The Great Destroyer

Though the Obama administration withdrew its demand to reinstate the ban, it persisted with the 90 percent fable.² It also shifted law enforcement resources to border states to combat the supposed gun trafficking problem, “blitzing” Houston and the southern half of Texas in April 2009 with a temporary army of 100 additional inspectors and investigators, with plans to permanently expand those forces later.³ Further, the administration demonized American gun dealers to the point that the National Rifle Association alerted its members to the scapegoating.

Against that background in the autumn of 2009, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), under the umbrella of the Justice Department, initiated Operation Fast and Furious, a secret gunwalking program whereby ATF agents allowed straw purchasers to buy guns while under surveillance, with the ostensible goal of tracing them into the hands of Mexican cartel leaders and weapons traffickers on the southwestern border and in Mexico. “Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals, this was the plan,” Special Agent John Dodson of the ATF Phoenix field division later explained. “It was so mandated.”⁴ The idea, according to findings from a House Oversight Committee report, was “to wait and watch, in the hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case. This shift in strategy was known and authorized at the highest levels of the Justice Department.”⁵

The ill-conceived program was a total bust that climaxed in the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry; AK-47s were found at the crime scene that had been knowingly sold under Fast and Furious. An assault on police in Maricopa, Arizona, was also traced to automatic weapons from the operation. Most of the 2,000-plus guns involved in Fast and Furious were lost and, reportedly, hundreds turned up at Mexican crime scenes.⁶ Two hundred people were killed or wounded in Mexico with Fast and Furious weapons,⁷ and at least eleven violent crimes occurred in the United States involving fifty-seven Fast and Furious weapons.⁸ This gruesome outcome was by no means unforeseeable. As Special Agent Larry Alt testified to Congress, “You can’t allow thousands of guns to go south of the border without an expectation that they are going to be recovered eventually in crimes and people are going to die.”⁹

After several ATF whistleblowers alerted Congress that Fast and Furious weapons were found at the scene of Agent Terry’s murder, congressional hearings ensued and certain top officials behind the operation were removed from their positions. Despite vehement complaints from Mexico and pressure from Congress, however, the administration didn’t bother to offer any explanation for the operation and stubbornly refused to apologize.¹⁰

Congress turned up the heat, as investigators formally requested that the Obama administration turn over copies of “all records” involving: three specific White House national security officials in connection with the Fast and Furious Operation; other ATF gun cases in Phoenix; and all communications between the White House and the ATF field office in Arizona. While White House staffers had briefed Congress on the operation as early as April 2010, they mentioned nothing about the gunwalking tactics in play. For its part, the administration denied that anyone at the White House knew the operation was allowing gunwalking into Mexico.¹¹

Casting doubt on the White House’s claim, Bill Newell, the ATF agent in charge of the Phoenix office, told Congress he had discussed the operation with Kevin O’Reilly, the White House National Security director for America.¹² Newell was reportedly in close contact with O’Reilly and was seeking White House assistance to convince the Mexican government to let ATF agents recover U.S. guns across the border.¹³ Other White House staff who may have known about the operation include National Security staff members who received information from O’Reilly on Phoenix gun trafficking cases, and Assistant to the President for Homeland Security John Brennan, who led a high-level discussion in Phoenix on gun trafficking in June 2010.¹⁴

When Congress began investigating Fast and Furious, it quickly realized the Department of Justice would not be cooperative. At a congressional hearing in early May 2011, Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, criticized Attorney General Eric Holder for refusing to answer questions or comply with subpoenas for documents concerning who approved Fast and Furious. “We’re not looking at straw buyers, Mr. Attorney General,” said Issa. “We’re looking at you. We’re looking at you, we’re looking at your key people who knew or should’ve known about this.” Holder indignantly replied, “The notion that somehow or another that this Justice Department is responsible for those deaths, that assertion is offensive.” Issa persisted, “What if it’s accurate, Mr. Attorney General? What am I going to tell Agent Terry’s mother about how he died at the hands of a gun that was videotaped as it was being sold to a straw purchaser fully expecting it to end up in the hands of drug cartels?”¹⁵

A key point of dispute was that Obama and Holder wanted the investigation of Fast and Furious to be conducted internally by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, while congressional investigators, alleging a lack of DOJ cooperation from the outset, wanted a broad outside investigation. As Issa declared,

The Justice Department hasn’t said how and why two rifles purportedly being tracked and monitored by federal law enforcement officials as part of Operation Fast and Furious ended up in the hands of Agent Terry’s killers. It angers me to think that this death might not have occurred had it not been for reckless decisions made by officials at the Department of Justice who authorized and supported an operation that knowingly puts guns in the hands of criminals. For these officials to imagine that this operation would result in anything other than a tragic outcome was naïve and negligent.¹⁶

Invoking its default “Blame Bush” meme, the administration and its backers attempted to dodge accountability for Fast and Furious by suggesting that the operation was just an extension of a Bush-era program called Wide Receiver—as if that would justify an ill-conceived gunwalking operation that ended in the murder of a U.S. agent. In any case, the two are hardly comparable. Wide Receiver was a small-scale operation involving about one-quarter the amount of guns implicated in Fast and Furious.¹⁷

What’s more, in Wide Receiver, the ATF tried to track guns sold to straw purchasers—even fitting some with electronic tracking devices—and when some guns went missing, the operation was quickly shut down. By contrast, there was no attempt at all to track the weapons sold in Fast and Furious, and agents who tried to follow the purchasers were inexplicably ordered to stand down. The operation continued as more and more guns disappeared into Mexico, only ending after Fast and Furious guns were used in the high-profile Terry killing, and reportedly after ATF officials mistakenly believed its weapons were also used in Jared Loughner’s mass shooting in Tucson.¹⁸

Furthermore, while grilling Eric Holder in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator John Cornyn showed that Wide Receiver was coordinated with Mexican authorities, who were deliberately kept in the dark about Fast and Furious. In fact, despite its vast scope, Fast and Furious was kept under such tight wraps that even ATF Attaché to Mexico Darren Gil was kept out of the loop; and when Gil discovered the operation and complained that running it without telling Mexican authorities was tantamount to an act of war, he was reportedly pressured to retire. Challenged by Cornyn, Holder himself acknowledged crucial distinctions between Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious, saying, “I have not tried to equate the two.”¹⁹

At a House Oversight Committee hearing in June 2011, four ATF agents gave testimony that contradicted Department of Justice spokesman Ronald Weich’s claim—made in a February 4, 2011 letter to a member of Congress—that the DOJ did not approve the program. The agents testified that Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley, an Obama appointee, “orchestrated” the operation. ATF Phoenix field office supervisor Peter Forcelli further alleged, “I have read documents that indicate that [Hurley’s] boss, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, also agreed with the direction of the case.”²⁰

Forcelli was referring to an order, instituted shortly after Obama was inaugurated, mandating that Phoenix ATF agents monitor, but not stop, gun sales to suspected gun traffickers, breaking with long-established agency practice. Agents told the committee that Phoenix ATF supervisor David Voth “was jovial, if not giddy, but just delighted” when Fast and Furious guns were subsequently recovered at multiple Mexican drug busts. Issa released emails showing that ATF acting director Kenneth Melson arranged to watch live feeds from ATF cameras in the gun stores involved in the operation. Issa’s panel also released documents indicating the operation was well-known and vigorously supported at the highest levels of the ATF.²¹

On June 14, 2011, the House Oversight Committee released its shocking findings about Fast and Furious. Here are some highlights:

• “ATF agents are trained to ‘follow the gun’ and interdict weapons whenever possible. Operation Fast and Furious required agents to abandon this training.”

• “Agents knew that given the large numbers of weapons being trafficked to Mexico, tragic results were a near certainty.”

• “Agents [are] expected to interdict weapons, yet were told to stand down and ‘just surveil.’ Agents therefore did not act. They watched straw purchasers buy hundreds of weapons illegally and transfer those weapons to unknown third parties and stash houses.”

• “Operation Fast and Furious contributed to the increasing violence and deaths in Mexico. This result was regarded with giddy optimism by ATF supervisors hoping that guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico would provide the nexus to straw purchasers in Phoenix.”

• “Every time a law enforcement official in Arizona was assaulted or shot by a firearm, ATF agents in Group VII had great anxiety that guns used to perpetrate the crimes may trace back to Operation Fast and Furious.”

• “Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, DOJ continues to deny that Operation Fast and Furious was ill-conceived and had deadly consequences.” (The DOJ later modified this ludicrous and indefensible position.)²²

One ATF deputy assistant director, Steve Martin, stated that McMahon had ignored his urgings in January 2010 to halt Fast and Furious. “I asked Mr. McMahon, I said, ‘what’s your plan?’” Martin reported. “Hearing none, I don’t know if they had one.” Despite his admission that he’d made mistakes in Fast and Furious, McMahon was promoted—ironically—to deputy assistant director of the ATF’s Office of Professional Responsibility and Security Operations—the division that investigates employee misconduct.²⁴ Newell also admitted to making mistakes in Fast and Furious, though he claimed his agents never allowed guns to “walk.” The denial angered numerous agents who knew better. “Literally, my mouth fell open,” said Agent Larry Alt, who worked under Newell. “I am not being figurative about this. I couldn’t believe it.”²⁵ As for agent Voth, who supervised the agents working on Fast and Furious, he had dismissed agents’ concerns about the illegal gun purchases and gunwalking, reportedly insisting the bureau was “watching the right people.”²⁶

Other key figures in Fast and Furious transferred or retired without facing any consequences. At the end of August 2011, Ken Melson stepped down from his position as ATF acting director and was transferred to the DOJ’s Office of Legal Affairs as a senior forensic science adviser. Melson had claimed he’d only learned about Fast and Furious after it was shut down, but Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich insisted Melson knew about it almost from the beginning.²⁷ Additionally, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, Dennis Burke, resigned. Notably, statements from Holder and Burke didn’t tie these moves to Fast and Furious, though both alluded to distractions affecting federal prosecutors in Arizona.²⁸

In the meantime, several ATF agents claimed the agency had retaliated against them for shedding light on the abuses of Fast and Furious. The House Oversight Committee found that Special Agent John Dodson was removed from Phoenix Group VII in the summer of 2010 for complaining to ATF supervisors about the operation.²⁹ Likewise, Vince Cefalu, a Tucson-based agent who had been with the agency for twenty-four years, said he was served with termination papers in June 2011. “Aside from Jay Dobyns,” said Cefalu, “I don’t know of anyone that’s been more vocal about ATF mismanagement than me. That’s why this is happening.” He added, “Simply put, we knowingly let hundreds of guns and dozens of identified bad guys go across the border.”³⁰ Although some other agents attributed Cefalu’s dismissal to personality clashes, he was adamant that “it was my willingness to expose [Fast and Furious] and support other people to come forward.”³¹

In addition, Peter J. Forcelli, group supervisor, ATF, alleged that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona and the DOJ Office of Deputy Attorney General retaliated against him for his remarks before the House Oversight Committee, to whom he testified, “I believe that these firearms will continue to turn up at crime scenes, on both sides of the border, for years to come.” According to Forcelli’s attorney,

It now appears to GS Forcelli that a pattern of conduct has emerged designed to attack GS Forcelli’s credibility.... Clearly, the USAO is clumsily attempting to paint a picture that GS Forcelli’s testimony and conduct resulted from a “personal issue” between AUSA Hurley and himself, rather than hold AUSA Hurley accountable for missteps in several of his cases.... GS Forcelli would respectfully request that the actions of certain members of the Department of Justice be investigated inasmuch as said actions seem to flout the power of Congress to oversee and reform the workings of our great Nation’s government.³²

Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings heralded this campaign during Darrell Issa’s June 15 hearing on Fast and Furious. “No legitimate examination of this issue will be complete without analyzing our nation’s gun laws, which allow tens of thousands of assault weapons to flood into Mexico from the United States every year, including fifty caliber sniper rifles, multiple AK variants and scores of others,” Cummings argued. “When Mexican President Calderon addressed Congress in May, he pleaded for us to stop fueling a full-scale drug war with military-grade assault rifles.”³³

This may have set a new record for Democratic chutzpah, given that Fast and Furious—not lax gun laws—allowed these deadly weapons to reach Mexico and “fueled” the drug war there—all behind the backs of the Mexican authorities. Regardless, a few weeks after the hearing, Cummings released a report—cleverly titled “Outgunned”—arguing that stricter gun control laws are needed to help fight organized crime at the border.³⁴

Meanwhile, there were growing indications of DOJ stonewalling and even a possible cover-up surrounding Fast and Furious. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 8, Eric Holder told Senator Grassley that after he received two letters from Grassley back in January requesting information about gunwalking tactics, he’d asked his “staff to look into this.” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein drafted a response to Grassley, which was reviewed by Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer. On February 4, 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich signed off on the letter, which stated that “ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.”

Of course, in both Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious, that was entirely false. What’s more, an email from Anthony Garcia, a DOJ employee assigned to Mexico City, to Adam Lurie of that same date, February 4, 2011, showed that Lanny Breuer was actually advocating a gunwalking scheme to Mexican authorities, who were unaware gunwalking was already occurring through Fast and Furious.³⁵ So, while gunwalking was already happening, and while he was advocating gunwalking to Mexican officials, Breuer was involved in preparing a letter stating that the ATF does no such thing.

Breuer said he wasn’t sure whether he’d seen the draft of the Weich letter. But when internal emails were released in December, they showed that Breuer had been well informed about it. Even more incriminating was the revelation that Breuer had received both drafts of the letter as well as the final version and even forwarded them to his personal gmail account.³⁶ On December 2, Deputy Attorney General Cole formally withdrew the Weich letter, saying it “contains inaccuracies.”

Senator Grassley had harsh words about this episode.

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer admitted one week ago in this room that the department’s letter to me in February was absolutely false. Think about that for a second. It’s bad enough that the head of the Criminal Division admits that the department’s letter to me was false. It gets worse, though. He admitted that he knew all along that it was false. Although he could not recall whether he helped edit it, he knew it was false because he was aware of a previous gunwalking operation called Wide Receiver. Yet he remained silent for nine months as the public controversy over gunwalking grew. He was aware that Congress had been misled and yet made no effort to correct the department’s official denial. I am eager to hear whether the Attorney General thinks that is acceptable and what he intends to do about it.³⁷

As Holder continued to plead ignorance, congressional investigators tried to determine exactly what he knew about the operation and when he knew it. Back in May 2011, Holder had told the House Judiciary Committee he had only known about Fast and Furious “for a couple of weeks.” This would imply that after Brian Terry was killed on December 15, 2010, months went by before Holder discovered that guns walked via Fast and Furious were found at the scene—even though email records indicate that fact was immediately known within the DOJ; in fact, Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke informed DOJ deputy Monty Wilkinson about that fact the very day Terry was killed. Other memos later surfaced that were addressed to Holder and described the specifics of Fast and Furious. Holder claimed he had neither read the memos nor been informed of their content by his staff.⁴⁰

CNN’s Anderson Cooper, discussing the matter with reporter Drew Griffin, remarked, “No one seems to know, who authorized this thing? Border Agent Brian Terry, Drew, was murdered back in December 2010. Considering that ATF was part of the Justice Department, does anyone buy that Holder wasn’t aware of the program?” Griffin responded, “I’ve been on the phone talking to some of these ATF agents today, I’ve talked to them over the weekend, and it’s really hard for them to imagine that Holder wasn’t at least briefed about it; this was a major operation, Anderson.” Drew added, “To the boots on the ground it’s unimaginable that high up people in the Department of Justice, including Holder, didn’t know about it.”⁴¹

When a reporter asked President Obama about Fast and Furious and about Attorney General Holder’s role in the operation, Obama took Holder at his word. “As you know, my Attorney General has made clear he certainly would not have ordered gun running to be able to pass through into Mexico,” said Obama. “The investigation is still pending and I’m not going to comment on a pending investigation. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment if it is not completed.”⁴²

Congressman Issa was disappointed by Obama’s comments. “There was no sign of urgency to provide answers or explain why no one at the Justice Department has accepted responsibility for authorizing an illegal gunwalking operation six months after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder,” said Issa. “The American people expect more from the President than unsubstantiated assertions that the Attorney General didn’t know about this reckless program and no explanation about who authorized it.”⁴³

Furthermore, Issa continued, Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division, apologized for certain aspects of the operation but had retained his job. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich withdrew a letter he had sent to Congress because it contained false information—and he wasn’t removed from his position, either. And ATF Director Ken Melson had said that the DOJ was focused on covering for its political appointees. “Surprisingly, no one at Justice Department headquarters has faced any meaningful consequences,” Issa wrote. “While replacing the entire ATF leadership structure and causing the U.S. attorney for Arizona to tender his resignation, Holder has consistently used a concurrent investigation by the inspector general to prevent him from acting against senior officials close to him.”⁴⁴

In an interview with ABC News in October 2011, Obama acknowledged Fast and Furious was a mistake and vowed that “people who screwed up will be held accountable.”⁴⁵ But there is no indication he’s exercised any leadership to uncover the facts, and indeed, he has blindly supported Attorney General Eric Holder.

As Fox News reported in November 2011, the record does not bear out Obama’s promise to hold the wrongdoers accountable. Fox News’ William La Jeunesse corroborated Issa’s contention that those accountable have been protected and even promoted. “Those in charge of the botched operation,” wrote La Jeunesse, “have been reassigned or promoted, their pensions intact. But many of those who blew the whistle face isolation, retaliation and transfer.”⁴⁶

As La Jeunesse recounted, the following people whose hands were all over the operation have appeared to benefit as a result, but in any event have not been punished:

• ATF Chief Ken Melson is working as an adviser in the Office of Legal Affairs.

• Acting Deputy Director Billy Hoover is the special agent in charge of the D.C. office.

• Deputy Director for Field Operations William McMahon is the second in command at the ATF’s Office of Internal Affairs.

• Special Agent in Charge of Phoenix Bill Newell was promoted to the Office of Management in Washington.

• Phoenix Deputy Chief George Gillette was promoted to Washington as ATF’s liaison to the U.S. Marshal’s Service.

• Group Supervisor David Voth has now been elevated to be chief of the ATF Tobacco Division, supervising more employees than he did in Phoenix.⁴⁷

As such, Field Agent John Dodson, whose whistleblowing helped to ensure the Terry family would learn the truth about the operation, was “isolated, marginalized and referred to as a ‘nut job,’ ‘wing-nut’ and ‘disgruntled.’” ATF command said that “contact with Dodson was detrimental to any ATF career.” Dobson, who had sole custody of his two teenagers and was behind on his house mortgage, transferred to South Carolina after being prohibited from working in Phoenix.⁴⁹

Other whistleblowers met a similar fate. Agent Larry Alt was transferred to Florida, Agent Peter Forcelli, noted above, was demoted to a desk job, Agent James Casa was transferred to Florida, Agent Carolos Canino was moved to Tucson, Agent Jose Wall was moved to Phoenix, and Agent Darren Gil has retired.⁵⁰

This was predictable, given Holder’s response when Issa asked him in February 2012 whether he would ever hold anyone accountable for the operation “because you haven’t done any so far, as far as we can tell.” Holder replied that he was prepared to hold people accountable right now—the whistleblowers, those who revealed contents of Fast and Furious wiretap applications that showed the operation’s transgressions.⁵¹

When Holder continued to stonewall subpoenas and other information requests, Darrell Issa sent a letter threatening to hold him in contempt of Congress and alleging the DOJ had “misrepresented facts and misled Congress.” The DOJ’s ignoring of the subpoenas, wrote Issa, “lead[s] us to conclude that the department is actively engaged in a cover-up. If the department continues to obstruct the congressional inquiry by not providing documents and information, this committee will have no alternative but to move forward with proceedings to hold you in contempt of Congress.”⁵²

In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, Holder claimed that Justice employees were working “tirelessly to identify, locate and provide relevant information” to Congress, “all while preserving the integrity of the ongoing criminal investigations and prosecutions.” Holder insisted that the documents show DOJ personnel were relying on information they’d received from supervisors in Arizona, though some of the information later turned out to be “inaccurate.”⁵³

But in the Senate, Grassley wasn’t satisfied, noting that Justice had yet to explain why it was withholding 74,000 pages it had given to the DOJ inspector general but not to Congress. Grassley remarked that he couldn’t take anything from Justice at face value, since Holder initially denied gunwalking had ever occurred before later admitting it had, and since Lanny Breuer was less than honest about the topic. “He [Breuer] stood mute as this administration fought tooth and nail to keep any of this information from coming out for a year,” said Grassley. “It will take a lot more than a knee-jerk defense from their political allies in Congress to restore public trust in the leadership of the Justice Department.”⁵⁴

Luckily for Holder, he had help from his Democratic colleagues. Continuing their counteroffensive, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee began running interference for him in anticipation of his testimony at a House Oversight Committee hearing on February 2, 2012. Just a few days before the hearing, Congressman Cummings filed a 95-page report claiming top DOJ officials did not authorize Fast and Furious. Though copious evidence indicated otherwise, Cummings’ report blamed “rogue” officials in the ATF Phoenix Field Division. The essential point was that this was purely a local operation, completely outside the knowledge of anyone important in the ATF or DOJ.

The main problem with this argument was that wiretaps for Fast and Furious were, according to CBS News, authorized by the second-in-command at Justice, Lanny Breuer.⁵⁵ Because wiretap applications must be scrupulously detailed and reviewed, it is highly unlikely Breuer would be ignorant of the specifics of the operation, including the gunwalking tactics.⁵⁶

With this in mind, during a congressional hearing, Congressman Gowdy asked Holder to acknowledge that wiretap applications in general are voluminous, long, and factual predicates. Holder agreed they were, but when asked about wiretap applications for Fast and Furious, he said he couldn’t discuss them, and later admitted he hadn’t even read them—an astounding admission considering the gravity of the investigation. When Gowdy could not get Holder to admit Breuer had reviewed the wiretap applications, he challanged Holder to deny that some other DOJ official would have had to review them. Holder dodged the question.⁵⁷

Gowdy expressed incredulity that Holder would deny Breuer had knowledge of Fast and Furious when Breuer had admitted it in emails. Holder said he was relying only on what Breuer had testified to—which is hard to believe. Nevertheless, if true, it’s inexcusable that Holder didn’t bother to ask Breuer directly about such a fundamental issue. In any case, Holder has access to the documents and was obligated especially after all these months, to know what’s in them.

Yet an email from Assistant Director in Charge of Field Operations Mark Chait related, “Internal ATF emails seem to suggest that ATF agents were counseled to highlight a link between criminals and certain semi-automatic weapons in order to bolster a case for a rule like the one the DOJ announced yesterday.” In another email, Chait wrote, “Bill—can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same FfL and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales.”⁵⁸ Thus, at a minimum, we can voice a reasonable suspicion that Fast and Furious was conceived, at least in part, as a gun control vehicle.

Even CNN’s Anderson Cooper seemed incredulous that the government designed a program ostensibly to trace gun purchases to Mexican cartels and make arrests when the ATF agents had no way of knowing where the guns would end up—and that Mexican agents, who would be the ones to make the arrests, weren’t even told about the operation at all. “So,” said Cooper, “a program meant to stop gun smuggling actually put weapons into criminals’ hands in Mexico.”⁵⁹

John Hayward, writing in Human Events in June 2011, raised the intriguing possibility that the Washington Post had run a piece in December 2011 that inadvertently disclosed indications that Fast and Furious was in fact meant to help build the case for tighter gun control laws. In the story, the Post reported on U.S. gun dealers with “the most traces for firearms recovered by police.” It gave “the names of the dealers, all from border states, with the most traces from guns recovered in Mexico over the past two years.” Hayward explained that the purpose of the story was to criticize a 2003 law that shields the government’s gun tracking database from the public, and also to suggest that many guns sold by these dealers were traveling across the border and being used in Mexican crimes. This law, according to the Post, was passed due to pressure from the dastardly gun lobby.

Interestingly, Hayward points out, the Post probably got its data from an ATF leaker, since this very law would have prevented the paper from obtaining the information legally. Hayward also pointed out that two of the gun dealers the Post highlighted had been recruited by the ATF in Operation Fast and Furious. The ATF reportedly instructed these shops to “keep selling” guns to drug cartel front men.

Hayward’s theory is that the ATF was feeding information to the press about American guns going into Mexico to build the administration’s case for tighter gun laws. Meanwhile, it was manipulating those very gun sales the Post was reporting on—and one of those guns ended up being used in the murder of Brian Terry the day after the Post story appeared. Hayward concluded:

Connect the dots: a story that almost certainly required information leaked by the ATF, in a paper noted for its friendliness to the Administration, was used to build the case that lax American gun control laws are contributing to Mexican gun crimes, when the ATF was secretly running a program that deliberately pushed American guns into the hands of Mexican cartels, without any serious plan to track them, until they were used in the commission of crimes. Now, take an educated guess what the true purpose of Operation Fast & Furious was.⁶⁰

While the White House, as of this writing, has not yet implemented these rules, it did issue regulations applicable to gun shops close to the U.S.-Mexican border, probably hoping to deflect attention from Fast and Furious. The Justice Department invoked a “new reporting measure—tailored to focus only on multiple sales of these types of rifles (semi-automatics greater than .22 caliber with the ability to accept a detachable magazine) to the same person within a five-day period.” The “targeted information requests” applied to Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas.⁶¹

The day before the February 2, 2012 hearing of the House Oversight Committee, committee staff for Chairman Darell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley issued a report detailing Main Justice’s involvement in Operation Fast and Furious. According to the report, DOJ headquarters had been passing blame for the operation on to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona and the ATF, despite the fact that both were under the DOJ’s domain. Main Justice, said the report, “had much greater knowledge of, and involvement in, Fast and Furious than it has previously acknowledged.”⁶²

The report discussed emails which showed that Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson had informed Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer that they wanted to take a “different approach” to seizing guns going to Mexico and that Breuer said it was a “terrific idea.” But Deputy Attorney General James Cole wrote Issa denying the claim that Breuer wanted the Phoenix division to be involved in gunwalking. The report concluded that the DOJ was “managing the congressional investigation in order to protect the political appointees at the department.”⁶³

During his testimony at the February hearing, Holder sarcastically alluded to the fact that he’d been summoned before Congress on Fast and Furious six times. Chairman Issa reminded him that not all those appearances were directly related to Fast and Furious, and that the investigation would have gone more quickly if he had been more cooperative. Before the hearing, the House Oversight Committee released a graphic called “Fortress Holder” to illustrate Holder’s stonewalling. The image shows, among other things, that over the past year, congressional investigators and the American people had been denied access to 92 percent of the documents related to Fast and Furious, 68 percent of subpoenaed document categories related to the operation, and forty-eight accounts from DOJ officials involved in the operation.⁶⁴

According to the committee report, ATF officials said their goal from the beginning was to go after the people at the top of the gun trafficking operation, not the low-level straw purchasers. That, supposedly, is why they didn’t confront those purchasers or interdict guns—they were focused on dismantling the entire cartel organizations. While the ATF said they were dealing with a very complex gun trafficking operation, the committee said, “In reality... the network was not complex.... It actually included a small cadre of about forty straw purchasers—only five of whom purchased 70 percent of the weapons—one ringleader (Manuel Celis-Acosta), and two cartel associates who were the link to the Sinaloa Cartel. The whole point of Fast and Furious . . . was to identify this ringleader and these two cartel associates.”⁶⁵

As it turns out, federal law enforcement officials had already identified the ringleader by December 2009. Also around that time, the operation had expanded to include fifteen interconnected straw purchasers known to have bought 500 firearms. The report makes clear that the ATF well understood that these gun sales—which the ATF allowed to proceed—were going to violent criminals. The ATF, based on DEA wiretap intercepts, had sufficient probable cause to make arrests as early as 2009, or at least to use other investigative techniques to disrupt the purchases and seize the weapons.

But the ATF chose not to act or to arrest Celis-Acosta. Instead, according to the committee report, the ATF wanted to get its own wiretaps and build up its own case. This decision “ensured that Fast and Furious lasted nearly a year longer, with 1,500 more guns being purchased—including the guns bought by Jaime Avila in January 2010 that were found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.” It wasn’t until the ATF finally brought in Celis-Acosta in January 2011 that it learned the identities of the two cartel associates.

It was later discovered that other branches of the DOJ had already been aware of the two associates because their names often appeared in DEA logs provided to the ATF as early as December 2009. But the ATF missed the names because it failed to review this information.

Additionally, the DEA and FBI had jointly opened a separate investigation specifically targeting the two men. Thus, by January 2010, both agencies had collected abundant information on them. Yet the ATF, unaware of that, “spent the next year engaging in the reckless tactics of Fast and Furious in attempting to identify them.” Adding insult to injury, the FBI made the two men informants, preventing their indictment. The upshot was “that the entire goal of Fast and Furious—to target these two individuals and bring them to justice—was a failure.” The ATF apparently disputed that the two were untouchable.⁶⁶

Consistent with its posture throughout the investigation, the DOJ barely demonstrated any concern for the egregious absence of information-sharing among its three subsidiary entities—the ATF, DEA, and FBI. Upon being apprised of this situation, the deputy attorney general merely remarked, “We will look into it.”⁶⁷ Fortunately, it was not only Republicans who were alarmed by the DOJ’s misdeeds. Concerned about the lack of interagency coordination along the border and the miscommunication between law enforcement agencies concerning Fast and Furious, Senator Joe Lieberman, an independent, directed staff of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which he chairs, to examine the situation.⁶⁸

The committee report explained the acquisition of wiretap affidavits that eventually led to the authorization of seven federal wiretaps. The affidavits established the necessity for wiretaps by detailing—with specificity—why other investigative techniques were insufficient. What was appalling was that no one in either ATF leadership or any political appointees at Main Justice admitted to having reviewed the affidavits, even though someone among them had to have read them to approve their issuance. As the committee observed, “Because of the Wiretap Affidavits, the Criminal Division at Main Justice was in a position to know as much about Fast and Furious as ATF. Both Justice Department and ATF leaders in Washington, D.C. claimed that they were unaware of the gunwalking that occurred during Fast and Furious, yet both could have and should have reviewed the Wiretap Affidavits.”⁶⁹ This is precisely the point Congressman Gowdy was pressing Eric Holder to admit during the February 2012 hearing.

Moreover, the ATF was directly aware of the purchase of weapons when they occurred, because agents were monitoring feeds from cameras inside the stores of cooperating gun dealers. Indeed, ATF Agent Dodson, during a March 3, 2011 CBS News interview, showed footage of ATF agents watching known straw purchasers leave a gun store and load their new weapons into their vehicles. The committee report stated that Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein and his Criminal Division should have known, based on the wiretap affidavits, that the ATF agents were witnessing, monitoring, and recording the purchases and illegal transfers of the weapons. They also should have known that in some cases these weapons were being recovered in Mexico within a day of their purchase.

Weinstein testified that he was unaware of the detailed information in the affidavits because his general practice was only to review the summary memos, not the affidavits themselves. But Weinstein did admit he reviewed what he thought were three of the Fast and Furious wiretaps, saying he found nothing in them that concerned him. Nothing, he said, gave him “any reason to suspect that guns were walking in that case in Fast and Furious.” And if he had encountered such information, he “would have reacted very strongly to it.” The committee report said it is now clear why Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer were so adamant in their testimony to explain that the Criminal Division reviews the wiretap affidavits only to see if they are legally sufficient, and not to evaluate the appropriateness of tactics. “That distinction,” said the report, “is essential in order to avoid responsibility for knowing of the tactics described in the Wiretap Affidavits.”⁷⁰

This typified the DOJ’s attitude toward the entire investigation—showing a “serious lack of inquisitiveness when it came to discovering details about Operation Fast and Furious,” and obstructing the committee’s investigation at every turn. Ken Melson’s testimony that Justice was managing the investigation to protect its political appointees turned out, according to the committee report, to be “prophetic.” The department “has blamed everyone except for its political appointees for Fast and Furious. This includes the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona, the ATF Phoenix Field Division, and even ATF Headquarters.”⁷¹

In its conclusion, the committee said that the ATF blames Main Justice for encouraging Fast and Furious while the DOJ blames the ATF and Arizona’s U.S. Attorney’s Office. Meanwhile, the DOJ officials in a position to stop the operation blame their staffs for not bringing the critical issues to their attention. Additionally, U.S. Attorney’s Office personnel have either taken the Fifth Amendment in refusing to testify before Congress or have been prohibited by the DOJ from talking to Congress altogether. As Melson testified, the Department is clearly “circling the wagons to protect its political appointees.”

And we can never forget the real victims here. As the committee report stated, “The family of Brian Terry, the families of countless citizens of Mexico slain by weapons purchased through Fast and Furious, and the American people deserve to know the truth.”⁷²

The Obama administration has gone to great lengths to distance itself from Fast and Furious. Yet the operation shows many hallmarks of Obama’s governance, from its excessive secrecy to the incompetence of its execution to the refusal of anyone to take responsibility. We still don’t know at what level of the administration this operation was ultimately approved—and Attorney General Holder seems determined that we never find out. Regardless, Operation Fast and Furious testifies to a federal government that, while itself is out of control, demands ever more control over our guns, our economy, and our everyday lives.

“THIS DEATH MIGHT NOT HAVE OCCURRED HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR RECKLESS DECISIONS”

“I HAVE NOT TRIED TO EQUATE THE TWO”

FAST AND FURIOUS REQUIRED AGENTS TO ABANDON THEIR TRAINING

“LITERALLY, MY MOUTH FELL OPEN”

COVER-UP AND RETALIATION

THE LETTER “CONTAINS INACCURACIES”

HOLDER: LYING OR WOEFULLY INATTENTIVE?

“NO ONE AT JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HEADQUARTERS HAS FACED ANY MEANINGFUL CONSEQUENCES”

“ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN A COVER-UP”

CONNECTING THE DOTS

“A SERIOUS LACK OF INQUISITIVENESS”