New Documents Highlight Differences in Bush-Era, Obama-Era Gunrunner Investigations
There seem to be two avenues of document extraction in the ongoing Gunwalker scandal, in addition to witness testimony. One is the subpoena process being used by House and Senate committees investigating the plot. The other is selective leaking to favored media sources, which appears to be a preferred tactic of the White House. The former is official process, the latter an attempt to short-circuit the process.
Both approaches have been used in a pair of articles released via the Associated Press (via National Public Radio) and ABC News about an early Operation Gunrunner interdiction effort known as Operation Wide Receiver.
The Associated Press article presents an interesting variation of reality:
A second Bush administration gun-trafficking investigation has surfaced using the same controversial tactic for which congressional Republicans have been criticizing the Obama administration.
The tactic, called “gun walking,” is already under investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general and by congressional Republicans, who have criticized the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama for letting it happen in an operation called “Fast and Furious.” …
The 2007 probe operated out of the same ATF office that more recently ran the flawed Operation Fast and Furious. Both probes resulted in weapons disappearing across the border into Mexico, according to the emails. The 2007 probe was relatively small — involving over 200 weapons, just a dozen of which ended up in Mexico as a result of gun-walking. Fast and Furious involved over 2,000 weapons, some 1,400 of which have not been recovered and an unknown number of which wound up in Mexico.
The Associated Press article goes on to paint the picture of a serially incompetent ATF office that began acting in a dangerous manner in 2007 and which continued until ATF whistleblowers came forward after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down in December of 2010, in a variation of the “Bush did it” meme that has long been a reflexive defense mechanism of the Obama White House.
But the ABC News article paints a very different picture, using newly obtained emails between ATF supervisors running Operation Wide Receiver:
“ATF agents observed this vehicle [carrying guns] commit to the border and reach the Mexican side until it could no longer be seen,” Carroll wrote in a Sept. 28, 2007 email. “We, the ATF … did not get a response from the Mexican side until 20 minutes later, who then informed us that they did not see the vehicle cross. For the first time we are working hand in hand with the GOM [Government of Mexico] and providing them with what they want and this is what we get!”
The following day, ATF Acting Director for Field Operation William Hoover was demanding information on the strategy.
“Have we discussed the strategy with the U.S. Attorney’s Office re letting the guns walk? Do we have this approval in writing? Have we discussed and thought thru the consequences of same?” Hoover wrote to Newell and Carroll. “Are we tracking south of the border? Same re U.S. Attorney’s Office. Did we find out why they missed the hand-off of the vehicle? What are the expected outcomes?
“I do not want any firearms to go south until further notice,” Hoover wrote on Oct 5. “I expect a full briefing paper on my desk Tuesday morning from SAC Newell with every question answered.”
On Oct. 6, 2007, Newell wrote in an email, “I’m so frustrated with this whole mess I’m shutting the case down and any further attempts to do something similar. We’re done trying to pursue new and innovative initiatives – it’s not worth the hassle.”
Possible??? Certain – based on records released so far. The standard is “knew or should have known” – i.e. fiduciary responsibility. Under that standard, the facts are clear that multiple felonies occurred resulting in the death of US agents, including violations of ITAR, federal firearms laws and perjury. John Mitchell went to the federal pen for less. Holder, Hillary and Mueller are all guilty and deserve incarceration – and that’s only on what we know for certain right now.
Review: Gorelick – 9/11. She was asked but refused to step down from 9/11 Commission because of Ruling she established just before 9/11 that blocked any communication between our intelligence agencies which prevented them from stopping the attack. Now just why would that broad who was paid $25-28M for a few months at some corporation before 9/11 do such a thing? Attorney Gen Ashcroft blamed her actions for enabling 9/11. FASTFORWARD TO Fast&Furious Gunwalker: Recently (you can still probably google or find YouTube) the NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL no less, is or has set Intro 656 in effect which BLOCKS communication between ICE and prison agencies with the complaint unfair to illegals or something like that, intended to protect illegals who are given the getoutofjail card. Now just why would that gang do such a thing? After all, weren’t they in NY on 9/11, didn’t they follow the deals with the commission and the complaints by the 9/11 families regarding the “personalities” working the ropes to discover stuff re 9/11? So didn’t they hear that we broke Gorelick’s Wall and ordered that communications flow between our Intelligence Agencies because we had LEARNED the hard way that it is critical? So, oh dear oh dear, do we call Gorelick and tell her that there will be an uprising bringing her name out AGAIN about her Wall connection to 9/11, or do we call Issa, or maybe reach back to Tancredo who has been isolated, or do we call Lou Dobbs -but they shot at him too, remember – so maybe for his sake we better not. Who do we call Who do we call??? Is there ANYBODY out there??
“OH…WE NABBED ANOTHER NEGRO WE CAN ARTIFICIALLY TIE TO INNER-CITY GUN VIOLENCE, YIPPEEEE!!!” I can see all you smug Cheneyites smoking your cancerous cigars, rubbing your greedy, soft hands, spines tinkling with excitement over this stupid plan designed to run another fine, strong Africa-American man out of a position of influence. Get a grip! Bush did the same thing, but only worse! HIS FAMILY IS IN THE ARMS INDUSTRY, AND HE PROFITED FROM THE SALE OF THE GUNS TO HIS MEXICAN DRUG-LORD BUDDIES! You evil Koch Brother loving Tea Bag janglers! Can you see how nuts you all are: Bush did the same thing, but he’s not an African-American or a Mulatto, is he? Gotta get the all Mulattos, right? That’s the scheme here? RACISTS!!!! Up with Socialism! Down with racism, sexism, and social bi-specific identifiers!
you poor sad sack.
the race card is all you have.
And the “race card” just doesn’t work very well anymore. So he’s got nuthin!
Good grief LE you are one sick pathetic puppy.
Maybe a change in your diet would help, otherwise check the meds.
For your information, my diet consists heavily of organic grains and produce. Light of the humanely harvested animal biologic products, and no alcohol. I prefer to mellow with a little special fuzzy herb, but other than that I don’t believe in medication. It’s all a corporate mind-control scheme. So what’s YOUR basis to doubt my extreme logic now, Mr. silly-pants?
Thought for sure you were going to say something about CAFOs and/or Peter Singer. Cows, feces, etc. Keep up the satire, buddy, we love you.
Once again, LovelyEarth fools everyone. For hevvun’s sake, people. How many times are you going to fall for the same trick? Who supplies your snark meters?
LovelyEarth – You say you eat organic grains. I wonder – did you ever eat inorganic grains? (They’re a little hard to digest.)
poor poor deluded lovelyearth. She doth know not what she espouse’. Just an entitlement mentality child of some deluded hippie. If ignorance of fact is a fact is not ignorance therefore good? Seems to be her style of thinking. If a black man knows he is running an illegal operation in which HUNDREDS of innocent American and Mexican citizens were MURDERED. Let alone the numbers of drug and people dealers that have been murdered. Get a life luv and go live in a communist country if that is what your views are. America does not need your ilk. Nov. 2012 will see the beginning of the downfall of your commie, progressive, liberal, socialist un-American undeserving freedom peoples. Good bye to you ALL. May chmn mao infest your exzternal richard holes.
If the Tea Party were actually racist, sexist, and bi-specific identifier critical – all you dirt bag, wanna-be socialists would want to buddy up with them (like you’re doing at those protests).
And please remind me what specifically this “strong man” has done for the African-American community in the past 5 years.
You are a fraud. You wouldn’t even know what a real socialist looked like if josef stalin himself walked up to you and asked you for directions to the nearest democrat fund raiser.
If you knew what real socialism was, you would run faster than if someone was chasing you with a job application.
please take your sorry hate speech to a college campus, where you can blend in with all the other hate speakers.
LE
With all due respect, people like you and your ilk are at the heart of everything that’s wrong with America today.
Why don’t you move to Cuba, North Korea, or Venezuela where they practice equal shares of misery for all except the Ruling Class ? You can march in parades and spout your Marxist horsecrap and be applauded for it.
I will be happy to kick in a few bucks toward a ticket to your dictatorship of choice.
In the meantime, we have serious work to do refloating the ship that you and your fellow travelers have carelessly run onto the rocks. Morons.
Read the article again. Obviously, you missed something the first time.
Bush shut it down.
Obama, in his “wisdom”, continued. His belief is: if the square peg doesn’t fit into the round hole, force it! Make it work!!
Were you ever taught that two wrongs don’t make a right? First, the premise that everyone here approved of the Bush administrationS is wrong. Same for Clinton. We haven’t had a good President since Eisenhower. He loved Americans, fought in a war with us as tightly as Washington did, and adored the USA. High standards and morals to represent Americans and USA. He saw what was building that we needed to control… the MilitaryIndustrial Complex. He recognized USSR danger and built NASA for us which the stupe in the white house CLOSED and gave our stuff to Russia. Another who loved us sincerely and did his best in spite of the devils who had already gotten tight holds on us was Reagan. There was never a question, never a doubt that those guys loved our country… and not for what they could get out of it or use it for. Evil men and women have infiltrated constantly all of our offices and must be removed. If you are like Michelle and have no respect for this country, (which she has had to clam up about now being in the White House) take her with you to a commie country and don’t worry… be happy. You have lots of freedom here to pack up and move out. Everything can be arranged and many good Americans would help you leave. Now isn’t that a shame? Isn’t it a shame that you have been so manipulated, so brainwashed and your heart so deceived that you do not recognize you are privileged to live in the best country ever in the history of this planet? Change your friends, do some history reading not from commies, and realize you are wasting your time in one of two ways. Either you need to leave the USA and go where you would be happier, or see the USA for what it truly is, a gift from God, and be grateful.
I know I’m satire-challenged, but I’m beginning to think you can’t lay it on thick enough for some folks to get it. You might as well give up.
What’s most irksome is the current rabble of politicians who are trying to avoid the issue or obfuscate it or morph it into something that it wasn’t.
The American People are owed blunt honesty when federal officials, entrusted with the charter of our very nation, fail to operate in a forthright manner and need to be heavily critiqued.
What this looks like to me are a bunch of high-schoolers who got caught cheating on an exam and are now trying to lie their way out of it. The tactics that adolescents use are no different and easily spotted. Delay, give only cryptic answers, try to shift the blame, flat-out accuse uninvolved parties of wrongdoing, yell, lie, misdirect. It’s all been done.
The Liberals are so nasty! Everyone knows
that The Bush Admin. saw problems with this
mis-adventure and immediately closed it down.
Now our ULTRA LIBERAL PRESENT DAY WHITEHUT
is claiming that they are merely following
the past administration’s ideas.
There should be some sort of immediate
punishment for this sort of nonsense!
I posted something similar to this on the Belmont Club, but the press must, must, must recognize that this is the perfect opportunity to start to unwind itself from the embrace of Dear Leader.
It’s over, and only the die-hards and OWS whackos don’t recognize it.
With F&F, they are being handed a tailor-made scandal, one they can investigate thereby gaining back some degree of bona fides. I’m sure they don’t want to do it, and it pains them to contemplate it; but there are too many smart journalists not to realize that it must be done.
F&F allows them to “uncover” the truth about a flawed plan, distancing themselves from the administration while still not being seen as “betraying” the White House. They can shrug their shoulders and lament “what could we possibly do?” And, unless there is a (pardon me) smoking gun, they can probably save Dear Leader himself while sending Holder and others down in flames.
It’s perfect to allow them to execute an exit strategy from the disaster that is the Obama administration and still not cast themselves as Judas. They have to realize that, right? Right?
I don’t think they desire an exit strategy. Ideology trumps all. You have to remember, it’s hippies you’re dealing with here and they have a firm socialist bent and nothing can change that. They do not see corruption and scandal the way you and I do. They see gunwalker as a means to a legitimate end. The men who got killed? Just right wing fascists who they feel deserved to die because they were probably conservatives. The end justifies the means here; That being complete gun control in the US. They don’t want anyone to have them which harkens back to the days when they tried to sell the idea that all gun owners are bad. No actual, real, verifiable numbers about gun crimes in this nation will sway them from their ironclad belief that guns must be banned, for the “benefit of all mankind”. Hippies operate under the premise that all their fellow hippies are “with-it” and “cool” and always “mean well”. But those of us on the right who see things as they really are, can identify evil 9 out of 10 times, have no love for criminals, etc. are categorically bad, in their mind because they are engaged in the touchy-feely psychological warfare that the 60′s gave us and it lives to this day.
However the national socialists have co-opted it as a means by which they can take our guns away, thus making the rubes (you ‘n’ me) easier to snap into line. They KNOW it worked in Europe and endeavor to reach that goal here by ANY MEANS.
Since “ugly earth” uttered the “n” word can it/she/he be banned? I thought that was a no no?
Not trying to speak for PJM policy here, but “Negro” is not quite the same as the politically & racially-charged “n” word.
Unless, of course, it were uttered by a Conservative. Then a hate crime prison sentence would be in order.
Is a planned scandal still a scandal, or does it become something else?
What’s the difference between corruption and an actor breaking the law?
I hope the investigation into this whole thing culminates with the ultimate impeachment/conviction of our current POTUS. This whole thing stinks to high heaven.
Now I’m even more puzzled by Bill Newell. He shut the operation down in disgust when it failed as Wide Receiver. He is protecting it in its reincarnation as Fast and Furious — where it is guaranteed to achieve the same results as Wide Receiver, except on a much larger scale.
Was it personal for him? Was he so mad at the Mexicans for blowing WR? Did he want to arm criminals in Mexico out of revenge?
Bob – Wayne Talleksen asked at one point which departments were involved. I now know State was involved, but at the time I thought Homeland Security was not. Can you provide a source for Homeland Security’s involvement? Thanks.
BTW If this goes across Departments doesn’t that mean that POTUS is involved as well?
Jack, here’s a link to Holder’s speech April 2, 2009 when Project Gunrunner was first announced:
http://www.justice.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090402.html
He said:
“Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels. My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion. DHS is making similar commitments, as Secretary Napolitano will detail.”
Thanks.
Ok, so since arrests were not seriously anticipated, what is the reasonable person to assume was the purpose of the operation to provide such weapons to the cartels? It was intended for drug cartels to kill Mexican military and law enforcement personnel with those weapons? It was intended for drug cartels to more efficiently kill each other over market share with those weapons? Presumably it was hoped that collateral damage to uninvolved Mexican nationals from those weapons would be minimal during the drug wars over market share? In other words, the Department of Justice, State, ATF, and the FBI basically approved and signed off on extra judicial killings? And the reasonable person is to assume the Mexican government, not known for its history of “good government” and the rule of law was ignorant of all this? Doesn’t the current American government tout the rule of law as one of our fundamental values, along with not condoning torture?
Bob Owens – Apparently they were running more than guns (how about grenades). Here is another article from Sharyl Attkison – http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/14/earlyshow/main20120395.shtml
The Joy of Creeping Corruption
When the late economist-philosopher Friedrich Hayek coined the term “creeping socialism” in The Road to Serfdom, he couldn’t have envisioned the great socialist leap forward this America has witnessed under President Barack Hussein Obama. To complement the soaring socialism, Obama and his administration are now proving they are as guilty of creeping corruption as they are of perpetrating socialistic schemes.
It may all be a good thing.
In 2008, Obama was painted by his mainstream media as Mr. Clean, free of political contamination perhaps in part because he was so inexperienced in politics, and in everything else except community organizing. Perhaps, too, that cleanliness feature was on the mind of then-Senator Joe Biden when he described his future boss as “bright and clean.”
For the most part, the president somehow eluded significant scandal for two years but in the third year of his reign the dirt has hit the executive fan big time.
To be sure, there were relatively minor dings in Obama’s armor during his first two years. However, the out-of-control EPA and TSA, the WikiLeaks leaks, the black racism demonstrated at Eric Holder’s Justice Department, etc. and Obama’s scandalous mishandling of the economy weren’t comparable in gravity to the overt instances of corruption playing out now in both the White House and DoJ.
First came the “Fast and Furious” fiasco, the botched gun-running sting which resulted in the ATF furnishing some 1500 weapons to Mexican cartels which were then used to kill a U.S. border patrol agent and in countless crimes south of the border rather than achieving the planned aim of arresting Mexican criminals.
Close on the heels of Operation Fast and Furious came the Solyndra and LightSquared messes, the administration’s favoritism toward so-called “green” companies. Playing favorites is a time-honored if sleazy feature of politics but when the administration wasted hundreds of millions of dollars of scarce taxpayer money and the good buddies repaid that largesse by generously funneling millions back to Obama’s campaign war chest, favoritism entered the realm of impeachable corruption.
If anything, the corruptive nature of the LightSquared seamy involvement with the presidency actually eclipsed the Solyndra boondoggle.
What may turn out to be the ultimate irony in the deceit, misrepresentations, and outright lies of Eric Holder and Barack Obama relating to the administration’s growing record of corruption is the fact that most of it was avoidable had the president not adopted the Nixonian approach to being caught: deny, deny, and deny again. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5724.)
IT IS VERY INTERESTING TO KNOW THAT THERE IS A FIERCE WAR GOING ON IN MEXICO.
AS YOU AND EVERYBODY KNOWS, IT IS A WAR BETWEEN THE PRESIDENT TOGETHER WITH HIS GOVERNMENT AND THE NATION, THAT HAS CHOSEN THIS GOVERNMENT LEGITIMATELY (DEMOCRATICALLY), AGAINST THE ILLEGITIMATE THUS ILLEGAL DRUG CARTEL AND DRUG LORDS.
GUESS WHICH SIDE THE GOVERNMENT THAT REPRESENTS WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES HAS CLEARLY CHOSEN TO HELP IN THIS WAR.
DO I SEE THE PRESIDENT, THE VICE PRESIDENT, MR. HOLDER, MRS CLINTON BEING ACCUSED OF GENOCIDE IN THE COURT OF THE HAGUE?
WHAT A SHAME!!!
Please treat Lovely Earth with some respect, he, or it, is a very senior member of the Obama administration, at the very top. He, or it, sits on the the high councils, both foreign and domestic, and has our President’s ear, all of it, and is considered the brains of the Administration, the go to guy, gal, or whatever by the NY Times and the rest of our serious and respectable media elite. Obama has intimated he would be lost without the wisdom provided to him. So there !
Blame some one else – every time. ‘Bush did guns – so can we – ‘nanny nehaw ho ho ho’!
We know what the original plan was Eric and you blew it – and what really pisses me off is that while you duck shove around F&F you are still attacking the ‘right to posses a gun issue!
And then my wife said to me – “Don’t let the angst build until you get foolish about this F&F business!”
(She made this comment as I was returning from doing some measurements on my tobacco barn .)
The Soros people and the Alinsky methods they espouse are working – and as they build toward a crescendo the participants remind me of the rabble that greeted the troops returning from the Nam. My question is – ‘how long can we keep turning the cheeks’?
Special Observation Groups within our military have long known the value of ‘removing the planners from the plot’- and while my offering of a barn to house the malcontents before any trials was on the smile side of my face – it is getting harder by the hour to see any semblance of joy in the mirror!
The destruction caused by this So-Com Progressive president places him in the foreground of the planners – and I along with a growing number of qualified ‘removal specialists’ – think that it is time to look harder at the top rungs of the problem!
And Lovely – don’t fear – the tobacco barn would still be for your ilk!
Did anyone see Rep. Cummings dissembling on Face the Nation this morning? I really hope this scandal takes him down, too.