Justice officials in "Panic Mode" over failed Gun Program

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I couldn't stomach the whole first video, he makes me ill. THEN in the second video Issa basically lets him off the hook for total criminal involvement by criticizing him for being disconnected. He either doesn't have the sense to finish it, or is intentionally allowing him to cop to being disconnected instead of the real (imo) criminal activities he most likely knew about, and as boss had to condone.
What a clusterchuck
ETA: I just watched the third video. Issa is not even going to go for criminal charges. He wants "assurances it will never happen again."
"We're sorry, we won't commit crimes and blame it on gun owners any more, we promise to stop." Obama says they will scapegoat someone... well, he said "hold someone accountable", I just translated it from liar to English.
 
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Alsaqr,

What you are saying is possible if we were talking about a single sting that went wrong. Example: A joint task force comprising the ATF, FBI, DHS, Federal Marshals, Border Patrol, Justice Department and State Department set up a fictional sale of weapons to Cartels to identify buyers and make arrests.

So they sent a tractor trailer full of guns for the fictional transaction. All of they aforementioned agencies were in position to monitor the situation but much to their horror, realized too late, that no one was in position to make an arrest. Everyone expected everyone else to make the arrests. So, they watched helplessly as the tractor disappeared into Mexico.

Reality...These guns were bought and sold off in much smaller quantities. 5, 10, 50 guns at a time. How many transactions did they have to make in order to let 2,000 guns walk? How many stings had to go wrong in order for that to happen? This is somehow by accident?
 
EXCLUSIVE: Third Gun Linked to 'Fast and Furious' Identified at Border Agent's Murder Scene

A third gun linked to "Operation Fast and Furious" was found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, new documents obtained exclusively by Fox News suggest, contradicting earlier assertions by federal agencies that police found only two weapons tied to the federal government's now infamous gun interdiction scandal.

Sources say emails support their contention that the FBI concealed evidence to protect a confidential informant. Sources close to the Terry case say the FBI informant works inside a major Mexican cartel and provided the money to obtain the weapons used to kill Terry.
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Rest of the story.


Every time I see something about this "obamanation", I just get angrier and angrier. There has to be SOMETHING we can do to make them ACTUALLY do something about this.

If anyone has some ideas, I am all earsss..................um eyes.

Shawn
 
Every time I see something about this "obamanation", I just get angrier and angrier. There has to be SOMETHING we can do to make them ACTUALLY do something about this.

If anyone has some ideas, I am all earsss..................um eyes.
Click to expand...
It's a two-step process. First of all, throw the bums out in 2012. Throw them out of the Executive branch and the Congress -- both houses. Then hold the new Administration and Congress' feet to the fire to prosecute these bums.
 
One thing you can do is write your congressman and senators:

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

http://www.senate.gov/reference/common/faq/How_to_contact_senators.htm

Each time you write them, it counts for hundreds of citizens. They know the stats and know if 50 people write them it represents 50 times xxx number of actual citizens who feel the same way. Makes a difference.

Many Congressman have regular town hall meetings. You can show up and ask what is being done about this mess.
 
phantom soldier said:
ed into Mexico.

Reality...These guns were bought and sold off in much smaller quantities. 5, 10, 50 guns at a time. How many transactions did they have to make in order to let 2,000 guns walk? How many stings had to go wrong in order for that to happen? This is somehow by accident?
Click to expand...

Accidentally on purpose. Obama calls it, "under the radar"...
 
But, wait! There's more!

http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/09/third-fast-and-furious-gun-linked-to-agent-brian-terrys-murder/

Sources say emails support their contention that the FBI concealed evidence to protect a confidential informant. Sources close to the Terry case say the FBI informant works inside a major Mexican cartel and provided the money to obtain the weapons used to kill Terry.

Unlike the two AK-style assault weapons found at the scene, the third weapon could more easily be linked to the informant. To prevent that from happening, sources say, the third gun “disappeared.”
Click to expand...
 
Gun store owner had misgivings about ATF sting

In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard's Lone Wolf gun store. They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door.

For 15 months, Howard did as he was told. To customers with phony IDs or wads of cash he normally would have turned away, he sold pistols, rifles and semiautomatics. He was assured by the ATF that they would follow the guns, and that the surveillance would lead the agents to the violent Mexican drug cartels on the Southwest border.

When Howard heard nothing about any arrests, he questioned the agents. Keep selling, they told him.
Click to expand...

And the agents did follow the guns, right up until their bosses ordered them to stop following them. Over and over again.

dodsontestimony.gif
 
Surprising Story Considering the Source

Good catch, publius.

Richard A. Serrano, "Gun store owner had misgivings about ATF sting", Los Angeles Times, 12 Sep 2011.

The comments (47 when I checked) were about 44 critical of OF&F BATF and maybe 3 trying to blame the dealer or gun dealers in general.

It seems from those responding to the story that a lot of folks realize that enforcement of existing laws, as Howard and other dealers wanted to deny (as in turndown or refuse) the obvious questionable sales to suspicious buyers, would have prevented the sales, and that BATF ordering the dealers to go through with them was the problem.
 
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I have given Serrano a hard time in this thread and others for repeatedly saying the agents lost track of the guns, which is true as far as it goes, but the whole truth is, they lost track of the guns when their bosses ordered them to lose track of the guns.

Still, he is actually covering the story, which is more than can be said for many mainstream reporters and news outlets. When he does a good piece on it, I will give credit, and that one was pretty good.
 
This article from Serrano a few days ago is also pretty good:

Congress Expands Fast and Furious Probe to White House

The congressional letter comes after a series of emails surfaced last week showing that William D. Newell, the ATF field supervisor in Phoenix during Fast and Furious, was in routine contact with Kevin O'Reilly, then the White House director of North American Affairs for the National Security Council. The emails discussed a broad range of gun-trafficking investigations on the Southwest Border, and White House officials have since acknowledged that the cases were part of Fast and Furious.

The White House has said that O'Reilly forwarded the emails to two other White House officials – Dan Restrepo, special assistant to the president and senior director for Western Hemisphere Affairs on the NSC, and Greg Gatjanis, director for Terrorist Finance and Counternarcotics, Counterterrorism Policy, also on the NSC.

In their letter, Issa and Grassley discussed a new email in which Newell told O'Reilly about a specific case that ATF agents had been aware of for three months involving a 22-year-old illegal gun purchaser whom the ATF allowed to buy nearly 700 firearms.

The purchaser was on food stamps and, Newell said in a follow-up email to O'Reilly, "when a 22-year-old kid on State financial assistance walks into a gun store and plops down $12,000 in cash to buy a tripod mounted .50 caliber rifle that's a clue (even for us) that he's involved in trafficking firearms for a Mexican DTO (cartel).'

According to Issa and Grassley, that exchange of information makes it "clear that the case Mr. Newell and Mr. O'Reilly were communicating about was Fast and Furious."
Click to expand...

So two people on the President's National Security staff in the White House knew about this program, but nobody told Obama or Holder. I see.

On the believability scale from 1 to 10, thats a zero, off the bottom end of the scale.
 
Napolitano denies knowledge of Fast and Furious

Spillover. McCain is hazing Napolitano about gunwalking.

In testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Napolitano said she was first made aware of the Fast and Furious program after U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in the line of duty in Arizona in December 2010.

“Let me be very clear for the record: You were unfamiliar with Operation Fast and Furious while the operation was under way?” asked Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).“That is accurate,” Napolitano replied.

The Fast and Furious operation was launched by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2009 to try to trace weapons from the United States to Mexican drug cartels by authorizing the sale of guns in the Southwest border region to known and suspected straw purchasers for the cartels.

But ATF agents were often told to abandon their surveillance of the weapons, allowing them — and the straw buyers — to disappear, according to House testimony from numerous agents. The only remaining hope for agents to track the guns was if other agencies found them at crime scenes or during drug raids and identified them by their serial numbers.

...


Both President Obama and Holder have said they were unaware of the operation while it was ongoing. And with Napolitano’s admission to not knowing about it, the top ranks of who gave the ultimate authorization are rapidly thinning....
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So the ATF just went nuts and threw away their own rule book, but nobody in authority told them to do that, and nobody ever thought it significant enough to bring up with the bosses.

If you're having trouble convincing someone like me of this level of government incompetence, you have a serious credibility problem. I think the gunwalking policy could only have come from the White House.
 
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011...HK20110914?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews
Jared Taylor, "U.S. agents find rocket launcher near Mexico border", Reuters, 14 Sep 2011.
....rocket launcher, grenade launcher, six assault rifles, 20 ammunition magazines for various weapons and three packages of what appeared to be C-4 plastic explosive....
....the bloodshed fueled by weapons brought across the border from the United States....
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Yep, the only way to stop that sort of thing is to require WalMart to report anyone who buys more than one 10/22 a month, and of course "to close the gunshow loophole". Gee, I'll miss that table at the local gun show with blocks of C4. :rolleyes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War
Code: 
Sources of Weapons in the Mexican Drug War (Wikipedia)

Weapon:                 Primary Source:

AK rifle variants 
semi-automatic:         United States
select-fire:            Central America, South America, Middle East, Africa, 
                        Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia
AR-15 rifle 
semi-automatic:         United States
M16 select-fire:        Vietnam

Fragmentation grenades 
M61/M67/MK2/K400 :      Central America, South Korea, Israel, Spain, 
                        Soviet bloc, Guatemala, Vietnam, Unknown
Grenade launchers
RPG-7/M72 LAW/M203:     Asia, Central America/Guatemala, North Korea

Barrett M82 .50 cal:    United States

M2 Carbine select fire: Vietnam

During this 2010 review by the OIG, the ATF could not provide updated information on the percentage of traced Mexican crime guns that were sourced to (that is, found to be manufactured in or imported through) the United States, and the November 2010 OIG analysis of ATF data suggest a much lower percentage, ranging from 27% to 44%. In February, 2011, Stratfor Global Intelligence calculated the number between 12% and 48%, and reported almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States.
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In 2009, Mexico reported that they held 305,424 confiscated firearms, but submitted data of only 69,808 recovered firearms to the ATF for tracing between 2007 and 2009. This is a 23% sample of total gun population.
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Of the subset submitted for tracing, about half are successfully traced. Of the successfully traced guns, 90% are US origin. But that is a fraction of a subset selected because they appeared to be US origin. The vast majority not submitted for tracing by Mexican authorities simply did not appear to be US origin.

The claim that 90% of all Mexican crime guns trace to the US is a myth perpetrated to promote gun control. As the e-mails in 13 Apr 2011 letter, Grassley to Holder, indicates, if the "Cooperating FFLs" in OF&F had had their way, the straw purchasers once ID'd would not have walked with their purchases. The conclusion is inescapable: the Gunwalker fiasco is an example of the government not enforcing existing gun laws in order to push for more gun control laws.
 
This a good place to vent but one should demand action by their US Representative and if none is taken then vote for one that will. The NRA has the tools but I don't think they have the votes to change the status quo in this country, most Americans could care less and will go on voting for more government aid as their number one priority.
 
PreMod70 said:
This a good place to vent but one should demand action by their US Representative and if none is taken then vote for one that will. The NRA has the tools but I don't think they have the votes to change the status quo in this country, most Americans could care less and will go on voting for more government aid as their number one priority.
Click to expand...

Find me one who will take action and I'll be happy to vote for them.:)
 
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