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Townhall...
Missing The News
By Hugh Hewitt
6/10/2011
Two enormous stories are waiting for the MSM when it recovers from the
Weiner implosion. One concerns domestic policy and the other foreign.
“Fast and Furious” is the name given to a Department of Justice/Bureau
of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms investigation into gun running into
Mexico. The Feds decided to try and tag and follow heavy weaponry into
Mexico with the idea of charting the smugglers’ map.
What happened to the operation is the subject of an investigation by
Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Governmental Affairs
Committee. Appearing on my show Tuesday, Issa had this about the
investigation into the operation:
HH: Would you explain to people what it is and what your committee is
looking into?
DI: Well, Hugh, this is often called Project Gunrunner, because it was
really about knowingly, deliberately letting guns be sold to straw
purchasers who were going to supply them to the narco-terrorist groups
on both sides of the border, and they did. And even at our discovery,
our investigation, which is now, you know, 20 subpoenas, incredible
amount of depositions, leading up to the office of the Attorney
General, has shown us that this was authorized at the highest level.
They regret that it went badly, that two American agents are now dead,
and countless Mexicans are dead, and 2,000 weapons, 1,600 of them are
still unaccounted for. They regret it, but they’re probably still doing
similar programs. And that’s why this is such a big thing. If you think
you can let guns walk in order to “lead to the bad guys”, you’re
missing the whole point of law enforcement. You don’t let drugs walk,
you don’t let the money walk, you don’t let guns walk. You do that,
you’re part of the crime.
HH: You know, there’s a tremendous novelist, lives maybe in your
district, T. Jefferson Parker, and he has written a number of books,
and I’ve interviewed him about the gun trade from north to south. It’s
vicious, and it’s violent. But when did this Fast and Furious program
start that countenanced, basically, Americans selling guns with the
effort to sting someone on the other side? When did it start?
DI: It started with this administration.
HH: It is?
DI: It started with, literally, the political appointees, many of whom
had to approve specifics of this, including funding. And understand,
there were agents at the ATF who have testified that they believe this
was a good program. And there are agents who gave up their careers,
basically, by refusing to be involved in it. So it was controversial.
But it’s not about the agents in Arizona, or a similar program in
Texas. It’s about the approvals all the way back in Washington. This is
the Iran Contra decision. The Iran Contra decision was made by people
around the President in the White House. This decision was made at
least by people in the Office of Attorney General Holder. And they’re
hiding behind every delay tactic they can, claiming that we’re going to
interfere with an investigation. I’ve got to tell you, Hugh, I don’t
want anyone to walk because of our investigation. But if some meth
addict doesn’t get a strong sentence for buying guns, that’s probably
not the worst damage if this kind of program continues, and we believe
it continues to today.
HH: Is there any evidence that Attorney General Holder approved the
selling of these guns?
DI: There is evidence all the way up to Lanny Brewer in the office, a
very famous name from the past. And he is an immediate assistant of
Eric Holder. President Obama, as a good lawyer, used his terms very
carefully. He said neither I nor Attorney General Holder authorized
this program. There’s a long way between authorized and knew.
HH: Has Attorney General Holder appeared in front of your committee yet?
DI: He has not. As a matter of fact, they have been refusing to even go
through depositions voluntarily. We had a deal with them, and candidly,
they reneged on it the moment my plane was off the ground. So far, we
have had to issue more subpoenas on this than all others combined in
all other investigations. This has been the real investigation where
you can see the stonewalling, and you can see it for a reason. People
got people killed, and they were people who are appointed by this
President.
HH: So American agents may have been murdered as a result of this
program?
DI: Their guns were found, with those serial numbers, at the scene, and
by the way, long time after emails indicate that they knew this program
was out of control.
HH: And so in terms of that chain of command, have you subpoenaed the
Attorney General yet to come?
DI: We have not. One of the natures of this investigation is we’re
going through this step by step, because we want to understand is there
a problem at Alcohol, Tobacco and Fire all the way up to Washington? Is
there a problem at Justice? The one thing I can tell you today is this
was a joint task force operation. So DEA, Justice Department, the U.S.
attorney in Arizona, all these elements had to be part of it, which is
what should really tell you there’s something wrong at the highest
levels, but there may be something wrong in the ability for somebody at
a operative level to pull the stop cable. It doesn’t appear as though
we had it. And candidly, that’s what concerns me. There should be a
culture in a law enforcement that says if something’s really wrong, you
don’t just obey the orders.
If and when MSM trains its resources on this brewing scandal, Team
Obama will have an another DOJ mess on it’s hands as the election year
opens.
The second story concerns the fact that our entire country has a
problem with the Chinese government which is becoming increasingly
brazen in it’s assaults on American security. Former Ambassador to
China and Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. was a guest on Wednesday’s
program and we had this exchange on the recent hack attacks originating
from the PRC:
HH: It is widely believed that the Chinese were behind the Google
hacks, and the various cyber attacks. To what do you attribute that? Is
there a regime within the regime there, Jon Huntsman, that is rogue?
JH: There is a concerted effort on the part of the Chinese military, on
the part of government, to infiltrate and penetrate whatever they can
find here in the United States that might bring them value, value in
terms of understanding where our thinking it, value in terms of
understanding our latest technology, and it is done very, very
aggressively, and without rules and without boundaries. And this is
something that we’ve got to begin to understand, because I do believe
that now and going forward, cyber security for this country will be
extremely important. When you start seeing the plans for the F-22 begin
showing up in strange places, you know that the effort, the money, the
brainpower that we’ve put into some of our best innovations, if we
can’t protect those, if we can’t come up with countermeasures against
those who seek to rip us off, then we’re going to be discounted and
hobbled for the rest of our future.
HH: But would military officials dare do things like mount cyber
attacks without the knowing consent of the politburo and the leadership
in China, Governor?
JH: Even though there is a serious divide between the civilian and
military leadership teams, you would have to imagine that all decisions
are made through the central military commission, the CMC. That is
chaired by Hu Jintao, that’s the party secretary-general and the
president of the country. They would basically review all of these
decisions, and I would suspect that they would give the go.
Very few reporters, editors and producers seem to have grasped the
import of what Huntsman is confirming. The PRC is launching serial
attacks on American business, individual privacy and national security,
and the U.S. Is saying nothing. President Obama’s fecklessness in
response to these attacks is sure to invite more of the same.
The complete transcripts of both of these interviews are available at
HughHewitt.com, but the surface has just been scratched on both dramas.
And they are dramas, dramas which the MSM is almost entirely missing,
once again.
Read it at Townhall
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