I'm going to reply in a couple parts here, I have limited time today (and I want to reach the link threshold

) . . . Thanks for the compliments.
You just aren't giving this crowd enough credit.
Let's put it this way . . .
If one
was going to put into action a plan to grease the path of weapons smuggling "under the radar" (which is how Obama told Sarah Brady he was working on gun control) to effect a crisis intended to sway public opinion to call for ATF to enact regional regulations (as a worst case outcome i.e.,
Demand Letter 3) or
much, much better, the reenactment of an even more encompassing national Assault Weapons Ban . . .
No better people could have been chosen to be in the governmental command structure with both the required political allegiance and knowledge of the workings of the region, to see this agenda is acted on and brought to completion.
Let's look at just
one link in the chain . . . (which gives some insight into the interrelationships):
Dennis Burke, while he served as the Majority Counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee is credited (along with Rahm Emmanuel, then senior advisor to President Clinton) as being the political architects of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban. With Gore's loss in 2000, Burke moved to become Chief Deputy AG in Arizona under State Attorney General Janet Napolitano. When Napolitano became Arizona Governor, Burke became her Chief of Staff. There he was intimately involved with her cross-border anti-drug and gun trafficking initiatives including the expansion of eTrace into Mexico. In 2009 of course Napolitano became Obama's Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and Burke came with her to DC, becoming a "Senior Advisor" to the Secretary.
On Wednesday, September 16, 2009, Burke was sworn in as the United States Attorney for the District of Arizona.
That is the
moment Fast and Furious began.
Burke resigned August 30, 2011 after it became known that he personally ordered retaliation against the initial ATF Agents who went public with the details of Fast and Furious. His underling, Chief of the Criminal Division, AUSA Cunningham has resigned, refused to testify to House Oversight and invoked the 5th.
To add insult to murder, the Terry case has been sealed . . . Now who would have gone to a federal judge for that?
When the layers of this onion are peeled back, the real operational base of command for this fiasco / scandal will be DHS/NSC.
AG Holder may very well be as disconnected and incompetent as he claims.