Freedom Line Blog

Fox News reports that ATF’s Fast and Furious botched gun-tracking operation to Mexican drug cartels didn’t stop at encouraging private gun owners to sell to known criminals with assurances of surveillance.  Six months before Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered with one of these weapons, ATF supervisors in Phoenix directed field agents to sell the guns directly.

The result was the same as when the guns came from private sellers: no surveillance was initiated by ATF to track the guns.  Instead, the buyers for the cartels were allowed to store them in a stash house and ship them south with impunity.

These are the kinds of revelations that get bureaus like ATF shut down.  Could it also be the scandal that sinks Attorney General Eric Holder, the man who oversees ATF’s operations?

Read the whole story here.

The ATF’s “Project Gunrunner” and “Operation Fast and Furious” scandals continue show a cover-up by high-ranking officials in Eric Holder’s Department of Justice.  The most recent revelation was the emergence of tapes secretly recorded by an Arizona gun dealer who grew suspicious of ATF’s ability to intercept guns deliberately sold to Mexican drug cartels.

Howard made the tapes in March 2011 after a meeting he and his attorneys held with federal officials. In that meeting, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley continued to insist the guns Lone Wolf sold were stopped and seized before reaching Mexico.

But ATF officials are quoted in a Washington Post article and the Spanish language daily La Opinion saying just the opposite — blaming Lone Wolf for “selling guns to the cartels” with no mention that Howard was operating under the federal government’s direction, encouragement and approval.

In related news, the Mexican government is seething because ATF brass and supervisors at Justice chose not to inform relevant officials of the gun-walking program.  After learning of the operation from news reports following Border Agent Brian Terry’s murder, the Mexican Attorney General said, “In no way would we have allowed [the selling of guns to drug cartels], because it is an attack on the safety of Mexicans.”

And an affront to American integrity as well.

The web of possible criminality in the ATF “gun-walking” case i still stretching with a Fox News story confirming the existence a second and third ATF gun at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Congressional investigators have been looking for evidence of the third weapon for months.  Now, it looks like it disappeared at the behest of the FBI for fear that an informant working for it and ATF would be exposed.

This revelation follows on the news that ATF and the FBI coordinated efforts on other dubious programs that allowed guns to reach known criminals.

There seems to be no end to the incompetent corruption at Eric Holder’s Justice Department.  Can the same indefinite tenure be true of the Attorney General?

David Codrea, the blogger who originally broke the “Gunrunner” scandal at ATF, reports that another guns-to-criminals scheme is sprouting up in Indiana.

There, a gun seller defended himself recently against an FBI demand for information about guns sold to American crime gangs with all-too-familiar response: I was just following ATF’s guidelines.

That’s right, according to Codrea’s extensive documentation there is now another instance of ATF deliberately violating gun control laws to let weapons fall into criminal hands in the hopes of catching bigger criminal fish.  And how’s this for oversight: when the FBI was told the Indiana gun dealer was working with ATF, the FBI promised to remove the seller from any further investigation.

Add the American Midwest to the list of ATF scandals including Phoenix, AZ, (Project Gunrunner, Operation Fast & Furious) and Tampa, FL (Operation Castaway).

Last week the Acting ATF director was reassigned and the Arizona U.S. Attorney abruptly resigned.  With a third front opening up, how much longer can U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder – the man charged with oversight of ATF – keep his job?

H/T: Michelle Malkin

Writing for Big Government, AWR Hawkins asks the obvious question about the political hot potato being passed around by President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and interim ATF director Ken Melson – none of whom claim any “substantive” knowledge about a federal program to arm Mexican drug dealers.

In other news, on July 5^th Jack Tapper (ABC News) peppered Obama’s White House Press Secretary with questions about “Fast and Furious” in front of the rest of the press reporters, but the most substantive answer that Jay Carney gave was: “The president takes this very seriously.” (In all fairness to Carney, he’s clueless because Obama keeps him clueless.)

Look folks, this is ridiculous. Where is Chris Matthews? Where is that Keith guy who used to work for MSNBC? Where are all the freaks who wanted to hang George W. Bush in effigy for supposedly-lying about Iraq?

Why are they silent in the face of so great a cover-up?

Probably because the “Gunrunner” and “Fast and Furious” projects have too many inconsistencies to tolerate; better to just ignore them.  A liberal president presides over the intentional escalation of a narco-fueled civil war.  His celebrated AG fails yet again to faithfully execute his oversight responsibilities.  And the man charged with ensuring that alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives don’t fall into the wrong hands is at the head of a bureaucracy actively peddling the most lethal one (guns) to obtain the others.

With Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry killed as a result of guns used in the ATF program, isn’t it about time to get an updated (and much more accurate) version of “Bush lied, people died”?

The family of slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry is urging federal officials to accept “responsibility” but not be criminally prosecuted for a horribly bad program to sell guns to drug dealers.  Terry’s cousin, Robert Heyer, tells The Hill that the family doesn’t want government agents (or their Washington superiors) to be indicted for crimes, just for them to take responsibility for being (criminally) stupid.

While it’s a noble sentiment for the Terry family to train its attention on the drug dealers who killed their son and cousin, killing Terry with guns intentionally sold to those drug dealers was a decision deliberately made by ATF officials.  Therefore, it’s arguable that members of the Obama Administration were criminally negligent.

As if to underscore the impossibility of separating responsibility for this fiasco from its criminal consequences, The Hill’s interview with Heyer concludes with a paragraph stating that (in theory) Project Gunrunner worked as planned:

One of the main ways agents would be able to partially track a gun’s path under the operation was if it was found at the scene of a crime and officials were able to trace it back to the original federally authorized purchase, as was the case with the guns found at Terry’s murder scene. It remains unclear whether the guns found at the scene that were linked to the operation were actually used to kill Terry.

Here’s betting that Attorney General Eric Holder and his subordinates responsible for ATF’s policies won’t be using this as a defense.

The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that a raid of an arsenal in Mexico identified at least five guns traced back to a controversial program allowing guns to “walk” across the border into the hands of drug cartels.  The guns were part of the “Fast and Furious” program run out of the Phoenix, AZ office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to catch higher level criminals.

CFIF and others have reported on the presence of another ATF-tracked gun at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.  The confirmation of five more guns linked to illegal activity will heighten pressure by House Government Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) to break through Justice Department stonewalling on an operation that went predictably out of control.

Unsurprisingly, Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on Issa’s committee, is not joining the growing bipartisan chorus for more answers from Attorney General Eric Holder, whose administrative portfolio includes oversight of ATF.

One American is already dead because of ATF’s misguided sting operation.  With more than 1,000 “Fast and Furious” guns still unaccounted for, let’s hope it doesn’t take more deaths to convince Holder that political considerations should take a back seat to our Border Patrol Agents’ personal saftey.

He’s no John Dean, but ATF Agent Jay Dobyns is flatly contradicting the President of the United States and the U.S. Attorney General on what they knew and when.  The controversy involves ATF’s Project Gunrunner and its offshoot, Operation Fast and Furious.  Both initiatives deliberately allowed military style firearms to “walk” into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, some of which were used to kill American citizens.

In an interview with Fox News‘ Andrew Napolitano, Dobyns said that despite Attorney General Eric Holder’s congressional testimony that he only found out about the programs “a few weeks ago,” both he and the president were aware of the recklessness of each program.

Dobyns also made the startling assertion that “the president and the attorney general are aware of the conclusions that those guys (Newell and Gillett) operate ATF’s business in a reckless and dangerous way, and they did nothing about it.”

During questioning by both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees last week, Holder insisted he did not know about Project Gunrunner’s problems until only “a few weeks ago.” However, this column reported Tuesday that Sen. Grassley personally delivered two letters about Gunrunner to Holder at a meeting Jan. 31 in his office.

The more details that emerge about these programs, the less likely it seems Eric Holder will be back for a second tour of duty at the Justice Department.  If so, thank goodness.

National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre has a clever response to Attorney General Eric Holder’s claim he didn’t authorize an agency he oversees to sell guns to known criminals and “let them walk” into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

“He’s the attorney general of the United States of America — the highest law-enforcement officer in our land,” LaPierre said. “Who’s in charge? If he didn’t know, then who’s minding the store? If Holder didn’t know, Holder has got to go.” (Emphasis added)

The programs at issue, Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious, are initiatives run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) that attempted to track the post-sale movement of guns used in violent crimes.

Disastrously, at least one U.S. Border Patrol agent has been killed with a gun linked to the ATF initiative.

With all his other missteps, this could be the fiasco that ultimately removes Eric Holder from power.