posted July 13, 2011 02:04 PM            

More than 2000 guns..some of them automatic weapons were bought with taxpayer money and handed off to Mexican drug dealers and drug runners.

One of those guns was used to kill a US Border Patrol officer...whose family is now suing.

The BATF was in charge of this so called operation which had to have been approved at the highest levels of the US Justice Dept.

There's a huge congressional investigation in progress and it will be a miracle if BATF agents and some Justice Dept lawyers...including Eric Holder don't get fitted for prison uniforms.

Just thought you'd like to know...some of you at least...that Barack Hussein O'Bomber is a lawless liar and is unfit to hold any office at any level of government. Well, perhaps in communist Cuba, communist North Korea or perhaps with his good buddy the communist Hugo Chavez.

posted July 13, 2011 05:32 PM            

The government's gunrunners
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/the_government_gunrunners_SpVf9FwWuFsrXNKwv4t1ZO

Mexican Lawmakers: U.S. Officials Who Approved Gun-Running Should Be Tried in Mexico
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/mexican-lawmakers-us-officials-who-appro

Gunrunning scandal uncovered at the ATF
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/02/23/eveningnews/main20035609.shtml

Sen. Grassley On Gun-Running Sting: "Without A Doubt The DOJ Was Involved"
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/06/15/sen_grassley_on_gun-running_sting_without_a_doubt_the_doj_was_involved.html

posted July 13, 2011 09:49 PM            

The purpose of the operation was to let the Justice Department trace the movement of the guns and uncover the full structure of the gun-smuggling operations

posted July 13, 2011 10:13 PM            

it gets so tiring watching kettles calling pots black.

posted July 13, 2011 10:19 PM            

it gets so tiring watching kettles calling pots black.

but the main prob with your links jwhop is they are all to a bunch of circumstantial evidence that really goes nowhere and certainly doesn't implicate obama in "running guns" though it might indicate a DOJ that is playing fast and loose with human lives to carry out an entrapment/sting that is not too legal either.

posted July 14, 2011 11:26 AM            

Exactly what has Issa's positions on the Middle East have to do with the O'Bomber Gun Running Operation?

Little Debbie is obviously a kook. Question katatonic.

Why would you take anything she says at face value?

The story of Operation Gun Runner is true.

Agents of the Federal Government told gun dealers to make the sales..which were illegal, US taxpayer money was used, the guns were destined for Mexican drug cartels and those guns were used in the commission of crimes...including the murder of a US Border Patrol agent.

The head of the BATF didn't know about the operation but the FBI and Justice dept did know. It appears the plot to run guns to drug cartels in Mexico was hatched at the Justice Department...Eric Holder's patch.

ATF Chief Testifies Before Congress in Secret Over Controversial Gun Program
July 06, 2011 1:55 PM

ABC's Jason Ryan (@JasonRyanABC) reports:

The acting head of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Fire Arms agency, facing scrutiny over a controversial gun program across the U.S. - Mexico border linked to the death of a Border Patrol agent last year, appeared secretly before Congressional investigators on July 4 with his own private attorney, rather than lawyers from the Justice Department.

According to sources close to the investigation, ATF Acting Direction Ken Melson had previously wanted to testify before the oversight committees but Justice Department officials sought to delay his testimony.

Melson’s testimony came weeks after three current ATF agents who were involved in the program known as “Fast and Furious” testified before Congress about the botched operation and how ATF failed to stop guns going into Mexico. The program allowed straw purchases of weapons that were then allowed to “walk” across the border into Mexico in an effort to locate major weapons traffickers.

But when Border Agent Brian Terry was murdered in December 2010 and two guns were found on the scene that were linked to the program, it came to a halt and was brought under Congressional investigation. According to reports by the ABC affiliate in Phoenix, other guns from the Fast and Furious program have now also been linked to additional crimes.

According to a letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder by Rep Darrel Issa, R-CA and Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who have been investigating the Fast and Furious program, Melson expressed dismay during testimony over how the operation was run and that “he was sick to his stomach” when he reviewed internal documents.” The letter also notes that Melson’s testimony corroborated information indicating that DEA and FBI may have had a role in the operation.

In the July 5,2011 letter (read more HERE) lawmakers who were once very critical of Melson and his tenure at ATF, have since changed their tune and are now urging the Attorney General to ensure Melson is being treated fairly – even suggesting that action against Melson by the Justice Deparmtment could have the effect of “intimidating others who might want to provide additional information to the committees.”

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/07/atf-chief-testifies-before-congress-in-secret-over-controversial-gun-program.html

Btw, no one in government would begin an operation to run guns over an international border without first clearing the operation at the highest levels of government.

The Mexican government is furious at the O'Bomber administration for running guns into Mexico which were and are used in the commission of crimes there.

posted July 14, 2011 01:20 PM            

The program allowed straw purchases of weapons that were then allowed to “walk” across the border into Mexico in an effort to locate major weapons traffickers.

this is not the "government running guns" but allowing gunrunners to lead them to the "queen" and "hive", a slightly different proposition. obviously they were playing fast and loose with the possibility that crimes would be committed with those guns, not my idea of pretty either.

but it is surely not the first time our crime investigators have played as dirty as their prey. and it is NOT the "government running guns" as you keep suggesting.

posted July 14, 2011 03:19 PM            

It is exactly as I presented it. High level O'Bomber stooges at the FBI and Justice Department hatched an illegal operation...which broke the laws of the United States...and they got caught.

posted July 14, 2011 07:11 PM            

in other words, illegal or not, YOU want to make it seem like the illegal part is not motivated by a desire to END gun running to mexico...when in fact that IS the goal of this "op" ...

posted July 14, 2011 11:34 PM            

Further, what they did...in telling gun dealers to allow straw purchases of weapons they wanted run into Mexico violates US law...as well as common sense.

posted July 15, 2011 11:30 AM            

In previous articles here at American Thinker dealing with the ATF gun smuggling scandal there has been mention made of the suspicions of many Americans (as evidenced by comments from AT readers) that Operation Fast and Furious was a politically motivated action put in place by the Obama Justice Department to manufacture a false scenario that would justify stricter gun control in this country. Most of those pieces carried an editorial caution citing the lack of specific evidence. Clarice Feldman's recent article had this to say on the issue:

Some commentators believe the real purpose of the operation was to provide "evidence" that U.S. arms were behind the gang violence in Mexico to provide a basis for further restrictions on U.S. arms sales, pointing to comments by Hillary Clinton and the New York Times editors on the need for further restrictions to limit the weaponry of the Mexican drug cartels. While the supposition is far from unreasonable, stronger evidence supporting such claims is to date missing.

Ms. Feldman is both a former federal prosecutor and a frequent contributor here at American Thinker where she has repeatedly demonstrated a sharp eye for political hijinks. She is correct in implying that stronger evidence is needed before such charges can be given more credence. But it is also fair to point out that this suspicion of a larger Administration goal than apprehending big fish gun smugglers in Mexico is afoot. We may now have the stronger evidence Ms. Feldman and the AT editors cited need for.

Townhall.com has posted an email from "Mark R. Chait Assistant Director Field Operations," to a William D. Newell in July last year, which states:

"Bill-can you see if these guns were all purchased from same Ffl and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales."

Ffl is federal firearms licensee.

When this business of American firearms in Mexico first became news two years ago, I was immediately skeptical of the numbers proclaimed by the mainstream media: 90% of the cartels' guns were coming from the U.S. The liberal media had a heyday with a story where America was against the villain, even though common sense told me there were far easier ways to get guns into Mexico than smuggling them across its most heavily guarded border. With thousands of miles of coastline and a porous southern border with Central and South America, and hundreds of major arms dealers worldwide eager to ply the lethal products trade*, why choose the high-risk route? Fox News alone of the media shared my disbelief. And even though the liberal media and liberal Democrat politicians immediately used the story as further evidence of American perfidy and blame, it simply didn't stand up to common sense analysis, unless...

Unless of course the Obama Administration was deliberately allowing, even encouraging, the cross-border transshipment of firearms, which we now know was indeed the case. While the media and the gun control lobby were screaming that lax gun laws were to blame, it was in fact our own federal government facilitating the smuggling operations, supposedly in an attempt to ensnare the Mexican cartels. How that was to be accomplished has still not been explained. Once those guns crossed into Mexico, the U.S. lost jurisdiction over their use and the Mexican government's inability to disarm the cartels or even track captured weaponry is glaringly obvious. What then was the true objective of the Obama Administration?

As many of the comments for previous articles here at AT indicate, there are many of us who believe this may well have been part of the "under the radar" approach that Obama told gun control zealots that he was employing to effect stricter gun control laws in America. Those of you inclined to be skeptical should bear in mind that Obama and his closest advisors hail from Chicago, where all firearms must be registered with the police. Some suburban governments there actually ban handgun possession, but are under fire by the U.S. Supreme Court which has declared the tough restrictions unconstitutional. As conservatives know, this is just a bump on the road for true believers in gun control; those suburbs are busily seeking ways to circumvent the Court's ruling.

Skeptics should remind themselves that the agency running this scam is the ATF, a branch of Eric Holder's Justice Department; we have seen previously how little respect for the rule of law the nation's chief lawyer has. Just as Holder's Justice Department has overruled its own legal staff in other prosecutions, ATF leadership likewise ignored, in fact retaliated against, criticisms from its field agents.

Why would ATF leaders pursue a dangerous policy that has already caused the death of one agent and resulted in the deaths of unknown numbers of Mexicans, all cut down by US/ATF-supplied weaponry? If the cartels are beyond the legal reach of American authorities for the most part and the Mexican government is incapable of following through on any supposed entrapment program, then what was the true purpose of this otherwise senseless secret program? Read this excerpted quote, from a CBS affiliate no less, then consider again the above points:

On March 30, the 30th anniversary of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, Jim Brady, who sustained a debilitating head wound in the attack, and his wife, Sarah, came to Capitol Hill to push for a ban on the controversial "large magazines." Brady, for whom the law requiring background checks on handgun purchasers is named, then met with White House press secretary Jay Carney. During the meeting, President Obama dropped in and, according to Sarah Brady, brought up the issue of gun control, "to fill us in that it was very much on his agenda," she said.

"I just want you to know that we are working on it," Brady recalled the president telling them. "We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar." [Emphasis added.]

For those of you still doubting my premise, consider the fact that the Obama administration used an administrative Justice Department order earlier this week to tighten the rules of purchase on the same type weapons they were allowing to go into Mexico uninhibited. That order specifically cites the same states where DoJ had previously conducted Operation Fast and Furious. It also points to "illegal gun trafficking into Mexico and along the Southwest Border," as justification.

No connection you say?

These are criminal breaches of trust with the people by the Obama Justice Department and perhaps Obama himself. That the Obama administration not only allowed but appears to have facilitated illegal firearms exports resulting in multiple deaths on both sides of the border, in furtherance of a domestic agenda of stricter gun control laws, is criminally prosecutable and politically lethal. Richard Nixon was forced to resign for a far less grievous offense; no one died by Nixon's hand, but two American agents are dead by the hand of whoever initiated this misguided program. If Republicans take control of the Senate in the 2012 elections, Barack Obama could be facing impeachment and conviction should the current House investigation into this scandal ultimately lead into the Oval Office and there find the smoking gun.

posted August 01, 2011 09:22 AM            

Within months after Barack Obama became President, a covert operation was launched to allow gun sales to people with ties to the Mexican drug cartels, ostensibly in hopes that those guns would lead agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to cartel members in Mexico. The name of the operation was “Project Gunrunner,” and the details of it included allowing straw purchasers to buy not hundreds but thousands of guns, approximately 2,500, which they were then to walk into Mexico while having their movements traced by the ATF. The problem is that the ATF was not able to keep track of the weapons, and to date only 1,300 of the approximate 2,500 have been recovered.

An even bigger problem is that at least one federal officer, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, lost his life in a shootout with an individual armed with a weapon sold during Gunrunner, and violence in Mexico jumped exponentially when the weapons made their way into that country. For example, 958 people were killed in Mexico during the month of March 2010 alone, and at least 150 Mexican law enforcement officers have been killed since early 2009. (A little-known fact is that many of the guns sold during Gunrunner were assault rifles and similar weapons that are easily converted from semiautomatic to full-auto. In other words, our ATF looked the other way while men with criminal ties entered gun stores in Arizona and purchased weapons that are now de facto machine guns on the streets of Mexico and the U.S. Southern border.)

At the outset it is important to note that as this operation moved from one of overseeing the selling and subsequent international transport of weapons, to one in which law enforcement was supposed to trace the guns back to cartel members and make arrests, its name changed from Gunrunner to "Fast and Furious.” Yet they are not so much two separate operations as they are two parts of one large covert action. Thus it’s not uncommon to hear people use the labels Gunrunner and Fast and Furious interchangeably.

The beginnings of Gunrunner can at least be traced back as far as Feb. 15, 2009, when President Obama authorized $10 million for it via the stimulus package. His signature on that document renders his subsequent denials of any knowledge of Gunrunner questionable at best. And on April 2, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech at the Mexico/United States Arms Trafficking Conference in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in which he boasted of overseeing the implementation of Gunrunner.

Holder said: "Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels. My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion.

At the time of Holder’s speech, the mention of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the FBI seemed to slip right past the news commentary, so that even as reporters and bloggers began focusing attention on Gunrunner and Fast and Furious in the spring of 2011, they referenced them solely in relation to the ATF. But in testimony before Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R.-Iowa) over the Fourth of July holiday (2011), Kenneth Melson, acting ATF director, broke ranks with Obama and Holder and talked at length about how Gunrunner and Fast and Furious were interagency operations to a certain degree. In particular, Melson testified to how the involvement of so many different agencies at so many different levels mangled an already wounded plan, resulting in the fact that some of the cartel members being sought via Gunrunner and Fast and Furious turned out to be paid informants for one federal agency or another.

After hearing Melson’s testimony, Issa and Grassley fired off a letter to Holder that contained the following paragraph:

"When confronted with information about serious issues involving lack of information sharing by other agencies, which [our] Committee staff had originally learned from other witnesses, Mr. Melson's responses tended to corroborate what others had said. Specifically, we have very real indications from several sources that some of the gun trafficking 'higher-ups' that the ATF sought to identify were already known to other agencies and may even have been paid as informants."

Moreover, as Issa and Grassley connected the dots, it increasingly seemed like U.S. taxpayer funds had been used not only to help purchase the weapons, but also to pay for the cost of smuggling them across an international border:

"The evidence we have gathered raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons, but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities. While this is preliminary information, we must find out if there is any truth to it."

As the investigation continued, Issa and Grassley uncovered a “cheat sheet” of sorts that was being made available for any ATF agents who might be called to testify before a congressional committee. According to Issa and Grassley, this cheat sheet was a document cache accessible through “a shared drive on [the ATF] computer system replete with pertinent investigative documents, including official ATF e-mails.” The existence of this shared drive and what appears to be an attempt to coach people to give certain answers when interviewed or cross-examined squares perfectly with Melson’s testimony that when he realized what was going on and began reassigning ATF agents associated with Gunrunner and Fast and Furious to other operations, the “Justice Department directed him and other ATF officials to not communicate to Congress the reasoning behind the reassignments.”

More Gun Control

posted August 20, 2011 11:35 AM            

For nearly two years, Operation Fast and Furious largely took place under the radar. And it’s arguable that it would still be unknown to the majority of Americans had not Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry been gunned down with a weapon traceable to Fast and Furious on December 14, 2010. That death changed the complexion of everything by drawing attention to the fact that there are indeed weapons at large that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allowed straw purchasers to buy and distribute among the criminal element in our society and throughout Mexico.

Following Terry’s death, questions about Fast and Furious hit critical mass, prompting Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) to investigate the operation under the auspices of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, of which he is chairman. A number of hearings have been held before that committee, and at least two more hearings are already scheduled to take place once Congress reconvenes following summer break.

I recently spoke with Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona’s 1st District. He serves on the oversight committee and in that capacity is one of the congressional members taking part in investigating Fast and Furious:

HUMAN EVENTS (HE): To begin with, what went wrong with Fast and Furious?

Gosar: The government knowingly put forth a flawed process in Fast and Furious that placed Border Patrol agents like Brian Terry in harm’s way: That placed every American in harm’s way, and particularly those in Arizona. Because of the implementation of Fast and Furious, there are hundreds upon hundreds of guns that we’ll only find when they show up at a crime scene.

HE: How, to your knowledge, were the weapons moved across the border?

Gosar: We don’t know. But we do know that many of the gun dealers selling the guns to the “straw purchasers” didn’t want to sell the guns. It was flawed from the start. [Congressman Gosar defined a straw purchaser as someone “who knowingly buys a weapon not for themselves, but to be given to a criminal, perhaps even a felon.”]

For example, one purchaser who bought over 700 guns was on food stamps and the ATF knew it. But when gun dealers would contact the ATF to say, “This doesn’t look right” or to explain why they weren’t comfortable with a particular sale, the ATF would simply tell them the buyer was “on the list” and that the purchase was good to go.

And let me add that out of the over 2,000 guns sold, only two had tracers on them, and those ran on batteries that allowed the ATF to track them for a few hours at most. Our government has never done this before: We’ve never sold weapons for an operation without surveillance or tracers.

HE: What kind of list was the ATF referencing when it told gun dealers a certain buyer was “on the list”?

Gosar: Right now, we’re trying to formulate the details of the list.

HE: To your knowledge, how did the ATF and other agencies plan on apprehending cartel members once the weapons purchased by straw purchasers made it into agents' hands?

Gosar: The best-case scenario was that we’d catch a transporter. The straw purchasers would sometimes take the guns to transporters, who would then take them across the border. And all a transporter might get is 18 months in prison.

But there was no way to get the drug lord. How could we? We didn’t even tell Mexico what we were doing. So how would we hope to get extradition of a cartel member?

HE: Because the ATF’s William Newell admitted in congressional testimony that “the DHS, IRS, DEA, ATF, ICE and DOJ” were all involved in Fast and Furious. And because Congressman Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley’s report says they identified “a dozen Justice Department officials who knew about the program.” And because Kevin O’Reilly, White House officials and the national security director for North America, received updates on Fast and Furious from Newell, is there really any way President Obama​ could not have known about it?

Gosar: We’re looking for documentation.

HE: In light of the fact that Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech on Gunwalker on April 2, 2009, in which he said, “My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner [aka Gunwalker],” and in which he went on to mention the contribution other agencies were making to Gunwalker, is there really any way he didn’t know about Fast and Furious until the spring of 2011 as he claims?

Gosar: What we’re dealing with are decisions that involve an international border [U.S./Mexico] and thus should be made at the Cabinet level. That’s common sense, and it’s a position any previous administration would confirm. That being said, there are certain people who ought to have known about Fast and Furious from the start.

HE: What’s your opinion of the claims that weapons were also moved into Mexico via El Paso, Tex., and Columbus, N.M.?

Gosar: There are other activities we know of and other things we’ve heard of, but we are focusing our attention on Fast and Furious.

HE: Amid all the denials and stonewalling by various officials, together with the fact that Fast and Furious was tragically flawed from the start, how big of a cover-up do you think we might be dealing with here?

Gosar: We’re still inquiring. But what we do know is that it was an operation carried out on our own people—on Americans. We were the known collateral damage.

And it was carried out on our Mexican neighbors as well.

posted September 04, 2011 12:04 PM            

The heated Congressional investigation into the botched Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program Operation Fast and Furious reached a whole new level on Friday.

New emails obtained by the Los Angeles Times appear to show senior Obama administration and White House officials were briefed on the gun-walking operation. The three White House officials implicated by the LA Times’ reporting are Kevin M. O’Reilly, the director of North American Affairs for the White House national security staff; Dan Restrepo, the president’s senior Latin American advisor; and Greg Gatjanis, a White House national security official.

The emails were sent between July 2010 and February 2011, before the scandalous ATF program was exposed, according the LA Times.

The LA Times says a senior administration official denies that the emails which lead Fast and Furious ATF agent William Newell sent to O’Reilly — who later briefed Restrepo and Gatjanis –included details on “investigative tactics” used in the program. By “investigative tactics,” the White House means how ATF agents facilitated the sale of firearms to drug cartels via “straw purchasers,” or people who could legally buy guns in the U.S. but did so with the intention of selling them to individuals who would traffic them to Mexico.

Those emails apparently show Newell and O’Reilly discussing how the program was affecting Mexico.

Another explosive new detail that emerged on Thursday was a set of documents showing senior officials in Phoenix attempting to cover up a connection between Fast and Furious weapons and U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s death.

In a letter sent to Ann Scheel, the new acting U.S. Attorney for Arizona, House Oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley wrote that high-ranking Phoenix officials tried to “prevent the connection [between Terry’s death and Fast and Furious weapons] from being disclosed.”

Internal emails also show that recently resigned Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke and his deputy Emory Hurley made the decision because “this way we do not divulge our current case (Fast and Furious) or the Border Patrol shooting case.”

UPDATE 3:04 p.m.:

Though the White House has claimed these newly discovered emails didn’t contain any details on the “investigative tactics” officials used in Operation Fast and Furious, one comment has surfaced suggesting otherwise. Politico reports that, in an August 18, 2010, email to O’Reilly, Newell described the details of what was going on.

posted October 13, 2011 07:31 AM            

Issa Issues Subpoena to Holder in Fast and Furious Investigation
Published October 12, 2011
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/12/issa-issues-subpoena-to-holder-in-fast-and-furious-investigation/

posted November 30, 2011 04:57 PM            

First, they finance...with taxpayer money the illegal purchase of guns to be run into Mexico to the drug cartels.

Then, they lose track of the illegal guns. Guess they forgot to put tracking chips in or on the guns.

Then, hundreds of Mexican citizens get killed by those illegal guns which are now in the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

Then, a US Border Patrol agent gets killed by one of those illegal guns.

Then, Congressional committees start investigating the Justice Dept, DEA, BATF and Administration officials to find out who authorized, directed and controlled the purchase and sale of those illegal guns.

Then, O'Bomber throws a blanket over the investigations by sealing the records from view.

Now that's the kind of transparency leftists can believe in!

Obama Admin Seals Records of Murdered Border Patrol Agent Implicated in Fast and Furious
11:45 AM, Nov 30, 2011
By MARK HEMINGWAY

And to think that Attorney General Eric Holder is getting testy about congressional calls for his resignation. After all, the Justice Department has nothing to hide, right?:

The Obama Administration has abruptly sealed court records containing alarming details of how Mexican drug smugglers murdered a U.S. Border patrol agent with a gun connected to a failed federal experiment that allowed firearms to be smuggled into Mexico.

This means information will now be kept from the public as well as the media. Could this be a cover-up on the part of the “most transparent” administration in history? After all, the rifle used to kill the federal agent (Brian Terry) last December in Arizona’s Peck Canyon was part of the now infamous Operation Fast and Furious. Conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the disastrous scheme allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels.

Link via Judicial Watch.

The murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent is related to the Justice Department willingly turning over thousands of guns to Mexican criminal gangs, and Obama administration is hiding information about his death from the public. Amazing.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-ad min-seals-records-murdered-border-patrol-agent-implicated-fast-and-furious_610783.html

posted December 06, 2011 12:47 PM            

Issa demands info from Holder after report that Justice smuggled millions to cartels
12/05/2011
By Matthew Boyle

House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa announced late Monday that he’s expanding his probe into the Justice Department’s questionable gun-walking programs to include drug money the Drug Enforcement Agency reportedly helped smuggle into the hands of the drug cartels in Mexico.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that “in operations supervised by the Justice Department and orchestrated to get around sovereignty restrictions” drug enforcement agents “laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels.”

In a Monday letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Issa announced he’s investigating the allegations made against the DEA in the New York Times article.

“As you are fully aware, since March of this year, I have been investigating the reckless tactics — in particular gunwalking — used in ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious,” Issa wrote. “That operation, which you personally acknowledged was ‘fundamentally flawed,’ failed spectacularly to meet its objective of bring down Mexican drug cartels. Precisely because the ends do not justify the means, the law limits the conduct alleged in this story.”

“Apparently, this same goal of dismantling Mexican drug cartels motivated the Drug Enforcement Administration in aiding and abetting these same cartels in laundering millions of dollars in cash,” Issa continued. “In fact, The New York Times reports that agents needed to seek Department approval to launder amounts greater than $10 million in any single operation.”

Issa wrote that, according to the report, many agents said the $10 million requirement was frequently “waived” because it was treated more like a guideline. He said that means “hundreds of millions of dollars” could’ve been “laundered” into the hands of drug cartels by the Obama administration and Holder’s Justice Department.

The news of this DEA operation comes as 52 congressmen, three U.S. senators, four presidential candidates and two sitting governors are demanding Holder’s immediate resignation over Fast and Furious. Issa hasn’t called for Holder to resign, but has made comments that suggest he may soon. For instance, in his Monday letter to Holder, he questions the attorney general’s “leadership” at the DOJ.

“The existence of such a program again calls your leadership into question,” Issa wrote to Holder. “The managerial structure you have implemented lacks appropriate operational safeguards to prevent the implementation of such dangerous schemes. The consequences have been disastrous.”

“It is almost unfathomable to contemplate the degree to which the United States Government has made itself an accomplice to the Mexican drug trade, which has thus far left more than 40,000 people dead in Mexico since December 2006,” Issa continued.