of the Fast and Furious operation, providing advice to agents involved.
 
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