The only thing missing is a pile of dead bodies. Or maybe, some smoke coming out of the barrel.
This just might be the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for to break the festering “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal wide open: the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.
Let that sink in: After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.
Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy four Draco pistols for cash and even got a letter from his supervisor, David Voth, authorizing a federally licensed gun dealer to sell him the guns without bothering about the necessary paperwork.
“Please accept this letter in lieu of completing an ATF Form 4473 for the purchase of four (4) CAI, Model Draco, 7.62×39 mm pistols, by Special Agent John Dodson,” read the June 1, 2010, letter. “These aforementioned pistols will be used by Special Agent Dodson in furtherance of performance of his official duties.”
On orders, Dodson then sold the guns to known criminals, who first stashed them away and then — deliberately unhindered by the ATF or any other agency — whisked them off to Mexico.
They were selling them, but they weren’t tracking them — which was supposed to be the whole point, right? We’ve seen in recent weeks just how easy it is to track stuff. GM has been using its OnStar to track drivers, even down to second-hand owners who never even subscribed to OnStar. Apple and Google both used their phones to track cell users. Facebook has been tracking us all over the place. Heck, anybody who’s ever watched a Discovery Channel doc has probably seen the neighborhood oceanographic institute track dolphins by attaching little GPS tags to them. If these private companies can do this, surely the brains at the ATF and DOJ could have embedded GPS locators into the guns they were selling to the drug cartels. If that’s what they wanted to do. But all indications are that they didn’t do that. They violated Mexican sovereignty, ran guns to a known drug cartel on the American taxpayer’s dime, and roughly 200 people and counting are dead.
And Eric Holder just keeps locking in the silencer.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member