Redstate...
Operation Fast and
Furious’ fast and furious unraveling
Posted by Moe Lane
Wednesday, June 15th
So. Somebody in the Obama administration is telling lies to the
House Oversight/Government Reform Committee. That’s not smart.
When people tell lies to House committees, people go to jail.
Background on this: this is all about the BATF/Justice Department
Operations Gunrunner and Fast & Furious, which were originally
purported to be methods by which [illegal purchases of] guns could be
detected and arrested*. However, they instead turned into methods
by which Mexican drug cartels were able to get their hands on
[illegally-purchased semi-automatic] weapons. You see, the problem was
that while selling the guns to middlemen (’straw purchasers’) [who
intend to sell the guns illegally] is in itself a standard ’sting’
operation, somehow the guns continued on down the supply chain until
they resurfaced in Mexico. The end result was inevitable:
somebody used a BATF-supplied gun to kill Border Patrol agent Brian
Terry.
As you can imagine, nobody in the BATF or DoJ wishes to be officially
responsible for selling criminals the guns that said criminals used to
kill federal agents, so there has been a remarkably comprehensive drive
to stonewall the investigation; alas for the administration, the House
of Representatives flipped last November. And new Chairman
Darrell Issa is very keen to get to the bottom of this.
Hence, the lying. But who is lying?
Are they the ATF agents who testified today that they were under orders
to let guns illegally sold to middlemen go on to resurface in Mexico,
despite their strenuous objections?
Is it Deputy Attorney General Ronald Welch, who originally claimed to
Senator Grassley of Judiciary that the ATF did not sanction letting
guns go onto Mexico? - and who will be discussing that letter today in
the House?
Or is it Attorney General Eric Holder, who similarly denied
responsibility to Issa last month?
It’s an interesting question, but let me summarize these emails
released by Issa’s office: the Acting Director and Deputy Director for
the ATF were getting weekly briefings; ATF’s Deputy Assistant Director
for Field Operations got at least one special briefing; and the Acting
Director was at one point watching the live feed of guns being sold to
the middlemen. So I think that we can safely assume that the
standard ‘overzealous underlings’ defense is not likely to fly…
PS: You can read Issa’s/Grassley’s report here. ‘Scathing’
doesn’t begin to cover it.
Read it with links at Redstate
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