Follow up Fast & Furious - and the subpoena's start

[AC54ME]

Hmmm: Issa to subpoena Holder, perhaps today
11:25 am on October 11, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

CBS News reports that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, will issue a subpoena for Eric Holder to produce in their entirety a series of documents pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious. The subpoena could come as early as today, and push a simmering conflict between the House and the Obama administration onto center stage:

CBS News has learned a congressional subpoena directed to Attorney General Eric Holder could go out as early as Tuesday, ordering him to turn over documents to lawmakers about when he was aware of a controversial gun smuggling operation known as Fast and Furious.

CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports the the subpoena will come from the House Oversight Committee, led by Republican Darrell Issa. It will ask for communications among senior Justice Department officials related to Fast and Furious and “gunwalking.”

The subpoena will list those officials, says Attkisson – more than a dozen of them – by name.
The best part of this story might be the reporter who wrote it. Sharyl Attkisson got verbally attacked by spokespeople at the White House and Department of Justice for her work on the Fast & Furious story for not being “reasonable” like the Washington Post and the New York Times, which haven’t exactly dedicated too much effort into exposing the deadly consequences of the operation. The LA Times also got a mention as “reasonable,” according to Attkisson, which is unfair, since Richard Serrano has been doing excellent work at the LAT on the story as well.

The subpoena will be an unmistakable escalation between Issa and the Obama administration, but the blame for that falls directly onto Holder’s narrow shoulders. Instead of cooperating with Issa’s probe, Holder sent a letter last Friday practically daring Issa to subpoena the documents and his aides. Issa returned fire yesterday with a detailed broadside listing all of the mischaracterizations and misrepresentations given by Holder and the DoJ, ending with the admonition that Holder “own[s] Fast and Furious” no matter how much he tries to duck the consequences. After that exchange, it became clear that Holder wouldn’t voluntarily comply with the House’s investigation, and that a subpoena was inevitable.

Will the Obama administration fight the subpoena? They’d be better advised to rid themselves of the albatross of Eric Holder, but that hasn’t been their style despite a series of blunders and political machinations by the Attorney General. A fight over a legitimate subpoena — especially in a case where one Border Patrol agent has been killed and perhaps hundreds of Mexicans with weapons trafficked by the ATF — will attract plenty of media attention, even without the hamhanded attempt to intimidate Attkisson from reporting on the story. That will overshadow Obama’s jobs push, and perhaps lead to even more disturbing revelations as to just how high this scandal goes. The smart move would be to dump Holder and give the House what it wants, but this administration has been short on smart moves throughout the F&F scandal.

Hmmm: Issa to subpoena Holder, perhaps today « Hot Air

[RedLS1GTO]

but this administration has been short on smart moves... period.

Fixed.

[mrvette]

NOTICE how fast Holder left the stage after the final question today, about the F&F deal??? chicken shit bastard.....

[VITE1]

I hope the committee does it job and the Pubs shut the F**k up and let the story play out.

[AC54ME]

As the Gunwalker conspiracy continues to unravel, initial claims that the multi-agency plot was an isolated and localized Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives operation are falling apart.

Following up on comments made this past Sunday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee Charles Grassley sent a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller seeking detailed information in their Fast and Furious investigation. They are particularly focused on the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry on December 14, 2010.

The letter asserts that as many as five firearms may have been in the hands of the suspects, based upon the claim by the captured suspect that he was traveling with four other individuals — all of whom he says were armed. Neither the search warrant affidavit nor the unsealed indictment stated the total number of weapons recovered after the firefight, a curious omission.

The letter goes on to ask 16 questions. The first three questions cover the ballistics tests run on the weapons recovered, while the next four inquire about the weapons the smugglers may have used in the firefight and how many shots may have been fired from each kind of weapon. The remaining questions are focused on the investigators themselves (specifically the FBI, ATF, and any other “state local, or federal” agencies that may have been present by the time the FBI arrived to the crime scene), the gun trace data, and the total number of suspects involved.

Getting honest answers to these questions is critical, as the FBI seems to be claiming that only two weapons were recovered at the scene. Candid conversations with other law enforcement agents strongly suggest that a third weapon, an SKS tied to an FBI criminal informant, was at the crime scene before disappearing.

The Department of Justice was quick to denounce the letter and the Oversight Committee’s quest to reach the bottom of Operation Fast and Furious:

On Monday, the Justice Department responded to Issa’s accusations about a possible third gun saying, “The FBI has made clear that reports of a third gun recovered from the perpetrators at the scene of Agent Terry’s murder are false.” They also maintain that Issa’s staff was previously informed of this.

“Unfortunately, this most recent false accusation not only maligns the dedicated agents investigating the murder of Agent Terry, it mischaracterizes evidence in an ongoing case,” the Justice Department said in its statement.

Oversight Committee Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD), an Obama administration loyalist, fiercely responded as well:

Frankly, I am shocked that Chairman Issa would continue to spin this conspiracy theory — that the FBI is hiding a third weapon — even after his recent allegations proved false. Rather than acknowledging this embarrassing mistake and apologizing for making false accusations about the FBI, Chairman Issa’s letter is an unprecedented attack on the integrity and credibility of law enforcement that could seriously jeopardize the ongoing prosecution.

To put it mildly, Cummings’ criticism is duplicitous. The ATF’s William Newell boldly lied to the American people when he answered “Hell no!” to inquires on whether guns were walked in Operation Fast and Furious. Instead of being fired, he and his fellow conspirators were promoted “laterally” to desk jobs in Washington, D.C.

The Department of Justice has repeatedly tried to claim that Operation Fast and Furious was a localized operation, when documents prove that numerous Obama administration-appointed officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder himself and the number two man in Justice, Gary Grindler, were briefed on the operation. One document shows Grindler’s personal notes scrawled in the margins.

The FBI, DEA and Justice Department have all attempted to stonewall the Oversight Committee investigation, and have refused to answer direct questions from other congressional committees and individual congressmen and senators as well.

With allegations of gun-walking operations in 10 cities in five states, the congressional reaction of a calm investigation is, if anything, subdued. As noted in a previous article, if we use Operation Fast and Furious as a baseline and assume that the other gunwalking operations were roughly as productive, the U.S. may have run between 10,000 and 20,00o guns to criminal organizations, enough weapons to outfit an entire U.S. Army infantry division.

The constant revelations of new documents and new testimony strongly suggest that President Obama, Attorney General Holder, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not been forthright about what they knew of multiple plots carried out jointly by their agencies.

PJM reporter AWR Hawkins notes:

To date, their stories are not believable, and Obama’s pledge to discover who was behind Fast and Furious and hold them “accountable” is simply not trustworthy.

Even the reliably left-leaning Huffington Post tells readers they should be furious over Operation Fast and Furious:

Who in their right mind would think using criminals to smuggle thousands of guns in to Mexico was a good idea?

Our Justice Department refuses to reveal the creator or cost of Operation Fast & Furious. Why?


What the hell is going on in this country? And why don’t our federal officials just man-up and admit when mistakes have been made?

The handful of apologists that still openly support the administration’s gun-smuggling plot are left with little more than bombast, vitriol, and shallow, transparent attempts to smear the investigations that originated in the White House.

New claims suggest that the federal government had “prior knowledge” that poverty-stricken straw purchasers were about to start spending thousands of dollars at a time at Lone Wolf Trading Company, a gun dealer cooperating with the investigation. Lone Wolf’s owner, Andre Howard, was allegedly told by ATF Agent Hope McAllister: “The amount of weapons you sell is about to dramatically increase.”

This suggests that either the agents had inside intelligence on cartel buyers, or FBI criminal informants at the heart of the operation were directing the straw purchasers to Lone Wolf to spend money provided by the FBI.

All of the evidence that has come forward in recent months paints an increasingly detailed picture of a government gone mad, with top administration officials contributing willfully to a bloody criminal conspiracy.

It’s a little late for faux outrage.

Pajamas Media » As Issa Closes in on FBI Role in Gunwalker, Dems Feign Outrage

[Sea Six]

Fox lies.

[AC54ME]

Getting worse:

Issa, Grassley: Holder needs to reveal info on 2nd agent’s murder, connections
Published: 3:20 PM 10/26/2011 | Updated: 4:49 PM 10/26/2011
By Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller

WASHINGTON - MAY 28: U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) speaks to the media during a news conference May 28, 2010 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley lambasted Attorney General Eric Holder in a new letter detailing how Holder’s team has failed to provide congressional investigators with critical details surrounding the connections between Operation Fast and Furious and a second federal agent’s murder.

The two top Republicans wrote to Holder on Tuesday criticizing what they said was the Department of Justice’s late and lacking response to Grassley’s March 2011 request for details about the murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jaime Zapata. “Not only was the response more than six months late, it completely failed to answer the key questions,” Issa and Grassley wrote.

Issa and Grassley then detail how the DOJ’s severely late response is still rife with inconsistencies. Zapata was murdered in Mexico on February 15, 2011. At least one firearm involved in Zapata’s murder was traced back to Otilio Osorio, his brother, Ranferi Osorio, and their neighbor, Kelvin Morrison. The DOJ arrested the three, and in a March 1, 2011 press release announcing the arrest, revealed that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had been investigating since early in November 2010.

Otilio Osorio made the weapons purchase, which included a gun linked to Zapata’s murder, on October 10, 2010. On the same March 1, 2011 press release announcing the three men’s arrests, the DOJ said it was unaware of the weapons purchase.

“According to ATF documents, however, the agency had reason to believe as early as September 17, 2010, that Otilio’s brother and co-habitant Ranferi Osorio and their next-door neighbor Kelvin Morrison were straw purchasers,” Issa and Grassley wrote. “Yet the ATF apparently made no effort to contact Ranferi Osorio or Kelvin Morrison and inquire about how their weapons came to be trafficked to Mexico within two weeks of their purchase.”

“Moreover, it appears that the ATF had an opportunity to arrest the Osorio brothers and Kelvin Morrison during a staged operation on November 9, 2010,” Grassley and Issa add. “According to a DOJ press release, ‘a Dallas ATF confidential informant (CI) arranged a meeting’ at which the Osorio brothers, arriving at the meeting with Morrison as a passenger in their vehicle, ‘unloaded several large bags containing firearms into the CI’s vehicle, which was kept under surveillance.’”

Issa and Grassley add that they have documents they say indicate the ATF didn’t write a “Report of Investigation” about the November 9, 2010 weapons transfer “until over three months later, on February 25, 2011.” That day is, Issa and Grassley point out, “the same day ATF received the report tracing the Zapata murder weapon back to the purchase by Otilio Osorio.”

“Documenting investigative steps three months after the fact and only after a trace returned to the murder of a federal agent raises red flags about the nature of ATF’s investigation,” they wrote.

Grassley and Issa ask Holder to clarify all the details and finally provide the information the DOJ has been withholding. They gave Holder until noon on November 8 to respond.

The two top Republicans added that Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee with Grassley, has indicated a particular interest in these answers as well.

Read more: Eric Holder | Fast and Furious | ATF | The Daily Caller

[6spdC6]

The shit is getting deeper, just about to go over the high boots Holder and oBUMa wear!

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The sh*t is getting closer to BHO:

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is investigating to what extent the White House was aware of — or involved in — the “Fast and Furious” gunwalking scandal.

The committee recently requested to speak with former White House National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly. According to CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson, the Obama administration answered:

O’Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq and unavailable.

Through a tip, PJ Media learned that Kevin O’Reilly was unexpectedly named director of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau for Iraq (INL-Iraq). Long-time INL-Iraq employee Virginia Ramadan had been expected to get the position — many were quite surprised when she did not.

The previous occupants of the Director, INL-Iraq position — Joe Manso and Francisco Palmieri — were not considered “unreachable” to press or government access. A quick internet search reveals Palmieri, while director, attended a media event on August 23, 2010.

On October 21, PJ Media reporter Patrick Richardson called the number for Office of the Director, INL-Iraq:

1-240-553-0581, ext. 3275

Richardson reached a voicemail message confirming that it was indeed the correct number. He left a message that was not returned.

On Monday Richardson called again, and an assistant answered. Richardson asked to speak with Kevin O’Reilly, and the assistant asked who was calling. Richardson gave his name and stated he was with PJ Media.

The assistant said O’Reilly was currently on a conference call, and asked if Richardson wanted to leave a message. Richardson gave his phone number. His call was not returned.

This morning, Richardson called again. He received a prerecorded message saying “this number is not in service.”

PJ Media is aware that the number was in service as the line to the director’s office for several years prior to Richardson’s calls.

Today, PJ Media is forwarding this information over to Darrell Issa, along with some suggested questions to ask of the Obama administration:

– Why were we told Kevin O’Reilly was “unavailable” if he was employed in a position that has always been open to media, and indeed was easily reached by PJ Media?

– Why did Kevin O’Reilly suddenly get sent to Iraq for the Director, INL-Iraq position when another employee was widely considered the most-qualified person for the job?

– Now that we know he is in the Director, INL-Iraq position and not in a position ever considered “unreachable,” when will you be sending him to Washington to testify?

The committee’s interest in Kevin O’Reilly stems from documents the White House released last month on September 30 – a late afternoon “Friday document dump.” From Sharyl Attkisson’s reporting on the documents:

The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell — who led Fast and Furious — and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O’Reilly are long time friends.

The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. They discuss ATF’s gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O’Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office’s gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as “letting guns walk.”

A lawyer for the White House wrote Congressional investigators: “none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to allow guns to ‘walk.’”

Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF’s Newell sent the White House’s O’Reilly an “arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up.” The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.

In response, O’Reilly wrote on Sept. 3, 2010 “The arrow chart is really interesting — and — no surprise — implies at least that different (Drug Trafficking Organizations) in Mexico have very different and geographically distinct networks in the US for acquiring guns. Did last year’s TX effort develop a similar graphic?”

The White House counsel who produced the documents stated that some records were not included because of “significant confidentiality interests.”

Also included are email photographs including images of a .50 caliber rifle (left) that Newell tells O’Reilly “was purchased in Tucson, Arizona (part of another OCDTF case).” OCDTF is a joint task force that operates under the Department of Justice and includes the US Attorneys, ATF, DEA, FBI, ICE and IRS. Fast and Furious was an OCDTF case.

An administration source would not describe the Tucson OCDTF case. However, CBS News has learned that ATF’s Phoenix office led an operation out of Tucson called “Wide Receiver.” Sources claim ATF allowed guns to “walk” in that operation, much like Fast and Furious.

Congressional investigators for Republicans Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have asked to interview O’Reilly by September 30. But the Administration informed them that O’Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq and unavailable.

PJ Media

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Obama has his fall guy!

Top Justice Dept. official: ATF should have stopped 'gun walking' tactics
By Jordy Yager - 11/01/11 08:33 PM ET


A senior Justice Department official on Tuesday sought to blame the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for not stopping the controversial “gun walking” tactics used in the botched Fast and Furious program.

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer also tried to shield Attorney General Eric Holder and other administration officials from culpability, claiming he had concerns about the ATF’s activities that he did not take up the chain of command.


“At the time, I thought that dealing with the leadership of ATF was sufficient and reasonable … If I had known then what I know now, I, of course, would have told the deputy and the attorney general,” Breuer said.

“I thought we had dealt with it by talking to the ATF leadership,” he said.

Breuer became the highest-ranking Justice Department (DOJ) official to publicly admit to knowing about the ATF’s use of “gun walking” — the practice of allowing criminals to take possession of firearms — during Fast and Furious.

Breuer’s admission to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee could take some of the heat off of Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who have all come under questioning from Republicans about whether they knew of or helped authorize the operation.

The Cabinet officials and President Obama have all denied any involvement or knowledge of the tactics used in Fast and Furious. The DOJ’s independent Inspector General (IG) launched its own investigation into the operation earlier this year at Holder’s direction.

In his testimony, Breuer said he realized last year that Fast and Furious was using the same taboo methods as an earlier gun-tracking operation, Wide Receiver, which was run on a smaller scale under President George W. Bush.

“I wish that at that time that I had said clearly to the deputy attorney general and the attorney general that in this case, Wide Receiver, we had determined that in 2006 and 2007, guns had walked,” said Breuer in testimony before the committee.

Under questioning from the committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Breuer indicated that former ATF deputy director William J. Hoover would have taken part in conversations about whether action should be taken with regard to the Fast and Furious tactics.

Hoover was reassigned within the ATF earlier this year in response to his involvement with Operation Fast and Furious, which oversaw the sale of thousands of firearms in the Southwest border region to known and suspected straw buyers for Mexican drug cartels.

Former acting director of the ATF Kenneth Melson was also reassigned in August, and former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke, who oversaw many of the legal aspects surrounding the operation, stepped down from office.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has been investigating the operation and has pointed to Breuer as one of the top-ranking DOJ officials who knew about the controversial tactics used in it.

On Monday, Issa received 650 pages of documents from DOJ on Fast and Furious that he had issued a subpoena for.

Holder is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week, and Grassley has indicated that he will question him further on his role in the operation, which might have contributed to the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Holder is also scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee next month.

Fast and Furious and its predecessor, Wide Receiver, were launched in an attempt to track and dismantle gun trafficking routes and rings that brought firearms purchased in the U.S. into Mexico.

Breuer said about 350 guns were allowed to “walk” under Operation Wide Receiver, which resulted in nearly a dozen prosecutions and no known U.S. deaths in 2006 and 2007.

Operation Fast and Furious began in 2009 and oversaw the sale of nearly 2,000 guns to known and suspected criminals. Two of those guns were found at the scene of Terry’s murder last December.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Tuesday pointed to U.S. gun laws as the largest impediment to the ATF and the DOJ combating illegal firearms trafficking.

“I think this hunt for blame doesn’t really speak about the problem,” said Feinstein, referring to Congress’s investigation of Fast and Furious.

“And the problem is anybody can walk in and buy anything — .50-caliber weapons, sniper weapons — buy them in large amounts, and send them down to Mexico.”

Breuer agreed and said “the No. 1 tool would be if ATF were given the ability to know when guns are purchased.” Breuer also recommended that Congress grant the ATF and DOJ the ability to require gun dealers who knowingly sell firearms to criminals to forfeit their weapons and inventories.

“If I go into a dealership today and I want to buy 50 or 60 semiautomatic weapons, there is nothing that requires that to be in any way notified to ATF,” said Breuer.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/19...alking-tactics

[PortDawg]

“If I go into a dealership today and I want to buy 50 or 60 semiautomatic weapons, there is nothing that requires that to be in any way notified to ATF,” said Breuer.

I call Bullshit...I have to fill out that POS Federal form for every weapon I buy. It's not my friggin' fault the bureaucracy they created doesn't talk to each other...

Breuer agreed and said “the No. 1 tool would be if ATF were given the ability to know when guns are purchased.” Breuer also recommended that Congress grant the ATF and DOJ the ability to require gun dealers who knowingly sell firearms to criminals to forfeit their weapons and inventories.

If they KNOWINGLY sell to a felon, they lose their licenses and hence their ability to sell weapons. Asshat politicians....

[RedLS1GTO]

Originally Posted by PortDawg

I call Bullshit...I have to fill out that POS Federal form for every weapon I buy. It's not my friggin' fault the bureaucracy they created doesn't talk to each other...

If they KNOWINGLY sell to a felon, they lose their licenses and hence their ability to sell weapons. Asshat politicians....

Please... don't let facts get in the way.

[AC54ME]

Senator says Justice won’t provide witnesses
The Washington Times
Thursday, November 10, 2011

“The department has refused to schedule interviews with any of the other 11 witnesses. That’s not the good-faith cooperation I was promised, and it is unacceptable. If this controversy has taught us anything, it is that you have to talk directly to the people who know the facts,” said Mr. Grassley, Iowa Republican Login to Vote

The ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee says the Justice Department has refused to make available 11 of 12 department witnesses called by the panel for transcribed interviews in the ongoing investigation of the botched Fast and Furious weapons operation.

Sen. Chuck Grassley said that despite the department’s promises of good faith cooperation in the probe, only one witness has been provided so far - former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in Arizona, who resigned in August after taking responsibility for his mistakes during testimony about Fast and Furious before a House committee.

“The department has refused to schedule interviews with any of the other 11 witnesses. That’s not the good-faith cooperation I was promised, and it is unacceptable,” said Mr. Grassley, Iowa Republican. “If this controversy has taught us anything, it is that you have to talk directly to the people who know the facts.

“If Congress had relied on the department’s official talking points, we still wouldn’t know the truth today,” he said Thursday during the committee’s executive business meeting.

Mr. Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, have been investigating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives‘ Fast and Furious operation for several months.

They discovered that more than 2,000 weapons illegally purchased by “straw buyers” at Arizona gun shops, including hundreds of AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifles, were allowed to be walked to drug smugglers in Mexico.

More than 1,400 of the weapons are still unaccounted for. Two AK-47s purchased at a gun shop in Glendale, Ariz., were discovered at the site of the shooting death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry, killed during a gunfight with Mexican bandits just north of the border near Nogales, Ariz.

Mr. Grassley also noted that during a Justice Department oversight hearing Tuesday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. “shifted slightly” from a denial in May that gun-walking had occurred during the Fast and Furious operation to “a wait-and-see position,” noting that he didn’t know if guns had been walked and would wait for the results of an investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General.

“We have come a long way since May,” Mr. Grassley said. “On Tuesday, the attorney general finally admitted that the whistle-blowers were right all along, about gun-walking in Fast and Furious. While I am pleased the attorney general is no longer trying to deny the obvious, he did not fully own up to his responsibility.”

Mr. Grassley said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who heads the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, admitted last week that he had known since April 2010 the ATF allowed guns to be walked to Mexico and regretted not telling the attorney general about it earlier.

Mr. Grassley said Mr. Breuer also admitted that he knew the Justice Department’s blanket assertion that ATF did not walk guns was false, having to acknowledge the validity of documents showing he had been briefed about gun-walking in an earlier operation called Wide Receiver.

Mr. Grassley said it also appears from those documents that Mr. Breuer’s deputy, Jason Weinstein, knew about ATF gun-walking in both operations.

“Anyone who knew about gun-walking in any case also knew that the department’s initial letter to me was false,” he said. “The attorney general said the letter was based on the best information available at the time. But senior officials at headquarters, like Breuer and Weinstein, knew better.”

Mr. Grassley said Mr. Weinstein briefed committee staff on Feb. 10 but failed to disclose what he knew about ATF walking guns.

The Justice Department did not respond to an email requesting comment.

Mr. Issa this week also asked Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, to explain who prepared or helped prepare a Feb. 4 letter he sent to Mr. Grassley denying that guns had been walked into Mexico as part of Fast and Furious.

He said the congressional investigation of the operation has shown that the statement was untrue, and that senior Justice Department officials knew at the time Mr. Weich made the denial that it was untrue.

Senator says Justice won't provide witnesses - Washington Times

[AC54ME]

Naw, can't be?

Fast and Furious: Case Files on Terry Murder Have Disappeared, Gone
Katie Pavlich News Editor, Townhall

The Arizona Daily Star's Tim Stellar is reporting the federal case file against illegal Mexican bandits accused of killing Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, has disappeared.

The case against the alleged killers of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry has disappeared from federal court records, apparently sealed by a federal judge.

In May, federal prosecutors won an indictment against Manuel Osorio-Arellanes and others, and they announced it with a press release. Only Osorio-Arellanes’ name was visible in the indictment, but there were blacked-out words where other defendants’ names go.

Osorio-Arellanes was charged with second-degree murder and was not considered the likely shooter. He had been wounded during the gunfight that left Terry dead.

But in the ensuing months, the case disappeared from court records.

Why? Nobody is saying.

Asked about the case, Debra Hartman, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego, which is prosecuting the case, said via email: “Yes, our office is handling the case and can’t comment further.”

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council’s local 2544, said agents have grown frustrated with the lack of transparency in the case.

First, he said, there was the long silence surrounding the origins of the assault rifles discovered at the scene, eventually revealed to have been set loose into the community as part of a federal firearms investigation. Now there’s this: a criminal investigation that has disappeared from public view.

I for one, am pretty shocked the corruption within the Fast and Furious case is this bad. I was told by a friend of the Terry family last week that after Brian Terry's death, his mother, Josephine Terry, along with other family members, were prohibited for weeks from entering Brian's home. Things here just aren't adding up. Considering the case was sealed by a federal judge, the file must have been stolen by someone on the inside.

Remember, U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke resigned on August 31, 2011. Burke's office was handling the case before it was moved to the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego on September 6, 2011, just days after Burke's resignation. Now, the case files for the prosecution, dripping with details about Brian Terry's murder, a result of the Obama Justice Department's Fast and Furious, has disappeared.

Fast and Furious: Case Files on Terry Murder Have Disappeared, Gone - Katie Pavlich

[mrvette]

Of course!!!!!

[AC54ME]

[quote]Traditional Friday Night DOJ Docu-Dump a whopping 1400 pages. Blaming Arizona. Don't look at us, DOJ sez. "Willing stooges for the Gun Lobby."
NPR: Justice Withdraws Inaccurate 'Fast And Furious' Letter It Sent To Congress.


Under fire for losing track of weapons that turned up at crime scenes along the Southwest border, the Justice Department has taken the extraordinary step of formally withdrawing an inaccurate letter about the episode that it sent to Congress earlier this year.

Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole sent nearly 1,400 pages of emails and other documents to Capitol Hill late Friday afternoon that lay bare the raw and sometimes cringe-worthy process by which the letter was drafted. The materials contain clues into how misleading information about the botched gun trafficking operation made it into a Feb. 4, 2011 letter to Congress that department leaders have since acknowledged was false. . .

Here are a few of the new disclosures contained in the documents:

— The basis for the inaccurate statements in the letter appears to have originated among people in the U.S. Attorney's office in Arizona and among ATF officials earlier this year, according to the new letter to Congress. Notes taken by a Justice Department legislative affairs person who helped prepare a response to Congress include statements that found their way into the faulty Feb. 4 letter, including: "ATF doesn't let guns walk" and "we always try to interdict weapons purchased illegally." Also at the meeting were the ATF's top congressional liaison and a high level deputy named Billy Hoover. At other times, the U.S. Attorney's office in Arizona passed along inaccurate information about the length of the gun trafficking operation and the timing of when guns were purchased.

— Jason Weinstein, a senior aide in the Justice Department's criminal division, played a key role in drafting the February 2011 letter. Weinstein, who had served as a highly regarded prosecutor in Baltimore and New York for a decade before taking a political appointment at the Justice Department, already had come under scrutiny from Republican lawmakers. They say he had approved the use of wiretaps in the Obama administration's Fast and Furious operation and he should have dug deeper. The department has acknowledged that the operation sent as many as 2,000 weapons into Mexico but failed to follow them. Many of those guns later ended up at crime scenes on both sides of the border, including near the body of slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

Justice officials say Weinstein relied on the ATF and the U.S. Attorney's Office in drafting the letter.

— Justice Department Criminal Division chief Lanny Breuer received draft copies of the Feb. 4, 2011 letter from Weinstein and forwarded those messages to his personal email account, which he didn't share in recent congressional testimony about questionable ATF tactics in gun cases. However, Breuer writes in new correspondence to Congress Friday that "I cannot say for sure whether I saw a draft of the letter...I have no recollection of having done so and given that I was on official travel that week and given the scope of my duties as Assistant Attorney General, I think it is exceedingly unlikely that I did so." Breuer apologized last month for failing to make a "connection" between out-of-bounds strategies he discovered in a Bush-era case and Fast and Furious.

— Former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, who resigned in August as the gun trafficking scandal intensified, repeatedly urged Justice officials in Washington to "push back" against "categorical falsehoods" coming from whistleblowers inside the ATF and from members of Congress. Burke also had some choice words for Sen. Grassley's staff, which he said were "acting as willing stooges for the Gun Lobby" and "lobbing this reckless despicable accusation" about ATF. In another message, he tells a colleague that the congressional accusations are "among the lowest acts I have ever seen in politics." Burke may have been relying on aides in his office, who more closely supervised the day to day activities of the ATF in the gun trafficking operation.

"Dennis Burke is a standup guy. He provided what he believed to be accurate information to the Department of Justice, as he always does," said Chuck Rosenberg, an attorney for Burke.

— Drafts of the Feb. 4th letter reached the highest levels of the Justice Department, as aides to the Deputy Attorney General suggested fixes to the language and prodded subordinates to check the facts. In one email chain, a deputy named Lisa Monaco advised against using adjectives such as "categorically" and asked, "why poke the tiger" when it comes to communications with Capitol Hill.

The documents released today show tangential involvement by Breuer in preparing the Feb. 4 letter.

“Let me know what’s happening with this,” he wrote in a Feb. 1 email asking for an update.

Jason Weinstein, Breuer’s deputy, responded by saying he had revised the initial draft, written by Burton, to “make it a little tougher.”

The documents show Weinstein was intimately involved in drafting the letter, urging repeated changes to strengthen the tone of its denial over objections from the Office of Legislative Affairs headed by Weich.

Weinstein was also far more familiar than Breuer with the details of Operation Wide Receiver, according to documents released in October. For instance, Weinstein told colleagues in an April 12, 2010, email that the ATF should be “embarrassed that they let this many guns walk” in Wide Receiver.

According to Breuer, Weinstein is now also expressing regret about not connecting the dots between Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious.

“Weinstein has expressed to me that, in hindsight, he wishes he had not relied on those assertions and that, because he did rely so heavily on them, he viewed, incorrectly, the misguided tactics used in Operation Wide Receiver — which resulted in the ATF losing control of guns that then crossed the border into Mexico — as having no relation to the allegations that were being made about Operation Fast and Furious,” Breuer said today in a written statement to Congressional investigators.

The day before the letter was sent to Grassley, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General raised concerns about the scope of the denial it contained.

“In the 2nd full para[graph] — we say ‘categorically false’ — obviously we want to be 300% sure we can make such a ‘categorical’ statement,” Lisa Monaco wrote in an email after reviewing a draft version of the letter. “I’ve developed an aversion to adjectives and oversight letters,” she explained in a later email.

The language was ultimately removed.

Over the course of the letter being prepared, Burke vehemently argued the department should more vigorously deny the allegations.

“What is so offensive about this whole project is that Grassley’s staff, acting as willing stooges for the Gun Lobby, have attempted to distract from the incredible success in dismantling [southwest border] gun trafficking operations ... but, instead, lobbing this reckless despicable accusation that ATF is complicit in the murder of a fellow federal law enforcement officer,” he wrote in a Feb. 4 email.

“Well said Dennis. Thank you!” Hoover replied.

However, guns found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder were eventually connected to the Fast and Furious operation.

Burke's anti-gun mindset.


“No commentary by Grassley on the lax laws, nor greedy gun shop owners, nor careless straw purchasers, and not boo about the evil gun traffickers for the Cartels. Nope. Just demonize ATF w/ a strategically-timed repulsive letter e-mailed to the entire press world before we ever saw it,” Burke wrote.

Discussing the Department’s response to a letter that Grassley sent to the agency concerning the allegation that a gun from the ATF was used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, Burke continued: “I sat there during the press conference on this case wondering how the Gun Lobby would counter the American public’ (sic) exposure to the legality of people buying 20-30 AK-47s during one purchase [with] no reporting requirement. Well, they figured out [their] counter. Never crossed my [mind] they would stoop this low — and now we are playing defense [with] this low-tone response.”


CBS: Justice Dept. Fast and Furious emails show disagreement over response to Grassley


More than 1,000 pages of frenzied email exchanges were fired back and forth among Justice Department officials, as they weighed how to respond to initial inquires about the gunwalker scandal. Today, the agency turned over those subpoenaed records to Congress in advance of a hearing next week with Attorney General Eric Holder.


The emails are marked by intra-office disagreement over how vigorously to defend the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives (ATF) amid questions from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. ATF whistleblowers had told Sen. Grassley that their own agency had let thousands of weapons "walk" into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. They also told Grassley that two of the weapons involved in the case, known as "Fast and Furious," were used at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

"Those [allegations] are the most salacious, and the most damaging to ATF, both short-and long-term," writes Deputy Asst. Attorney General Jason Weinstein to Justice Department Special Counsel Faith Burton on Feb. 2, 2011.

Weinstein also wrote ATF Acting Director Ken Melson, calling the gunwalking allegations "terribly damaging to ATF," and pushing for "a more forceful rebuttal" than what the Justice Department was considering.

Additional Justice Department Emails

Special Counsel Burton disagreed, telling Weinstein: "Understand the concerns about pushing back on the Terry issue, but think presents significant risks and we should discuss that together in person if nec."

"What 'risk'?" U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke asked the Justice Department's Weinstein. Burke's office oversaw Fast and Furious.

"They're worried if we engage in a detailed discussion of this case with Grassley's staff, that they'll just keep pushing for more and more information. But I think we need to come down hard and firm and say that the allegation is BS," Weinstein tells Burke.[quote/]

Sipsey Street Irregulars: Traditional Friday Night DOJ Docu-Dump a whopping 1400 pages. Blaming Arizona. Don't look at us, DOJ sez. "Willing stooges for the Gun Lobby."