http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-i...on-sources-say
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ botched Operation Fast and Furious was not a “renegade operation” but a coordinated effort “from the top down,” congressional sources and ATF insiders told the Seattle Gun Rights Examiner today.
The suggestion surfaced in
National Law Enforcement Examiner Jim Kouri’s column, quoting an unnamed New Jersey police commander who referred to the controversial gun trafficking sting as a “renegade operation.”
One police commander in New Jersey told Law Enforcement Examiner, "We need to get to the bottom of this renegade operation fast. I am furious that our government actually contributed to the killing of two American law enforcement officers -- one in the U.S., the other in Mexico." - Jim Kouri
According to sources close to the on-going investigations conducted by Senator Charles Grassley and Congressman Darrell Issa, every piece of evidence unearthed so far reinforces the belief that this was a “coordinated effort” that involved individuals high up in the Obama administration. That's why Grassley and Issa want e-mails and other materials involving a dozen current and former Justice Department officials, as
this column reported.
“They knew what they were doing,” said one Grassley staffer to this column Thursday. “When we started looking into this in January, little did we know when we started what this would lead to. At first, it was too unbelievable to believe, but when you start looking into things…”
Early in the process, some ATF insiders expressed concerns that the people responsible would never be held accountable, and that someone would be “thrown under the bus.” That apparently almost happened to Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson, but he turned the tables on that by appearing secretly with his own attorney at a meeting with congressional investigators on July 4, as this column noted
here and
here. ATF whistleblowers have offered strong evidence in the form of e-mails and other documentation, that Fast and Furious reaches to the highest levels of Eric Holder’s Justice Department, hence the cover-up that has been suggested by Issa and Grassley.
Now with revelations by
National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea that a similar operation occurred in Florida, the investigation is branching out. Investigators are finding that every interview leads to more information, more allegations to be checked out.
Still, Obama administration apologists in the press continue their campaign to divert public attention and point the blaming finger at firearms dealers and current gun laws. Guilty on all counts is the
New York Times, which editorialized this morning about “Gun Mayhem Along the Border” and asserted:
Straw buyers have been easily purchasing thousands of fast-firing weapons on the American side to supply the cartels, which deal drugs back across the border.
The
Times conveniently overlooks the obvious, that many of these straw purchases were allowed, and even encouraged, by ATF supervisors, over the protests of their own field agents and the concerns of cooperating gun dealers. There is ample evidence to back that up, which the
Times ignores, in its editorial endorsement of the Obama administration order to some 8,000 Southwest gun dealers to start reporting multiple long gun sales; an effort that was derailed yesterday, as
this column reported.. The
Times also gets into name-calling this morning:
Gun lobby sycophants in Congress are calling the regulation a smoke screen to distract attention from a gun-tracking operation botched by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Yet there is also ample evidence that building a smoke screen is precisely what the Obama administration is doing, though not very well. Perhaps a counter-editorial in this morning’s
Washington Times sums it up best:
The Justice Department’s effort to contain the Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal is crumbling. Members of Congress are demanding full disclosure regarding the bizarre scheme to funnel guns to Mexican drug cartels, supposedly to help sniff out the higher-level bad guys. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. isn’t helping congressional investigators understand the rationale behind this breathtakingly dumb idea…
The botched operation provided ammunition for administration officials intent on exploiting any excuse to demand expanded gun-control measures. The White House often claimed that 90 percent of the weapons used in Mexican crimes had been traced to the United States, but the number has never been substantiated. By all appearances, Fast and Furious delivered statistics to back up the figure. Not surprisingly, the Justice Department pounced on the issue Monday. It issued a regulation requiring gun shops in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California to report purchases of multiple rifles made within a five-day period. The timing of the new mandate seems a little too convenient, as it’s not yet clear how much of this supposed gunrunning “problem” originates in Washington.
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Beth Levine, spokeswoman for Senator Grassley, noted via telephone this morning that the investigation is nowhere near the proverbial “bottom of this.” Grassley and Issa, with their concurrent investigations, are determined to get there.
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BATFE Fast and Furious leading to.....
