"Fast and Furious": Half-Fast ATF and Furious Americans
Revelation of the Plan
This past week, Congress heard testimony from agents working for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (edited: BATFE, or ATF for short). These agents were disgusted at the ATF management's "Fast and Furious" operation, which has intentionally put American lives in danger and has already resulted in known American and Mexican deaths.
I've read much of the testimony and the associated documents. It appears that the ATF's plan (no one will say who in the Obama administration instructed this) was to put a large number of guns in the hands of criminals, and turn them loose on the American and Mexican public. They succeeded (to the tune of at least 2,500 guns), but were caught doing it.
For what purpose?
Their goal was apparently to create so much backlash from Americans that gun control would be significantly advanced, and perhaps privately owned guns could be eliminated. This goal is being confirmed by the Democrats' reaction: they are trying to turn even the revelation of this plan into a push for more gun control. All during the hearings, the Democrats were trying to focus on tightening gun purchase laws and to keep the talk away from the revelations about the Justice Department's lies. This article summarizes that attempt.
If 2,500+ guns were purchased by "straw-buyers" at gun stores, doesn't that say that it's too easy for such people to buy guns? No, as the testimony shows. The ATF agents commended the gun store owners for cooperating with them - and were flabbergasted at having to officially tell the gun store owners to go ahead and make the sales, and that this was part of a "sting" operation.
It wasn't. Or at least, not against the criminals. The American and Mexican people were getting stung. I say "American" here because the ATF directed that surveillance of the bad guys be dropped before they left the United States, so that the ATF surveillance people could not say what percentage of the guns wound up in the hands of US-based versus Mexican gangs.
We know that murders were committed in the US with those weapons; it was this that began to trigger these events (including the ATF's rather cynical and malicious plan) to come to light.
ATF's intentions
It's important to understand that the ATF never intended to arrest or stop or trace the gang members involved. All evidence points to the ATF willingly cooperating with these gangs, and under explicit instructions from Obama's Department of Justice.
Let's consider the situation. Enough facts have emerged over the past few months to show that the undeniable plan was to put guns in the hands of gang members by the thousand, in the US and in Mexico. All of this was confirmed by the testimony of the ATF agents, but had already been figured out. (And those ATF agents had been threatened by the now-famous "Schism" email to keep their mouths shut.)
Faced with this, Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama administration (and the Democrats) had two choices. They could say "This is terrible, and we're going to get to the bottom of it!" The DOJ witness, Weich, makes this sort of statement in a very cautious way, but demonstrates by the rest of his testimony that this is not his plan, nor his instruction.
Instead the opposition - the Obama administration and Democrats on the committee - are saying in essence, "the only thing we should be thinking about is making it more difficult for people to buy guns." But that is NOT the problem, according to the testimony:ATF agents allowed weapons to be provided to individuals whom they knew would traffic them to members of Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). They did so by failing to lawfully interdict weapons that they knew were going to be delivered to members of DTOs, and they did so by encouraging federal firearms licensees to continue selling weapons that were destined for delivery to members of the DTOs where no interdiction efforts were planned.
The odd thing is that when an actual corrupt gun store owner was discovered, the Feds had little interest:Another case, which involved a corrupt federal firearms licensee, who was supplying guns to several firearms trafficking organizations, was declined by Mr. Hurley. This dealer, in his post- arrest statement, admitted that “approximately 1000 of his firearms” were trafficked to Mexico. Over one half -dozen of that dealer’s firearms were found in the immediate area around the body of Arturo Beltran-Leyva. Mr. Beltran-Leyva, who was the head of Beltran-Leyva Cartel, was killed in a fierce gun battle with the Mexican Naval Infantry in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
It's almost as though the more Americans were killed, the more easily the Democrats could push through laws limiting the ability of the law-abiding public to have guns. The net effect:In my opinion, dozens of firearms traffickers were given a pass by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona. Despite the existence of “probable cause” in many cases, there were no indictments, no prosecutions, and criminals were allowed to walk free. In short, their office policies, in my opinion, helped pave a dangerous path.
Dangerous indeed
And what does Holder say about it? That he didn't know until May, despite the fact that President Obama apparently knew about it in March (from a television interview).
This is not entirely an "Obama problem" -- the beginnings of this notion of not intercepting certain illegal weapons transfers goes back to the tail end of the Bush administration. But it became a formal program, and was ramped up in volume and scope, and apparently approved and authorized somewhere within the Justice Department, in November 2009. And the people responsible for that are being protected by the Obama administration. The investigation is being blocked, stalled, and stymied in every way.The Rant
Committee chair Issa was pretty livid, "more animated than at any time in my career" he said, when he received a subpoenaed 20-page document, and every bit of it was blacked out except for a name and address. I understand that he waved this document around during the hearings. Here was one angry blast (on page 71) from Issa at Weich, an Assistant AG sent (ostensibly) to answer questions:ISSA (to Asst AG Weich): Sir, if you're going to count pages like this as discovery, you should be ashamed of yourself. The only thing that this says is "internal use only, not for dissemination outside the ATF". That's not discovery. That is saying that nothing within the document requested under any circumstances are we going to be shown. It doesn't take so long if you don't spend your life redacting. The pages go on like this forever. You've given us black paper instead of white paper. You might as well have given us a ream still in its original binder.
How dare you make an opening statement -- how dare you make an opening statement of cooperation? We've had to subpoena again and again. You've -- your -- your representatives of this -- of your organization, of the executive branch, have discouraged witnesses from coming forward.
It has only been the courage of whistleblowers like the ones you saw here today that have caused us to have more documents on this case than you have ever suggested turning over.
And how dare you talk about 900 pages, all of which were available on the Internet? Your first discovery that you ever turned over, you gave us already available on a Google search documents only.
So sir, what executive privilege are you claiming? Sensitivity is not envisioned. On Monday, we held a hearing here, and I hope you had plenty of people watching it, and if you didn't, get it on YouTube. Not one witness, not on direct or on cross, talked in terms of a kind of unique sensitivity.
Instead, they gave us case law and cases involving Justice that say just the opposite of what you're saying.
Sir, you heard from the family, and you heard from the whistleblowers. They have concerns about whether you're charging everybody in Brian Terry's murder. And, yes, I'm deeply concerned and we've promised to get to the bottom of it. If somebody wants to call that political interference, so be it.
You should be held to a standard of why everybody, including the people who lie -- buy and lie those weapons, why they're not being charged if there's any chance they can be properly linked to his murder. But let's move on. Understand, that's for the family.
For this committee, we're investigating you, your organization, the executive branch above the Phoenix office is who we're investigating. We want to know what felony stupid bad judgment led to allowing this program at the highest levels. When you've got the head of Alcohol, Tobacco and Fire (sic) on -- on basically his computer screen watching these things, don't tell me you didn't know what it was doing.
It appears to us on this side of the aisle and I believe on the other side that you thought this was a good idea. Today, are you prepared to tell us that this program was, in fact, necessary and a good idea, and are you prepared to tell us who authorized it? Who was the greatest, highest
ranking person who authorized any part of it?
WEICH: Mr. Chairman, you've raised a number of issues. Let me try to address...
(CROSSTALK)
ISSA: Do the last ones first. Who authorized this program that was so felony stupid that it got people killed?
WEICH: The attorney general has said that he wants to get to the bottom of this. He has directed the Office of the Inspector General at the Justice Department to review this matter in order to answer questions like the ones...
ISSA: And, if that's the case, then why are we any burden at all? Isn't every one of our requests consistent with what the inspector general and the attorney general should be looking at in this case?
WEICH: I don't know for a fact that everything you've asked for is what they're looking at.
ISSA: I hope you came here to answer questions like that. We're asking for things related to the above-the-field level almost exclusively.
Our questions are about who authorized this, why did it happen, why did it continue?
Our question to you today is the president said he didn't authorize it. He said the attorney general didn't authorize it. He didn't say he didn't know about it. He said he didn't authorize it. Who at Justice authorized this program?
WEICH: As I've said, Mr. Chairman, the Office of the Inspector General...
ISSA: Who at Justice -- and if you know, I ask you to answer, who do you know was involved in the authorization of this today? Do you know? Do you know?
WEICH: Well, Mr. Chairman, if you'll permit me to answer the question, we sent a letter to Chairman Smith, who asked a question like that. And we pointed out that this operation, as with other law enforcement operations, originated in the ATF's Phoenix office.
ISSA: That's not authorization. Who authorized it at the highest level?
WEICH: Again, Mr. Chairman, please, if you'll permit...
ISSA: Do you know who authorized it at the highest level? And don't answer Phoenix or Tucson or any part of Arizona, if you please.
WEICH: Well, Mr. Chairman, it's difficult to answer your questions if you won't permit me to answer them.
ISSA: I want the answer to my question, which was who here in Washington authorized it. We know who looked at it on video. We know who authorized it effectively at least by acquiescence. Who authorized this at Justice?
WEICH: Mr. Chairman, I do not know the answer to that question, and the inspector general is reviewing the matter.
ISSA: Then we will have somebody back who does.
Voyeurs in Washington
When Issa refers to the "who looked at it on video," he's referring to the fact that the gun dealers, who were cooperating with ATF, had cameras (apparently installed by ATF) in their facilities. When folks in Washington learned that the local ATF people were able to watch the drug traffickers buying guns, their sudden interest was only to get the cameras' IP addresses so that they could watch, too. That's documented in an email, with the Acting Director of ATF in Washington making the request.
Technical Truth and the Big Lie
The most telling moment was the response to proof that a letter sent by Weich, in which he asserted that guns were not being allowed to be trafficked into Mexico, was utterly false. His response: It was "technically correct" (his phrase) because (as testimony by then had shown) they stopped tracking the guns before they got over the border, so they didn't technically know they were going to Mexico.
The Congressman questioning him noted the nature of this:I would not call it the whole truth, but I certainly understand why if someone's trying to deceive and mislead that they could in fact write a letter like that and -- and think that they technically didn't lie, and they would be correct.
The committee even made reference to "the definition of is" in this discussion. This circus is both horrific and amusing in turns.
Here's a follow-up post.
===|==============/ Level Head
This past week, Congress heard testimony from agents working for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (edited: BATFE, or ATF for short). These agents were disgusted at the ATF management's "Fast and Furious" operation, which has intentionally put American lives in danger and has already resulted in known American and Mexican deaths.
I've read much of the testimony and the associated documents. It appears that the ATF's plan (no one will say who in the Obama administration instructed this) was to put a large number of guns in the hands of criminals, and turn them loose on the American and Mexican public. They succeeded (to the tune of at least 2,500 guns), but were caught doing it.
For what purpose?
Their goal was apparently to create so much backlash from Americans that gun control would be significantly advanced, and perhaps privately owned guns could be eliminated. This goal is being confirmed by the Democrats' reaction: they are trying to turn even the revelation of this plan into a push for more gun control. All during the hearings, the Democrats were trying to focus on tightening gun purchase laws and to keep the talk away from the revelations about the Justice Department's lies. This article summarizes that attempt.
If 2,500+ guns were purchased by "straw-buyers" at gun stores, doesn't that say that it's too easy for such people to buy guns? No, as the testimony shows. The ATF agents commended the gun store owners for cooperating with them - and were flabbergasted at having to officially tell the gun store owners to go ahead and make the sales, and that this was part of a "sting" operation.
It wasn't. Or at least, not against the criminals. The American and Mexican people were getting stung. I say "American" here because the ATF directed that surveillance of the bad guys be dropped before they left the United States, so that the ATF surveillance people could not say what percentage of the guns wound up in the hands of US-based versus Mexican gangs.
We know that murders were committed in the US with those weapons; it was this that began to trigger these events (including the ATF's rather cynical and malicious plan) to come to light.
ATF's intentions
It's important to understand that the ATF never intended to arrest or stop or trace the gang members involved. All evidence points to the ATF willingly cooperating with these gangs, and under explicit instructions from Obama's Department of Justice.
Let's consider the situation. Enough facts have emerged over the past few months to show that the undeniable plan was to put guns in the hands of gang members by the thousand, in the US and in Mexico. All of this was confirmed by the testimony of the ATF agents, but had already been figured out. (And those ATF agents had been threatened by the now-famous "Schism" email to keep their mouths shut.)
Faced with this, Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama administration (and the Democrats) had two choices. They could say "This is terrible, and we're going to get to the bottom of it!" The DOJ witness, Weich, makes this sort of statement in a very cautious way, but demonstrates by the rest of his testimony that this is not his plan, nor his instruction.
Instead the opposition - the Obama administration and Democrats on the committee - are saying in essence, "the only thing we should be thinking about is making it more difficult for people to buy guns." But that is NOT the problem, according to the testimony:ATF agents allowed weapons to be provided to individuals whom they knew would traffic them to members of Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). They did so by failing to lawfully interdict weapons that they knew were going to be delivered to members of DTOs, and they did so by encouraging federal firearms licensees to continue selling weapons that were destined for delivery to members of the DTOs where no interdiction efforts were planned.
The odd thing is that when an actual corrupt gun store owner was discovered, the Feds had little interest:Another case, which involved a corrupt federal firearms licensee, who was supplying guns to several firearms trafficking organizations, was declined by Mr. Hurley. This dealer, in his post- arrest statement, admitted that “approximately 1000 of his firearms” were trafficked to Mexico. Over one half -dozen of that dealer’s firearms were found in the immediate area around the body of Arturo Beltran-Leyva. Mr. Beltran-Leyva, who was the head of Beltran-Leyva Cartel, was killed in a fierce gun battle with the Mexican Naval Infantry in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
It's almost as though the more Americans were killed, the more easily the Democrats could push through laws limiting the ability of the law-abiding public to have guns. The net effect:In my opinion, dozens of firearms traffickers were given a pass by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona. Despite the existence of “probable cause” in many cases, there were no indictments, no prosecutions, and criminals were allowed to walk free. In short, their office policies, in my opinion, helped pave a dangerous path.
Dangerous indeed
And what does Holder say about it? That he didn't know until May, despite the fact that President Obama apparently knew about it in March (from a television interview).
This is not entirely an "Obama problem" -- the beginnings of this notion of not intercepting certain illegal weapons transfers goes back to the tail end of the Bush administration. But it became a formal program, and was ramped up in volume and scope, and apparently approved and authorized somewhere within the Justice Department, in November 2009. And the people responsible for that are being protected by the Obama administration. The investigation is being blocked, stalled, and stymied in every way.The Rant
Committee chair Issa was pretty livid, "more animated than at any time in my career" he said, when he received a subpoenaed 20-page document, and every bit of it was blacked out except for a name and address. I understand that he waved this document around during the hearings. Here was one angry blast (on page 71) from Issa at Weich, an Assistant AG sent (ostensibly) to answer questions:ISSA (to Asst AG Weich): Sir, if you're going to count pages like this as discovery, you should be ashamed of yourself. The only thing that this says is "internal use only, not for dissemination outside the ATF". That's not discovery. That is saying that nothing within the document requested under any circumstances are we going to be shown. It doesn't take so long if you don't spend your life redacting. The pages go on like this forever. You've given us black paper instead of white paper. You might as well have given us a ream still in its original binder.
How dare you make an opening statement -- how dare you make an opening statement of cooperation? We've had to subpoena again and again. You've -- your -- your representatives of this -- of your organization, of the executive branch, have discouraged witnesses from coming forward.
It has only been the courage of whistleblowers like the ones you saw here today that have caused us to have more documents on this case than you have ever suggested turning over.
And how dare you talk about 900 pages, all of which were available on the Internet? Your first discovery that you ever turned over, you gave us already available on a Google search documents only.
So sir, what executive privilege are you claiming? Sensitivity is not envisioned. On Monday, we held a hearing here, and I hope you had plenty of people watching it, and if you didn't, get it on YouTube. Not one witness, not on direct or on cross, talked in terms of a kind of unique sensitivity.
Instead, they gave us case law and cases involving Justice that say just the opposite of what you're saying.
Sir, you heard from the family, and you heard from the whistleblowers. They have concerns about whether you're charging everybody in Brian Terry's murder. And, yes, I'm deeply concerned and we've promised to get to the bottom of it. If somebody wants to call that political interference, so be it.
You should be held to a standard of why everybody, including the people who lie -- buy and lie those weapons, why they're not being charged if there's any chance they can be properly linked to his murder. But let's move on. Understand, that's for the family.
For this committee, we're investigating you, your organization, the executive branch above the Phoenix office is who we're investigating. We want to know what felony stupid bad judgment led to allowing this program at the highest levels. When you've got the head of Alcohol, Tobacco and Fire (sic) on -- on basically his computer screen watching these things, don't tell me you didn't know what it was doing.
It appears to us on this side of the aisle and I believe on the other side that you thought this was a good idea. Today, are you prepared to tell us that this program was, in fact, necessary and a good idea, and are you prepared to tell us who authorized it? Who was the greatest, highest
ranking person who authorized any part of it?
WEICH: Mr. Chairman, you've raised a number of issues. Let me try to address...
(CROSSTALK)
ISSA: Do the last ones first. Who authorized this program that was so felony stupid that it got people killed?
WEICH: The attorney general has said that he wants to get to the bottom of this. He has directed the Office of the Inspector General at the Justice Department to review this matter in order to answer questions like the ones...
ISSA: And, if that's the case, then why are we any burden at all? Isn't every one of our requests consistent with what the inspector general and the attorney general should be looking at in this case?
WEICH: I don't know for a fact that everything you've asked for is what they're looking at.
ISSA: I hope you came here to answer questions like that. We're asking for things related to the above-the-field level almost exclusively.
Our questions are about who authorized this, why did it happen, why did it continue?
Our question to you today is the president said he didn't authorize it. He said the attorney general didn't authorize it. He didn't say he didn't know about it. He said he didn't authorize it. Who at Justice authorized this program?
WEICH: As I've said, Mr. Chairman, the Office of the Inspector General...
ISSA: Who at Justice -- and if you know, I ask you to answer, who do you know was involved in the authorization of this today? Do you know? Do you know?
WEICH: Well, Mr. Chairman, if you'll permit me to answer the question, we sent a letter to Chairman Smith, who asked a question like that. And we pointed out that this operation, as with other law enforcement operations, originated in the ATF's Phoenix office.
ISSA: That's not authorization. Who authorized it at the highest level?
WEICH: Again, Mr. Chairman, please, if you'll permit...
ISSA: Do you know who authorized it at the highest level? And don't answer Phoenix or Tucson or any part of Arizona, if you please.
WEICH: Well, Mr. Chairman, it's difficult to answer your questions if you won't permit me to answer them.
ISSA: I want the answer to my question, which was who here in Washington authorized it. We know who looked at it on video. We know who authorized it effectively at least by acquiescence. Who authorized this at Justice?
WEICH: Mr. Chairman, I do not know the answer to that question, and the inspector general is reviewing the matter.
ISSA: Then we will have somebody back who does.
Voyeurs in Washington
When Issa refers to the "who looked at it on video," he's referring to the fact that the gun dealers, who were cooperating with ATF, had cameras (apparently installed by ATF) in their facilities. When folks in Washington learned that the local ATF people were able to watch the drug traffickers buying guns, their sudden interest was only to get the cameras' IP addresses so that they could watch, too. That's documented in an email, with the Acting Director of ATF in Washington making the request.
Technical Truth and the Big Lie
The most telling moment was the response to proof that a letter sent by Weich, in which he asserted that guns were not being allowed to be trafficked into Mexico, was utterly false. His response: It was "technically correct" (his phrase) because (as testimony by then had shown) they stopped tracking the guns before they got over the border, so they didn't technically know they were going to Mexico.
The Congressman questioning him noted the nature of this:I would not call it the whole truth, but I certainly understand why if someone's trying to deceive and mislead that they could in fact write a letter like that and -- and think that they technically didn't lie, and they would be correct.
The committee even made reference to "the definition of is" in this discussion. This circus is both horrific and amusing in turns.
Here's a follow-up post.
===|==============/ Level Head