ATF Chief Admits Mistakes in 'Fast and Furious,' Accuses Holder Aides of Stonewalling

[Ringel05]

WASHINGTON -- The head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has admitted that his agency, in at least one instance, allowed sales of high-powered weapons without intercepting them -- and he accuses his superiors at the Justice Department of stonewalling Congress to protect political appointees in the scandal over those decisions.

Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson made the disclosures about the so-called Operation Fast and Furious in an interview with congressional investigators looking into the controversial anti-gunrunning initiative.

ATF Chief Admits Mistakes in 'Fast and Furious,' Accuses Holder Aides of Stonewalling Congress - FoxNews.com

 

[waltky]

Straw Buyers at heart of ATF gun-running scandal...

Operation Fast and Furious: The Straw Buyers
July 20, 2011 | When the Operation Fast and Furious indictment was announced back in January, it was depicted as a big bust. Twenty suspects were charged with numerous counts of conspiracy, money laundering, gun running and drug trafficking. The defendants faced 5 to 20 years on a single count.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives(ATF) along with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix claimed to have dismantled a major weapons trafficking organization from top to bottom- from the end user of the weapons in Mexico to the money men, those who smuggled and transported the weapons from the U.S. into Mexico, and the buyers on our side of the border. Yet after thousands of man hours and millions of dollars spent, only one of the 20 suspects remains behind bars. Most were released within 24 hours of their arrest. In the end, all prosecutors got was one middle man and a handful of straw buyers.

Fox News paid a visit to some of the straw buyers in the Phoenix Metro area last week. What we found were young men, many living with their parents, who were apparently just looking to make some quick money. "A straw buyer is usually a kid who is 18-25, who needs a couple hundred extra bucks and knows somebody who knows somebody that has a way to make a couple extra bucks," said Adrian Fontes, an attorney for the accused ringleader of this Operation. His client, Manuel Celis- Acosta is the only one still in jail. "The government wants a dramatic indictment, they want the conspiracy to sound like it's run out by highly sophisticated individuals who are involved with a particularly nefarious organization when the reality is it's just a bunch of kids," said Fontes.

Those "kids" purchased more than 1800 guns from stores in and around Phoenix. The straw buyers reportedly received about $100 per transaction. The gun stores say they were assured by the ATF and U.S. attorneys that the weapons would be tracked. Instead, agents say the weapons were allowed to "walk", they were not followed and many ended up in Mexico. Along with crime scenes south of the border, two were also found at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Former U.S. Attorney Melvin McDonald says the defendants' release suggests that Operation Fast and Furious is not only a scandal, it was a failure. " It's pretty scary," says McDonald. " You'd think a lot of people probably would not get out , they'd be detained because of the risk."

The parents of some of the straw buyers claim their sons just got caught up with the wrong crowd. The mother of 18-year old Dejan Hercegovac, who bought more than 30 guns, said, "He didn't know anything.. he was just a kid." The father of Erick Avila- Davila, a 25-year old who bought 12 guns, said he didn't know what his son was up to and only found out when he was arrested. " When I ask him what he did, he just told me 'I'm sorry dad'."

Read more: Operation Fast and Furious: The Straw Buyers - FoxNews.com

 

[waltky]

ATF attempt to cover their butt...

ATF sought to downplay guns scandal, emails show
July 21, 2011, As Sen. Charles Grassley and congressional investigators looked into the Fast and Furious operation and the killing of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, ATF officials took steps to throw them off the trail.

Two days after U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry was killed in December, the top ATF supervisors in Phoenix said in internal emails that weapons found at the scene in Arizona came from a failed agency sting operation. But nearly two months later, when U.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) inquired about the origin of the guns, senior officials in Washington with the Justice Department and its Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were evasive.

Grassley asked whether the guns were "used" in the killing. According to agency emails obtained by the Tribune/Times Washington bureau, the Justice Department response to Grassley said that "these allegations are not true." The response made no acknowledgement that the guns were even there. ATF officials, speaking not for attribution because the probe is ongoing, said they saw a distinction between the guns being found at the scene and "used" in the killing. They said the FBI had determined that neither of the two AK-47 semiautomatics was the one that killed the agent.

U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian A. Terry was fatally shot north of the Arizona-Mexico border. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

The parsing of the response to Grassley fit a pattern of ATF and Justice Department officials seeking to minimize the depth of the problems with the sting operation run by the ATF's Phoenix field office. The goal of the sting operation, dubbed Fast and Furious, was to observe but not prevent a series of illegal gun purchases in the hopes that agents could follow the guns and learn about smuggling routes into Mexico. The program, which began in November 2009, largely failed. ATF lost track of many of the weapons. Along with the two guns found at the Terry shooting, nearly 200 more were found at crime scenes in Mexico.

After the death of Terry and Grassley's inquiries, the agency sought to close ranks. In an email on Feb. 3, ATF supervisors were told "you are in no way obligated to respond to congressional contacts or requests for information.... You are not authorized to disclose non-public information about law enforcement matters outside of ATF or the Department of Justice to anyone, including congressional staff." In addition, in a series of emails to William J. Hoover, the ATF's acting deputy director, bureau officials discussed what steps to take to throw Grassley and congressional investigators off the trail.

MORE

 

[waltky]

An' dey didn't even have to bribe the ATF...

How Mexican killers got US guns from 'Fast and Furious' operation
July 26, 2011 - US officials thought they would catch Mexican criminals in a bold gun-running sting called 'Fast and Furious.' Instead, they inadvertently armed drug cartels as the operation spiraled out of control, a congressional report finds.

On May 29, Mexican federal police in four helicopters attacked a drug cartel in a mountain redoubt. They were rebuffed by heavy fire, including from a massive .50 caliber rifle. A bullet hole left in one helicopter's plate glass window is one exhibit in an exhaustive House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report released Tuesday showing the breadth of a high-stakes, unprecedented, and, ultimately, ill-advised US scheme called "Operation Fast and Furious." The .50 caliber bullet hole, the report says, likely came from a gun trafficked via Fast and Furious, an operation to allow nearly 2,000 arms to leave US gunshops via certain traffickers who the US government had identified and thought it could track. The idea was to trace these "straw buyers" to key cartel figures in an attempt to score major gun busts to prove the US was serious about stopping arms trafficking across the border.

Instead, the report alleges that the operation – which one US official has called "a perfect storm of idiocy" – likely allowed hundreds of powerful guns to cross into Mexico, possibly changing the outcome of cartel battles with Mexican police, leading to the deaths of many Mexicans and one federal agent, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, and damaging diplomatic relations between the US and Mexico. The Fast and Furious scandal is still playing out, with hearings in the House Oversight Committee Tuesday. Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R) of California says he is intent on finding out how high in the Obama administration knowledge of the operation went.

The report, "Fueling Cartel Violence," backs reports that leaders in the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) were aware of the operation. But it also names several key Department of Justice officials, such as Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, as "clearly" being aware of the operation – a charge that the Obama administration denies. According to whistleblowers and key witnesses, however, the real lesson behind Fast and Furious, a two-year operation that ended in January 2011, is how "groupthink" clouded decision-making at the highest levels of government, causing an agency to go against its basic instincts – which is to not allow arms to be trafficked illegally – and consequently contribute, not detract, from border violence.

"These guns weren't going for a positive cause, they were going for a negative cause," ATF attaché Carlos Canino told the congressional oversight committee. "The ATF armed the [Sinaloa] cartel. It's disgusting." Despite repeated pushback from some agents and the attaché office in Mexico City, ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson assessed it as "a good operation," the report says. According to witnesses, Assistant Attorney General Breuer appeared to cite Fast and Furious in meetings with Mexican officials, saying the US had a major gun-interdiction effort underway out of Phoenix, the report adds.

Where the guns went

See also:

ATF agents denounce Mexico gun operation
July 26, 2011 -- U.S. firearms agents based in Mexico bitterly denounced their bosses Tuesday for a sting operation and keeping them in the dark.

Testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Darren Gil, a former attache for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, said: "I would like to apologize to ... the people of Mexico for Fast and Furious. I hope they understand it was kept secret from me and my colleagues."

"Operation Fast and Furious is indeed a disaster," he said. The committee, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has been investigating the ATF operation, which allowed illicit firearms to get into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

Jose Wall, an AFT agent in Tijuana, said: "I could not believe that someone in ATF would so callously let firearms wind up in the hands of criminals. But it appears that I was wrong." Carlos Canino, the current acting ATF attache at the embassy, said: "I would like to inform this committee and the American public that I believe what happened here was inexcusable, and we in Mexico had no part in it.

"These allegations stemming from this case, that a few ATF agents and supervisors deliberately allowed guns to walk, have destroyed ATF's credibility with our Mexican law enforcement partners and the Mexican public," Canino said. Earlier Tuesday, Issa's committee released a report in which Canino and other agents said ATF higher-ups in Phoenix and Washington ignored their agents' warnings until Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in Arizona last December and two AK-47s sold in the Fast and Furious sting were found at the scene.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011...n-operation/UPI-56961311694599/#ixzz1TGadyW2a

 

[waltky]

Suspected Cartel Leader Admits 1,500 Murders...

Mexico drug cartel suspect Acosta 'admits killings'
31 July 2011 - Police in Mexico say a suspected cartel leader they arrested on Friday has confessed to ordering the murder of 1,500 people in northern Chihuahua state.

Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez, 33, is also suspected of masterminding the attack on a US consulate worker and her husband in Ciudad Juarez last year. Officials say Mr Acosta Hernandez is a key figure in the Juarez cartel. Juarez is Mexico's most violent city, with more than 3,000 murders in 2010. The suspect, who is better known as El Diego, is accused of being the leader of the La Linea gang, whose members work as hired killers for the Juarez cartel.

The cartel controls some of the main drug smuggling routes from Ciudad Juarez into the United States. Police believe El Diego was also behind a car bomb attack which killed four people in the border city, the first such attack in Mexico's spiralling drug-related violence. Head of Mexico's federal police anti-drug unit Ramon Pequeno said Mr Acosta Hernandez had also admitted to ordering the killing of 15 people, most of them teenagers, at a party in Ciudad Juarez last year. The Mexican government had offered 15m Mexican pesos ($1,275,000; £778,000) for information leading to his arrest.

US prosecutors said they wanted to try him in the case of the 2010 killing of US consulate employee Lesley Enriquez, her American husband Arthur Redelfs, and the husband of another consular worker, Jorge Alberto Salcedo. They were shot dead in their car after leaving a social event in the city. Ms Enriquez, 35, was four months pregnant when she died. The couple's seven-month-old daughter survived the attack and was found crying in the back seat. Mr Salcedo was killed in a near-simultaneous drive-by shooting as he drove away from the same event.

BBC News - Mexico drug cartel suspect Acosta 'admits killings'

 

[Mad Scientist]

Yeah, when the gov't does it it's "Controversial" and explains it away by sayin' "Mistakes were made".

But if you or I (Joe Citizen) were to do the same, we'd be in jail for the rest of our lives.

Some one in Gov't needs to go to jail for the rest of his life.

 

[daveman]

This Administration is astoundingly incompetent in every facet of its operations.

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Well somebody goofed up...

Firearms from ATF sting linked to 11 more violent crimes
August 17, 2011 : Reporting from Washington — Guns from Operation Fast and Furious were found at scenes in Arizona and Texas, the Justice Department acknowledges, widening the scope of the danger posed by the program.

Firearms from the ATF's Operation Fast and Furious weapons trafficking investigation turned up at the scenes of at least 11 violent crimes in the U.S., as well as at a Border Patrol agent's slaying in southern Arizona last year, the Justice Department has acknowledged to Congress. The department did not provide details about the crimes. But The Times has learned that they occurred in several Arizona cities, including Phoenix, where Fast and Furious was managed, as well as in El Paso, where a total of 42 weapons from the operation were seized at two crime scenes. The new numbers, which expand the scope of the danger the program posed to U.S. citizens over a 14-month period, are contained in a letter that Justice Department officials turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee last month.

In the letter, obtained by The Times on Tuesday, Justice Department officials also reported that Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives officials advised them that the agency's acting director, Kenneth E. Melson, "likely became aware" of the operation as early as December 2009, a month after it began. Melson has said he did not learn about how the operation was run until January of this year, when it was canceled. The July 22 letter, signed by Assistant Atty. Gen. Ronald Weich, was sent to Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), the top members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was in response to questions posed to the Justice Department about Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. and the weapons operation.

The program was intended to identify Mexican drug cartel leaders and smuggling routes across the border by allowing illegal purchases of firearms and tracking the weapons. Instead, many of the guns vanished. Weich said that although the "ATF does not have complete information" on all of the lost guns, "it is our understanding that ATF is aware of 11 instances" beyond the Border Patrol agent's killing where a Fast and Furious firearm "was recovered in connection with a crime of violence in the United States." Justice Department officials did not provide any more details about the crimes or how many guns were found.

But a source close to the controversy, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation, said that as early as January 2010, just after the operation began, weapons had turned up at crime scenes in Phoenix, Nogales, Douglas and Glendale in Arizona, and in El Paso. The largest haul was 40 weapons at one crime scene in El Paso. In all, 57 of the operation's weapons were recovered at those six crime scenes, in addition to the two seized where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed. Weich's letter also said a total of 1,418 firearms were circulated under the program. How many remain missing in the U.S. and Mexico is unclear. The total is considerably lower than earlier estimates, when authorities said that at least 2,000 guns had vanished.

MORE

See also:

Senator Blasts ATF’s Reported Promotion of Supervisors in Ill-Fated Gun Operation
August 16, 2011 | A top Republican senator slammed the Justice Department for reportedly promoting the supervisors of the failed anti-gunrunning sting operation Fast and Furious, which is under a federal and congressional investigation after weapons linked to program were used in a December attack in Mexico that killed a U.S. border patrol agent.

The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives promoted three key supervisors of Operation Fast and Furious who came under fire for pushing the program even after it clearly spiraled out of control. The three supervisors -- William Newell and David Voth, both field supervisors who managed the program out of the agency’s Phoenix office, and William McMahon, who was the ATF’s deputy director of operations in the West -- are being transferred to Washington for new management positions at the agency’s headquarters, the newspaper reported.

“Until Attorney General (Eric) Holder and Justice Department officials come clean on all alleged gun-walking operations, including a detailed response to allegations of a Texas-based scheme, it is inconceivable to reward those who spearheaded this disastrous operation with cushy desks in Washington,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Cornyn sent a letter to Holder last week demanding answers following reports of alleged Texas-based “gun-walking” programs similar to “Fast and Furious.” Holder insists that he didn’t know about the operation as it was being carried out. But Republican leaders say he should have known. Spokesmen for the ATF did not return phone calls to the newspaper seeking comment.

At a congressional hearing in June, three ATF agents said they were repeatedly ordered to step aside while gun buyers in Arizona walked away with AK-47s and other high-powered weaponry headed for Mexican drug cartels. So far, 20 small-time gun-buyers have been indicted, but the investigation is still under way. ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson admitted last month to congressional investigators that his agency, in at least one instance, allowed sales of high-powered weapons without intercepting them -- and he accuses his superiors at the Justice Department of stonewalling Congress to protect political appointees in the scandal over those decisions. The operation was designed to track small-time gun buyers up to major weapons traffickers along the U.S. border with Mexico. Critics estimate that 1,800 guns targeted in the operation are unaccounted for, and about two-thirds of those probably are in Mexico.

Source

 

[Claudette]

Mistakes??

Sounds like one giant clusterfuck to me.