Operations Fast & Furious

[Mike_Yates]

'Fast and Furious' scandal grows with revelation that Mexican cartel suspects may be paid U.S. informants

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2011/07/atf-agents-informants-dea-fbi-drug-war-guns.html

Family of murdered border agent may sue government after he was killed by U.S. gun sent to Mexico in trafficking programme

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-border-agent-Brian-Terry-sue-government.html

It looks like the Obama administration has been outright caught red-handed running a false flag smear campaign against the 2nd amendment.

 

[Mike_Yates]

This isn't even the pristine tip of the iceberg in terms of the criminal activities of the government and government agencies.

*The FBI works closely alongside terrorists and criminals. They also act as the government's political police, intimidating, framing, and even outright murdering certain political activists. See COINTELPRO

*The DEA sells and trafficks narcotics.

*The ATF arms violent criminals and trafficks weapons.

*The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) really isn't a legitimate government agency as much as it is a corrupt and conspiratorial organ of the government to harass and intimidate the masses, slowly dismantle democracy and establish outright totalitarian oppression throughout the entire country. All in the name of protecting people from mostly fabled and nonexistent "terrorists." Yeah, you heard that right, an oppressive dictatorship in America.

*The absolute worst of these is the CIA, they have been complicit in many of the worst genocides modern history including Cambodia, Nicaragua, Burma, and various Asian, African, and South-American genocides and crimes against humanity. The CIA is probably the single most unspeakably atrocious organization of the 20th century. They also do drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, human trafficking, sex trafficking, acts of false flag terrorism, and just about every single kind of crime and atrocity humanly imaginable. There is even evidence which points out that Al-Qaeda is 100% run by the CIA.]

Each of these government agencies does the exact opposite of what they're meant to do. All to serve the interests of greedy criminals, strange secret societies, giant multinational corporations, the international banking cartels, and especially to keep the wheels of wall street well-oiled.

 

[MeeMie]

Lawmakers have requested correspondence records, including emails and handwritten notes, from a dozen senior Justice Department officials who may have been involved in a controversial gun-tracking operation.

Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, are investigating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ (ATF) botched operation “Fast and Furious,” which sold thousands of weapons to known and suspected straw purchasers for Mexican drug cartels. They sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder this week in which they ask for communication records from 12 senior officials with the Department of Justice (DOJ), including James Cole, the recently confirmed Deputy Attorney General.

The move comes in connection with a separate letter sent by the lawmakers to Holder on Monday asking for records of a shared drive, which they say was provided to the computers of ATF officials and could jeopardize their investigation.

The drive contained documents relating to the Fast and Furious operation that the DOJ has given to the committee and possibly documents that it has not yet handed over, their letter states.

“Allowing witnesses access to such documents could taint their testimony by allowing them to tailor their responses to what they think the committees already know,” the lawmakers wrote.



TWELVE Senior DoJ Officials Named


House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, ripped Attorney General Eric Holder again in another Monday letter.

The top Republicans investigating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Operation Fast and Furious also blasted Holder for allegations that he allowed his Justice Department to skew potential witnesses by prepping them with access to background information.

In this new letter, Issa and Grassley name 12 senior Justice Department political officials they believe may have been involved in the decision which allowed guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. They asked Holder to provide all records relating to communications between those 12 individuals regarding Operation Fast and Furious.

“As our investigation into Operation Fast and Furious has progressed, we have learned that senior officials at the Department of Justice (DOJ), including Senate-confirmed political appointees, were unquestionably aware of the implementation of this reckless program. Therefore it is necessary to review communications between and among these senior officials.” Grassley and Issa wrote to Holder.



The Obama administration Justice officials named in the letter were:

–Former Deputy Attorney General David Ogden
–Deputy Attorney General James Cole
–Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer
–Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco
–Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein
–Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Keeney
–Associate Deputy Attorney General Matt Axelrod
–Former Associate Deputy Attorney General Ed Siskel
–Gary Grindler in the Office of the Attorney General
–Brad Smith, in the office of the Deputy Attorney General
–Kevin Carwile, section chief of the Capital Case Unit
–Joseph Cooley, in the Criminal Fraud Section



The records Issa and Grassley are requesting include emails, memos, briefing papers and handwritten notes. They also requested any records concerning any large weapons trafficking cases within ATF or in Phoenix. The deadline they gave Holder is July 18 at noon.






. .

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

"Stonewall Holder"

 

[unregistered]

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

This scandal is worse than Watergate, nobody died as a result of Watergate. Holder has to go, the President need to be warned of impeachment if he doesn't get to the whole truth out.

Why waste time? the Press is going to cover for him no matter what, just like they ran with faked grand jury testimony and forged documents for a Kinko's in Texas...



The only thing they care about is American guns in Mexico and Holder knows that.

The source is us. We need more regulations on ammo...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Hey, it was just business as usual...

On February 15, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila were returning to Mexico City, where they were assigned after a meeting, when they were ambushed by members of the Zetas cartel on a highway near San Luis Potosi.

Agent Avila was lucky. While seriously wounded in the attack he managed to survive, and is on the long road to recovery back in the United States. Agent Zapata died as a result of the ambush, and it was determined that he was killed with a weapon smuggled across the U.S. border.

A week after the ambush Julian Zapata Espinoza, aka “El Piolin,” was captured and confessed to the shooting, saying that the Zetas mistook the ICE Chevrolet Suburban for a vehicle driven by a rival cartel. Curiously, that confession does not match the facts as related by Agent Avila, which indicated the cartel knew exactly who they were attacking. It seems unlikely that the cartel gunners could have missed seeing the U.S. government diplomatic plates as they overtook the vehicle from behind and rammed it off the side of the road.

Regardless of the other details of the ambush, what is known is that these two agents were shot at point-blank range by a gunman armed with a weapon that had been purchased in a gun store in the United States. Agent Zapata’s death is commonly accepted as the second U.S. fatality related to “Operation Fast and Furious.”

But that isn’t entirely true.

The weapon used to shoot these agents was not sold in the Phoenix, Arizona, area that was the hub of Operation “Fast and Furious,” also known as Gunwalker, which allowed gunrunners to acquire the gun that was used to murder Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December. Instead, one of the weapons used to shoot these two ICE agents came from Lancaster, Texas, a suburb of Dallas.

Brothers Otilio and Ranferi Osorio and their neighbor Kevin Morrison were arrested in Texas after Zapata’s death, but only after ATF and DEA agents had organized a transfer of some 40 weapons in November. It was one of those rifles that was traced back to Agent Zapata’s murder.

Senator Charles Grassley noted that these three men had actually been stopped by local police after the transfers took place, but they were not arrested — presumably on orders from the Department of Justice.

The men were trailed as part of a multi-agency operation similar to Fast and Furious, that to date has not been named, in the Dallas Field Operations area, which encompasses southwest Texas, north Texas, and Oklahoma.

This is in addition to considerable circumstantial evidence that the Houston Field Operations area, which is made up of central and southeastern Texas, may have been responsible for shipping a large percentage of the recovered guns linked to Mexican cartels in central and southern Mexico. How large is the alleged Houston operation? It could possibly dwarf the Arizona operation now so infamously known as the source of the weapons recovered at Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder.

...

In addition to the allegations of “Fast and Furious” type operations in both Texas Field Operations areas and the Fast and Furious operation itself in Arizona, there are sources reporting to Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea that another operation, codenamed “Castaway,” may have run as many as a thousand guns to MS-13 in Honduras from the Tampa Field Operations area, and that field agents are itching to testify.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/‘gunwa...a-killed-by-gun-from-…-texas/?singlepage=true

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Rep. Gus Bilirakis (Republican of Florida) sent out a letter today to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding answers on Operation Castaway. There are reports that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Tampa Field Division, ran a gun-running investigation that was walking guns to Honduras using the techniques and tactics identical to Fast and Furious. 1,000 of those guns were sold to MS13 buyers.

The Examiner reported:

Congressman Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) wrote a letter today to Attorney General Eric Holder and Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Kenneth Melson expressing “deep concern about reports that [ATF and DOJ] have participated in multiple acts of ‘gun walking,’ purposely allowing firearms to pass from straw purchaser into the possession of criminals and other dangerous third party organizations.”

“These reports,” Bilirakis writes, “raise troubling questions about the motives, intentions, and competency of the ATF and DOJ.”

“In recent days,” he notes, “it has come to light that the ATF and DOJ may have participated in the act of ‘gun walking’ beyond the acts conducted within the scope of “Operation Fast and Furious’…and that similar programs included the possible trafficking of arms to dangerous criminal gangs in Honduras with the knowledge of the ATF’s Tampa Field Division.”

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Hey vette, more American guns coming to a 'hood near you!

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Thank the gods they weren't shopping at gun shows.


*massages loophole*

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

The Gub'mint brought the show to them!




The Shadow Government AKA The Most Transparent Administration in History

 

[MeeMie]

Only 363 Of The 2,020 Guns Involved In ATF’s “Operation Fast And Furious” Are Accounted For



Federal agents can’t account for more than 1,400 guns after a widely criticized operation aimed at tracing the flow of weapons to Mexican drug gangs, sources with knowledge of the investigation tell CNN.

Of 2,020 guns involved in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives probe dubbed “Operation Fast and Furious,” 363 have been recovered in the United States and 227 have been recovered in Mexico. That leaves 1,430 guns unaccounted for.

The ATF operation was intended to build cases against Mexican drug cartels by allowing firearms to go from the United States into Mexico. The hope was by tracing the guns in Mexico, agents would be able to determine the structure of various cartels and then bring them down.

The problem was that once the guns were allowed to “walk,” there was no way to recover them until they turned up at crime scenes. The operation has been widely criticized in Congress, with the chairman of a House committee that investigated the issue calling it “felony stupid.”

Rene Jaquez, the ATF’s former attache in Mexico City, told CNN the operation never should have happened.

“Guns traditionally are just not allowed to leave the undercover operation for fear that it will enter into the criminal element and then be subsequently used in a crime at a later date,” Jaquez said.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

You guys know the Bush Administration invented this program. Right?

Yeah, Bush was the President in the Fall of 2009...

What's absurd is that you'd use "fuzzy math" to blur the line between 1,900 un-recovered guns and 90,000.

It was a BUSH program!

 

[MeeMie]

Holder bragged about Operation Gunrunner in 2009


On May 3, 2011, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder testified before House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa's committee that he only learned about the government's sale of weapons to Mexican drug cartels "in the last few weeks."



But a 2009 speech by Holder on the Department of Justice's own website that proves the attorney general was well aware of Operation Gunrunner back in 2009:

The problem with Holder’s feigned ignorance is that he gave a speech in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 2, 2009, in which he boasted about Operation 'Gunrunner” and told Mexican authorities of everything he was doing to insure its success.​

When questioned by the media, Holder also denied knowing anything about Gunrunner.

"Holder's office at first vehemently denied ATF has ever knowingly allowed weapons to get into the hands of suspected gunrunners for Mexico's drug cartels," CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reported.​

But at the arms trafficking conference in Cuernavaca, Holder not only acknowledged the program, he bragged that he was in the process of expanding it:

"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. DHS is making similar commitments, as Secretary Napolitano will detail."​

So Holder's May 3rd denial appears to be refuted by his own words.

And, he also involved Napolitano with that statement.

How far up in the Obama administration will the lead follow?


With 43 automatic weapons with serial numbers traced back to the ATF operation seized during a single traffic stop in Phoenix, and others showing up in crimes throughout Arizona, the ATF director now claims that Holder's department is obstructing the congressional investigation.

 

[koalabear]

You guys know the Bush Administration invented this program. Right?

You know what a moron you are, right?

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Semi-automatic weapons. Autos are too complicated to buy here.


Now, the IRA could hook them up.


Erin go buy.

 

[unregistered]

 

[MeeMie]

Washington Times:
Holder Accused of Cover-up, ATF Probe Expanding


ATF testimony stirs new questions



The closed-door testimony of ATF’s acting director, saying that the Justice Department was obstructing a congressional investigation, has prompted an expansion of that ongoing probe into the controversial “Fast and Furious” weapons-smuggling operation.

“We’ll go wherever the investigation takes us,” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a key inquisitor in probing the operation, during which guns, including AK-47 assault rifles, were “walked” into Mexico.

He said the weekend testimony of Kenneth E. Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, had corroborated information that “more agencies within the Justice Department may have been involved in allowing guns to fall into the hands of known straw purchasers.”



A spokesman for Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Thursday that the Melson testimony “raises new questions” about the scope of the program and certainly “justifies an expansion of the investigation.”

“After talking with the acting ATF director, I think we have a greater insight into what happened and what questions need to be asked to lead to some final answers as to who authorized this program and why,” said spokesman Frederick Hill, whose boss also has been a key player in the ongoing investigation.



Meanwhile Thursday, Mexican police released a videotaped interview of Jesus Enrique Rejon Aguilar, in which the recently captured No. 3 leader of the Los Zetas drug cartel said “all the weapons” the Zetas use were “bought in the United States” and that “even the American government itself was selling the weapons.”

http://media.washtimes.com/media/im....jpg?73b8e21685896c3f2859310aaa5adb253919b641



Mr. Grassley and Mr. Issa have been investigating accusations that Operation Fast and Furious, part of an anti-gun initiative known as “Project Gunrunner,” allowed thousands of weapons to be purchased by “straw buyers” in Arizona and Texas that later were “walked” unchecked to drug smugglers in Mexico.

At least three of those weapons, including two AK-47 assault rifles, later were found at the site of separate shootings that claimed the lives of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata, who was killed by Rejon Aguilar’s Zetas, and U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry.

The lawmakers also want to know what role other federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), played in the operation.

Last weekend, Mr. Melson said during two closed-door interviews that the senior leadership at the agency wanted to cooperate in the congressional probe but were stopped by Justice Department officials who took control of all briefing and document requests. Mr. Grassley and Mr. Issa, in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., accused Justice of “muzzling” the director.

Mr. Melson confirmed information the committee has been investigating that some of the suspected gun traffickers targeted by ATF in the Fast and Furious probe may have been working with the FBI and DEA without ATF’s knowledge.

He also confirmed concerns expressed by several ATF agents during their recent testimony before Mr. Issa’s committee that while they witnessed the transfer of weapons from the straw buyers to others, they were not allowed to follow the guns further as they made their way to Mexico. He told the investigators he became aware of “this startling possibility” only after the killing of Mr. Terry and the indictments of the straw purchasers.

“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,” Mr. Grassley and Mr. Issa wrote in the letter to Mr. Holder. “The acting director said ATF was kept in the dark about certain activities of other agencies, including DEA and FBI.”

In the videotape, Rejon Aguilar told Mexican police that his gang - considered that country’s most violent - had armed itself with weapons “bought in the United States.”

Mexican law enforcement authorities have long accused the U.S. of failing to control the flow of weapons into that country - many of which have been used in a brutal turf war over the control of drug smuggling routes into the United States that so far has cost more than 35,000 lives.

In the videotaped interrogation, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, Rejon Aguilar, a former member of an elite Mexican paratroop and intelligence battalion known as the Special Air Mobile Force Group, told Mexican police, “Whatever you want, you can get” from the U.S.

Mr. Grassley noted that it has been “well documented” that hundreds of guns may have crossed the border into Mexico because of the “reckless policy known as Fast and Furious,” but the hundreds of thousands of guns used by Mexican drug cartel members are not primarily from U.S.-based gun dealers.

Instead, he said, evidence shows that other sources, including some in Central America, help supply the weapons.

Rejon Aguilar was taken into custody Sunday in the Mexico City suburb of Atizapan “without firing a shot,” according to Mexican federal police. He was one of Mexico’s most-wanted men, and the U.S. Justice, State and Homeland Security departments had announced a reward of up to $5 million for his arrest and conviction.

Mexican police said he was “connected to the attack” in the daylight ambush in Mexico of Zapata and his partner, ICE Agent Victor Avila Jr., who was wounded. They said Rejon Aguilar was in charge of operations for the Zetas in San Luis Potosi when the American agents were ambushed.

Neither of the U.S. agents was armed, as the Mexican government does not allow U.S. law enforcement personnel to carry weapons.

 

[unregistered]

 

[koalabear]

Did you notice yesterday, in the face of Heller, and the gunrunner controversy, the ATF came out with enhanced gun control regs for the southwestern states anyway? Hows that for equal protection under the laws. Wonder how that flies with the Privileges and Immunities Clause.

Justice Department’s New Rule on Border Gun Sales Gets Mixed Reviews

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...r-gun-sales-gets-mixed-reviews/#ixzz1Rzd2XFoc


The JD is the biggest offender.

 

[unregistered]

 

[MeeMie]

Gunrunner vs Fast & Furious: An overview to separate fact from fiction


There has been what could best be described as a fog bank obscuring the truth on these two different operations. When we first started following the twists and turns of Operation Fast & Furious there was a great deal of confusion about this operation and what is known as Project Gunrunner. This confusion ultimately got a lot of help from trolls spreading false information to try to merge the two ops into one, the endgame being to link the debacle of Fast & Furious to the Bush administration under whom Gunrunner began, and provide cover for the Holder DOJ and ultimately the Obama administration.

We start with Project Gunrunner.

It began life as a Pilot Program out of the Laredo, TX office in 2005 and then expanded nationwide in 2006. Officially, its primary purpose was to assist the Mexican Government in the implementation of the agency’s E-Trace system. E-Trace is a web-based program that allows various Law Enforcement Agencies (foreign and domestic) to access BATFE’s firearm serial number database for the purpose of tracing firearms recovered at crime scenes or seized in raids. It falls under the auspices of the Southwest Border Initiative.


It is outlined in an agency paper found here:
http://www.atf.gov/publications/factsheets/factsheet-project-gunrunner.html


A similar fact sheet was released in 2010 on the E-Trace program which is available here:
http://www.atf.gov/publications/factsheets/factsheet-etrace.html


The DOJ Office of the Inspector General released a damning report (the working draft was completed in Sept. 2010 and sent to DOJ for input) from the conclusions drawn by the OIG:
http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/ATF/e1101.pdf

In addition, ATF needs to improve its sharing of firearms-trafficking
related information and techniques within its intelligence structure. ATF
Southwest border intelligence personnel need to more routinely exchange
information, analytical techniques, and best practices within and across
field divisions.

ATF also needs to revisit its implementation of a key component of
Project Gunrunner – the Border Liaison Program. We found that the
liaisons need to coordinate their cross-border activities between their own
field divisions and ATF’s Mexico Country Office and need their roles more
clearly defined.

Project Gunrunner’s investigative focus has largely remained on gun
dealer inspections and straw purchaser investigations, rather than targeting higher-level traffickers and smugglers. As a result, ATF has not made full use of the intelligence, technological, and prosecutorial resources that can
help ATF’s investigations reach into the higher levels of trafficking rings.
ATF also needs to make better use of the OCDETF Program, to extend its
investigative reach into higher levels of firearms trafficking rings.​

The next paragraph is particularly ominous considering the events of less than three months later of December 14, 2010, the tragic death of USBP Agent Brian Terry.

ATF did not effectively implement Project Gunrunner as a multiagency
program. Despite the existence of an MOU between ATF and ICE,
collaboration between the agencies, which share jurisdiction over firearms
trafficking, must be improved. ATF needs to provide supplemental guidance
to field supervisors on the coordination of pertinent and necessary
information in areas of concurrent jurisdiction between ATF and ICE.​

What this means is that Agent Terry and his fellow agents never had any idea of what they ultimately ran into that fateful December day in 2010. You can read the OIG’s report, the working draft, as I or apparently anyone else cannot track down a copy of the finished report. However, the draft is pretty damning all on its own.

As to Operation Fast & Furious, it began in 2009, ostensibly as a sting operation. It should have been simple enough: attract straw-purchasers intent on running firearms south, track them to the US/Mexico border arrest them and seize the firearms. However as we now know one or more persons at the agency apparently figured if they tracked them to the end buyer and caught them it might be just the ticket up the ladder. It might have continued under the “radar” had it not been for four agents who came forward upon learning that the weapon that killed USBP Agent Terry was a “walked” weapon, one of these was Agent Vince Cefalu who was subsequently terminated by the BATFE in 2011, after he came forward about the operation.

As we are all aware this operation has come under a Joint Congressional investigation led by Representative Darrell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley. So far what the investigation has turned up that:

BATFE knowingly allowed as many as 2,500 firearms to be sold illegally to known or suspected straw purchasers. One of those purchasers accounted for over 700 illegal guns.

BATFE ordered its agents working the program not to arrest illegal gun buyers or to interdict thousands of guns that were allowed to “walk” into criminal hands.

Senior BATFE officials in Washington were regularly briefed on the operation and approved of the tactics employed.

BATFE agents who opposed the operation and who raised objections were told to “get with the program” and threatened with job retaliation if they continued their opposition.​

Other pertinent information can be found on these links...

Sen.Grassley’s testimony and accompanying slide show:
http://grassley.senate.gov/news/Article.cfm?customel_dataPageID_1502=35387
http://grassley.senate.gov/judiciary/upload/ATF-06-15-11-CEG-Presentation-with-testimony.pdf

The Initial Findings from the House Oversight investigation:
http://oversight.house.gov/images/stories/Reports/ATF_Report.pdf

 

[koalabear]

As to Operation Fast & Furious, it began in 2009, ostensibly as a sting operation. It should have been simple enough: attract straw-purchasers intent on running firearms south, track them to the US/Mexico border arrest them and seize the firearms. However as we now know one or more persons at the agency apparently figured if they tracked them to the end buyer and caught them it might be just the ticket up the ladder. It might have continued under the “radar” had it not been for four agents who came forward upon learning that the weapon that killed USBP Agent Terry was a “walked” weapon, one of these was Agent Vince Cefalu who was subsequently terminated by the BATFE in 2011, after he came forward about the operation.
BATFE agents who opposed the operation and who raised objections were told to “get with the program” and threatened with job retaliation if they continued their opposition.[/INDENT]

The idea was that BATFE could then trace the guns back to the border state licensed retailers, where BATFE had "monitored" illegal gun sales in the first place, thus fulfilling the basis for the Obama administration`s three-year big-lie campaign that gun stores were the source of 90 percent of guns used by the massive criminal network known as the Mexican cartels.


http://www.nraila.org/Issues/Articles/Read.aspx?id=457&issue=28

The weapons could never be tracked to the end buyer. The Mexican authorities were never in on it, and the U.S. Justice Department had little presence across the border.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

PJM’s Bob Owens has long speculated that the primary reason for Operation Fast and Furious was to perpetuate the lie that 90 percent of illegal firearms in Mexico were from the United States.

Owens’ assertion was buoyed on Wednesday by internal ATF emails obtained by Townhall.com. One email reads:

Can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same FfL and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks Mark R. Chait Assistant Director Field Operations.

This would seem to be a “smoking gun” for Owens’ assertion that this operation was never about crime and always about an “under the table” effort to institute the gun control Obama knew he could never push through Congress.

Additionally, Obama has just issued an executive order which requires gun dealers in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California to report multiple long gun (rifle or shotgun) purchases to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in order to combat illegal firearms trafficking along the Mexican border.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gunwalker-smoking-gun-email/

 

[MeeMie]

The idea was that BATFE could then trace the guns back to the border state licensed retailers, where BATFE had "monitored" illegal gun sales in the first place, thus fulfilling the basis for the Obama administration`s three-year big-lie campaign that gun stores were the source of 90 percent of guns used by the massive criminal network known as the Mexican cartels.


http://www.nraila.org/Issues/Articles/Read.aspx?id=457&issue=28

The weapons could never be tracked to the end buyer. The Mexican authorities were never in on it, and the U.S. Justice Department had little presence across the border.

Exactly.

To compare the two is nothing more than a snow job typical of the loonies ...
see their mantra -> BLAME BUSH!

During the earlier program no weapons were allowed to cross the border and were monitored continuously. The weapons were never out of sight.