Mega Banks, ATF True Culprits Behind Mexican Drug and Gun Violence

Πηγή: Old - Thinker News
By Daniel Taylo
May 5 2013

President Obama, during a recent visit to Mexico, pointed the finger at American’s use of illegal drugs and guns for Mexico’s plague of violence. “Much of the root cause for violence that has been happening here in Mexico, for which so many Mexicans have suffered, is the demand for illegal drugs in the United States,” Obama said. He continued, “Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States.”

The fact is, this story goes much deeper. It is true that there is a demand for drugs in the united states, but we should ask these vital questions: Who has facilitated this situation? Who is supporting the drug lords? Looking into this story, we can reasonably conclude that the American people are scapegoats for the crimes of money laundering banks and the ATF.

As reported by Bloomberg in 2010, mega banks including Wells Fargo (Bailed out with $36 billion in taxpayer money in 2008) and Bank of America (Which began giving credit cards to illegal aliens with no social security numbers in 2007) were caught laundering money to Mexican drug cartels. In total over $300 billion was laundered in operations that were blatantly ignored by Wachovia, now part of Wells Fargo. Among other illegal activities, the money bought planes used to deliver narcotics. After paying a measly $160 million in fines – and “promising not to do it again” – Wachovia is officially off the hook for its crimes.

Drug lords would have a hard time exerting their authority without armaments. Fortunately for them, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) kindly supplied weapons in operation Fast and Furious. The operation allowed guns to be sold to suspected Mexican drug dealers to be “tracked.” Not surprisingly, Fast and Furious weapons have been found at crime scenes in Mexico. Can this be chalked up to a “botched operation,” or is there a conscious intent to use it for wider objectives?

CBS news uncovered documents in 2011 that showed the ATF discussing Fast and Furious as a means to justify tighter gun control measures. Now, President Obama is pointing to this violence and proclaiming the same objectives. In his version of reality the American people – in their wanton lust for guns and drugs – are to blame.

It is vitally important that the official narrative on this issue be deconstructed. The establishment will ride on its white horse proclaiming ignorance of any wrongdoing. In fact, it will use the violence it generates to elevate itself over the people even further.

The Other Consequences of Fast and Furious

Πηγή: Stratfor
By Scott Stewart
July 12 2012

On the night of Dec. 14, 2010, U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was shot and killed while on patrol in an Arizona canyon near the U.S.-Mexico border. Two guns found at the scene were linked to an investigation being run by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) called "Operation Fast and Furious," sparking a congressional inquiry into the program and generating considerable criticism of the ATF and the Obama administration. Because of this criticism, in August 2011 ATF acting director Kenneth Melson was reassigned from his post and the U.S. attorney for Arizona was forced to resign.

Currently, the congressional inquiry is focused on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who has been accused of misleading Congress about what he knew about Fast and Furious and when he learned it. The Obama administration has invoked executive privilege to block the release of some of the Department of Justice emails and memos sought by Congress pertaining to the operation. The controversy escalated June 28 when the U.S. House of Representatives voted to hold Holder in contempt of Congress for ignoring its subpoenas.

As all Second Amendment issues are political hot buttons, and with this being a presidential election year in the United States, the political wrangling over Fast and Furious is certain to increase in the coming months. The debate is also sure to become increasingly partisan and pointed. But, frankly, this political wrangling is not what we find to be the most interesting aspect of the operation's fallout. Rather, we are more interested in the way that criticism of Fast and Furious has altered law enforcement efforts to stem the flow of guns from the United States to Mexico and the way these changes will influence how Mexican cartels acquire weapons.

Law Enforcement Shifts

Several of these law enforcement changes already have been enacted. For example, the number of ATF inspectors has been increased due to additional funding for an inspection program through the U.S. Southwest Border Initiative. This means that there are more inspectors to audit the sales records of licensed gun dealers. In southern Arizona, for example, the number of inspectors was increased from three to eight. According to the ATF, these inspectors oversee the operations of some 430 federally licensed firearms dealers in six border counties.

These firearms dealers include gun store proprietors as well as independent dealers working the gun show circuit. The increase in ATF inspection staff and activity has sparked an outcry from gun show dealers who claim they are being unfairly harassed by inspectors. ATF sources have told Stratfor that they do not harass dealers, but that the staff increase has allowed the bureau to catch up on inspections it was not able to conduct in the past. The sources also said they believe that their increased presence at gun shows is scaring away cartel buyers, although, obviously, some gun show firearms are still finding their way into cartel hands.

Another procedural change occurred in August 2011, when the ATF began a new program in which licensed gun dealers in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California are required to report to the ATF bulk sales of certain types of rifles, namely semi-automatic rifles larger than .22 caliber with detachable magazines such as the semi-automatic AR-15 and AK-47 variants favored by the cartels. The new rule requires gun dealers to report people without federal firearms licenses who buy two or more of such rifles to the ATF within five working days. The rule has raised the ire of some Second Amendment activists, but the ATF notes that it has had a similar reporting regimen for multiple sales of handguns in place since 1975.

The attention that Fast and Furious attracted to the gun smuggling problem also has led to an increase in interdiction efforts by other U.S. federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Furthermore, weapons cases have reportedly been given increased prosecutorial priority by U.S. attorneys -- meaning they are now less likely to decline prosecution of a gun case than before the controversy emerged. This has led to increased pressure on lower-level violators such as straw purchasers -- people paid by arms traffickers to buy guns from dealers. Greed will ensure that people continue to work as straw purchasers, but considering the increased risk of prosecution and the new reporting requirements, straw purchasers and the traffickers who employ them will be more exposed.

In May 2012, the ATF claimed that the reporting requirements have led to a decrease in large-volume sales of semi-automatic rifles (10 or more in a single purchase). The ATF also said that traffickers are adapting their weapons procurement methods to the new regulations.

Arms Smugglers Adapt

Despite their impact, the law enforcement and reporting changes cannot stem the tide of weapons entirely. In the same way that drug flows adapt to law enforcement interdiction efforts, weapons flows will also adjust. Previous federal investigations have shown that Mexican cartels have contacts in many different parts of the United States, including cities such as Chicago and Atlanta, far from the border. One way to bypass the increase in ATF inspections and the border state reporting requirements is to buy guns in states located farther from the border. Of course, this would require the weapons to be transported longer distances to get to Mexico, increasing transportation costs as well as exposure to interdiction efforts. A shift in the points of purchase would also almost certainly result in the expansion of the new reporting requirements to other states.

Although it will never be possible to completely cut off the flow of guns to Mexico from the United States, it can be reduced. This would force the cartels to search for new sources of weapons.

One significant emerging source of AR-15/M16 variants is something called an 80 percent lower receiver. (The lower receiver is the part of the AR-15/M16/M4 that carries a manufacturer's serial number. These 80 percent lower receivers do not have any serial numbers.) Under U.S. federal firearms law, the unfinished lower receiver is not considered a firearm and thus can be shipped anywhere and sold to anyone without a license. Once the remaining machining on the lower receiver is completed, one can build an AR-15, M16 or M4 carbine by purchasing the additional required parts -- such as the bolt assembly, trigger assembly and barrel -- which also are not considered firearms. Once the weapon is fully assembled, it is then considered a firearm and subject to federal firearms law.

While the 80 percent lower receivers are intended for do-it-yourself gun enthusiasts, according to the ATF, these guns have also begun to show up in increasing numbers in Mexico.

Many if not most of the semi-automatic rifles purchased in the United States and smuggled into Mexico are converted to be capable of fully automatic fire by armorers working for various cartel groups. The same armorers are capable of finishing the machining on 80 percent lower receivers and assembling completed firearms from them. The finishing process is not difficult, and there are specialized jigs one can buy and instructional videos posted on the Internet to assist in the process. With experience, proper parts and equipment, a competent machinist can quickly and easily finish a lower receiver in an hour or less.

But acquiring 80 percent lower receivers is not the only alternative for cartels. As noted previously, the Mexican cartels obtain weapons from a variety of sources. The main reason they buy rifles and high-powered pistols from the United States is that such weapons are cheap and readily available. The United States is also nearby, so the guns do not have to be transported very far. Once in Mexico, such weapons can be sold to cartels or on the black market for three times their purchase price in the United States. This explains the difficulty of shutting down the flow of weapons between the two countries. The gun trade is almost as lucrative as the narcotics flowing north.

The premium prices Mexican cartels are paying for guns mean that even if the U.S.-Mexican border could somehow magically be sealed tomorrow, arms merchants from elsewhere would be able to fill the void. Indeed, there are some weapons that the cartels simply cannot buy from the United States due to a lack of availability. Such weapons include hand grenades, 40 mm grenades, M60 machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and M-72 anti-tank rockets. Instead, the cartels buy such items from members of the Mexican military, militaries in countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador, or international arms dealers. The cartels would go to these same sources to replace the weapons unavailable in the United States due to increased arms interdiction efforts. South American groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and Peru's Shining Path have demonstrated that it is not difficult for groups to arm themselves via the black arms market in the Western Hemisphere.

Rifles and other weapons are durable goods, and it is not unusual to find weapons in Mexico that were provided by the United States, the Soviets or the Cubans to various governments and insurgent groups during the Cold War. Weapons are also fungible, or easily substituted for each other. This means that an AK-47 rifle made in the Soviet Union in the 1950s could be replaced by a variant made in East Germany in the 1970s or in China or Romania today. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find assault rifles of various makes and ages in cartel possession. In videos published by groups such as the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, gunmen armed with FN-FAL rifles have appeared alongside comrades armed with various models of AKs, M16s and M4s. A cartel gunman does not care where his rifle comes from.

In recent years, Mexican cartels have begun to forge close relationships with Chinese organized crime groups that are helping the cartels obtain precursor chemicals for the manufacture of methamphetamine and other synthetic drugs. These Chinese groups also are reportedly becoming increasingly important components of Mexican cartel money laundering efforts. Chinese criminal groups have close ties with the Chinese arms manufacturers, and it is possible that they could begin sending guns to their Mexican contacts with the other illicit cargo.

The Mexican cartels have also reportedly become progressively more involved in the transportation of cocaine to Europe via Africa -- a continent awash in black market assault rifles and other weapons. Some of the cocaine trafficked into Europe is handled by Balkan groups with access to large stockpiles of weapons in Eastern Europe.

These various connections ensure that the Mexican cartels will continue to have access to assault rifles and other military ordnance for the foreseeable future, regardless of how much progress U.S. authorities make in their efforts to stem the flow of guns to Mexico.

House votes to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt

Jun. 27, 2012 - Eric Holder mingled with members of Congress, warmly greeted by Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), at a picnic at the White House on Wednesday, the night before the full House is scheduled to vote to cite the Attorney General in contempt.

Πηγή: Washington Post
By Ed O'Keefe and and Sari Horwitz
June 28 2012

The House of Representatives voted Thursday to make Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.the first sitting attorney general to be held in contempt of Congress for withholding documents requested as part of a congressional investigation into a botched gun-running operation.

On a vote of 255 to 67, the Republican-led House successfully sanctioned Holder for failing to cooperate with an ongoing probe into Operation “Fast and Furious,” which was led by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from 2009 to 2011.

In a statement, Holder said the vote “is the regrettable culmination of what became a misguided – and politically motivated – investigation during an election year.” Holder added that the Republicans leading the investigation “have focused on politics over public safety.”

In the coming days, the House is expected to refer the contempt charge to Ronald C. Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who will have to decide whether to press criminal charges against Holder, his boss. Based on a separate vote Thursday authorizing civil action against Holder, theHouse Oversight and Government Reform Committee is expected to mount a court challenge to President Obama’s decision to invoke executive privilege over some of the documents sought by the panel.

Before the vote, several Democrats walked off the House to protest what they characterize as a politically motivated investigation, backed in recent days by theNational Rifle Association, to embarrass Holder and the White House.

“This is not a principled effort to resolve the issue,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said before her colleagues left the floor.

But House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) disputed those charges.

“I don’t take this matter lightly, and frankly hoped it would never come to this,” he said from the floor. “The House is focused on jobs and the economy. But no Justice Department is above the law and no Justice Department is above the Constitution, which each of us has sworn an oath to uphold.”

Over the course of an almost 18-month investigation, Republicans have said they are chiefly concerned with an attorney general whose Justice Department, in refusing to release documents, has covered up what senior officials knew — and when they knew — about the operation that allowed thousands of firearms onto U.S. streets and into Mexico and resulted in the death of a U.S. border patrol agent, Brian Terry, in December 2010.

Among the dozens of Republican lawmakers who spoke before the vote, Rep. Paul Gosar (Ariz.) said Thursday’s contempt vote was “long overdue” and “welcome news” to the American people.

But Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-Va.) said Holder “has provided all the information. They keep asking. There’s no further legislative purpose to be served — it’s time for the attorney general to get back to work.”

Holder has testified to congressional committees about Fast and Furious nine times over the past 14 months. On Thursday, he traveled to Lake Buena Vista, Fla., to speak at the annual convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens. He attended the White House Congressional Picnic on Wednesday evening to mingle with some of the lawmakers who plan to hold him in contempt.

Adding to the political intrigue, the contempt vote was held just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the individual health insurance mandate at the heart of President Obama’s landmark health-care law.

The conflict between the Justice Department and House Republicans centers on a particular set of documents that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committeesubpoenaed from the Justice Department in October as part of its investigation into Fast and Furious.

The operation, named after the popular movie series, was run out of the ATF's Phoenix division, with the legal backing of the U.S. attorney in Phoenix. As part of the operation, ATF agents purposefully did not interdict more than 2,000 weapons they suspected of being purchased at Arizona gun shops by illegal buyers known as “straw purchasers”; agents hoped to later track them to a Mexican drug cartel.

While conducting Fast and Furious, ATF lost track of most of the firearms, some of which have been found at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States. Two of the guns connected to the operation were found at a site in the Arizona desert where Terry was killed.

Last year, a Justice Department official told lawmakers in a letter that ATF had not ever “sanctioned” or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico. Ten months later, the Justice Department withdrew the letter, acknowledging the botched operation.

That episode has heightened suspicions among Republican lawmakers, who have demanded that the department hand over records of any deliberations it had about Fast and Furious after the Feb. 4, 2011, letter.

Justice officials have insisted that no senior officials in the department knew of the controversial tactics. They also have said they have worked hard to cooperate with requests from the oversight committee. During the past year, Justice officials have turned over 7,600 documents relating to the operation, as well as documents relating to another operation involving “gun-walking,” as the tactic is known, during the George W. Bush administration.

In the days before the vote, the Obama administration joined congressional Democrats in arguing that Holder and the Justice Department went above and beyond previous congressional requests for information and bemoaned that the episode has devolved into a politically motivated exercise.

But the administration’s focus on political motivation was blunted by a handful of moderate House Democrats expected who voted with Republicans to hold the attorney general in contempt. The NRA said before the vote that it planned to track how members voted in determining future endorsements and several moderate Democrats rely on the group’s support in election years.

Mexican Roulette

A deadly gun-running gamble just cost America's ATF chief his job. But the gun lobby gave him little choice but to try.

Πηγή: Foreign Policy
By James Verini

August 30, 2011

Until this year, the worst episode in the history of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives came in 1993, when the ATF raided cult leader David Koresh's Branch Davidian compound. That raid led to a 50-day standoff that ended with the deaths of 83 Davidians and provided endless fodder for anti-government types (Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh among them), the gun lobby, and Republican lawmakers, who overtook Congress the next year on a wave of anti-Washington resentment. Although it was the FBI that oversaw the final siege of the compound, and although four of its agents were killed in the shootout, the ATF took most of the blame. A board member of the National Rifle Association (NRA) wrote, in a letter to then Attorney General Janet Reno, "If you send your jack-booted baby-burning bushwhackers to confiscate my guns, pack them a lunch; it will be a damned long day. The Branch Davidians were amateurs; I'm a professional." By jackbooted, baby-burning bushwhackers he meant, of course, ATF agents.

Bad as 1993 was politically for the ATF, 2011 has been worse. In January, it came out that a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, killed in Arizona in December, was shot with an AK-47 purchased at a gun store near Phoenix by someone under ATF surveillance. Since this spring, Congress has been looking into the investigation that monitored that sale and others like it. Operation Fast and Furious, as it was infelicitously known, was aimed at dismantling a gunrunning ring smuggling weapons from the United States to the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico. It was an interagency investigation involving not just the ATF, but also the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the FBI, the Arizona U.S. attorney's office, and the Justice Department. It was carried out with the knowledge of the National Security Council.

But the ATF is, once again, taking the heat. On Tuesday, Aug. 30, ATF acting director Kenneth E. Melson and Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke were forced out over the scandal, according to the New York Times. All other major newspapers and networks have covered the controversy, mostly breathlessly and with a marked lack of context. Fox News and its Internet echo chambers would have you believe they're on the trail of a major coverup. And the NRA is, to no one's surprise, having a ball. As recently as February, NRA Director Wayne LaPierre blasted "the phony claim that armed violence committed by Mexican drug cartels on Mexican soil is fueled by guns obtained from federally licensed retailers in border states." Now, amazingly, LaPierre tells news organizations that cross-border gun-trafficking does exist -- only, it's the government that's responsible for it.

"The largest gunrunning operation in history into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels has been conducted by the Obama administration's Justice Department," he said.

Only slightly less shameful than his self-serving cant were hearings held in late July, in which House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa dragged ATF agents over the coals -- or attempted to. Even by the farcical standards of congressional hearings, these were useless. Not that it mattered. The point, after all, was not to figure out how Fast and Furious went wrong (if indeed it did, a contention not necessarily proved by Terry's death), but to embarrass the ATF. How else to explain why no officials from its partner agencies were called to testify? And how else to justify calling no fewer than three members of the Terry family, whose testimony, while heart-breaking, had no bearing on the details of the investigation?

It does the Terrys no more a service than it does Washington to skirt a substantive debate of Fast and Furious. Whatever its flaws, the program marked a major and welcome shift in the federal government's attempts to combat border gun-trafficking -- a fact not even its creators are willing to admit to now.

I spent much of early 2008 investigating arms-trafficking across the border for an article forConde Nast Portfolio. I passed many hours with ATF agents in Arizona and Texas, interviewing them and attending gun shows with them. I also spent time at the smuggling routes on the border and in northern Mexico. What I found would have been more frightening had it not been so galling: on the one hand a huge gunrunning market that led directly to the deaths of thousands of Mexicans, and not a few Americans; and on the other a law enforcement agency trying to stop it with one hand tied behind its back. The problem was not that ATF agents weren't dedicated and smart -- many were -- but that they were prey to absurd congressional stipulations urged, most vociferously, by the NRA.

Let's start with the obscenely irresponsible laws that cover gun sales in America. For instance, anyone without a criminal record can legally purchase as many rifles and other long guns as they want in the United States. You read that correctly. If you have no criminal record, you can walk into a gun dealer and buy 100 AR-15 rifles, 200 AK-47s, the store's entire inventory of shotguns, or a .50-caliber sniper rifle that can take down a low-flying aircraft -- as long as you have the cash. Not only can the dealer sell them to you, but he doesn't even have to notify anyone unless you buy multiple handguns as well. One of the buyers being surveilled under Fast and Furious, an Arizona man named Uriel Patino, bought about 720 guns -- legally.

There are roughly 100,000 licensed gun dealers in the United States. Most of them are gun stores, pawn shops, sporting-goods stores, and the like, but many are so-called "kitchen table" dealers who sell secondhand guns out of their businesses, homes, or even cars. While reporting, I took a look at a pair of assault rifles in the office of a plumbing-supply salesman near Dallas who peddles guns on the side. I also learned of a Mexican drug trafficker who'd opened a series of gun stores in Texas to cut out the middleman. That's how easy it is to legally sell guns. If you have a criminal record and want to avoid scrutiny, you can go to one of these kitchen-table dealers or to one of the thousands of gun shows that take place around the country each year, where you can find people who claim to be selling out of their private collection. They don't need a license to do so, and you don't have to submit to a background check. All you need is money and identification showing you're over 18 years old.

This is what the ATF faces as it tries to head off gun-trafficking across the 2,000-mile border with Mexico with only a few hundred agents. Lawmakers -- by no means all of them Republicans -- have seen to it that the agency is as understaffed and underfunded as possible. Between 1973, when the ATF was founded, and 1998, the number of field agents increased by nine. Nine agents. It has half the budget and half the manpower of the DEA, and it has been laboring under a series of acting directors since 2006, when the NRA successfully lobbied Congress to require Senate confirmation for the job.

Still, William Newell, the ATF special agent who oversaw Fast and Furious, and his agents in Phoenix did what they could. A devoted, articulate lifetime civil servant who spent part of his childhood in Latin America and then cut his teeth as an agent in Colombia during the drug wars of the 1990s, Newell was under no illusions about his agency's beleaguered standing in Washington. He didn't let it stop him, however. When I interviewed him in 2008, he showed me "the vault," a large room with racks and bins full of guns his agents had caught before they could cross the border. They were the fruits of Operation Gunrunner, a Bush administration initiative. (The ATF's policy is to destroy the guns it seizes, though many police departments around the country resell them on the secondary market, appallingly enough.) Newell had been implementing Operation Gunrunner so effectively that he was seen as a possible future head of the ATF.

It was remarkable he'd seized even those guns, however, given how needlessly hobbled his agency is by Washington. Congress prohibits the ATF from employing many basic tools of modern law enforcement. For instance, it is forbidden from creating a national registry of guns or gun owners. The U.S. government keeps track of everyone who owns a car or a house, but not a gun (nor even hundreds of guns or caches of military-grade weaponry). Gun buyers are required to fill out ATF sales forms, but the agency can't systemize or even collect them; they're kept by dealers. The number of dealers who knowingly aid in trafficking is miniscule, and the ATF knows who many of them are. But in most cases it's not allowed to inspect a dealer unannounced more than once a year.

Meanwhile, the ATF's National Tracing Center, which would be the hub of any serious attempt to combat gun-trafficking, houses hundreds of millions of documents, but thanks to Congress it can't make them searchable by name. And, preposterously, there is no federal law explicitly forbidding international gun-trafficking. For years lawmakers have proposed such laws, and for years they've been defeated, including by Democrat-controlled Congresses. In 1997, President Bill Clinton signed the Convention on Illicit Firearms Trafficking. Congress has refused to ratify it ever since, under pressure from the gun lobby.

This means that when gun-trafficking cases are brought at all, they are brought under weak catchall anti-smuggling laws. U.S. attorneys in Arizona for years refused to help the ATF build gun cases, knowing prosecutions would likely result in, at best, minor sentences for straw purchasers who buy guns for criminal organizations but have no impact beyond that. And so the ATF, though an investigative agency, was relegated for years to interdiction. Agents arrested small fry and seized small caches, knowing that they were dipping a bucket into the ocean. For every gun they got, hundreds more made it over the border. Had they wanted to, Issa and his committee could have learned much of this from their very own Congressional Research Service's 2009 report on border gun-trafficking, or a larger study by the Government Accountability Office.

Operation Fast and Furious was part of a plan to change the situation. In 2009, Barack Obama's administration made combating gun-trafficking on the border a priority, and Burke, who was then the new Arizona U.S. Attorney, agreed to help. The goal was to investigate and build a serious case against a gunrunning network connected with the Sinaloa cartel, one of the biggest drug-trafficking organizations in Mexico. Building off the successes of Operation Gunrunner, Burke's office, along with the ATF, DEA, ICE, and the FBI, created a new Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. Its operational name was Fast and Furious.

The aim of Fast and Furious was to investigate, and not, as the ATF had grown accustomed to, interdict. Instead of arresting the so-called "straw purchasers" who buy the guns and pass them on (again, legally, provided they pass a background check), Fast and Furious called for agents to surveil them and try to follow the flow of guns, to move beyond the pawns to the larger players. Of course, this is what investigators and detectives who don't work at agencies hobbled by their elected overseers do every day: allow things to be bought and sold and moved so that they can map out criminal organizations and get to their highest levels.

If their testimony is to be believed, a number of agents newly posted to Phoenix and Fast and Furious were nonetheless shocked when they were instructed to "let guns walk," as it's known. According to ATF personnel I spoke with, these agents had no idea of the scale of the gun-trafficking problem when they arrived in Arizona. They were used to interdiction and apparently were not properly read into the larger aims of Fast and Furious. A number of these agents delivered impassioned pleas at the hearings in July, expressing their unshakable opposition to the very idea of letting guns walk. (Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley, always happy to impugn his fellow federal employees, cherry-picked their best lines for a pair of mostly useless and histrionic reports.)

The agents' indignation was duly righteous, but none felt it worth mentioning, apparently, that letting guns walk was precisely the point of Fast and Furious. None of them dared mention what is common knowledge on the border -- that scores of American guns walk every day, regardless of surveillance, because buying and moving them is so easy and the ATF too hampered to stop them.

Nor, sadly, did Newell, the most enduring target of Issa's ire, mention that. During his testimony, Newell mostly stared down at a prepared statement, offering evasive and feckless answers. He offered no explanation of Fast and Furious or of the colossal problem of the border's illicit gun market, and he certainly didn't mention -- out of good manners or professional restraint, one assumes -- the hoops that these same congressmen have made him jump through merely in order to do his job.

2 resignations over Operation Fast and Furious

Kenneth Melson will be replaced as ATF's acting chief by B. Todd Jones, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota.

Πηγή: Salon
BY PETE YOST, ASSOCIATED PRESS

TUESDAY AUG 30, 2011

The acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Attorney in Arizona resigned Tuesday amid investigations into a flawed law enforcement operation aimed at major gun-trafficking networks on the Southwest border, the Justice Department announced.

The operation, known as Fast and Furious, was designed to track small-time gun buyers at several Phoenix-area gun shops up the chain to make cases against major weapons traffickers. The operation was a response to longstanding criticism of ATF for concentrating on small-time gun violations and failing to attack the kingpins of weapons trafficking.

A congressional investigation of the program has turned up evidence that ATF lost track of many of the more than 2,000 guns linked to the operation. The Justice Department inspector general also is looking into the operation at the request of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Kenneth Melson will be replaced as ATF's acting chief by B. Todd Jones, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota.

Amid bickering between Republicans in Congress and the department over their investigation, Melson finally testified recently to Hill investigators in private on his own hook. He said his department superiors "were doing more damage control than anything" and trying to keep the controversy away from top officials.

Also leaving was Dennis Burke, U.S. attorney in Arizona, whose office was deeply involved in Operation Fast and Furious. Burke will be replaced on an acting basis by his first assistant, Ann Scheel.

In a statement, Attorney General Eric Holder called Jones "a demonstrated leader who brings a wealth of experience to this position." Jones will continue to serve as U.S. attorney when he assumes the top ATF spot on Wednesday.

Melson will become senior adviser on forensic science in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy.

An ATF intelligence analyst testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform committee last month that of more than 2,000 weapons linked to Fast and Furious, some 1,400 have not been recovered.

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California, chair of the House panel, said in a statement that "the reckless disregard for safety that took place in Operation Fast and Furious certainly merits changes."

Issa said his committee will pursue its investigation to ensure that "blame isn't offloaded on just a few individuals for a matter that involved much higher levels of the Justice Department."

The strategy behind Fast and Furious carried the risk that its tracking dimension would be inadequate and some guns would wind up in the hands of criminals in Mexico or the U.S. and be used at crime scenes -- which did happen to some of the guns.

Jones is a former military judge advocate as well as a prosecutor. Holder said, "I have great confidence that he will be a strong and steady influence guiding ATF in fulfilling its mission of combating violent crime by enforcing federal criminal laws."

The attorney general said Melson brings decades of experience at the department and extensive knowledge in forensic science to his new role. Holder also praised Burke for demonstrating "an unwavering commitment" to the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney's office, starting over a decade ago when he was a line prosecutor.

Justice Dept. Vague on When Holder First Learned About Operation Fast and Furious

Barrett .50 caliber rifles, like this one held by Mexican Gen. Antonio Erasto Monsivais in a government warehouse for seized weapons in Mexico City, were among the firearms made available in Operation Fast and Furious. (AP Photo)

Πηγή: CNSNews
By Fred Lucas
Thursday, August 18, 2011

The Justice Department has given a vague response to a query by congressional investigators about when Attorney General Eric Holder first learned about a botched gun running sting operation along the southwest border

In a letter answering a questionnaire about “Operation Fast and Furious,” the department replied only that concerns emerged “earlier this year.” It also mentioned two occasions when Holder testified on the matter to congressional committees, both already on the record.

In their questionnaire addressed to Holder, investigators led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) asked when department officials including Holder himself had first become aware of the program.

“When and how did you [Holder] first learn about Operation Fast and Furious or the strategy of ‘allow[ing] the transfer of firearms to continue to take place in order to further the investigation?’” they asked.

The Justice Department response, provided by Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich on July 22, did not include an exact date – or even an approximate one – for Holder first having learned about the operation.

“The concerns about Operation Fast and Furious first became evident earlier this year,” it said.

“After learning of these concerns, the Attorney General referred the matter to the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General for review, as was made clear in the Attorney General’s testimony on March 10, 2011 before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and also in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on May 3, 2011.”

Testifying before the Senate Appropriation commerce and justice subcommittee in March, Holder said, “I’ve also made clear to people in the department that letting guns walk – I guess that’s the term that the people use – that letting guns walk is not something that is acceptable.”

Before the House Judiciary Committee in May, Holder was asked when he first learned about the operation. He replied, “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”

Operation Fast and Furious was first reported by various media outlets in February.

In an initiative led by the Phoenix division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and also involving the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration, straw purchasers were allowed to buy 1,418 guns to be transported to Mexican drug trafficking organizations. The ATF subsequently only recovered 274 of the firearms, according to the Justice Department.

The operation came to a halt in December after two guns that had been transferred to Mexico were found at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

According to Issa and Grassley, there were also 11 instances of Fast and Furious guns being recovered in the U.S. in connection with violent crimes.

Issa, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, complained in a letter Tuesday that “many of the [Justice Department] answers were non-responsive.”

‘Allowing the transfer of arms to continue’

Also raising the investigators’ concerns was the existence of an apparent strategy of “allow[ing] the transfer of firearms to continue to take place” in order to further investigations.

An ATF briefing paper, dated Jan. 8, 2010 said, “Currently our strategy is to allow the transfer of firearms to continue to take place, albeit at a much slower pace, in order to further the investigation and allow for the identification of co-conspirators who would continue to operate and illegally traffic firearms to Mexican DTOs [drug trafficking organizations] which are perpetrating armed violence along the Southwest Border.”

In their questionnaire, the lawmakers asked, “Who first suggested the methods of investigation employed in Operation Fast and Furious, specifically the strategy of ‘allow[ing] the transfer of firearms to continue to take place in order to further the investigation?’”

The Justice Department said the phrase had been misconstrued by the congressional investigators.

“The phrase ‘to allow the transfer of firearms to continue’ should not be construed to suggest that ATF condoned or sanctioned the suspected firearms trafficking activity,” the department explained. “Rather, ATF has made clear that its strategy was to gather sufficient evidence to build a case against federal firearms violators.”

The department cited ATF order 3310.4(b), which deals with interdicting guns. One portion of that order says, “immediate intervention may not be needed or desirable, and the special agent my choose to allow the transfer of firearms to take place in order to further an investigation and allow for identification of additional co-conspirators who would have continued to operate and illegally traffic firearms in the future, potentially producing more armed crime.”

Another question from the congressional investigators asked, “Which officials at ATF and DOJ are responsible for authorizing the strategy of ‘allow[ing] the transfer of firearms to continue to take place in order to further the investigation?’”

The Justice Department provided a similar answer, but avoided saying specifically who authorized the operation.

“As noted, the phrase ‘to allow the transfer of firearms to continue’ should not be construed to suggest that ATF condoned or sanctioned the suspected firearms trafficking activity,” it stated.

“Rather, at the time the briefing paper being quoted was prepared in or about January 2010, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, in conjunction with ATF’s Phoenix Field Division, evaluated all facts and information that had been compiled in the case to that point and concluded that sufficient evidence to permit the prosecution and conviction of targeted individuals did not exist.”

The operation began in November 2009, the Justice Department said, and acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson became aware of the operation the following month, on Dec. 9.

The questionnaire also asked when Holder and Melson first spoke about Operation Fast and Furious.

“We believe that the first direct discussion of Operation Fast and Furious between Acting Director Melson and the Attorney General occurred in or about late April 2011 as part of an agenda item in a briefing for the Attorney General by the leaders of the Department of Justice’s law enforcement components,” the Justice response said.

Congress investigating botched Fast and Furious ATF operation

Πηγή: newsytype

By Sam Hoober June 10, 2011

Ann ATF sting operation called "Fast and Furious," in which gun store owners sold firearms to gun smugglers so the guns could be traced, is being investigated by Congress. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
A sting operation by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms called “Fast and Furious” has been revealed to have gone horribly wrong. The ATF allowed guns to be purchased for distribution to Mexican drug cartels in the hopes of making a huge bust. Instead, the operation flooded the Southwest with illegal firearms.