What was the purpose of Fast and Furious?

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rajb123

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This ongoing political soga has been discussed in the press for > 1 year.

As far as I know, the public is not aware of why the ATF did this.

Apparently, weapons were released (distributed) by the ATF with the intent that they would fall into the hands of Mexican cartels which would be unlawful. This happened and caused some serious issues including at least one murder with the weapons in question.

Why did the ATF do this? Was this to create a climate for additional gun controls?

If not; why did the ATF release (distribute) the weapons?

Thx.
 
My understanding, and don't quote me on this, was to release said weapons and track their movement, to see whos hands they fell in to, and at some point they lost track.

Thus theory doesn't make sense for a number of reasons. One being, how do you track weapons once they're across the border, and two, what's the point.
 
 
rajb123 said:
Why did the ATF do this? Was this to create a climate for additional gun controls?

If not; why did the ATF release (distribute) the weapons?

Thx.
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Continual incompetence extending at least as far back as Gunwalker.

Sent using Tapatalk 2
 
Continual incompetence extending at least as far back as Gunwalker.
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Fast & Furious itself was no more "incompetent" than the Marco Polo Bridge "incident" or Gleiwitz. It did EXACTLY what it was intended to do, namely serve up talking points in favor of new and more repressive gun control legislation.

The incompetence was in the inept coverup and ham handed and thuggish retaliation against the whistleblowers.

The BATFE is our "Kwantung Army", in business for itself, and Holder our Doihara Kenji, the "man of action" manipulating events to forward an authoritarian agenda.
 
Create a justification for gun control. The antis (includes everyone in the Obama administration) have been going ape fecal since the AWB died and want an excuse for another one.
 
Sam:
Ok, I read all the posts above. About 98% of the discussion addresses ....who knew what when .....

However, WHY this was done by ATF is still a mistery to me. If I had to guess, it sounds like F&F was an attempt to overthrow a foreign government....

As a CPA in public practice for +30 years, I would tell you that if you want to know more, follow the money. Someone approved funding for this operation and that is where the fault likely lies.

Apparently, the project started long before Holder and Obama were in power. That says something. Has former AG Gonzolez ever testified before Congress? Like Holder, he was not a real popular guy either, as I remember.
 
Purpose? To build skewed data for later support in attacking state gun laws and furthering federal regulations.

Many of us with business FFLs in Arizona began to smell shenanigans very, very early on when requesting or receiving unsolicited federal advice in relation to multi purchase scenarios.

I think the real give-away is the lack of accountability for individual firearms after the transfer and while they were still in a federally supervised/overseen program. They didn't know what became of the firearms because they didn't want to know until there was the opportunity to "trace" them back to otherwise legal sales back in the border states.

Both of my cents on that one.
 
However, WHY this was done by ATF is still a mistery to me.
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One of the things one can take away from the discussions linked here, and the debates raging in the press and on the hill is that NOBODY really knows why, except for those who directed it to happen, and the things they are saying haven't made anyone any happier.

As with everything that happens in government, usually such things are meant to be clandestine, then when they are discovered there are the stated reasons, and then there are the real reasons. The real reasons may have been nefarious, conspiratorial, mistaken, poorly conceived, inane, stupid, and quite possibly all of the above.

Your thinking regarding "follow the money" certainly has merit. But, of course, governmental actions don't regularly have the same financial/investment drivers as other (ha ha) forms of criminal enterprise. When a federal agency has all the money (OUR money) it needs to play with, looking for who fronted the cash to make something happen might not help elucidate the underlying purpose.
 
I initially assumed the purpose of F&F was to prompte a climate for additional gun control but I have not read a single press report that suggests this.

However, I'm not sure that rationale makes sense if (i) the F&F project began during the Bush#2 era, and (ii) Bush#2 let the Clinton era prohibition against so-called assault rifles expire without fanfair.

If the true purpose of F&F was to promote a climate for additional federal gun controls, I would assume that Bush#2 and Gonzolez were not aware and did not approve the ATF funding for this project since they are presumed to not be anti-gun advocates.
 
I initially assumed the purpose of F&F was to prompte a climate for additional gun control but I have not read a single press report that suggests this.
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I suppose it depends on who's reports you're reading, but that is the single most widly accepted/promoted theory here on THR and in the "gun community." A false-flag operation to advance gun control here in the US by showing that Mexico's problems are made far worse because of our easy access to the kinds of weapons used in that country's drug war.
(Instead of blaming the much more direct sourcing of ACTUAL military hardware through corrupt government agencies and other off-shore sources.)

If the true purpose of F&F was to promote a climate for additional federal gun controls, I would assume that Bush#2 and Gonzolez were not aware and did not approve the ATF funding for this project since they are presumed to not be anti-gun advocates.
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Until/unless all the facts (or some coherent version of the facts) come out to show who knew what & when, and what the project started out to be and how it grew/changed and how its various masters intended to use it, it will be hard to prove much to anyone's satisfaction.
 
However, WHY this was done by ATF is still a mistery to me.
Click to expand...

No one in the public actually knows exactly why. The shortest summary of "why" to my thinking is -

1) The ATF claims it was a program to identify the participants in conspiracies to move guns illegally across the border to the cartels. They foolishly used the drug trafficking model and focused on trying to find the highest levels of the conspiracy instead of trying to prevent the weapons from ending up doing harm. This allowed firearms to cross the border without being tracked or stopped. While these firearms ended up in the violence in Mexico, at least one firearm that was allowed to go across the border ended up at the scene of the fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol officer.

2) The conspiracy theorists variously claim the "why" was to topple the Mexican government or an intentional effort to create propaganda to support tighter restrictions on law-abiding citizens owning these firearms. 2a)The former is unlikely because the flow of undocumented weapons into Mexico purchased with Cartel money is many times larger than the flow across the border from gun shops requiring 4473s for the purchasers here. The U.S. origin guns are a drop in the bucket to the ones sourced from Mexican government stolen supplies and offshore smuggling from the south. 2b) The later is unlikely because it also had no great impact on the totals in Mexico, BUT that's not to say that once any traceable firearms from Gunwalker and Fast and Furious were identified by the Mexican government that the opportunity to beat the drum against Evil Black Rifles wasn't taken. Too much coordinated effort would make it unlikely that F&F was hatched as a gun control plot.
 
More gun control.

Those of us in the border states ended up with more gun control regardless.:fire:
 
Where to begin. The agents who ran Operation Fast and Furious quantified the success of their operation by the increasing murder rate in Mexico.

i've been following this thing since it became public. In order to have a basic understanding of Fast and Furious one should peruse these two joint congressional committee reports. Yeah, they are longer than the Dead Sea scrolls.

June 14, 2011 Joint Committee Repot.

Click on Joint Committe Report:

http://oversight.house.gov/report/t...tion-fast-and-furious-accounts-of-atf-agents/

July 26, 2011 Joint Committe Report.

Click on Joint Committee Report:

http://oversight.house.gov/report/t...ion-fast-and-furious-fueling-cartel-violence/


A good site to visit:

http://cleanupatf.org/

Theres some good stuff in the minority report too.

http://Democrats.oversight.house.gov/images/stories/minority_report_13112.pdf
 
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Based on HSO's model, in #1 they're incompetent, in #2 they're corrupt. Both are typical stereotypes of people in government (and that's any government).
 
Long before F&F made the news, the administration was sending out regular press reports about "the problem of US guns getting into the hands of the cartels in Mexico." This was done on a fairly regular basis and was being eaten up by the media. Were the press releases part of an anti-gun campaign? Seems likely.

What we didn't know was that most of those guns were being allowed into Mexico by the F&F project. Certainly allowing criminals to buy guns illegally knowing they are going to be used for criminal activity (i.e., murder) in another country is unethical and immoral at best and a criminal conspiracy at the worse. Of course when Border Agent Brian Terry was killed with one of those guns the project unraveled. Was F&F part of the anti-gun campaign as well? Probably pretty hard to prove without documentation.

That kind of explains why the ATF Director and others started pointing fingers at each other and why Holder has refused to release documents about why Obama is using executive privilege to cover (up) themselves. Those documents likely prove that the knowledge and approval of F&F went all the way to the top. Whether there was a concerted anti-gun agenda behind it remains to be seen.

Also be careful to check your sources when you hear that F&F began under Bush administration. Tracking guns 'may have' (some doubt there) been going on under Bush but allowing criminals and known cartel connections to buy and move guns is an ATF project under Holder/Obama.
 
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The idea that US Attorneys or ATF in Phoenix could use Fast&Furious gun traces to get cartel heads in Mexico was just a sick joke. In at least one case, the US side honcho identified by ATF turned out to be an untouchable FBI "asset".

Mexican authorities were upset to put it mildly. All they expected from "Project Gunrunner" was for the US authorities to block cartel buyers from smuggling new guns across the border into cartel hands. Most operations under the Project did that and that only: gun dealers would alert ATF to straw purchasers, ATF would follow the the straw purchasers to the actual buyers for the cartels, and ATF would move in and pickup the purchasers, buyers and guns before they could hit the streets or cross the borders.

The tactic of Operation Fast and Furious was insane. You would allow thousands of guns across the border, withour notifying the Mexican authorities, then as the the guns were recovered from crimes in Mexico, somehow US autorities would use the trace data to prosecute Mexican crtel heads.

What turns the hand for me is this: Operation Fast & Furious was accompanied by Obama administration propaganda that US dealers were responsible for supplying the majority of guns to Mexican cartels and the only answer to the Mexican Drug War was a reinstatement of the expired US Assault Weapon Ban.

There is no way US authorities could arrest Mexican cartel heads using gun trace data. But they were able to up the count of crimes in Mexico traced to US origin guns. What was the purpose of Fast and Furious? Do we really need to ask?
 
I do remember Hillary as Sec of State back in '09 saying that a large percentage of the guns captured from Mexican drug cartels could be traced to American gun shops.

This never made sense to me, since these international cartels could certainly get fully automatic weapons elsewhere - why would they bother with the heavy paper trail involved with buying semi-auto guns in the U.S.?

Turns out that a large percentage of the captured guns the Feds CHOSE to trace came from U.S. gun shops. That's because they knew exactly which ones to submit, having facilitated their sale and transport.

So, if Hillary knew about it 3 years ago, that means it wasn't just a BATF operation and it wasn't just a Justice Dept. operation. It very likely goes all the way to the guy who recently claimed it's his "privilege" to conceal evidence.
 
Bush Admin. Operation Wide Receiver 2006-2007 Tucson AZ involved "walking guns" under tight survelliance with notification of Mexican authorities. It was shut down in 2007 when Mexican police failed to intercept gun runners followed by ATF up to the US side of the border.

The Bush Administration ended when Obama was sworn in as President 20 Jan 2009. The Bush era gunwalking experiment had been shut down 6 Oct 2007.

Obama Admin. Operation Fast & Furious was started after mega-gun-ban advocate Dennis Burke* was appointed by Obama as US Attorney for Phoenix AZ (confirmed 15 Sep 2009 as USA for AZ; OF&F was outlined Oct 2009, began in ernest in Jan 2010). Fast & Furious involved allowing the guns to disappear onto the streets and across the border, then monitoring crime gun traces to see where they turned up; Mexican authorities were kept in the dark.

After ATF agents and the cooperating FFL dealers went public after Brian Terry was murdered with a OF&F gun, Eric Holder did eventually shut down OF&F but persisted in stonewalling Congressional probes. The Democrat spin machine started claiming that Operation Fast & Furious was started by Bush but shut down by Obama. Judging by some of the critical reviews to Katie Pavlich's book on "Fast and Furious" at Amazon, that claim has become a rote leftwing talking point: Bush dunnit, Holder stopped Bush's program.


*AWB backer Sen Dennis DeConcini credited Burke with major work in getting the 1994-2004 Assault Weapon Ban passed.
 
Carl N. Brown said:
Bush Admin. Operation Wide Receiver 2006-2007 Tucson AZ involved "walking guns" under tight survelliance with notification of Mexican authorities. It was shut down in 2007 when Mexican police failed to intercept gun runners followed by ATF up to the US side of the border.

The Bush Administration ended when Obama was sworn in as President 20 Jan 2009. The Bush era gunwalking experiment had been shut down 6 Oct 2007.

Obama Admin. Operation Fast & Furious was started after mega-gun-ban advocate Dennis Burke* was appointed by Obama as US Attorney for Phoenix AZ (confirmed 15 Sep 2009 as USA for AZ; OF&F was outlined Oct 2009, began in ernest in Jan 2010). Fast & Furious involved allowing the guns to disappear onto the streets and across the border, then monitoring crime gun traces to see where they turned up; Mexican authorities were kept in the dark.

After ATF agents and the cooperating FFL dealers went public after Brian Terry was murdered with a OF&F gun, Eric Holder did eventually shut down OF&F but persisted in stonewalling Congressional probes. The Democrat spin machine started claiming that Operation Fast & Furious was started by Bush but shut down by Obama. Judging by some of the critical reviews to Katie Pavlich's book on "Fast and Furious" at Amazon, that claim has become a rote leftwing talking point: Bush dunnit, Holder stopped Bush's program.


*AWB backer Sen Dennis DeConcini credited Burke with major work in getting the 1994-2004 Assault Weapon Ban passed.
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This is a very good summary.

Why was it done? IMO, more gun control pure and simple. And by using this method, they could also claim to be negatively impacting the drug trade.

They figured that they could claim and 'win-win' situation and reep the praise and votes by reducing gun related murders/crimes and drugs and thereby making our country a safer place.... for the children.

By creating that image... how could anyone be against it???... and if anyone was against it, they would receive the scorn of all that want to help our children have a better life and country to live in.


It would acheive two things... get votes and accomplish a personal agenda of gun bans just like in IL where he consistantly promoted the elimation of guns.

ETA: THANK YOU MODS FOR ALLOWING SOME OF THESE THREADS TO STAY OPEN. I THINK YOUVE DONE A VERY GOOD JOB OF BALANCING THIS ISSUE IN REGARDS TO KEEPING IT UNDER CONTROL WHILE NOT EXACTLY BEING "GUN RELATED" IN THE SPIRIT OF THE FORUM RULES.
 
From what I can figure, it was set up to find out who was making straw purchases and running guns to the cartels in Mexico.

I hear it didn't work out they way they planned. :uhoh:
 
hso said:
No one in the public actually knows exactly why. The shortest summary of "why" to my thinking is -

1) The ATF claims it was a program to identify the participants in conspiracies to move guns illegally across the border to the cartels. They foolishly used the drug trafficking model and focused on trying to find the highest levels of the conspiracy instead of trying to prevent the weapons from ending up doing harm. This allowed firearms to cross the border without being tracked or stopped. While these firearms ended up in the violence in Mexico, at least one firearm that was allowed to go across the border ended up at the scene of the fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol officer.

2) The conspiracy theorists variously claim the "why" was to topple the Mexican government or an intentional effort to create propaganda to support tighter restrictions on law-abiding citizens owning these firearms. 2a)The former is unlikely because the flow of undocumented weapons into Mexico purchased with Cartel money is many times larger than the flow across the border from gun shops requiring 4473s for the purchasers here. The U.S. origin guns are a drop in the bucket to the ones sourced from Mexican government stolen supplies and offshore smuggling from the south. 2b) The later is unlikely because it also had no great impact on the totals in Mexico, BUT that's not to say that once any traceable firearms from Gunwalker and Fast and Furious were identified by the Mexican government that the opportunity to beat the drum against Evil Black Rifles wasn't taken. Too much coordinated effort would make it unlikely that F&F was hatched as a gun control plot.
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My take is that hso provides the most logical and reasonable explanation. A poorly calculated anti-drug-cartel program gone terribly wrong. To me, it doesn't so much point to a failed plan as a foolish war - the war on drugs. It is like a global version of Prohibition. People will do what they will do and if stopped by the government, a corrupt group will step in to fulfill those needs. The billions spent on the drug war, the lives lost, and the corrupt motivation to win something that need not and can not be won drives these behaviors, and the collateral actions that come with them.
But in any reasonable context, why is Gonzalez not the first one on the stand testifying as to why he approved such a thing?
 
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