Book Review: Fast and Furious, Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up
Fast and Furious is the story of Justice Department deception, ideological recklessness, and, above all, murderous indifference toward good government. Katie Pavlich’s new book, aptly titled Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up (Regnery), is an encyclopedia-style account of the scandal. If you want a single source for an objective and thorough chronology of the outlandish DOJ program, and the names of the guilty bureaucrats, this is the book.
One of the most disturbing things to emerge from the Fast and Furious scandal (apart from the hundreds of murdered victims of DOJ policy) is the fact that nobody has lost their job. Eric Holder exhibits no outrage, and nobody was held accountable. The architects, foot soldiers, and propaganda mouthpieces remain unpunished.
Fast and Furious also reminds us about something I emphasize: Attorney General Eric Holder is not the Alpha and Omega of bad decisions and rotted policy in the DOJ. Individual bureaucrats deep inside DOJ are also at fault, and in the past remained anonymous. Not anymore. The civil servants who leverage petty power to corrupt ends should be accountable for their behavior, if by no other means, by exposing their role in the new media.
During the Bush administration, some foolishly labored under the false notion that DOJ lawyers were all upstanding professionals free from political bias or reckless indifference to the law. Most at DOJ aren’t unprofessional liars, but sadly, some are.
Pavlich names the names of the people responsible for Fast and Furious. Consider Emory Hurley.
Emory Hurley is an Assistant United States Attorney in Phoenix who helmed Fast and Furious. He blocked the arrest of straw gun purchasers repeatedly, even after ATF agents gift wrapped multiple cases for him. Pavlich records Hurley as saying again and again “no probable cause,” even though video existed of illegal straw purchases.
Hurley even prevented arrests in “a case on grenades.” Pavlich describes emails from cooperative gun dealers expressing concern to Hurley about the safety of border agents, but the dealers were told everything was fine and no guns were going to Mexico. Hurley kept the spigot of guns flowing wide open into Mexico.
I confirmed today that Emory Hurley still has a job as an attorney at the Justice Department.
Pavlich paints a disturbing portrait of ATF Special Agent in Charge Bill Newell. Newell comes across in Fast and Furious as someone who would find himself right at home in the Polish Służba Bezpieczeństwa in 1980, using his civil service perch to approve rough handling of Gdansk shipyard workers or authorize tails on unruly Catholic priests. After all, he just had a job to do and a regime to serve.
Pavlich: “Newell had earned a reputation for punishing those who questioned his authority.” When an ATF agent complained not enough was done to address threats against another agent, Newell retaliated. After the agent’s house was set on fire, “Newell doubled down. He had subordinates accuse [the agent] of purposefully burning down his own home.” A subsequent inspector general report concluded not enough was done to protect the threatened ATF agents, but Newell still has a government job.
Newell was the enthusiastic ATF captain on the ground in the gun running operation, as detailed in Fast and Furious.
Pavlich also details the deception and diabolical plotting of presidential appointees at DOJ. Topping the list are Assistant Attorneys General Lanny Breuer, Ron Weich, and Holder’s current chief of staff Gary Grindler. These three appear to be the top level political appointees responsible for concocting and managing the program.
Thanks for the update and clear-eyed view of Fast and Furious.
The only remaining question is this: What we we – ordimary Americans – need to do to see that these people are behind bars and made an example of.
These people flagrantly broke the law and fine young American men died because of it. I want justice.
There are obviously numerous things regular citizens can do, even calling up these government employees and suggesting they resign. You have that right under the First Amendment. Call your member of congress. Tell house members to impeach Weich. Come on, you all can figure out more ideas.
Buy the book and deliver it to your congresscritters office, lest they say they weren’t aware of it.
What Mr. Adams’ review tells me first and foremost is that no matter how lawless the rogue Obama regime becomes, there will still be a multitude of people who will remain loyal to the rogue regime merely because it is the regime.
Which is an unsettling thought.
They aren’t strictly loyal to the regime but loyal to “progressive ideals” that must advance at all costs. Because they are moral just (simply by having the ideals), that absolves them of all guilt and justifies any action in pursuit of goals.
There’s a lot more to it than ideology or support for a particular administration. If you’re far enough up the government’s organization that you have anything useful to be a whistleblower about, you have a lot of time and energy invested in being there and in many career fields, the ONLY employer is government at some level. Securing legal whistleblower protection under most whistleblower laws requires you to have used and exhausted internal complaint means before going outside the organization with your information. The second you tell your boss that you think he or his boss or his boss’ boss did a bad thing, you are marked for life; you will never be promoted and you’ll be lucky if they don’t just give you an office with no windows and as seat that flushes until people forget about you and then they fire you on a pretext. And this isn’t unique to the Obama Junta; it is any government and even Republican governments because below the high-level appointees, even Republican governments are mostly Democrats.
If you exhaust the internal system, and you’ll be exhausted by doing so and spend a lot of morning sitting on the side of your bed thinking, “Is this the day I quit,” and then you stare at your wife and kid(s) and buck up and go to work one more day. If there is a Democrat in the mayor, governor, or President’s Office, you will be dismissed as a tin-foil hat wearing “disgruntled employee.” Soon you’ll achieve the status of “disgruntled former employee. Your story will NEVER get any ink in the major media unless there is enough buzz about the underlying event that they have to give it some play. Then they’ll tag you as the disgruntled former employee, implying that you got fired or did something bad yourself that you’re trying to cover by being a whistleblower. Unfortunately, like any good lie; there is a bit of truth. Claiming whisleblower protection isn’t as good a path as claiming discrimination, but it has saved a fair share of bad employees at least long enough to screw up another day. If you rat out a Democrat, you will never work for a Democrat again in most cases (I did, but only because I’m very good at what I do and it was a WHOLE BUNCH easier for them to have me inside the tent rather than out. And I had my own agenda.) The really bad part is, you’re not likely to ever work for a Republican government either. First, Republican governments HATE controversy and controversy is your middle name. Even if the Republicans try to help you out, the Democrats and their media puppies will trash you and the Republicans for hiring you, so even for Republicans, hiring you is not without risk. When I played kiss and tell on Democrats, the little contract the Republicans threw my way was front page news; it’s just the way the thing works.
I know a lot of conservatives/Republicans reflexively say, “go get a job in the private sector.” That isn’t an easy thing to do if you’re in your late 40s, early 50s in a job that only exists in government and you know that if you walk away from that usually pretty good, well-paid job, you’re going to be wearing a blue vest or a funny hat in your next job.
I believe
1. Murders have been committed;
2. These are state felony crimes;
3. There is no statute of limitations applicable to murder; and
4. The United States President cannot pardon persons for state crimes.
I look forward…
But as Idaho found when they tried to prosecute FBI Hostage “Rescue” Team sniper Lon Horiuchi for his killing of Vicki Weaver, the Feds will quash the prosecution.
The whole Gunwalker/Fast and Furious treason is Waco rules on meth.
Fast and Furious is the main reason I will not watch ANY network news anymore. Only CBS did a little investigating into this scandal, but not nearly enough. Could you imagine, just imagine, what the networks would have been doing with a scandal like this if a Republican was in the White House? George W. Bush was crucified for days over the dismissal of a few federal attorneys, something he was actually ALLOWED to do. No Americans died, no Mexicans were killed, no guns were illegally sold to criminals. It makes my mind spin to think what would have happened if this story took place in 2005 or, worse, in 2004 when Bush was running for re-election. Don’t you think the mainstream media would have used this story to help STOP his re-election? But the mainstream media is oddly quiet now about this story, because they know it would damage the Obama re-election campaign. Disgusting the bias and hypocrisy the media shows on a daily basis.
So what can we do about this? First of all, vote Obama AND his minions out of office. That’s the first step, and to do that you need to help in ANY campaign that will unseat Obama. Volunteer, write blogs, give money (if you can), and most of all tell your neighbors what is going on. That’s the only way to stop this. Then, maybe, with a new president elected in November we can walk out of this dark shadow of lies and throw a little light on these bums who made Fast and Furious possible.
Fast and Furious- Hundreds dead and no one blinks.
2008 Campaign Contributions- Thousands of contributors that are not validated and obviously under false names.
Taxpayer Money to Reward Obama Campaign Contributors- Billions awarded and wasted.
Libya Hostilities- No request from Congress to support conflict.
WH Posted Bogus Birth Document- 3rd largest sheriff’s department in the nation alleges document a forgery.
No one in the media appears to find any interest in the aforementioned. I guess it matters who’s president.
Noone blinks? Noone cares? When I google the issue fast and furious, I get thousands of hits in the media. Why say “noone cares” when obviously they do. If you are looking for affirmation by ABC News, give that up. Andrew Breitbart said all the time, stop worrying about ABC’s narrative and go make your own.
Sir, perhaps you’re right that some in the media have made mention…the framing of the commentary should be “outrage”. Nixon lost his presidency over the cover up, the notion that a president would have the gall to shield his blatant transgressions from the public.
You’ve done a great job illustrating the sin but no one cares that happens to sit down to the CBS news.
Nixon and Bush are held to different criteria of what constitutes “outrage”. Again, it obviously matters who’s president.
How is that the third largest sheriff’s department makes allegations of forgery purported on the WH website and no one blinks? You would think someone in the MSM would jump at the chance to discredit a beloved icon of conservatives. Yet nothing.
Hundreds dead in Mexico, a murdered US federal law enforcement officer and other citizenry…no “outrage”.
What has become of us? Are we that politically expedient?
Outrage over media bias is a big story . . . in 2004. It isn’t going to change no matter how loud or frustrated you get. Get over it. Make your own news. That was precisely Andrew Breitbart’s view and the view of all the other conservative new media sites. Ignore the biased sources. Support the unbiased ones. Subscribe to PJ Media, for example. https://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=register&login-redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pjtv.com%2F
“the notion that a president would have the gall to shield his blatant transgressions from the public.”
Actually, they weren’t even his actions that he was trying to cover up. Nixon neither approved nor authorized the actions of his staff/aides regarding Watergate (which totaly negated the real crimes of the stealing of the Pentagon Papers) and it is generally believed and accepted that it was undertaken without his knowledge. Nixon’s crime was to try to protect his friends from prosecution. This is where the saying comes from: It’s not the crime – it’s the cover up.
There is also a reason there is the saying (in comparing and contrasting) that Nixon used his office to cover up the crimes of his friends – while Clinton used his friends to cover up crimes he committed in his office.
The allegations of Sheriff Arpaio’s I read WRT to the birth certificate were based on he and his people not understanding modern image compression techniques, although the White House should have been smart enough to release a picture that was compressed in a simple manner. This was thoroughly covered when it was released, including on PJMedia where I went into the details in my comments.
Voices from a free America. I’m grateful to PJM that those voices have a place to gather, I enjoy listening to them. Thanks Mr. Christian for continuing to speak about the Fast and Furious debacle and giving your insight into the Justice Department in general.
In this scandal I think there is the political part, the MSM part, the personalities part, the idealogical part, and etc. What if a singular party went at the problem in an objective part, a justice part, and let all the other stuff sluff off even as it is plastered on from all sides? Is that unrealistic thinking? Maybe the congressional investigation will grind on and some day produce some result, but it sure seems slow–and from this perch unlikely. I am grateful though to know about these things, thanks again.
Mr. Adams, why are you surprised? It’s a documented fact that the DOJ employees supposedly politicized by Bush donated to Obama in 2008 by a 2-1 margin.
Surprise? 2-1? Better recheck those numbers. I think you’d find it more like 3-1 or 4-1.
Well, if we are going to honest, let’s call a spade a spade. Most conservatives despised Bush, who was every bit as liberal as it gets at times. Liberals love to slam us for Bush, when in reality they would have loved him just fine (he initiated so many policies the libs themselves only ever had hot dreams for) if only that pesky R had been a D.
For the difference between Bush and Obama, just read what Mr. Adams writes.
Fantastic! I’m getting it. I hope it forces the hand of Romney’s AG (thinking VERY optimistically here).
I’m not sure if the sources are credible, but this morning I read there is a 1995 video of Holder saying Americans need to be brainwashed against guns. I heard from a vet a few months ago and read again today that Vet Administration doctors and nurses are asking vets if they own guns and feel stressed or depressed. “Yes” answers have lead to revoked licenses. Apparently Medicare personnel are also doing this.
The war to disarm conservatives marches on.
That video clip was available not too long ago either here or on Hot Air. I viewed it myself, so yeah, your source is credible. The video itself is INcredible, when taken in context with everything this regime is doing and intends to do.
The video i saw was about brainwashing kids against smoking.
I don’t know about the video, I’ve never seen it but I do know the rumor about the VA has been debunked. I am being treated for a knee problem at the VA Clinic here in Daytona and have never been asked if I own a gun. Due to the huge amount of Vets suffering from PTSD, they do ask about feeling depressed. If you answer yes they will get you help and a support group to talk to about it. They do not report gun ownership to anyone.
My husband was asked at the Houston VA.
” He blocked the arrest of straw gun purchasers repeatedly, even after ATF agents gift wrapped multiple cases for him. Pavlich records Hurley as saying again and again “no probable cause,” even though video existed of illegal straw purchases.”
Funny how video proof of straw purchases and Black Panther white voter intimidation don’t constitute probable cause for Holder or his soldiers, but racist mob demands to arrest Zimmerman do.
Naw, video proof is too easy to photoshop, just ask Obambi how easy photoshop works.
Actually, I think, (and hope and pray), they are just waiting until after the election. If you’ve watched the Dems on Izzas’ committee doing everything they can to change or whitewash the subject whenever it gets too close to home you can imagine what it would be like if he brought impeachment proceedings up in the Senate now.
Has Darrell “the bulldog” Issa gotten anywhere with this yet?
If this were a free Country with a free press, this President and Holder would now be in jail.
Unluckily, and as it always happens with the totalitarians, we have now in power “the psychotics and the murderers” (the sentence is by Hermann Hesse).
Mr. Adams, would you agree with a broken down old paratrooper that the main reason none of these criminals have been impeached/criminally convicted for their crimes is that the current republicans in the house and the senate are just as much a part of the problem of “the system” as it exists today. Republicans and democrats are both drinking from the same bottle, so to speak, and neither group wants to do anything that would upset their gravy train?
The sad thing about it all is that Obama came into office as the result of criminal enterprise, has committed such crimes as Fast and Furious, voter intimidation, dropping charges on terrorist financing Muslims, threatening the Clintons to prevent them from coming forward with information that Obama is not eligible for the office we naively gave him and the 2012 election will be even worse. Bottom line is that nobody will be able to do anything about it. Obama is like the Teflon Don. The news media work for him under the FCC and what control Obama does not have is covered by Marxist-Communist, George Soros, who has financial interests in thirty media companies, including the big ones, and he controls what we hear and what we are not allowed to hear. For lack of information about Obama’s illegitimacy to hold office, lack of information about his crimes, and a congress sitting on its hands unwilling to investigate, many people will be duped into voting for him again. For two hundred years, we have assumed our highest leaders were of good character and would do the right thing. Now, however, Chicago-style politics has entered the mix; a far left liberal who has mega bucks and a vision of imposing on America his ideas that will break us in the end has run his hand up our ultra liberal president and is working his mouth and the best thing we can hope for is that Romney, and the American people, will be able to kick them all in the teeth in November.
Project Gun Runner (Fast and Furious) was launched under the orders of President Barack Obama with the knowledge of Attorney General Eric Holder. Deputy Attorney General David Ogden announced the Obama Administration’s new and aggressive ‘comprehensive plan’ on March, 24, 2009. The plan was aimed at disrupting gun trafficking between the United States and Mexico. Full C-SPAN Video Link 3-24-2009
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/MexicoBorstart=800
Obama Orders Launched Fast and Furious
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PNhYk9NuNc
“If Holder didn’t know about Project Gunrunner, why did he give a speech about it 2 years ago?”
http://www.justice.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090402.html
Holder speech on April 2, 2009 (according to DOJ site!): “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.”
I haven’t heard a reference to the SB (Służba Bezpieczeństwa) in more than 20 years. Now I feel old …
Nice use of the Polish alphabet.
Incorrect. The most disturbing part of this story is the fact that Speaker Boner and the rest of his republican Congressional caucus let em get away with it. Which makes them just as bad. What’s worse, Obama or a big government republican? It’s like asking if you prefer the republic to be killed by a big hydrogen bomb or a really big hydrogen bomb. Either way, you is dead.
You is an idiot! What could the house do? They have no law enforcement power beyond swearing out a complaint that some Democrat has to act on. If they impeach, the Democrat Senate won’t convict. The only thing the House can do is shine a little light on it, light that the MSM won’t notice.
So are we completely screwed? Just prepare as much as we can until the wheels fall off? From Mr. Adams last book, we don’t really have much of a chance of getting a fair shake in 2012 – despite what he says in his final chapter, the DOJ Civil Rights Division fix is in. Despite claims that they’re under congressional oversight, what power does congress really have if the executive just extends the middle finger and smiles?
When you have a bureaucrat by his budget, his heart and mind follows. It is very hard to take a particular position out of the budget and make it stick, but you can sure get somebody’s attention if his whole office disappears. That is the primary, actualy the only, tool the House has so long as the communists control the Senate. Unfortunately, whenever Comrade Obama has led them to the brink with shutdown threats and such, they’ve blinked; I believe because the leadership and the old hands are just hard-wired to avoid the drubbing they took from Clinton over the government shutdown. I’ve done enough strike planning to believe that you can keep a government providing enough services to keep the moochers and looters sullen but not mutinous for some time, but I don’t know if you can do it in the face of a universally hostile media that will be inciting riots should an agency not be funded.
But the US House, dominated by the GoP, will not even do that. Just they tried would be worthy. What are they afraid of?
Thanks for this story. As a retired DEA agent, I have a couple of observations.
1 No ATF street agent would have ever concocted this scheme. It goes against the grain of everything they are taught. This had to come from the highest levels of DOJ-if not the WH.
2 Janet Napolitano has one, possibly two of her own DHS agents killed by F and F guns. Both she and Holder have testified under oath that they have not discussed this matter with each other. If I were head of DHS, I would be pounding on Holder’s desk demanding answers as to why I have 2 dead agents because of this fiasco.
This is worse than Watergate.
Getting names is a good thing – and when those named start not turning up for breakfast or don’t appear at their kids soccer match – only then will we get to the bottom of the Justice Departments evil intent.
The leadership should be ‘shaken not stirred’ – stirring trash only increases the smell – while making the awful disappear seems to freshen the air!
Why aren’t Holder and the rest of his cronies @ DOJ put to trail?
It doesn’t matter if Holder knew or not about this operation. He is in charge. He is responsible.
The same logic goes for Obama.
It seems to me that a lot of the House have tried to get the word out about what’s happening, but if you know of events personally, how often have you seen them in the news media, if they are favorable toward Republicans? Being from Wisconsin I know that it is next to impossible for Republicans to get face time on TV or a mention in the press if it’s not negative. They can be working “Fast and Furious”ly themselves but nobody outside of the House will ever know.
Republicans are no longer the “esteemed colleagues” across the aisle, they are the mortal enemies of this president and his political allies and the president’s arrogant, snide remarks about all things Republican, especially Conservatives, tells the story.
“I was contacted in late 2010 about a blockbuster story sources wanted me to break. It involved DOJ corruption of a scale unimaginable. I asked a few former Bush DOJ political appointees what they thought of the story that I was being spoon fed. “Impossible,” one said. “Crazy, couldn’t happen,” said another. So I didn’t touch the story. I wasn’t going to carry water for the tin-foil-hat crowd.
The story rejected as implausible was Fast and Furious.
That Bush DOJ officials dismissed entirely the possibility that the Obama DOJ would run Fast and Furious demonstrates the naiveté some have about those now in power. Your opponents are not following the Marquess of Queensberry. As Pavlich describes in Fast and Furious, even a murderous bloodbath does nothing more than activate the community organizing instincts of name calling and wagon circling.”
And we get the same reaction from everyone, regarding Obama’s African birth. He is not American. I know, it’s tin-foil-hat stuff. That will prove true also, sometime in the future.
After 9/11, I’m amazed some still refuse to believe lesser things can happen. How soon people forget.
This is a brilliant find by Washington76, which should be screen-capped immediately by PJM before it gets pulled from the DOJ site.
Do you know that ATF Fast and Furious was used as an excuse to restrict good law abiding citizen’s rights to.. Keep and Bear arms? What do you think of this Obama Dictatorship?.