Operations Fast & Furious

[4est_4est_Gump]

Holder's lashing out like a cornered parakeet...

 

[MeeMie]

Why Obama’s Flacks Bullied a CBS Reporter


President Obama’s press office bullies are in high gear, a sure sign that there are legs to the story about Attorney General Eric Holder’s potential perjury before the House Judiciary Committee.



CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson is doggedly pursuing the case, reporting that Holder knew about the Fast and Furious operation well before he said he did under oath last May, when he testified to the panel he’d just learned of it “over the last few weeks.” In fact, it appears, he was told about Fast and Furious in early 2010.


A Justice Department spokeswoman and White House spokesman launched at Attkisson what few people realize is a routine Obama administration tactic – attempt to quash good journalism that’s bad for Obama by intimidating reporters.

The idea is to get inside a reporter’s head and make them know that if they write something the White House doesn’t like, they’ll have to deal with abuse.

Ultimately, it’s suppression of speech, by the openness administration. I believe Obama is fully aware of the tactic, as he's done it himself directly.


In this case, they attacked Attkisson with the type of manufactured anger and foul language that many White House reporters will tell you is routine. I guess she was shocked, since she’s on the investigative beat and is not regularly in touch with the White House.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview in which she revealed the abuse to radio talk show host Laura Ingraham.

INGRAHAM: So they were literally screaming at you?

ATTKISSON: Yes. Well, the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. A guy from the White House-

INGRAHAM: Who was it?

ATTKISSON: On Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me-

INGRAHAM: Who was the person? Who was the person at Justice screaming?

ATTKISSON: Eric Schultz- oh, the person screaming was [DOJ spokeswoman] Tracy Schmaler. She was yelling, not screaming-

INGRAHAM: Oh, really?

ATKISSON: And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House.

ATTKISSON: They will tell you that I’m the only reporter- as they told me- that is not reasonable. They say ‘The Washington Post’ is reasonable, the ‘LA Times’ is reasonable, ‘The New York Times’ is reasonable- I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it. And my side of the story is- and I never knew where this story was going when I talked to those whistle-blowers back in January and February- and I didn’t care where it went. I’m just, sort of, digging away and going where it leads. But I’m sure they take it very personally, because it’s very important- they have very important implications.​

Such tactics as this were extremely rare in both the Clinton and Bush White Houses.


These Obama flacks are not just reacting with visceral anger to the story. They are specifically trained and encouraged to do this. Most of them are actually quite nice to be around when they’re not in 'Kill the Story Mode'. Though it does take a certain type of person to pull this off.


Let’s hope it doesn’t chill her reporting. It’s not pleasant. I was outraged that aides to the president of the United States were trying to suppress speech.


If Ms. Attkisson understands it’s nothing more than a tactic being used against her, it shouldn’t affect her. Anyway, her Facebook profile says she’s a third-degree black belt in TaeKwonDo, so I doubt she’ll be intimidated by the relative ninnies in the press office.

It should only affect her in that she should understand there’s a good reason they’re doing it: she’s onto something big and doing it in a way that scares them. The higher the volume of the screaming and the more sickening the language, the closer she’s getting.


KEITH KOFFLER, White House Dossier

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Third-Degree in TKD is not that big an accomplishment thanks to the introduction of the Korean McDojang market...



It mainly means that you paid a helluva lot of money.

 

[MeeMie]

Third-Degree in TKD is not that big an accomplishment thanks to the introduction of the Korean McDojang market...

It mainly means that you paid a helluva lot of money.

She has other accomplishments to her credit:

From 1990 to 1993, Attkisson was an anchor for CNN. She left CNN in 1993, moving to CBS, where she anchored the television news broadcast CBS News Up to the Minute and became an investigative correspondent based in Washington D.C. She simultaneously hosted the PBS Health news magazine HealthWeek from 1997 to 2003. She was also a key anchor for CBS space exploration coverage in 1993. She served as Capitol Hill correspondent for CBS in 2006.

In July 2011, Attkisson was nominated for an Emmy Award for her "Follow the Money" investigations into Congressional travel to the Copenhagen climate summit, and aid to Haiti earthquake victims.

Attkisson received an Investigative Emmy Award in 2009 for "Outstanding Investigative Reporting of a Business News Story" for her exclusive investigations into TARP and the bank bailout.

In 2002, Attkisson also won an Emmy Award for her Investigative Journalism about the American Red Cross.

In the same year, she co-authored a college textbook titled Writing Right for Broadcast and Internet News.

In 2003, Attkisson was nominated for an Outstanding Investigative Journalism Emmy Award for "Drugs, Money, and Safety"; reports on prescription drugs and vaccines.

In 2010, she received an Emmy Award nomination for her investigations into members of Congress, and she also received a 2010 Emmy Award nomination for her investigation into waste of tax dollars.

In 2006, she was one of a small number of female anchors covering the 2006 midterms.

In 2011, Attkisson reported on a literature review by Helen Ratajczak, a former scientist at a pharmaceutical firm, which theoretically linked the development of autism with the administration of vaccines containing human DNA via the mechanism of "homologous recombination tiniker"​

An up and coming talent who isn't following the rest of the sheep in ObamaMedia.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

This same story was posted three pages ago...

 

[MeeMie]

This same story was posted three pages ago...

Uh no ... excerpts from the same interview with Laura Ingraham were, but neither the opinion piece by the White House Dossier, nor the Wiki writeup on the reporter were.

Same reporter ... different story.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

He lied about Rich.
He lied about FALN.

He's lying about this...

And now, he's lashing out just as Obama lashed out at Hannity for actually reading his book.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

When the story first broke early in 2011, Democratic lawmakers and leftist gun-control groups rallied to the administration’s defense, and they still provided support through midsummer. Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign wrote a typical screed of the type on June 29, attempting to blame Republicans for the plot:

If California Rep. Darrell Issa and other congressional members who are in lock-step with the NRA bosses want to get to the bottom of the ATF gun trafficking operation, they need to start looking at their own actions and lack of action. By blocking and loosening laws to prevent gun violence they, too, are culpable in ATF’s “Fast and Furious” apparent debacle.

This poorly executed operation had agents skulking around gun shops to watch and possibly document numerous illegal firearms sales in Arizona. The unstopped gun runners then resold about 2,000 assault weapons to violent Mexican drug cartels. Further tragedy unfolded when two of the guns were found at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

Helmke would later testify at a dog and pony show organized by Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings that sought to be a rhetorical counter against Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s congressional investigation. Cummings and a handful of fellow Democrats then tried in July to use Operation Fast and Furious as an excuse to call for more gun control. This also fell flat.

Since that last effort the administration’s allies have fallen silent.

New York Democrat Carolyn B. Maloney hasn’t said a word about Operation Fast and Furious since she supported the doomed “Stop Gun Trafficking and Strengthen Law Enforcement Act” in mid-July. Neither has her even more zealously anti-gun collegue Carolyn McCarthy.

As pressure has increased on the administration this week, the silence from House Democrats has been deafening. And like House Democrats, Senate Democrats are quietly abandoning the White House and attorney general.

Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein have consistently pushed for gun control throughout their Senate careers. Along with Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, they fabricated a report in June that supported the administration with a walked-back version of the 90-percent lie.

Schumer in particular has been a strong ally of the president, and yet he has also been silent on Operation Fast and Furious.

How many major political scandals have there been in recent memory where an entire political party fell silent for months at a time — and how should we interpret that silence?

Democratic senators and representatives may feel they have nothing to gain by speaking out on behalf of the gunwalking scandals. It would be a logical position to adopt if they’re assuming that Operation Fast and Furious is a serious political liability.

Regardless of the specific reason, the Obama administration’s usual allies of gun-control groups and Democratic members of the House and Senate seem to have abandoned the executive branch to sink or swim on its own.

Bob Owens
Pajamas Media

 

[koalabear]

Bob Owens
Pajamas Media

Helmke has resigned as President of the Brady group.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

AG Eric Holder sounds all powerful in his latest attempt to wriggle out of his role in the Fast and Furious operation, but hubris catches up to everybody. A smart lawyer would never put into writing what he can't defend, but Holder did exactly that. After a week of aggressive reporting by CBS' Sheryl Attkisson, the Attorney General tried defending himself in a letter to Congress.

A similar scenario played out last summer when CNN reporter Dana Bash asked questions of the arrogant Anthony Weiner to uncover the truth behind the sexting scandal. Weiner called for the cameras, but then struggled to talk his way out of his problems. We all know how that turned out.

Yesterday, in a 5-page letter addressed to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the nation's top law official played the victim blaming Republicans, the press and lax gun control laws for the "flawed response to a serious problem." With no mention of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata or 200 dead Mexican citizens, Holder continued on the same track as Congressman Weiner. More concerned about avoiding trouble than taking responsibility for his questionable actions, Holder went on the offensive attacking the messengers....

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/10/holder_hits_bottom_-_keeps_digging.html

The administration has been caught red-handed. Holder has only made it worse. Didn't his own lawyer tell him not to put anything in writing? This "regrettable incident"--the murders of Terry, Zapata, Mexican officials and Mexican citizens--has become personal, very personal to Congressman Issa, his Committee and the American people. We all need to know who proposed the March 2009 phase of the gunwalking campaign and who authorized it.

~~~

Friday was just another day in a continuing series of bad days for the administration of President Barack Obama, as the furor surrounding the executive branch’s gun-walking scandal continues to escalate.

The day began with a gritty montage-style video from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asking the question few in the media are willing to ask about the gun-walking program: Holder vs. White House: Who Is Responsible? Like a duffel bag stuffed with straw-purchased Draco pistols, the day quickly went “south” from there.

The White House attempt to implement a weak “Bush did it too” defense collapsed in spectacular fashion, in the worst possible way. The administration – specifically the Department of Justice — leaked a claim that a Bush-era operation called “Wide Receiver” also walked guns to Mexican cartels, just like Obama’s Operation Fast and Furious. The claim served as a “hook” to draw out news agencies that had up until now largely ignored the scandal out of partisan deference to the White House.

But the claim simply wasn’t true.

While the steady drip-drip-drip of evidence has destroyed claims that the Obama administration program was anything but a way to arm criminals to support the 90-percent lie and the president’s gun control agenda, the Bush-era Operation Wide Receiver was a legitimate “botched” law enforcement operation that failed because of an over-reliance on new and unproven technologies and an underestimation of the cunning of cartel smugglers. One of the key witnesses testifying about Wide Receiver even came forward to debunk the DOJ’s claims of “Bush did it too,” noting that the 2006-2007 operation was a small local ATF operation, conducted without Justice or White House support.

The Obama DOJ created more media interest with the Bush claim, only to have the claim fall apart as the national interest in the case finally began to rise. Oops.

Just as the Wide Receiver claim was falling apart, new documents surfaced that seemed to undermine Eric Holder’s defense that he was unaware of Operation Fast and Furious, the best-known of the administration’s gun-walking scandals. Sharyl Attkisson released documents that showed then-Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler, the second-highest ranking official in Justice, received a detailed briefing on the operation and made hand-written notes in the margins. The briefing was on March 12, 2010, six months into Operation Fast and Furious:

In handwritten notes about Fast and Furious that are not all legible, Grindler writes about “seizures in Mexico” and “links to cartel.” He also noted “seizures in Mexico” on a map of Phoenix, the home base for Fast and Furious, and Mexico locations where some guns ended up. And Grindler made notations on a photograph of several dozen rifles.

As the evidence continues to cast strong doubts on the attorney general’s truthfulness, one of his defensive measures seems to be collapsing. The Obama administration and Holder’s Department of Justice have repeatedly fallen back on using the DOJ inspector general’s investigation as a way to keep from answering the hard questions about the gun-walking operations. When pressed about the plot, they defer to the inspector general’s investigation.

Now we know why.

It turns out that acting DOJ Inspector General Cynthia A. Schnedar, who had leaked information gathered by congressional investigators to the subjects of her investigation, is an old colleague of Eric Holder:

It turns out that Ms. Schnedar has long and close ties to Mr. Holder. According to her biography on the Justice Department website, she became assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. in 1994. Eric Holder had become the U.S. attorney in Washington the previous year, so he in effect was Schnedar’s boss from 1994 until 1997, when he left to become President Clinton’s deputy attorney general. Holder would become a key player in the scandalous pardons of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich and members of the Puerto Rican nationalist terrorist group known as FALN.

But during Ms. Schnedar’s tenure before Holder had departed, it happened that they had ended up working a number of cases together. According to the LexisNexis website, there were at least fourteen of them, usually at the appellate level. For Holder, it was more than just “in name only”; in some of those cases, they apparently co-filed legal briefs.

A responsible inspector general would have immediately noted the obvious conflict of interest and stepped aside after calling for a special counsel to conduct an impartial inquiry. The fact that Schnedar chose not to disclose this conflict of interest indicates possible collusion and corruption of the DOJ Inspector General’s Office. Schnedar may very well find herself the star of her own corruption trial.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gunwal...gs-back-at-critics-hits-self/?singlepage=true

 

[miles]

It turns out that acting DOJ Inspector General Cynthia A. Schnedar, who had leaked information gathered by congressional investigators to the subjects of her investigation, is an old colleague of Eric Holder.

These people are reprehensible...arrogant, stupidit, or both. Maybe they can have mutual conjugal visits while they're in the joint.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Maybe they can be housed with their Gitmo allies and clients...



Too late to put them with FALN and Rich.

 

[koalabear]

UN Arms Trade Treaty

As of this morning, 58 members-- a majority--of the U.S. Senate have signed letters to President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton saying they will oppose any ATT that includes civilian firearms ownership. These strongly worded letters caution the President and Secretary of State to uphold the Constitution of the United States. As Senator Jerry Moran's letter warns, “(A)s the treaty process continues, we strongly encourage your administration to uphold our constitutional protections of civilian firearms ownership. These freedoms are non-negotiable, and we will oppose ratification of an Arms Trade Treaty presented to the Senate that in any way restricts the rights of law-abiding U.S. citizens to manufacture, assemble, possess, transfer or purchase firearms, ammunition and related items.”

http://www.nraila.org/UNArmsTradeTreaty/un.aspx

 

[koalabear]

U.N. Agreement Should Have All Gun Owners Up In Arms


It may not come as surprising news to many of you that the United Nations doesn’t approve of our Second Amendment. Not one bit. And they very much hope to do something about it with help from some powerful American friends. Under the guise of a proposed global “Small Arms Treaty” premised to fight “terrorism”, “insurgency” and “international crime syndicates” you can be quite certain that an even more insidious threat is being targeted – our Constitutional right for law-abiding citizens to own and bear arms.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybe...eement-should-have-all-gun-owners-up-in-arms/

 

[unregistered]

 

[eyer]

Ahhh...

...I so enjoy any battle that pits the sovereignty of the Constitution of the United States of America as the supreme law of this great land against any foe, domestic and/or foreign.

 

[koalabear]

Fast and Furious weapons were found in Mexico cartel enforcer's home
Guns illegally purchased under the ATF operation were found in April hidden in violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, court records show.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-atf-guns-20111009,0,6431788.story?track=rss

When ask about this Holder replied "I was caddying for Oblamer, I know nothing."

 

[unregistered]

 

[NeverEndingMe]

'


Frankly, I've been wondering if he's ever known anything.

well we all know that holder is a criminal!

why does the obama, well has so many criminals on his staff? from illegal activities to tax dodgers?

 

[unregistered]

 

[koalabear]

When your motto is "God Damn America" you choose accordingly.

Maybe he's rehearsing a speech.

"In any organization, the man at the top must bear the responsibility. That responsibility, therefore, belongs here, in this office. I accept it."

But those who conducted the "sordid affair," he said, "must, of course, bear the liability and pay the penalty."

"I want you to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that during my terms as President, justice will be pursued fairly, fully and impartially, no matter who is involved.

 

[off2bed]

March, 2009:

"The President has directed us to take action to fight these cartels, and Attorney General Holder and I have taken several new and aggressive steps as part of the Administration's comprehensive plan. Those steps include the following... ...DOJ's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is increasing its efforts by... ...redeploying one hundred personnel to the Southwest border in the next forty five days to fortify its Project Gunrunner..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PNhYk9NuNc&feature=share

 

[koalabear]

March, 2009:

"The President has directed us to take action to fight these cartels, and Attorney General Holder and I have taken several new and aggressive steps as part of the Administration's comprehensive plan. Those steps include the following... ...DOJ's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is increasing its efforts by... ...redeploying one hundred personnel to the Southwest border in the next forty five days to fortify its Project Gunrunner..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PNhYk9NuNc&feature=share

Yeah.........but......

 

[unregistered]

 

[koalabear]

A thousand years from now people calling out a liar will no longer yell "bullshit," they will yell instead "Obamait!"