Obama’s ATF Director Nominee Helped Design ‘Fast And Furious’

Obama’s ATF Nominee On DOJ’s Fast And Furious Design Team – Big Government

As part of President Barack Obama’s 23-point gun control plan, he nominated Minnesota U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones – who currently doubles right now as the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – to be the ATF director.

Jones was personally a part of the high-ranking Department of Justice unit that first met on October 26, 2009, to create the new DOJ policy that was used to justify “gunwalking” in Operation Fast and Furious. In Fast and Furious, the ATF “walked” roughly 2,000 firearms into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. That means through straw purchasers the agency allowed sales to happen and didn’t stop the guns from being trafficked, even though they had the legal authority to do so and were fully capable of doing so.

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens – estimates put it around at least 300 – were killed with these firearms.

Obama nominated Jones after he said in his gun control plan that the “ATF has not had a confirmed director for six years. There is no excuse for leaving the key agency enforcing gun laws in America without a leader. It is time for Congress to confirm an ATF director.”

According to a congressional report from House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley, Jones was one of several senior DOJ officials in the meeting. Before the meeting, then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden disseminated a strategy that became the new law enforcement platform on which gunwalking was based.

“On October 23, 2009, Deputy Attorney General Ogden disseminated this strategy to the heads of Department components, including the ATF, DEA, and FBI,” the Issa-Grassley report, released on Oct. 23, 2012, reads. “The Deputy Attorney General also formed a Southwest Border Strategy Group, which he headed, responsible for implementing the new strategy. The Strategy Group’s first meeting was on October 26, 2009, when it assembled to discuss the new strategy.”

“The meeting invitation included Deputy Attorney General Ogden and his deputies Ed Siskel and Kathryn Ruemmler (both of whom would later leave the Justice Department for the White House Counsel’s Office); Assistant Attorney General Breuer and his deputies, Jason Weinstein, Kenneth Blanco, and Bruce Swartz; ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson and Deputy Director William Hoover; the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, Dennis Burke; and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota, B. Todd Jones, then serving as Chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee,” the report continues.

From that meeting came what’s become known as the “Ogden memo,” which contains a paragraph many involved in gunwalking have pointed to as their legal basis for the practice. “Thus, given the national scope of this issue, merely seizing firearms through interdiction will not stop firearms trafficking to Mexico,” the paragraph, printed on page seven of the memo, reads. “We must identify, investigate, and eliminate the sources of illegally trafficked firearms and the networks that transport them.”

The Department of Justice has withheld documents, details, and more information about these meetings and this group from congressional investigators and internal DOJ investigators at the Department of Justice. Many mainstream media outlets have claimed Attorney General Eric Holder and other senior officials were “vindicated” or “cleared” by the DOJ’s Inspector General when his report came out in the fall 2012. But these documents and details remain hidden from the American people, leaving open more questions about what role Holder or his aides played in gunwalking in Operation Fast and Furious.

“The Committees were unable to ascertain any further details regarding this meeting,” the Issa-Grassley report adds.

As Townhall’s Katie Pavlich notes, Jones also has a penchant for threatening and retaliating against ATF Operation Fast and Furious whistleblowers. Issa said Obama’s decision to nominate Jones is a “slap in the face” to the Terry family.

“Acting Director Jones was at the helm of ATF as many troubling problems from the fallout of Operation Fast and Furious festered,” Issa declared. “His specific decisions on a number of Fast and Furious related issues raise concerns about his judgment and ability to lead the agency.

“While I continue to believe that ATF needs to have a Senate confirmed Director, President Obama has a responsibility to find a nominee who can win confirmation and is not saddled by a string of bad decisions related to the agency’s greatest recent failure.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman hasn’t returned Breitbart News’ request for comment in response to these revelations about Jones and hasn’t answered whether Holder will release the documents and information surrounding those Fast and Furious formative meetings.

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Univision Breaks New Details Of Obama Administration’s Fast And Furious Cover-Up

Univision Breaks New Details Of Obama Administration’s Fast And Furious Cover-Up – Pajamas Media

On Sunday night, Spanish-language station Univision – one of the only networks to provide critical coverage of President Obama’s failures in office instead of cream-puff interviews – broke open the Fast and Furious investigation, revealing new evidence of weapons smuggling and displaying shocking new images of the bloody aftermath of the government-supported gun-smuggling program.

The Univision report undermines the integrity of the recently released DOJ inspector general report on Operation Fast and Furious, already heavily criticized as an attempt to whitewash criminal activity within the Obama administration.

The hour-long Univision report revealed the existence of another 57 guns recovered by Mexican authorities, including some of those used in the mass-murder at a party just one year after Obama’s inauguration:

On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college students in Villas de Salvarcar, Ciudad Juarez. Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more were wounded before the hit men finally fled.

Indirectly, the United States government played a role in the massacre by supplying some of the firearms used by the cartel murderers. Three of the high caliber weapons fired that night in Villas de Salvarcar were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), according to a Mexican army document obtained exclusively by Univision News.

These 57 recovered weapons discovered are in addition to the 122 weapons referenced in a congressional report. It is chilling to learn that each weapon recovered was dumped at the scene of a crime by cartel members who had attempted, and in most cases completed, the crime of first-degree murder. It is even more disturbing to know that American Department of Justice officials knew that most of the weapons walked over the border would only be discarded by the police and recovered by Mexican authorities after they were used in a crime, and that they were indifferent to the body count being racked up, callously noting that to make an omelet, eggs had to be broken.

Univision pulled no punches in describing the horrors of the Villas de Salvarcar massacre, even showing a graphic pool of blood reminiscent of the iconic Normandy D-Day invasion scene in the classic World War II film The Big Red One.

The report also shed more light on a fact that many in the media have attempted to ignore – namely, that Operation Fast and Furious was not the only federal gun-walking operation providing weapons to criminals at this time.

Operation Castaway, run with the same bloody-minded approach as Operation Fast and Furious, provided more than 1,000 guns to cartels via the Tampa ATF. Those guns leaked out across Honduras, Colombia, and Venezuela, according to the U.S. veteran who smuggled some of the weapons, Hugh Crumpler:

“When the ATF stopped me, they told me the guns were going to cartels,” Hugh Crumpler, a Vietnam veteran turned arms trafficker, told Univision News. “The ATF knew before I knew and had been following me for a considerable length of time. They could not have followed me for two months like they said they did, and not know the guns were going somewhere, and not want for that to be happening.”

Univision also uncovered evidence of weapons being smuggled from Texas: two gun-smuggling programs similar to Fast and Furious are rumored to have put thousands of additional weapons in the cartels’ hands in operations larger than Fast and Furious. U.S. Senator John Cornyn has repeatedly pressed the Obama administration for information about the documented trail of weapons coming from two Texas ATF areas of operations. The Department of Justice has denied the existence of such programs, despite the physical evidence of guns recovered suggesting otherwise. While the Univision report focused on guns the DOJ ran to Mexican cartels, there is enough evidence to suggest other Obama administration-sanctioned gun-walking plots arming domestic criminal gangs, such as the so-called Gangwalker plot in Indiana, which supplied Chicago street gangs, and similar rumored operations in California, North Carolina, northern Florida, and elsewhere, which provided weapons to gangs in U.S. cities. Nor has the Univision report focused on weapons that have found their way to cartels via the State Department or the Department of Defense.

Ever since Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea broke the story of Obama administration gun-walking, critics have been noting that this is the biggest, bloodiest scandal in U.S. presidential history.

Despite a concerted effort by the mainstream media to ignore the story and the Obama administration’s attempt to stonewall investigators, this story seems to be catching fire.

The first presidential debate between embattled President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney will occur Wednesday. You can rest assured the moderator Jim Lehrer will not ask questions about the bloody gun-smuggling plot. It will be interesting to see, however, if Romney himself is willing to bring the scandal out onto a stage so public that even the media can’t ignore it.

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DaleyGator DaleyThought Fast and Furious, all about gun control?

Click the pic to listen

Issa Pulls A Cunning Move To Detail Secret ‘Fast And Furious’ Wiretap Applications

Issa Pulls A Cunning Move To Detail Secret ‘Fast And Furious’ Wiretap Applications – The Blaze

The ongoing tug-of-war between Attorney General Eric Holder and Rep. Darrell Issa (R- Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, climaxed on Thursday with a historic vote in which Congress held the attorney general in both civil and criminal contempt over his refusal to provide subpoenaed “Fast and Furious” documents.

And now less than 24-hours following the vote, it is being reported that Issa has seemingly dealt another devastating blow to the Justice Department. Roll Call reports that in a very sly move: the chairman has inserted a May 24 letter he wrote to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), in which he quotes from and explains in detail some of the content found in secret wiretap applications from the failed federal gun-walking operation, into the Congressional Record.

Issa argues the wiretap applications are extremely detailed in identifying some of the tactics employed in Fast and Furious, which Holder and the senior DOJ officials still argue they were completely unaware of even though senior Justice Department officials signed off on the applications.

Holder has repeatedly said the wiretap applications are sealed court documents, which is why Issa has been unable to simply release the documents to the public. Issa himself said he got his copies from a group of “furious whistleblowers.” Holder and the DOJ have refused to comment on the applications, therefore details have remained extremely fuzzy.

In other words, because he couldn’t release the wiretap applications outright, he released a letter describing them. And he made that letter part of the official record while using Congress’ protection under the speech and debate clause to avoid legal ramifications.

Roll Call has the latest developments in the Fast and Furious saga:

In the midst of a fiery floor debate over contempt proceedings for Attorney General Eric Holder, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) quietly dropped a bombshell letter into the Congressional Record.

The May 24 letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), ranking member on the panel, quotes from and describes in detail a secret wiretap application that has become a point of debate in the GOP’s “Fast and Furious” gun-walking probe.

The wiretap applications are under court seal, and releasing such information to the public would ordinarily be illegal. But Issa appears to be protected by the Speech or Debate Clause in the Constitution, which offers immunity for Congressional speech, especially on a chamber’s floor.

According to the letter, the wiretap applications contained a startling amount of detail about the operation, which would have tipped off anyone who read them closely about what tactics were being used.

Holder and Cummings have both maintained that the wiretap applications did not contain such details and that the applications were reviewed narrowly for probable cause, not for whether any investigatory tactics contained followed Justice Department policy.

The wiretap applications were signed by senior DOJ officials in the department’s criminal division, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco and another official who is now deceased.

While Issa has since said he has obtained a number of wiretap applications, the letter only refers to one, from March 15, 2010. The full application is not included in what Issa entered into the Congressional Record, and names are obscured in Issa’s letter.

In the application, ATF agents included transcripts from a wiretap intercept from a previous Drug Enforcement Administration investigation that demonstrated the suspects were part of a gun-smuggling ring.

The wiretap applications also reportedly explain how ATF officials watched firearms purchased by suspected straw purchasers walk and ended their surveillance without intercepting the guns, according to Issa’s letter. In at least one instance, the guns were recovered at a police stop at the U.S.-Mexico border the next day, Roll Call reports.

“Although ATF was aware of these facts, no one was arrested, and ATF failed to even approach the straw purchasers. Upon learning these details through its review of this wiretap affidavit, senior Justice Department officials had a duty to stop this operation. Further, failure to do so was a violation of Justice Department policy,” the letter reads.

In a June 5 letter, Cummings responded to Issa’s May 24 letter and argued that Issa “omits the critical fact that [redacted].” Roll Call reports the entire first section of his letter is also blacked out.

“Sadly, it looks like Mr. Issa is continuing his string of desperate and unsubstantiated claims, while hiding key information from the very same documents,” a Democratic committee staffer told Roll Call. “His actions demonstrate a lack of concern for the facts, as well as a reckless disregard for our nation’s courts and federal prosecutors who are trying to bring criminals to justice. We’re not going to stoop to his level. Obviously, we are going to honor the court’s seal and the prosecutors’ requests. But if Mr. Issa won’t tell you what he is hiding from the wiretaps, you should ask him why.”

Some of the important highlights from Issa’s letter:

* The financial details of four suspected straw purchases showed they had made $373,000 in gun purchases in cash but had nearly no reportable income from past year.
* The applications detailed how many guns specific suspects had bought from straw purchasers.
* Wiretap Applications reveal ATF agents did not interdict guns when possible.
* “Although ATF was aware of these facts, no one was arrested, and ATF failed to even approach the straw purchasers.”
* The wiretap applications were signed by senior DOJ officials
* Holder has refused to address the documents.

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Fast And Furious Cover-Up Continues: Obama Asserts Executive Privilege Over Documents

Obama Asserts Executive Privilege Over Fast And Furious Documents – Daily Caller

President Barack Obama has asserted executive privilege over documents pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious. The move followed Attorney General Eric Holder’s last-second request for him to do so, ahead of a scheduled House Oversight Committee vote to begin contempt of Congress proceedings against Holder.

Obama granted the 11th-hour request after negotiations between Holder and the committee’s chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, fell apart again on Tuesday evening after a 20-minute meeting. Holder had agreed beforehand that he would provide internal DOJ documents to Issa ahead of the meeting. He did not bring the documents. On Tuesday evening, Issa gave him one final chance to provide the documents before the 10 a.m. scheduled vote to hold Holder in contempt.

Holder again did not provide the documents to Congress. Then, on Wednesday morning, minutes before the meeting, it was announced Obama had agreed to assert executive privilege over those documents.

Appearing on Fox News shortly after the announcement, Arizona Republican Rep. David Schweikert said the next steps are for Congress to move forward with contempt proceedings. According to Fox News, Issa’s committee is expected to move forward with the contempt proceeding.

Ranking Member Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings said the assertion of executive privilege doesn’t block the committee from access to all documents, only some.

“As I understand it, the assertion does not cover everything in this category, such as whistleblower documents, and the administration has indicated that it remains willing to try to come to a mutual resolution despite its formal legal assertion,” Cummings said. “As a member of Congress, I treat assertions of executive privilege very seriously, and I believe they should be used only sparingly. In this case, it seems clear that the administration was forced into this position by the committee’s unreasonable insistence on pressing forward with contempt despite the attorney general’s good faith offer.”

The Hill reported that this is the first time Obama has ever asserted the executive privilege.

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said this assertion raises more questions than answers.

“The assertion of executive privilege raises monumental questions,” Grassley said. “How can the President assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement? How can the President exert executive privilege over documents he’s supposedly never seen? Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme? The contempt citation is an important procedural mechanism in our system of checks and balances. The questions from Congress go to determining what happened in a disastrous government program for accountability and so that it’s never repeated again.”

Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton, a former chair of the oversight committee for six years, said Issa has been “patient.” He said the president’s decision to assert executive privilege to withhold documents makes him wonder if Obama knew of Fast and Furious.
“The attorney general has asserted on numerous occasions that he didn’t know about this, now the president of the United States has claimed executive privilege,” Burton added. “And now that brings into question how much Holder knew about this, and that the president knew about this. My question is, who knew about this, how high up did it go, did it go to the attorney general or president of the united states and when did they know about this?”

New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney said she was “horrified” that Issa was moving forward with contempt proceedings after Obama asserted the executive privilege. She accused Issa of conducting a “political witch hunt” against Holder.

Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash tweeted that Obama’s assertion of executive privilege means Fast and Furious “must rise all the way to Pres. Obama.”

“Stunning admission by White House,” Amash tweeted.

House Speaker John Boehner’s spokesman Michael Steel told The Daily Caller that President Obama’s claim of executive privilege implies a startling new allegation pertaining to Fast and Furious: The White House was either involved with the operation or a cover-up.

“Until now, everyone believed that the decisions regarding ‘Fast and Furious’ were confined to the Department of Justice,” Steel said in an email. “The White House decision to invoke executive privilege implies that White House officials were either involved in the ‘Fast and Furious’ operation or the cover-up that followed. The Administration has always insisted that wasn’t the case. Were they lying, or are they now bending the law to hide the truth?”

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Texas Rep. Gohmert lights into Eric Holder

Via The Right Scoop

*VIDEO* White House Press Secretary Jay Carney: Obama’s Baghdad Bob

Obama Administration Let Grenades Walk In Fast And Furious, Documents Show

Obama Administration Let Grenades Walk In Fast And Furious, Documents Show – Daily Caller

In a shocking development in the Operation Fast and Furious investigation, documents show Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents allowed grenade parts to walk in addition to guns.

The emails also show Obama administration officials acknowledging that they may lose track of grenades but would still be able to accomplish their original objective even if the grenades explode.

According to an internal email that was provided to Congress by the Department of Justice and first reported by CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson, ATF began watching accused smuggler Jean Baptiste Kingery’s AK-47 purchases in 2004. In the 2009 internal ATF email, Obama administration officials admitted they believed Kingery was “trafficking them into Mexico.”

The 2009 email shows the ATF officials had then become aware of Kingery’s alleged grenade trafficking.

The administration officials then put together a plan: They secretly intercepted Kingery’s grenade parts after he ordered them online, marked them with special paint and gave them back to him. Then, they allowed him to take those grenade parts into Mexico. ATF was going to try to find his weapons factory there – even though the U.S. government and its federal law enforcement agencies have no jurisdiction in Mexico – with the apparent goal of building a bigger case against Kingery.

ATF agents had planned to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials – who, unlike ATF agents who ultimately report to Attorney General Eric Holder, report up the chain to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

The emails show ATF agents were aware they might lose track of Kingery while they allowed him to transport the grenade parts into Mexico. The emails also show ATF agents knew that the grenades could end up exploding and killing innocent people if they proceeded with the plan. That didn’t stop the Obama administration’s ATF from allowing the grenades to walk.

“Even in a post blast, as long as the safety lever is recovered we will be able to identify these tagged grenades,” an official wrote in one email.

In addition to those revelations, new evidence photos have emerged: More than 2,000 rounds of ammunition and scores of grenade parts and fuse assemblies are seen in evidence photos that were just turned over to Congress. According to Attkisson’s report, officials had taken Kingery into custody in 2010 – long before Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered with a Fast and Furious-supplied gun – after having caught him trying to transport that ammunition and those grenade parts and fuse assemblies into Mexico hidden inside the spare tire of the SUV he was travelling in.

Attkisson said that ATF agents questioned Kingery at that point but then “inexplicably released” him.

Internally, some in the ATF objected to these practices. For instance, ATF’s Mexico attaché, Carlos Canino – who has cooperated with congressional investigators and appeared willingly before the House Oversight Committee last summer – said ATF was not supposed to allow weapons, including grenades, to walk.

“We are forbidden from doing that type of activity,” Canino wrote in one email. “If ICE is telling you they can do that, they are full of shit.”

This news comes on the heels of Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich’s decision to resign his post at the Department of Justice soon. The University of Baltimore School of Law hired him as its new dean and he starts in July. Weich was the DOJ official who provided provably false information to Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa when Grassley began investigating Fast and Furious.

On Feb. 4, 2011, Weich wrote to Congress that the idea that “ATF ‘sanctioned’ or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico … is false.”

“ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico,” Weich added in that letter.

The DOJ has since retracted Weich’s letter.

Not one government official has been held accountable for Operation Fast and Furious. Scores of lawmakers – 125 House members, three U.S. senators, two governors – and many major political figures, including likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, have demanded Holder’s resignation or firing over Fast and Furious.

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It’s Still On: Six More Members Of Congress Call For Eric Holder’s Resignation

It’s Still On: Six More Members Of Congress Call For Eric Holder’s Resignation – Hot Air

Between the contraception kerfuffle and the GOP primaries, the MSM has had too much to cover to tackle the fallout from Fast and Furious, too. Just kidding. Even if nothing else were going on, you’d still hear this news from just a handful of people.

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The Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle reports this morning that the count of congressmen calling for Attorney General Eric Holder’s resignation has reached 109:

Spokespeople for Florida Republican Reps. Cliff Stearns and Mario Diaz-Balart told The Daily Caller their bosses agree with the surging group of members already demanding Holder’s resignation. Meanwhile, four new members have signed onto the official House resolution of “no confidence” in Holder – House Resolution 490 – because of Fast and Furious: Republican Reps. Bill Huizenga of Michigan, Cory Gardner of Colorado, and Pete Olson and Mike Conaway, both of Texas.

The groundswell has grown steadily since the first House members demanded Holder resign last October. Three U.S. Senators, two sitting governors and all major Republican presidential candidates have joined those 109 House members.

As a reminder, Fast and Furious – a program of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms – was a purported drug-busting operation in which ATF officials intentionally sold guns to straw purchasers who, in turn, sold the weapons to leaders of Mexican drug cartels. But if the intention of the officials was to bust the cartels, they had a curious way of showing it: No credible attempt was made to track the weapons from the hands of the straw purchasers into the hands of the drug cartel leaders. As a result, the weapons were never interdicted and some have since shown up on the scene of violent crimes in both the U.S. and Mexico. The ultimately lethal program led to the deaths of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and more than 200 Mexicans. Hundreds more of the guns are still not accounted for and likely to turn up at the scenes of future tragedies.

The congressional investigation led by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has revealed enough for us to know Attorney General Eric Holder was either aware and in approval of the program or incompetent and negligent – either of which scenario would be grounds for Obama to demand his resignation.

My question: Why have just 109 congressmen called for this man to leave the administration? Do they not care about U.S.-Mexico relations, border security or the deaths of more than 200 people?

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Rep. Issa Signals Contempt Hearings Against Attorney General Holder On Fast And Furious (Video)

Rep. Issa Signals Contempt Hearings Against Attorney General Holder On Fast And Furious (Video) – Gateway Pundit

Rep Darrell Issa (R-CA) was on with Megyn Kelly this afternoon to discuss Fast and Furious. Issa signaled that the House will hold contempt hearings against Attorney General Eric Holder.

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TPM reported:

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa signaled Tuesday that his committee will “move forward with the contempt proces against Attorney General Eric Holder unless the Justice Department commits to “providing, at a minimum, a detailed description of documents it is withholding” from his committee in the course of their investigation into ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious.

“The Justice Department’s request for additional time has, unfortunately, not been followed by efforts to bridge the significant differences between its legal obligation to Congress and the reality of its stonewalling,” Issa said in a statement. “The committee is determined to know what happened in Operation Fast and Furious and how the Justice Department responded when it was publicly confronted with evidence of reckless conduct after Agent Terry’s death.”

Issa wrote in his letter that DOJ “is playing political gotcha games, instead of allowing a co-equal branch of government to perform its constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch” (emphasis in original), commenting on Holder’s criticism of Issa’s investigation.

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Perry rips into administration over Fast and Furious

 Via Ace, who adds an emphatic FINALLY!

Finally? Finally.

He called Fast and Furious a “bureaucratic bungling” that had made guarding the border “substantially more dangerous.”“Our own federal government provided more than 2,000 firearms to some of the most dangerous criminals in North of America, many of which are still unaccounted for,” Perry told the audience at the annual Federal Law Enforcement Foundation luncheon, held at a hotel in New York City.

“Federal law enforcement officials deserve an attorney general who displays the same courage and the sense of responsibility with which they serve,” he added. “And America deserves a president and a Congress willing to give law enforcement officials the support they need to truly secure our borders.”

As Ace points out, Perry might have said it a bit more harshly, but at least Perry is talking about this in an agressive manner.

Video-Janet Napolitano grilled over Fast and Furious

You know, I have said that this woman is as smart as a tree stump. But, that is wrong. She actually is not that bright!

H/T Duane Lester

Just saw this at America’s Watchtower, is DHS after Rick Perry?

According to this story the Department of Homeland Security may have found a new threat, and that threat is…..Rick Perry. The story is just breaking and as of this time there are few details but it appears as if a member of the Department of Homeland Security, Mohamed Elibiary, accessed documents which were meant strictly for official use and quickly decided that leaking them to the press constituted official use.

  Yes, he approached us and gave us some reports marked FOUO [For Official Use Only] that he said showed a pattern of Islamophobia at the department. He emphasized that some of the regional fusion centers were shut down a few years ago after the ACLU complained that they were targeting Muslim civil rights groups and said that this was being directed by [Texas Gov.] Rick Perry

  It appears as if Mohamed Elibiary’s intent was to use these documents in an attempt to bring down a political opponent of Barack Obama but:

We looked at the reports and they weren’t as he had billed them to us. They seem to be pretty straightforward, nothing remotely resembling Islamophobia that we saw. I think he was hoping we would bite and not give it too much of a look in light of the other media outfits jumping on the Islamophobia bandwagon

Well, I have said that Perry likely scares Obama more than any other candidate, which is why the Left has attacked him so. But think of this. The DHS being used to bring down political foes of you know who?

Botched U.S. Gun Smuggling Operation Let Grenades, IEDs ‘Walk’ Into Mexico

Botched U.S. Gun Smuggling Operation Let Grenades, IEDs ‘Walk’ Into Mexico – Business Insider

Amid brewing controversy over the ATF’s botched Fast and Furious gunrunning operation comes new allegations that the Department of Justice also let off an Arizona man suspected of supplying grenades to Mexico’s drug cartels.

The WSJ reports today that federal authorities are now investigating why the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix – the same office that oversaw Fast and Furious – released Jean Baptiste Kingery after he confessed to providing military-style weapons to the now-defunct La Familia Michoacana drug cartel.

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Kingery, who was arrested and released in June 2010, confessed to manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) using grenade components from the U.S. He also admitted to helping the cartel convert semi-automatic rifles into machine guns. Mexican criminal organizations are increasingly using these military-style weapons as the cartels’ escalate their wars against the government and one another.

Despite Kingery’s confession, and over loud protestations from the arresting ATF officers, the U.S. Attorney’s office let Kingery go within hours of his arrest.

Kingery’s release is now the subject of an internal probe by the DOJ inspector general. The findings in the DOJ probe were a major catalyst in the recent staff shakeup that ousted Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennie Burke and Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson from their posts.

The Phoenix U.S. Attorney’s office denies that it declined to prosecute the case, saying that it wanted to continue surveillance. The office alternatively told investigators that ATF agents wanted to make Kingery an informant, but lost contact with him within weeks of his release.

Prosecutors involved in the case also accuse ATF agents of devising a failed sting that allowed Kingery to take hundreds of grenade parts across the border in the months about six months prior to his arrest.

The Congressional Oversight Committee has also expanded its Fast and Furious investigation to include the Kingery case. The Committee is investigating who in the Obama administration knew about the gunrunning program, under which ATF agents allowed more than 2,000 guns to “walk” across the border.

The Fast and the Furious case has escalated over the past weeks, with news that at least three White House national security officials knew about the gunrunning program.

Emails obtained by the Committee last week show contact between the head of the Phoenix ATF and Kevin O’Reilly, then-director of North American affairs, about the operation. The White House confirmed that O’Reilly briefed Dan Restrepo, senior director for the Western Hemisphere, and Greg Gatjanis, director of counterterrorism and narcotics.

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ATF Agent Who Implemented ‘Fast And Furious’ Says 4 Federal Agencies Were ‘Full Partners’ (Video)

ATF Agent Who Implemented ‘Fast And Furious’ Says 4 Federal Agencies Were ‘Full Partners’ – Washington Examiner

Four federal agencies were “full partners” in the Obama administration’s bungled Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed guns to wind up in the hands of Mexican drug lords, the man who implemented the program revealed today at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

William Newell, the former head of the Phoenix field office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was pressed by Rep. Pat Meehan, R-Penn. to identify all the federal agencies involved in the operation.

In response, Newell identified the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service as “full partners” with the ATF.

The DEA and ATF are both part of the Department of Justice and ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

The video of the exchange is embedded below, with the relevant portion around the 3:30 mark.

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Allen West to Holder: Hit the road loser

Or words to that general affect

During an appearance on the Steve Gill Show, U.S. Rep. Allen West said the roads that appear to lead to those responsible for the botched program that was supposed to trace guns to high-ranking drug lords are alarming.

“This is just another sad chapter in the Eric Holder book of ineptness and incompetence,” West said. “Eric Holder needs to be brought before an investigative committee and if those charges are warranted he needs to be held accountable.

“At least the president needs to realize that Eric Holder needs to be removed from the Department of Justice … or else it appears President Obama is complicit and in approval of the actions of his attorney general,” he said.

Mega-Scandal: Was ‘Gunwalker’ A PR Op For Gun Control?

Mega-Scandal: Was ‘Gunwalker’ A PR Op For Gun Control? – Bob Owens

The most damning revelations coming out of the hearings on Operation Fast and Furious held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform are the unmistakable indications that the program was never designed to succeed as a law enforcement operation at all.

A quartet of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) agents and supervisors turned into whistleblowers to bring the operation down, but only after U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down in the Arizona desert. Two of the weapons recovered at the scene of Terry’s murder were traced to the operation.

Fast and Furious, also known by the more accurate “Gunwalker,” allowed known straw purchasers to buy large quantities of firearms — often a dozen or more semi-automatic rifles — at a time with the full knowledge of ATF agents and executives. The guns were then smuggled into Mexico, as frustrated front-line ATF agents watched, under strict orders to do nothing.

ATF agents testifying in front of the House Oversight Committee could not explain how the operation was supposed to succeed when their surveillance efforts stopped at the border and interdiction was never an option.

ATF Agent John Dodson, testifying in front of the committee, said that in his entire law enforcement career, he had “never been involved in or even heard of an operation in which law enforcement officers let guns walk.” He continued: “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.”

The obvious answer is that Gunwalker’s objective was never intended to be a “legitimate law enforcement interest.” Instead, it appears that ATF Acting Director Ken Melson and Department of Justice senior executives specifically created an operation that was designed from the outset to arm Mexican narco-terrorists and increase violence substantially along both sides of the Southwest border.

Success was measured not by the number of criminals being incarcerated, but by the number of weapons transiting the border and the violence those weapons caused. An ATF manager was “delighted” when Gunwalker guns started showing up at drug busts. It would be entirely consistent with this theory if DOJ communications reflected the approval of the ATF senior officials they were colluding with — but as we know, Holder’s Department of Justice refuses to cooperate.

At the same time in 2009 that federal law enforcement agencies (the ATF, the DOJ, and presumably Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security) were creating the operation that led to the executive branch being the largest gun smuggler in the Southwest, the president’s team was crafting the rhetoric to sell the crisis they were creating.

On television, in various news outlets, and even in a joint appearance with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama pushed the 90 percent lie, implying that 90% of the guns recovered in Mexican cartel violence came from U.S. gun shops.

At the same time they were damning gun dealers in public, the administration was secretly forcing them to provide weapons to the cartels, by the armful and without oversight. More than one gun industry insider suggests that the administration extorted cooperation and silence from these gun shops. As the ATF has the power to summarily shut dealers down for the most minor of offenses, that is very, very possible.

The administration has spared no effort to stop the investigation in its tracks. Democrat senators attempted to poison the well the day before the Oversight Committee’s hearings. The ranking Democrat on the committee did as well, before being flummoxed into silence by the testimony presented.

And Obama himself has offered the solutions we would expect from a gun prohibitionist:

Faced with a Congress hostile to even slight restrictions of Second Amendment rights, the Obama administration is exploring potential changes to gun laws that can be secured strictly through executive action, administration officials say.

The Department of Justice held the first in what is expected to be a series of meetings on Tuesday afternoon with a group of stakeholders in the ongoing gun-policy debates. Before the meeting, officials said part of the discussion was expected to center around the White House’s options for shaping policy on its own or through its adjoining agencies and departments — on issues ranging from beefing up background checks to encouraging better data-sharing.

Administration officials said talk of executive orders or agency action are among a host of options that President Barack Obama and his advisers are considering.

As there is a pattern of behavior to suggest that Gunwalker was not a botched law enforcement operation, but was instead an effort by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department to carry out a subversive anti-gun policy of the Obama administration, it is pertinent to examine Obama’s past associations with anti-gun groups.

From 1994-2002, Obama was a director of the Joyce Foundation. Joyce is a progressive organization dedicated to “social justice,” and one of their primary areas of advocacy has always been the funding of gun control organizations. Joyce has long attempted to erode Second Amendment rights, and during Obama’s tenure as a director went so far as to try to subvert Second Amendment scholarship. Joyce gave millions to effectively buy law reviews with grants, and then used those reviews to publish only papers that attacked the individual rights interpretation. The goal was to so pervert legal scholarship that the scholarship would affect Supreme Court decisions.

Joyce director Obama, and those surrounding him, internalized fellow Chicagoan Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. While the Joyce plot narrowly failed, it affirmed Alinsky’s strategy of agitating, fanning hostility, and disorganizing the public in order to force radical change.

We know that Obama’s friends in Joyce Foundation-supported gun control groups suspiciously have not attacked the administration’s gun-running, but instead have attacked the Oversight Committee’s investigation.

We know that of the 7,900 weapons (just under 8 percent of the guns captured from cartels) that came from gun shops in the United States, about 2,000 of them were the result of Gunwalker.

We know that Gunwalker was never designed to interdict the weapons the ATF and DOJ pushed objecting gun sellers to provide. We know that management reacted to the spiraling violence that Gunwalker caused not with concern, but with enthusiasm.

The Department of Justice claims that their inspector general will investigate Gunwalker, but it appears obvious to the very agents that brought this scandal into the open that they have a clear conflict of interest. There are already calls for a special prosecutor to investigate Gunwalker.

Considering the arming of narco-terrorist gangs, the destabilizing geopolitical effect on Mexico, the foreign policy ramifications, and the possibility of extrajudicial and criminal activity at the highest levels of the executive branch, a special prosecutor should be just one avenue of investigation. This could possibly lead to prison for senior administration officials and an indictment against President Barack Obama himself.

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Report: Amid ‘Fast And Furious’ Scandal ATF Head To Step Down

Report: Amid ‘Fast And Furious’ Scandal ATF Head To Step Down – The Blaze

In the midst of the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms acting director Kenneth Melson is expected to resign in the next day or two.

Last week, Congress further investigated the controversy and some ATF agents claimed that the mission and its organizers knowingly allowed guns to slip into the hands of criminals. With the testimony and research came e-mails that seemed to indicate that Melson had knowledge of the entire operation as it was being conducted. Some are questioning who else was made aware of the operation and how high up in the Justice Department the information traveled.

Operation Fast and Furious came to light after two assault rifles purchased by a now-indicted small-time buyer under scrutiny in the operation turned up at the scene of a shootout in Arizona where Customs and Border Protection agent Brian Terry was killed.

For more information, watch the following CNN report:

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According to CNN, Attorney General Eric Holder will meet with Andrew Traver (head of the Chicago ATF office) tomorrow regarding a replacement for Melson.

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Operation Fast and Furious, is the fit about to hit the shan

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Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has the story

The House Oversight Committee has released interviews with four ATF agents indicate that a top official in the Department of Justice may have lied to, or at the least misled, Congress on a controversial operation that put guns in the hands of Mexican drug cartels, one of which was used to kill a Border Patrol agent.  Ronald Weich, an Assistant Attorney General under Eric Holder, assured Congress in writing that the ATF and Department of Justice “made every effort” seize all illegally-purchased weapons.  However, the ATF agents testifed that the ATF and DoJ deliberately allowed hundreds of such weapons to cross the border as part of Operation Fast and Furious:

Dodson, Casa, Alt and Forcelli say they were instructed to watch weapons purchased illegally en route to criminal networks but not seize the weapons as they had been trained. …

Dodson estimates 1,730 weapons escaped to the clutches of Mexican drug cartels throughout the lifespan of “Fast and Furious.” Many were later recovered at the scene of violent crimes.

“This guy comes in, buys 10, 15, 20 AKs or … a 22-year-old girl walks in and dumps $10,000 on … AK-47s in a day, when she is driving a beat up car that doesn’t have enough metal to hold hubcaps on it. They knew what was going on. The ‘may have facilitated’ to me is kind of erroneous. We did facilitate it. How are we not responsible for the ultimate outcome of these [g]uns?” Dodson said.

The agents said they complained vociferously about the operation to superiors. Eventually, a “schism” between team members developed over whether the tactics being used were wise or even legal.

When the agents raised objections to the wisdom and legality of the operation, they were met with a rather pointed response:

David Voth, the team’s supervisor, sent a March 12, 2010 email to the team, saying the tactics of “Fast and Furious” were backed by “HQ.”

“Whether you care or not people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case and they also believe we…are doing what they envisioned the Southwest Border Grouops doing. It may sound cheesy but we are ‘The tip of the ATF spear’ when it comes to Southwest Border Firearms Trafficking,” Voth wrote.

If the agents didn’t like it, “Maybe the Maricopa County Jail is hiring detention officers and you can get paid $30,000 (instead of $100,000) to serve lunch to inmates all day,” Voth wrote.

Dodson said he was told “the U.S. Attorney is on board, and it was Mr. [Emory] Hurley, and they say there is nothing illegal going on.”

Agents clearly didn’t agree, and accurately predicted the outcome of allowing the weapons to cross the border:

ATF agents interviewed by congressional investigators described supervisors trying to tamp down agents’ misgivings about the strategy to allow the weapons purchases.

Larry Alt, an ATF agent, told investigators agents opposed the weapons sales as early as December 2009 and wanted to arrest straw purchasers, who are paid to buy guns for others. Mr. Alt said he agreed with a fellow agent who expressed the view that “someone was going to die.”

And, as we know someone, a Border Agent did die. Lots more at the link, and Michelle also is on top of this

Just in from Issa’s office:

Moments ago in his opening statement at today’s hearing, Operation Fast and Furious: Reckless Decisions, Tragic Outcomes, Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) released three e-mails detailing the intimate involvement of ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson and Acting Deputy Director Bill Hoover in Operation Fast and Furious:

* The first e-mail from March 10, 2010, to Operation Fast and Furious Group VII Leader David Voth indicates that the two most senior leaders in ATF, Acting Director Kenneth Melson, and Deputy Director Billy Hoover, were “being briefed weekly on” Operation Fast and Furious. The document shows that both Melson and Hoover were “keenly interested in case updates.”
* A second e-mail from March 12, 2010, shows that Deputy Assistant Director for Field Operations William McMahon was so excited about Fast and Furious that he received a special briefing on the program in Phoenix – scheduled for a mere 45 minutes after his plane landed.
* A third – and perhaps the most disturbing – e-mail from April 12, 2010, indicates that Acting Director Melson was very much in the weeds with Operation Fast and Furious. After a detailed briefing of the program by the ATF Phoenix Field Division, Acting Director Melson had a plethora of follow-up questions that required additional research to answer. As the document indicates, Mr. Melson was interested in the IP Address for hidden cameras located inside cooperating gun shops. With this information, Acting Director Melson was able to sit at his desk in Washington and – himself – watch a live feed of the straw buyers entering the gun stores to purchase dozens of AK-47 variants.

ATF Agent: I Was Ordered To Let U.S. Guns Into Mexico

ATF Agent: I Was Ordered To Let U.S. Guns Into Mexico – CBS News

Federal agent John Dodson says what he was asked to do was beyond belief.

He was intentionally letting guns go to Mexico?

“Yes ma’am,” Dodson told CBS News. “The agency was.”

An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson’s job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen.

Investigators call the tactic letting guns “walk.” In this case, walking into the hands of criminals who would use them in Mexico and the United States.

Dodson’s bosses say that never happened. Now, he’s risking his job to go public.

“I’m boots on the ground in Phoenix, telling you we’ve been doing it every day since I’ve been here,” he said. “Here I am. Tell me I didn’t do the things that I did. Tell me you didn’t order me to do the things I did. Tell me it didn’t happen. Now you have a name on it. You have a face to put with it. Here I am. Someone now, tell me it didn’t happen.”

Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico.

ATF named the case “Fast and Furious.”

Surveillance video obtained by CBS News shows suspected drug cartel suppliers carrying boxes of weapons to their cars at a Phoenix gun shop. The long boxes shown in the video being loaded in were AK-47-type assault rifles.

So it turns out ATF not only allowed it – they videotaped it.

Documents show the inevitable result: The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by watching thousands of weapons hit the streets… the Fast and Furious group supervisor noted the escalating Mexican violence.

One e-mail noted, “958 killed in March 2010… most violent month since 2005.” The same e-mail notes: “Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during March alone,” including “numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles.”

Dodson feels that ATF was partly to blame for the escalating violence in Mexico and on the border. “I even asked them if they could see the correlation between the two,” he said. “The more our guys buy, the more violence we’re having down there.”

Senior agents including Dodson told CBS News they confronted their supervisors over and over.

Their answer, according to Dodson, was, “If you’re going to make an omelette, you’ve got to break some eggs.”

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There was so much opposition to the gun walking, that an ATF supervisor issued an e-mail noting a “schism” among the agents. “Whether you care or not people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case… we are doing what they envisioned…. If you don’t think this is fun you’re in the wrong line of work… Maybe the Maricopa County jail is hiring detention officers and you can get $30,000… to serve lunch to inmates…”

“We just knew it wasn’t going to end well. There’s just no way it could,” Dodson said.

On Dec. 14, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down. Dodson got the bad news from a colleague.

According to Dodson, “They said, ‘Did you hear about the border patrol agent?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And they said ‘Well it was one of the Fast and Furious guns.’ There’s not really much you can say after that.”

Two assault rifles ATF had let go nearly a year before were found at Terry’s murder.

Dodson said, “I felt guilty. I mean it’s crushing. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Sen. Grassley began investigating after his office spoke to Dodson and a dozen other ATF sources – all telling the same story.

The response was “practically zilch,” Grassley said. “From the standpoint that documents we want – we have not gotten them. I think it’s a case of stonewalling.”

Dodson said he hopes that speaking out helps Terry’s family. They haven’t been told much of anything about his murder – or where the bullet came from.

“First of all, I’d tell them that I’m sorry. Second of all, I’d tell them I’ve done everything that I can for them to get the truth,” Dodson said. “After this, I don’t know what else I can do. But I hope they get it.”

Dodson said they never did take down a drug cartels. However, he said thousands of Fast and Furious weapons are still out there and will be claiming victims on both sides of the border for years to come.

Late tonight, the ATF said it will convene a panel to look into its national firearms trafficking strategy. But it refused to comment specifically on Sharyl’s report.

Statement from Kenneth E. Melson, Acting Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives:

“The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will ask a multi-disciplinary panel of law enforcement professionals to review the bureau’s current firearms trafficking strategies employed by field division managers and special agents. This review will enable ATF to maximize its effectiveness when undertaking complex firearms trafficking investigations and prosecutions. It will support the goals of ATF to stem the illegal flow of firearms to Mexico and combat firearms trafficking in the United States.”

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