Will Project GunRunner End Obama?

[tommyc]

There seems to be lies on top of lies from the DOJ on who knew what about Project GunRunner aka Fast and Furious.

The death of two federal agents were paid for by federal stimulus money according to reports.

Know of any Republicans (cough*Paul Ryan*cough) that voted for the Stimulus Package? If you do, then Project Gunrunner–that criminal enterprise undertaken by the federal government to deliver guns into the hands of Mexican banditos and drug cartels–was that holiest of Washington creatures: a bipartisan effort.

Both parties “reaching across the aisle” to ensure that more Americans and Mexicans die from the criminal activities of our “leaders.”

More Details–as well as a plethora of linked source: Project Gunrunner Funded By 2009 Stimulus: Obama Signed For It

AND: Project Gunrunner” (A.K.A Fast and Furious) executed over the objections of the ATF agents involved. This last link is not too surprising: the ATF agents are supposed to be against crime–instead of implementing it.

MORE @ DBKP:
* Sad Hill News: Freeze
* Project Gunrunner Plan: Professional U.S. Government Criminals Catching Mexican Criminals

A few questions are raised by the info at the links.

1- What do all of the Senators and Congressman have to say about this? Many were aware of HR 495, which was a bill specifically proposed to fund the killing of Americans–and Mexicans. It was dropped after the funding was rolled into the Stimulus Bill.

2- What does Eager Beaver Super Roadmap Drawer, Paul Ryan (R-WI) have to say about voting for the funds that funded Project Gunrunner? He wasn’t the only Republican to do so, but he’s the most vocal proponent of “cutting waste” and “putting the country on the road to fiscal responsibility.”

Ryan has yet to apologize for his many votes funding the trillions of dollars of debt run up by the Obama administration. Project Gunrunner seems to be just another item the media won’t ask and Ryan won’t tell.

3- It seems that it will be hard for calls for an investigation to gain much traction: It appears that everyone in The D.C. (Den of Corruption) either knew about it, voted for it, helped implement it or a combination of the above.

MORE: Someone in Congress knew about Gunrunner, and Obama signed funding for it into law

As Patrick Richardson (at the above link) says: “So Obama didn’t know anything about this, but he signed $10,000,000 in funding for the program. This thing would stink on a dung pile. It’s time for indictments.”

Richardson is right, but the question remains: Who has untainted hands? Where will the accountability come from?

The Department of Justice? Congress? The complicit House of Representatives and its supposedly “watchdog” Republicans? Our completely broken Corporate Media Stooges? When the press remains silent–as it largely has–it becomes a willing accomplice in the crime.

La Raza? The many so-called “Hispanic advocates?” How do they feel about this Kill-A-Mexican-Palooza? Apparently, these fearless crusaders are just fine with it because they’ve zipped their lips.

As they used to say in the Old West:

Hangin’s too good for ‘em.

Any of ‘em.

 

[tommyc]

Posted on July 10, 2011 at 8:15 PM EST
By Aaron Klein

Escalating a scandal that could rock the Obama administration, it has emerged the U.S. government trained Mexican police officers in precincts known to be corrupt as part of a scheme that ended up running guns into Mexico.

“Project Gunrunner” was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in conjunction with the Justice Department and the FBI.

As part of the project, the ATF conducted twelve training sessions for Mexican police in several Mexican cities, according to the Government Accountability Office, or GAO.

The ATF trained officers at police stations that were raided and shut down by the Mexican government as part of a massive corruption sting in which police officers were arrested.

In spite of the GAO report, the ATF claimed in October 2010 that it only trained about 20 people in Mexico as part of the gunrunning scheme. This discrepancy has not been explained by either the GOA or the ATF.

According to the GAO report, the ATF trained Mexican police in the cities of Mexico City, Tijuana, Nuevo Laredo, Rosarito, and Matamoros.

Most of those cities had their police forces subject to massive Mexican government raids in which the police had their weapons confiscated and some were arrested.

In November 2008, for example, the Mexican Army rounded up and disarmed 157 Matamoros police officers. Matamoros is located just south of the border city of Brownsville, Texas .

In January 2008, Mexican soldiers disarmed dozens of police officers in three border cities on suspicions that the officers had been protecting drug cartels, including in Mexico City.

In January 2007, the Mexican army confiscated guns from the entire police force of Rosarito, near the Mexican border with the US., on suspicion the town’s police were colluding with drug trafficking gangs.

Also that January, the entire Tijuana police force walked off the job after being effectively disarmed by the Mexican army as part of the same raid.

The ATF had been training the Mexican officers in a system called eTrace, which was the basis for “Project Gunrunner.”

Project Gunrunner is purportedly meant to stop the sale and export of U.S. guns to Mexico by denying Mexican drug cartels firearms. However, the project allegedly has resulted in allowing thousands of guns to cross into Mexico, where many of the weapons are currently untraceable and in the hands of Mexican criminals.

The same guns run into Mexico under the Project Gunrunner scheme have reportedly been recovered from crime scenes in Arizona and throughout Mexico.

One gun, reportedly recovered at the scene, is allegedly the weapon used to murder Customs and Border Protection Agent Brian Terry on December 14, 2010.

The project was first founded under President Bush as a bipartisan effort in 2005, when it had its inception as a pilot run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The project is in conjunction with the Justice Department and the FBI.

While Project Gunrunner was run by a few dozen officers under Bush, it has since received an infusion of cash from the Obama administration, becoming a full-time project staffed by over 200.

WND reported that tucked away inside Obama’s stimulus, was $10 million in funding for the ATF’s Project Gunrunner. This is in addition to $11 million already provided to the program under Obama, and another $12 million more requested by the White House for the end of this year.

The entire project revolves around tracing the U.S. guns that are allowed into Mexico using a program called eTrace, which is an Internet-based firearm trace request submission system.

eTrace does not electronically tag any of the guns. It simply serves as an online database that contains all registered information for each gun, including the personal information for all registered owners as well as whether law enforcement has information the gun was ever used in a crime. In essence, eTrace is a giant firearms monitoring database.

Once a gun enters the black market, the system cannot provide future information on a firearm unless the weapon is retrieved in a crime or once again enters into official registration.

eTrace was thought to have been advantageous to Project Gunrunner because it could provide information on “straw purchases,” meaning proxies who legally purchase a gun for a known criminal.

The ATF has repeatedly stated its tracing system was not designed to collect statistics. Still, the agency used information it claimed to have garnered from Project Gunrunner to release what turned out to be highly misleading information about U.S. guns.

In February 2008, William Hoover, Assistant Director for Field Operations of ATF, testified before Congress that over 90% of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or intercepted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the U.S.

Hoover’s statistics were officially released by the ATF and were subsequently cited in a flurry of news media pieces claiming the vast majority of illicit firearms in Mexico originate in the U.S.

The GAO used ATF’s 90% statistic in an official report to Congress about American firearms. The Justice Department also incorporated the data in several of its programs.

However, after a series of independent reports contradicted the ATF claims, the ATF then admitted in November 2010 that its “90% figure cited to Congress could be misleading because it applied only to the small portion of Mexican crime guns that are traced.”

The ATF admitted its statistics were based on the guns it traced, all of which originated in the U.S., thus skewing the data.

Project Gunrunner and its various inceptions, including “Operation Fast and Furious,” are coming under newfound scrutiny with a public investigation headed by Sen. Charles Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa.

Obama himself responded to the controversy in an interview with a Spanish television station in which he stated someone must take the fall.

“There may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made. If that’s the case, then we’ll find out and we’ll hold someone accountable,” he told Univision TV.

Acting ATF director Kenneth Melson told Issa in an emergency session on July 4th that he first learned about Project Gunrunner Terry’s murder and that the scheme made him “sick to my stomach.”

Melson reportedly told Issa that those who ran the controversial project at the ATF were reassigned, but that he couldn’t tell Congress the reason for the reassignments.

Issa followed up with a letter accusing the Justice Department, headed by Eric Holder, of obstructing his investigation.

“If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand. That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation,” Issa wrote.

In subsequent testimony before Issa’s commission this past week, Holder stated under oath that he only learned about the gunrunning project “in the last few weeks.”

However, BigGovernment.com found a 2009 speech by Holder on the Department of Justice’s own website in which Holder boasts about “Project Gunrunner.”

Stated Holder in 2009: “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.”

 

[Momanohedhunter]

Cool avatar, and no, it wont. Traditionally, the in Holders position would throw him self in his sword and resign to save his President. This administration lacks integrity so they will just continue to cover it up.

 

[tommyc]

Cool avatar, and no, it wont. Traditionally, the in Holders position would throw him self in his sword and resign to save his President. This administration lacks integrity so they will just continue to cover it up.

Thanks for the compliment on the avatar!

A lot of people i talk to outside the internet have never heard of "Project Gunrunner", it sounds like you have and i have a tendency to agree though Rep.Issa is holding some pretty intense investigational meetings on Tuesday that may blow the lid off this.

 

[tommyc]

Obama's Watergate:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PNhYk9NuNc&feature=player_embedded]‪Obama Orders Launched Fast and Furious‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Full-Auto]

Know of any Republicans (cough*Paul Ryan*cough) that voted for the Stimulus Package?


There were three, Two senators from maine and the third escapes me at the moment.

In any case all guilty of accessory to murder.

 

[tommyc]

ATF Mexico Report

 

[tommyc]

New info on "Project Gunrunner".

Holder Lied, Agents Died? - Investors.com

"Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals — this was the plan," ATF agent John Dodson testified before Rep. Darrell Issa's House Government Oversight Committee. "It was so mandated." Agent Olindo James Casa said that "on several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms."

 

[tommyc]

"a key ATF manager told Congress he discussed the case with a White House National Security staffer as early as September 2010."

ATF Manager says he shared Fast and Furious Info with White House - CBS News Investigates - CBS News

 

[tommyc]

Even more news on "Gunrunner".

ATF: The White House Knew - Investors.com

 

[Zona]

I was wrong when I said the burfers were going to be the ones who gets him kicked out of office. I know this will be the one thing that does it though....woohooo...

Great thread.

 

[BoycottTheday]

Dont leave out the State Department in all this:

Worse Than Gunwalker? State Dept. Allegedly Sold Guns to Zetas

My local paper hasnt said a word about any of this so dont be surprised when no one knows, the Govt media complex is in overdrive to cover up this one.

 

[tommyc]

Dont leave out the State Department in all this:

Worse Than Gunwalker? State Dept. Allegedly Sold Guns to Zetas

My local paper hasnt said a word about any of this so dont be surprised when no one knows, the Govt media complex is in overdrive to cover up this one.

This has been ignored for the most part by the media all across the country though there has been some sparse mention by the national MSM.

 

[tommyc]

I was wrong when I said the burfers were going to be the ones who gets him kicked out of office. I know this will be the one thing that does it though....woohooo...

Great thread.

Even though this is off topic i thought i would throw this out there since you mentioned it.

Exclusive: Court Subpoena for Obama’s Original Birth Certificate Served to Hawaii Health Department | The Post & Email

 

[whitehall]

The scandal could ruin any administration depending on the focus it gets in the so-called mainstream media. Look what a second rate burglary did to the Nixon administration. A couple of enterprising fiction writers created a mythical "informant" called deep-throat and Nixon was out of a job. Clinton dodged the bullet in the ATF Waco massacre because the media was on his side. Likewise Obama gets a pass for the ATF weapons debacle because the media is out to defend him rather than searching for the truth.

 

[MikeK]

Anticipation of the effect of this federal faux pas is ambitious and exaggerated.

If the Waco massacre couldn't sink the ATF and didn't splash a drop on the Clinton/Reno Administration this relatively obscure and bureaucratically complex issue certainly won't do it. The American public simply does not and cannot relate to the circumstances in this bizarre example of brazen corruption and the convoluted explanations they will hear, mainly from government, which will pass through one ear and out the other without a momentary pause.

The drug war brainwash has been going on far too long to be interrupted or diverted by something as trivial as this.

 

[tommyc]

Anticipation of the effect of this federal faux pas is ambitious and exaggerated.

If the Waco massacre couldn't sink the ATF and didn't splash a drop on the Clinton/Reno Administration this relatively obscure and bureaucratically complex issue certainly won't do it. The American public simply does not and cannot relate to the circumstances in this bizarre example of brazen corruption and the convoluted explanations they will hear, mainly from government, which will pass through one ear and out the other without a momentary pause.

The drug war brainwash has been going on far too long to be interrupted or diverted by something as trivial as this.

I wouldn't call the deaths of two ATF agents and 40,000 Mexican citizens trivial, and i would hope somebody in MSM media would really start following this story.

 

[tommyc]

Sen. Cornyn now is chiming in.

Cornyn demands answers on gun probe - Washington Times

 

[jillian]

who cares? more political hackery from the right...

reality check for the rightwingnut loons:

stuff like this is only meaningful to people who wouldn't have voted for the president, anyway. in order to win in 2012, the president has to not only be doing poorly, but the repubs have to offer a viable alternative. and it doesn't look like the tea loons plan on letting that happen.

what matters is what always matters... how is YOUR family doing? and can the proposed alternative make it better?

 

[tommyc]

since Congress was on vacation but new developements have surfaced and I see others have started threads but I will stick with mine.

Authorities Confirm Gun Found In Arizona Is Third At U.S. Crime Scene Tied To ATF's 'Fast And Furious' | Fox News