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Agent: I was ordered to let U.S. guns into Mexico
Agent: I was ordered to let U.S. guns into Mexico
ATF agent says "Fast and Furious" program let guns "walk" into hands of Mexican drug cartels with aim of tracking and breaking a big case Play CBS Video Video Agent: ATF partly to blame for Mexico violence
(CBS News) WASHINGTON - Federal agent John Dodson says what he was asked to do was beyond belief. He was intentionally letting guns go to Mexico? "Yes ma'am," Dodson told CBS News. "The agency was." An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen. Investigators call the tactic letting guns "walk." In this case, walking into the hands of criminals who would use them in Mexico and the United States. Dodson's bosses say that never happened. Now, he's risking his job to go public. "I'm boots on the ground in Phoenix, telling you we've been doing it every day since I've been here," he said. "Here I am. Tell me I didn't do the things that I did. Tell me you didn't order me to do the things I did. Tell me it didn't happen. Now you have a name on it. You have a face to put with it. Here I am. Someone now, tell me it didn't happen." Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico. ATF named the case "Fast and Furious." Surveillance video obtained by CBS News shows suspected drug cartel suppliers carrying boxes of weapons to their cars at a Phoenix gun shop. The long boxes shown in the video being loaded in were AK-47-type assault rifles. So it turns out ATF not only allowed it - they videotaped it. Documents show the inevitable result: The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by watching thousands of weapons hit the streets... the Fast and Furious group supervisor noted the escalating Mexican violence. One e-mail noted, "958 killed in March 2010 ... most violent month since 2005." The same e-mail notes: "Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during March alone," including "numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles." Dodson feels that ATF was partly to blame for the escalating violence in Mexico and on the border. "I even asked them if they could see the correlation between the two," he said. "The more our guys buy, the more violence we're having down there." Senior agents including Dodson told CBS News they confronted their supervisors over and over. Their answer, according to Dodson, was, "If you're going to make an omelette, you've got to break some eggs." There was so much opposition to the gun walking, that an ATF supervisor issued an e-mail noting a "schism" among the agents. "Whether you care or not people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case...we are doing what they envisioned.... If you don't think this is fun you're in the wrong line of work... Maybe the Maricopa County jail is hiring detention officers and you can get $30,000 ... to serve lunch to inmates..." "We just knew it wasn't going to end well. There's just no way it could," Dodson said.
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#2
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What a National Shame.
Not only do Field Agents have to contend with lethal criminal cartels each & every day,...same Agents must also suffer Amateur Bosses or Political Appointee Bureaucrats daily. I sure hope all rest of Border Patrol Agents & families fair much better than Brian Terry & family did. Neil
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My Salute & "GarryOwen" to all TRUE Patriots. Last edited by reconeil; 03-04-2011 at 06:13 PM. Reason: corrections |
#3
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Congressman Darrell Issa Demands Answers on ‘Operation Gun Runner’
by AWR Hawkins On March 28th, I had a post on the Big Government website that highlighted the details of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) ‘Operation Gun Runner.’ This operation, sometimes called by the name ‘Fast and Furious,’ entailed selling thousands of guns to known Mexican criminals in the U.S., allowing the weapons to be carried into Mexico, and tracing the movement of the guns in hopes of catching major players in the Mexican Cartel. The problem with this plan is that it didn’t work. Of the 2,000 to 2,500 guns that were sold, only 1,300 (approximately) have been recovered: which means that right now, as I type, 1,200 guns are passing hand to hand between cartel members and others in Mexico. And as I pointed out on the 28th, at least one Border Agent – Brian Terry – died as a result of this nonsense, and it seems that hundreds of Mexican civilians have been killed as well. Of course President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have no idea how this happened. Both of them deny authorizing ‘Gun Runner’ or ‘Fast and Furious,’ and seem shamefully indifferent to the crime and investigative complications that could arise from the thousands of guns the BATF allowed into Mexico. Fortunately, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) isn’t satisfied to sit back and wait for the administration to remember what they did or didn’t authorize. On March 16th he sent a letter to Acting Director Kenneth Melson, BATF, “requesting specific documents related to Project Gunrunner, its ‘Fast and Furious’ component, and records related to the death of Border Agent Brian Terry.” Although the requested documents were to be turned over by March 30th, the BATF didn’t comply. So Issa has now gone a step further and issued a subpoena that clearly specifies the documents the Congressman wants to see, and expects to receive by April 13, 2011. Among the documents subpoenaed are, “documents and communications relating to individuals responsible for authorizing the decision to ‘walk’ guns [into] Mexico in order to follow them and capture a ‘bigger fish,’” and documents highlighting “complaints or objections” by BATF Agents who viewed ‘Gun Runner’ and ‘Fast and Furious’ as foolish from the start. Won’t it be great if Congressman Issa can find out who authorized these operations and why the objections of numerous BATF Agents were suppressed, among other things? Clearly, somebody within the administration authorized the illegal sale of those guns to individuals with known cartel ties. And perhaps the same person, or somebody else, knew those illegal guns were then being smuggled across the border. As of now, all we know is that the BATF and the Justice Department knew about the operations. But thanks to Congressman Issa, we may know much more in the days immediately following April 13th. I just hope that when the smoke clears and the details are evident, those who were behind ‘Gun Runner’ and ‘Fast and Furious’ find themselves judged by the strictest standards of the law. And if this goes all the way to top, I hope Issa and his colleagues won’t shy away from the “I-word” (impeachment). For whoever authorized this mess waded into the waters of criminality and must be held accountable: both for the operation itself and for the lives lost as a result of it. http://biggovernment.com/awrhawkins/...on-gun-runner/
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LA Times: "Gillett had received death threats before making the decision to cooperate."
Key figure in ATF's Gunrunner operation cooperating in congressional inquiry. http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogsp...ved-death.html
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#5
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Indeed...
"Clearly, somebody within the administration authorized the illegal sale of those guns to individuals with known cartel ties."
When, oh when... will the rest of America awaken to these ongoing series of acts which, when taken together, exceed the threshold of mere errors in judgement. |
#6
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Is Project Gunrunner Scandal A ‘Crisis’ Created?
Posted by Ben Barrack Apr 25th 2011 at 9:33 am in Border Security, Congress, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Justice/Legal, Latin America, Obama, United Nations, Weapons | Comments (8) Never letting a crisis go to waste is a core belief of the Obama administration. As the incoming Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel infamously championed the practice: “Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”In 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed the sentiment when she told a Brussels audience to “never waste a good crisis” while talking about climate change. At about the same time, Clinton was responsible for pushing a provably false narrative that 90% of the guns used to commit crimes in Mexico came from the United States. Just a few short months later, Clinton announced that she would support the United Nations’ efforts to regulate arms sales. Clinton said the following in a written statement: “Consensus is needed to ensure the widest possible support for the Treaty and to avoid loopholes in the Treaty that can be exploited by those wishing to export arms irresponsibly.”Barack Obama himself promised Mexico that he would push the U.S. Senate for ratification of an international gun treaty that would operate under the auspices of preventing guns from entering Mexico illegally from the United States. It was a tall order that required two-thirds of the Senate to approve. While the administration was pushing an agenda by pushing false narratives, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) was allowing high caliber weapons to be exported irresponsibly to Mexico and placed in the hands of murderous drug cartels. Known as Operation Fast and Furious, it was part of the larger Project Gunrunner program. There is now ironclad proof that the decision to allow straw purchasers to buy AK-47’s and .50 caliber Barrett rifles which then were ‘walked’ into Mexico was made by someone extremely high up within the ATF and possibly Eric Holder’s Justice Department. The last straw for a growing number of whistleblowers was when two of those weapons were found at the murder scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry last December. When a gun shop owner expressed grave concern about this policy to ATF Phoenix Supervisor David Voth in an email, he was told to continue selling weapons illegally. When that same shop owner expressed concern for the safety of Border agents six months before Terry’s death, Voth told him to continue. In reality, it was this and other gun shop owners who were acting responsibly; a government agency – who Attorney General Eric Holder is ultimately responsible for – acted worse than irresponsibly. Initially, the ATF denied it was allowing these guns to ‘walk.’ It lied. Now, its Director has ignored a subpoena and countless requests for documents by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA). Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton have both denied requests for information as well. The evidence in this scandal is increasingly pointing to officials extremely high up in this administration. At that point, the dots are not too far apart to connect. Guns being transported into Mexico illegally is certainly a ‘crisis’ made exponentially worse by the resultant deaths. Such a crisis, if properly exploited, could serve as the impetus for getting the Senate to ratify an international weapons treaty. Until and unless Clinton, Holder, and ATF Director Kenneth Melson prove to us that a crisis wasn’t created in order to do something they could not do before, what else are we left to conclude? Ben Barrack is a talk show host on KTEM 1400 in Texas and maintains a website at benbarrack.com http://bigpeace.com/bbarrack/2011/04...d/#more-109912
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#7
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This stuff is nothing new for the US government: http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0825447.html
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I'd rather be historically accurate than politically correct. |
#8
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New Project Gunrunner documents peg top DOJ officials
By Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller 2:23 PM 05/04/2011 Three Project Gunrunner documents Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and House Oversight Committee chairman, released on Wednesday show high-ranking Justice Department officials were aware of Operation Fast and Furious and that there was a consistent administration policy that allowed American guns to be “walked” into Mexican drug cartels’ possession. One of the documents shows Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer approved a wiretap application for suspects Operation Fast and Furious targeted in March 2010. The wiretap application process is lengthy and cumbersome, and often requires those applying to make strong case as to why they need it. So, Breuer would have been briefed in detail on Operation Fast and Furious before authorizing the wiretap. Another document, a briefing paper from January 8, 2010, shows the administration’s step-by-step policy decisions and plans. The Phoenix Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), wrote that the “investigation has currently identified more than 20 individual connected straw purchasers,” or those who bought weapons, under ATF surveillance, with the intent to traffic them to Mexican drug cartels. The briefing paper shows that ATF’s policy was to allow this to happen. “Currently, our strategy is to allow the transfer of firearms to continue to take place, albeit at a much slower pace, in order to further the investigation and allow for the identification of additional co-conspirators who would continue to operate and illegally traffic firearms to Mexican DTOs [Drug Trafficking Organizations] which are perpetrating armed violence along the Southwest Border.” The briefing paper also shows that the “straw purchasing group” made a “blitz” in weapons trafficking from late September to early December 2009. The third document, an e-mail from Arizona-based U.S. Attorney Shelley Clemens to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Richard Crocker and FBI official S. Annette Bartlett, shows that the Justice Department has begun scrambling to stop the gun “walking” practice since Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, launched investigations into the program. “Yesterday, we received a directive from the DAG [Deputy Attorney General], instructing on DOJ’s policy regarding guns going south into Mexico,” Shelley wrote on March 10, 2011. The directive from the Deputy AG, as she Shelley quotes it, is: “We should not design or conduct undercover operations which include guns crossing the border. If we have knowledge that guns are about to cross the border, we must take immediate action to stop the firearms from crossing the border, even if that prematurely terminates or otherwise jeopardizes an investigation.” Attorney General Eric Holder has faced GOP heat on Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious for two straight days now. On Tuesday, Issa questioned him on it during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. Holder told Issa he’s only heard of the controversial gun trafficking programs over the past few weeks. Then, on Wednesday, before Issa released the three new documents, Grassley grilled Holder about the email from Clemens and the indications of a policy shift during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Grassley pushed Holder on the e-mail from Clemens. “If the ATF, as the agency keeps telling us, did not knowingly allow guns into the hands of traffickers, why was that directive even necessary? Why issue a memo telling people to stop doing something unless you think maybe they have been doing it?” Grassley asked Holder. “The memo was issued because the allegations had been raised,” Holder said, “the possibility that that happened was sufficient I thought to have clarification sent to the field that we should never allow guns in an uncontrolled fashion to cross the border or actually to leave any investigation in an uncontrolled way,” Holder said. “I don’t think it represents a change in policy, but I certainly wanted to make sure that people in the field understood that that is in fact the policy. And to the extent there was any confusion, I wanted to make sure there was none,” Holder said. Issa expressed dissatisfaction with Holder’s appearance of resisting cooperating with his and Grassley’s congressional investigations. “Two federal agents are dead,” Issa said in a statement. “While Attorney General Holder and other top officials at the Justice Department have refused to address the reckless decisions made in Operation Fast and Furious that have created a serious public safety hazard, investigations led by Sen. Charles Grassley and I continue to receive information from deeply concerned insiders who believe those responsible for what has occurred cannot be trusted to investigate themselves.” Spokespeople for the DOJ did not immediately return TheDC’s request for comment on the new release. Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/04/ne...#ixzz1LXotqzwN
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#9
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Did MSNBC Produce Project Gunrunner’s Smoking Gun?
Posted by Ben Barrack May 16th 2011 at 3:53 pm in Border Security, Congress, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Justice/Legal, Media Criticism, Obama, Politics, Strategy, Weapons, arms control/disarmament | Comments (36) Imagine a scenario in which the media outlet most afflicted with Barack Obama Sycophancy Syndrome (BOSS) – the place Chris ‘thrill up my leg’ Matthews calls home – presented a ’smoking gun’ that could implicate the Obama White House in a cover-up akin to that of Watergate but with the added scarlet letter of murder. The notion of such a thing would be like Woodward and Bernstein ignoring Deep Throat. Impossible, right? Yes, unless it did so unintentionally. It looks like that honor may just go to none other than Michael Isikoff who, in September of 2010, wrote about an ATF strategy that involved targeting gun dealers in the United States as a means to prevent weapons from ending up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Included in Isikoff’s article is a link to what Mike Vandergoegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars – who unearthed this amazing find – refers to as the “field manual” of the Project Gurunner scandal that led to the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry last December. The “manual” was leaked to Isikoff as the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) was wrapping up a report that was critical of the ATF’s efforts to stem the flow of weapons to cartels. Ironically, that same OIG is what Obama and Holder point to as the entity that is to conduct a thorough investigation into the origins of the scandal it appears to be involved in at some level. The “field manual” likely seemed innocuous at the time but that was before two of the weapons ATF placed in the hands of straw purchasers – who then placed them in the hands of Mexican drug cartels – showed up at the murder scene of Terry. It was also before ATF agent John Dodson blew the whistle in March on the ATF operation known as Fast and Furious; that operation was run under the larger Project Gunrunner umbrella and is allegedly what allowed guns to ‘walk’ into Mexico. When this “field manual” is viewed through the prism of the Gunwalker scandal, the verbiage in it could implicate not just the ATF or Eric Holder’s Justice Department but the White House itself. The “field manual” was ostensibly written by ATF Assistant Director for Field Operations, Mark Chait. It is a document so potentially damaging that Chait may be faced with only two options: take the fall or start singing. Vandergoegh has found a gold mine in plain sight thanks to MSNBC’s Isikoff posting it. The 29 page document says in part: It is essential that our efforts support the strategies and policies of the President and the Attorney General and where possible, complement the strategies of other agencies.The strategy chosen by the ATF, which is under the purview of Holder, was to direct gun store owners to sell weapons to straw purchasers who would then place those weapons into the hands of cartels. Vandergoegh points out that whoever authored the “field manual” viewed what they were doing as being in synch with Obama and Holder: Whatever happened in the Gunwalker scandal, the ATF thought it was dancing to its political master’s tune.Without the revelations brought forth by Dodson and other whistleblowers, this next excerpt from Chait’s report – assuming that’s who really authored it – is vague enough not to raise eyebrows. In light of the information now available, it looks like the guns at the center of this scandal are smoking and Isikoff inadvertently stumbled across them. Here’s another nugget from the ATF “field manual”: …we have deemed it necessary to revise both our Gunrunner strategy and the manner in which ATF headquarters monitors and supports certain field investigations.We now know that after continued urging from the ATF to sell weapons to straw purchasers, one licensed gun dealer communicated to ATF supervisor David Voth that he didn’t want to sell weapons to bad guys because he has “very close friends who are U.S. Border Agents.” He was directed to continue. Brian Terry was killed six months later. Back to the “field manual.” It is essential that ATF efforts support strategies promoted by the White House and Department of Justice. An examination of these and other strategies reveals similarities among the strategies, but also suggests that some revisions to ATF’s current strategy are necessary.The “field manual” then refers to a Department of Justice strategy for how to deal with the trafficking of firearms to the cartels: The strategy states that “given the national scope of this issue, merely seizing firearms through interdiction will not stop firearms trafficking to Mexico. We must identify, investigate, and eliminate the sources of illegally trafficked firearms and the networks that transport them.”It was already mildly surprising to consider that a reporter from CBS – Sharyl Attkisson – was way out in front of this scandal long before any other prominent mainstream outlet. Now, thanks to blogger Mike Vandergoegh, it’s being learned that MSNBC’s Michael Isikoff may be responsible for leading us to the smoking gun in the Gunwalker scandal. Irony that could choke a donkey. Ben Barrack is a talk show host on KTEM 1400 in Texas and maintains a website at benbarrack.com
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