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Fast & Furious Was "Unusual"

Mike

Well-known member
an "Aberration"......................................

Fast, Furious gun-walking called unusual

Dan Freedman

Updated 10:36 p.m., Saturday, August 4, 2012

Washington --

Justice Department and ATF officials have described the controversial gun-walking tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious as an aberration, but ATF agents have employed variations of the same surveillance techniques for decades.

ATF has long targeted gun traffickers through a combination of tailing, wiretaps and "controlled delivery" - following a contraband trail to the point where agents can catch a criminal organization's masterminds in the act, often with the help of an inside informant.

"Once the criminal takes receipt, ATF generally swoops in and locks up everybody," said Michael Bouchard, former operations director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "That's a part of doing undercover work. It happens all the time."

Straw purchasers

What doesn't happen all the time, current ATF officials insist, is gun-walking - Phoenix-based agents instructed to observe Mexico-bound gun purchases rather than interdict them.

In Fast and Furious, which ran from late 2009 through early 2011, agents watched straw purchasers - Mexican drug-cartel surrogates - buy weapons in Phoenix-area gun stores and hand them off to middlemen for transport to Mexico.

Fast and Furious blew up into a Washington scandal after two weapons linked to the operation were recovered at the southern Arizona site where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in December 2010.

Last week, congressional investigators working for Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued a draft report singling out five former ATF officials for blame in permitting some 2,000 weapons purchased during Fast and Furious to get smuggled to Mexico.

Democratic lawmakers counter that the GOP focus on Fast and Furious obscures the fact that ATF agents had employed gun-walking in three previous Phoenix operations, all conducted during the administration of President George W. Bush.

Bewildering tactics

ATF veterans, however, find the bureau's choice of tactics in all these Arizona investigations bewildering. While surveillance of one kind or another is an integral part of gun-trafficking investigations, seizing guns has always been a priority, they say.

But in Operation Fast and Furious, there was no pretense of enlisting aid from Mexican law enforcement. Instead, Bill Newell, ATF's top agent in Phoenix, wrote that agents would "allow the transfer of firearms to continue" in an effort to move beyond low-level straw purchasers and attack entire Mexican trafficking networks.

Instead of interdicting weapons, agents were instructed to note the serial numbers of weapons sold to traffickers and record them on ATF's suspect gun database.

They would then match the numbers with those of weapons recovered at Mexican crime scenes, thus proving the obvious - U.S-purchased weapons were being used in cartel-related shootings in Mexico
.

Asked during a congressional hearing last year how ATF planned to arrest Mexican cartel kingpins implicated in such crimes, Newell responded that agents would simply inform Mexican authorities and nothing more.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Fast-Furious-gun-walking-called-unusual-3763193.php#ixzz22mCVf6vK
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
Oh yeah, 'Bush did it". :x What they forget to mention is that Bush did
it in a reponsible manner and an American wasn't killed as a result
. I hope they get Holder for this. I've been
following it all along because someone was killed because of the DOJ
INCOMPETENCE. Nothing has been said of late, except this which I found
yesterday:


Congress may be heading out for recess today but that isn’t stopping the House Republicans from moving forward with a civil contempt of Congress lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder.

“We’ll be filing a civil case during the break,” Issa told NBC, “We will expect a day in court before a federal judge, which we have a 100 percent chance that the judge will hold that these documents should be delivered.”

The lawsuit will be reviewed by a judge who will assess whether Holder has an obligation to comply with a 22-part Congressional subpoena that was issue in October 2011. The judge will also review whether President Obama’s assertion of executive privilige surrounding Fast and Furious documents was warranted.

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What is taking so long???????? :mad:

Thanks, Mike, for your post. This has got to be the most irresponsible
administration EVER!! It is my hope and prayer that we don't have to deal
with them in charge for the next 4 years. Our country is going to hell
in a handbasket.

I hope Harry Reid has to apogize to Mitt Romney for his remark about
"it's been said Mitt Romney hasn't paid income taxes for the past 10 years."
He sounds like some OLD GOSSIPER.
 

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