Special Counsel to Probe Holder on 'Fast and Furious'

[hypocritexposer]

EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans are calling for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Eric Holder perjured himself during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious, Fox News has learned.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, was sending a letter to President Obama on Tuesday arguing that Holder cannot investigate himself, and requesting the president instruct the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/04/house-republicans-to-request-special-counsel-to-probe-holder-on-fast-and/#ixzz1ZqBtSpwh

 

[Anonymous]

If they are going to scream and object to the latest investigation it appears as tho they better expand their investigation into ATF's activities under the Bush years too- as it appears Congress knew nothing of this operation either....
Looks like Obama dumbly followed a GW precedent again....... :wink:

Report: Bush let guns 'walk'

TIM MAK | 10/4/11 4:54 PM EDT
The Bush administration also ran an operation that allowed hundreds of guns to be transferred to suspected arms traffickers - the same tactic that congressional Republicans are criticizing the Department of Justice for using, the AP reports.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight, and other Republicans have been slamming Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice over the Fast and Furious operation, a controversial gun-running program that went wrong.

Under the Fast and Furious program, weapons were allowed to be illegally purchased so that they could be tracked to gun traffickers and drug cartel leaders. But the ATF, which operates within the DoJ, lost track of these firearms, and many were allowed to cross into Mexico.

The practice of "letting guns walk" to trace their sales was also used in the Bush administration, federal officials tells the AP. The ATF began what became known as Operation Wide Receiver in 2006, after receiving information about a suspicious purchase of firearms. The investigation involved letting the guns "walk," and the investigation concluded in 2007 without any charges being filed.
----

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told the AP in a statement that "whether it's Operation Fast and Furious, Operation Wide Receiver, or both, it's clear that guns were walked, and people high in the Justice Department knew about it. There's no excuse for walking guns, and if there are more operations like this, Congress and the American people need to know."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65152.html#ixzz1Zrc7FTun

 

[hypocritexposer]

so if obama is following the Bush precedent, we'll see some indictments......

DOJ eventually issued two indictments that grew out of the Bush-era "Wide Receiver" investigation

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/wide_receiver_the_bush_administration_had_its_very_own_atf_gun_walking_scandal.php

 

[Steve]

What's also fascinating about the documents turned over to investigators is that they reference a little-known ATF operation called "Operation Wide Receiver",

what ever happened to taking responsibility for your actions?

two wrongs do not make it ok.. never has,.. never will...

this gun crap stinks.. if the evidence goes back, then follow it.. some one needs to investigate and fire some stupid people..

but it is low to hand over some old crap to try to take the stink off your recent crap..

 

[Steve]

Looks like Obama dumbly followed a GW precedent again..

it is amazing how dumb your guy is... isn't it?

 

[Anonymous]

I would think that true conservatives-especially those that are gunsrights folks would be supporting all efforts by government to catch those crooked folks that are involved in the conspiracy to smuggle guns across the border...

The attention that the opposition to these investigations has brought up gives much more ammunition for those that want stricter gun laws, limited purchases, and national ID/tracing of firearms....

 

[hypocritexposer]

I would think that true conservatives-especially those that are gunsrights folks would be supporting all efforts by government to catch those crooked folks that are involved in the conspiracy to smuggle guns across the border...

The attention that the opposition to these investigations has brought up gives much more ammunition for those that want stricter gun laws, limited purchases, and national ID/tracing of firearms....

catching the "bad guys" by legal means is much different than breaking international law to catch them. 200 people have been killed by obama/holder's illegal actions to date.

Why has obama told his DOJ to take a four year coffee break and not indict those involved in these illegal acts, as Bush's DOJ did?

 

[Anonymous]

I would think that true conservatives-especially those that are gunsrights folks would be supporting all efforts by government to catch those crooked folks that are involved in the conspiracy to smuggle guns across the border...

The attention that the opposition to these investigations has brought up gives much more ammunition for those that want stricter gun laws, limited purchases, and national ID/tracing of firearms....

catching the "bad guys" by legal means is much different than breaking international law to catch them. 200 people have been killed by obama/holder's illegal actions to date.

Why has obama told his DOJ to take a four year coffee break and not indict those involved in these illegal acts, as Bush's DOJ did?

The government under neither the Bush or Obama administration did anything illegal as far as I've seen- as they were not the ones buying, transporting, or smuggling arms into Mexico...The criminals were doing that....All the Agents were doing was monitoring the illegal activity already taking place trying to get to higher ups in the conspiracy...

And like I said before- the Supreme Court has ruled that you don't have to make an immediate arrest when a crime is committed- and there is reams of precedence of allowing illegal contraband to walk- in order to get to higher suspects in a conspiracy case...Its done everyday in drug cases....

As far as what intelligence they gathered- or how many indictments they could get- we probably won't know for awhile... Is it possible that there is a continuing Grand Jury in session? Some Grand Juries go on for years in secret- and all indictments sealed by the Judge until the entire bust goes down...

 

[hypocritexposer]

I would think that true conservatives-especially those that are gunsrights folks would be supporting all efforts by government to catch those crooked folks that are involved in the conspiracy to smuggle guns across the border...

The attention that the opposition to these investigations has brought up gives much more ammunition for those that want stricter gun laws, limited purchases, and national ID/tracing of firearms....

catching the "bad guys" by legal means is much different than breaking international law to catch them. 200 people have been killed by obama/holder's illegal actions to date.

Why has obama told his DOJ to take a four year coffee break and not indict those involved in these illegal acts, as Bush's DOJ did?

The government under neither the Bush or Obama administration did anything illegal as far as I've seen- as they were not the ones buying, transporting, or smuggling arms into Mexico...The criminals were doing that....All the Agents were doing was monitoring the illegal activity already taking place trying to get to higher ups in the conspiracy...

And like I said before- the Supreme Court has ruled that you don't have to make an immediate arrest when a crime is committed- and there is reams of precedence of allowing illegal contraband to walk- in order to get to higher suspects in a conspiracy case...Its done everyday in drug cases....

As far as what intelligence they gathered- or how many indictments they could get- we probably won't know for awhile... Is it possible that there is a continuing Grand Jury in session? Some Grand Juries go on for years in secret- and all indictments sealed by the Judge until the entire bust goes down...

the gun dealer involved in Fast and Furious was told to deal guns to those he would not normally sell to.


Holder perjured himself

 

[Anonymous]

catching the "bad guys" by legal means is much different than breaking international law to catch them. 200 people have been killed by obama/holder's illegal actions to date.

Why has obama told his DOJ to take a four year coffee break and not indict those involved in these illegal acts, as Bush's DOJ did?

The government under neither the Bush or Obama administration did anything illegal as far as I've seen- as they were not the ones buying, transporting, or smuggling arms into Mexico...The criminals were doing that....All the Agents were doing was monitoring the illegal activity already taking place trying to get to higher ups in the conspiracy...

And like I said before- the Supreme Court has ruled that you don't have to make an immediate arrest when a crime is committed- and there is reams of precedence of allowing illegal contraband to walk- in order to get to higher suspects in a conspiracy case...Its done everyday in drug cases....

As far as what intelligence they gathered- or how many indictments they could get- we probably won't know for awhile... Is it possible that there is a continuing Grand Jury in session? Some Grand Juries go on for years in secret- and all indictments sealed by the Judge until the entire bust goes down...

the gun dealer involved in Fast and Furious was told to deal guns to those he would not normally sell to.


Holder perjured himself

I have never heard that- do you have some testimony to that extent? But that still does not make it illegal or void any subsequent arrests....Law Enforcement have even ran complete sting storefront operations selling base materials for drugs to people they knew were going to use it to make drugs in order to get the intelligence needed to take them down later... ( In fact in one big longtime undercover operation- the undercover agents did such a good job they made the government money- and the government didn't know what to do with the profits!!!)

Agents have gone undercover sometimes for years and knew of terrible crimes- including murders....
Read about Joe Pistone aka Donnie Brasco...He wrote a good book of his time undercover in the mob....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_Brasco:_My_Undercover_Life_in_the_Mafia


The reason this has become such a big thing is that the radical right hates the ATF and any gun laws- and are screaming because its some of those same radical rights that are legally buying firearms and then selling them to those criminals doing the smuggling (at a large profit) - knowing full well why they are buying large numbers of guns....

And from what I see- their screaming and making such a big issue is actually going to come back and bite them in the butt- as its making more folks aware of how easy it is to buy all these guns- and making many more liberals and moderates think we need stricter gun laws and national tracking of serial numbers...

And as far as Holder- if he perjured himself- and wasn't sworn to secrecy under Grand Jury secrecy- he should be charged....

 

[hypocritexposer]

The reason this has become such a big thing

what about the 200 dead, including a border agent?

 

[Anonymous]

The reason this has become such a big thing

what about the 200 dead, including a border agent?

So you agree with the Liberals and anti-gun folks that we need stricter gun laws- limits on purchases (3 firearms a month)- and tracking of serial numbers and recording of all firearms exchanges/transactions then :???:

The Agents didn't kill them- the criminals/cartels did...They could have done the same with knives...Guns don't kill people- people kill people....

 

[hypocritexposer]

The reason this has become such a big thing

what about the 200 dead, including a border agent?

So you agree with the Liberals and anti-gun folks that we need stricter gun laws- limits on purchases (3 firearms a month)- and tracking of serial numbers and recording of all firearms exchanges/transactions then :???:

The Agents didn't kill them- the criminals/cartels did...They could have done the same with knives...Guns don't kill people- people kill people....

:roll:


So it's legal to sell guns to known criminals, across sovereign borders?

 

[Anonymous]

what about the 200 dead, including a border agent?

So you agree with the Liberals and anti-gun folks that we need stricter gun laws- limits on purchases (3 firearms a month)- and tracking of serial numbers and recording of all firearms exchanges/transactions then :???:

The Agents didn't kill them- the criminals/cartels did...They could have done the same with knives...Guns don't kill people- people kill people....

:roll:


So it's legal to sell guns to known criminals, across sovereign borders?

Its legal to sell to known criminals if they have no convictions- but its illegal to sell firearms to convicted felons (or for convicted felons to buy firearms)- or to smuggle guns across the border...

But from everything I've read- no government agents bought any guns, nor did they take any guns across any sovereign borders....

 

[Mike]

But from everything I've read- no government agents bought any guns, nor did they take any guns across any sovereign borders....

It was worse and much more sinister than that. They had it rigged that they could point fingers at the gun sellers if the whistle got blown.

RIO RICO and GLENDALE, Ariz. --
In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard's Lone Wolf gun store.

They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door.

For 15 months, Howard did as he was told. To customers with phony IDs or wads of cash he normally would have turned away, he sold pistols, rifles and semi-automatics. He was assured by the ATF that they would follow the guns and that the surveillance would lead the agents to the violent Mexican drug cartels on the Southwest border.

When Howard heard nothing about any arrests, he questioned the agents. Keep selling, they told him. So hundreds of thousands of dollars more in weapons, including .50-caliber sniper rifles, walked out the front door of his store in a Glendale, Ariz., strip mall.

He was making a lot of money, but he also feared somebody was going to get hurt.

"Every passing week, I worried about something like that," he said. "I felt horrible and sick."

Late in the night on Dec. 14, in a canyon west of Rio Rico, Ariz., Border Patrol agents came across Mexican bandits preying on illegal immigrants, authorities say.

According to a Border Patrol "Shooting Incident" report, the agents fired two rounds of beanbags from a shotgun. The Mexicans returned fire. One agent fired back with his sidearm, another with his M-4 rifle.

One of the Mexicans, Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, a 33-year-old from Sinaloa, was wounded in the abdomen and legs. Agent Brian Terry — 40, single, a former Marine — also went down. "I'm hit!" he cried.

A fellow agent cradled his friend. "I can't feel my legs," Terry said. "I think I'm paralyzed." A bullet had pierced his aorta. Tall and nearly 240 pounds, Terry was too heavy to carry. They radioed for a helicopter. But Terry was bleeding badly, and he died in his colleague's arms.

The Mexicans left Osorio-Arellanes behind and escaped across the desert, tossing two AK-47 semi-automatics from Howard's store.


* * * * *
Some 2,000 firearms from the Lone Wolf Trading Co. store and others in southern Arizona were sold under an ATF program called Fast and Furious that allowed "straw purchasers" to walk away with the weapons and turn them over to criminal traffickers. But the agency's plan to trace the guns to the cartels never worked. As the case of the two Lone Wolf AK-47s illustrates, the ATF, with a limited force of agents, did not keep track of them.

The Department of Justice in Washington said last week that one other Fast and Furious firearm turned up at a violent crime scene in this country. They have yet to provide further details. They said an additional 28 Fast and Furious weapons were recovered at violent crimes in Mexico. They have not identified those cases either. Mexican government officials maintain that Fast and Furious weapons have been found at some 170 crime scenes in their country.

 

[Anonymous]

But from everything I've read- no government agents bought any guns, nor did they take any guns across any sovereign borders....

It was worse and much more sinister than that. They had it rigged that they could point fingers at the gun sellers if the whistle got blown.

RIO RICO and GLENDALE, Ariz. --
In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard's Lone Wolf gun store.

They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door.

For 15 months, Howard did as he was told. To customers with phony IDs or wads of cash he normally would have turned away, he sold pistols, rifles and semi-automatics. He was assured by the ATF that they would follow the guns and that the surveillance would lead the agents to the violent Mexican drug cartels on the Southwest border.

When Howard heard nothing about any arrests, he questioned the agents. Keep selling, they told him. So hundreds of thousands of dollars more in weapons, including .50-caliber sniper rifles, walked out the front door of his store in a Glendale, Ariz., strip mall.

He was making a lot of money, but he also feared somebody was going to get hurt.

"Every passing week, I worried about something like that," he said. "I felt horrible and sick."

Late in the night on Dec. 14, in a canyon west of Rio Rico, Ariz., Border Patrol agents came across Mexican bandits preying on illegal immigrants, authorities say.

According to a Border Patrol "Shooting Incident" report, the agents fired two rounds of beanbags from a shotgun. The Mexicans returned fire. One agent fired back with his sidearm, another with his M-4 rifle.

One of the Mexicans, Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, a 33-year-old from Sinaloa, was wounded in the abdomen and legs. Agent Brian Terry — 40, single, a former Marine — also went down. "I'm hit!" he cried.

A fellow agent cradled his friend. "I can't feel my legs," Terry said. "I think I'm paralyzed." A bullet had pierced his aorta. Tall and nearly 240 pounds, Terry was too heavy to carry. They radioed for a helicopter. But Terry was bleeding badly, and he died in his colleague's arms.

The Mexicans left Osorio-Arellanes behind and escaped across the desert, tossing two AK-47 semi-automatics from Howard's store.


* * * * *
Some 2,000 firearms from the Lone Wolf Trading Co. store and others in southern Arizona were sold under an ATF program called Fast and Furious that allowed "straw purchasers" to walk away with the weapons and turn them over to criminal traffickers. But the agency's plan to trace the guns to the cartels never worked. As the case of the two Lone Wolf AK-47s illustrates, the ATF, with a limited force of agents, did not keep track of them.

The Department of Justice in Washington said last week that one other Fast and Furious firearm turned up at a violent crime scene in this country. They have yet to provide further details. They said an additional 28 Fast and Furious weapons were recovered at violent crimes in Mexico. They have not identified those cases either. Mexican government officials maintain that Fast and Furious weapons have been found at some 170 crime scenes in their country.

Yep- old Lone Wolf NOW says he would have turned them away- but its funny what wads of cash waved in front of greedy folks will do...Sounds more like to me they had him by the shorthairs- so he had to cooperate in their sting...

So if they have videos and recordings of all these supposed illegal purchases the Lone Wolf proclaims- they will have numerous indictments they can bring... Its also a felony to use false identification on or falsify an ATF firearms purchase form...

Like I said- the more publicity this case gets - the more ammunition the anti gun folks have for passing stricter gun laws...And it seems right now the Republicans in Congress in their attempt to do a smear on the Obama administration and the radical rights hated ATF is playing right into the anti gun movements hands....

 

[loomixguy]

Yep- old Lone Wolf NOW says he would have turned them away- but its funny what wads of cash waved in front of greedy folks will do...Sounds more like to me they had him by the shorthairs- so he had to cooperate in their sting...

This administration recently proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they have no qualms about killing American citizens. Maybe Mr. Howard didn't want to end up in an alley with 2 in the chest and one in the head.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is a total abuse of power if there ever was one. Something the fatman probably knows all about......eh? :wink:

 

[Mike]

Your logic, or lack of........................... is very twisted. This was a bad project made up to advance a lie.

Thanks to Operation Fast and Furious, the incompetence and ineptitude that has infected the Holder Justice Department is becoming more obvious all the time. For department prosecutors (and senior ATF personnel) to approve the sale of firearms to Mexican drug cartels through straw buyers was a deadly misstep.

It led directly to the tragic death of Border Agent Brian Terry. Mexican officials estimate that "150 of their people have been shot by Fast and Furious guns," Fox News reports. The obdurate refusal of Justice to provide the names of the senior Justice leadership who approved this operation at the recent House hearing held by Rep. Darrel Issa shows the willingness of Justice to cover up its mistakes and defy congressional oversight. As Issa accurately said, this growing scandal "was so felony stupid that it got people killed."

But Operation Fast and Furious also shows how willing this administration is to deliberately mislead the press and how easily the Washington Post was conned by the administration in a story it published last year.

On December 13, 2010, the Post ran a story about U.S. gun dealers with "the most traces for firearms recovered by police." The Post included "the names of the dealers, all from border states, with the most traces from guns recovered in Mexico over the past two years." The Post did not reveal where it got this information, but pointed out that Congress passed a law in 2003 exempting the trace information maintained by the ATF from public disclosure. So the Post had to have gotten this information through a leak directly from the ATF (or by illegally hacking the ATF's records, a far-fetched and highly unlikely scenario).

Two of the gun dealers the Post's story assailed were Lone Wolf Trading Co. in Glendale and J&G Sales in Prescott, Ariz. Lone Wolf Trading is number one on the list for Mexican traces; J&G is number three.

However, at the time the ATF was apparently leaking this information to the Post, both of these dealers were cooperating with the ATF in the Fast and Furious Operation. When Fox News talked recently to the owner of J&G, Brad DeSaye, about the ATF's disastrous operation, he said that when he questioned the ATF about whether the agency wanted the gun shop to sell to the cartel front men, the ATF said, "Keep selling."

The Post actually interviewed DeSaye over his store's appearance in the trace records. DeSaye, to his credit, did not reveal the still-secret ATF operation to the Post reporters, even though they were clearly writing a negative story that was potentially embarrassing to DeSaye.

This double-dealing by the ATF is appalling. It was bad enough that the ATF was running a secret operation that had gone off the rails and was supplying dangerous weapons to violent Mexican drug cartels. But then the agency apparently leaked deceptive information on gun sales that put the gun dealers in a bad light, or at a minimum, misled the Post when it should have tried to provide cover for dealers who were following ATF instructions. Indeed, these dealers were showing up in the Mexican trace information because the ATF was telling them to ignore the law and the usual verification procedures and sell guns to the cartels, sometime dozens in a single day to one person.

In an irony that could almost be considered comeuppance to the ATF, the Post story was published the day before Agent Terry was killed. Terry's death panicked the ATF supervisors who were running Fast and Furious, a panic that was deserved after two of the weapons found at the murder scene were traced to the operation. Yet in a letter to Sen. Charles Grassley on Feb. 4, 2011, DOJ's Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, the same individual who testified before Issa's committee, claimed the ATF had not "knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico." As the whistleblower ATF agents testified, this was patently false.

This apparent leak by the administration to mislead the Washington Post was not a one-time incident. On May 26, just two weeks before the Issa hearing, La Opinión, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the United States (based in Los Angeles), published a story about the smuggling of guns from America into Mexico. The spokesman for the Office of the U.S. Attorney in Phoenix again specifically named Lone Wolf Trading, which had sold guns at the express direction of the ATF, as being responsible along with other gun dealers for "a great majority of confiscated weapons in crimes on the other side of the border." This is the same U.S. Attorney's Office that "encouraged and supported every single facet of Fast and Furious," according to the Joint Staff Report prepared by Rep. Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley.

There are two final points that should be made about this fiasco. The fact that Holder sent Weich up to testify on June 15 is very revealing to anyone familiar with internal Justice procedure. Weich is the head of the Office of Legislative Affairs, the office tasked with dealing with Congress. It is not a line department directly involved in prosecutions and investigations. The Fast and Furious Operation would have been handled out of the Criminal Division, headed by Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, former special counsel to Bill Clinton. Breuer (or Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke) would obviously be the witnesses with the most direct knowledge — particularly the question of who at Justice in the top leadership offices was briefed or asked for approval of the operation.

The only reason for Justice to send Weich was to send someone with no actual knowledge of who approved this operation so he could truthfully testify under oath — as he did despite tough questioning by Issa — that he did not "know the answer to that question." The fact that the Inspector General is supposedly investigating — one of the other excuses Weich gave for not answering questions — is also not a legitimate reason to withhold information from Congress when it is exercising its constitutional oversight function.

Finally, the most obvious question that Issa, Grassley, and others have been asking is: Why would the administration implement such an obviously perilous, risky, and foolish operation that sent hundreds of dangerous weapons into Mexico?

For a possible answer, recall that in 2009 the Obama administration was making a huge public issue about the flow of guns from American gun dealers into Mexico. President Obama himself erroneously claimed at a joint press conference with President Filipe Calderon in Mexico City on April 16, 2009, that "90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border." Everyone from William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the ATF, to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed this same claim.

The problem, however, was that the 90 percent figure was demonstrably false. Only a small portion of the guns seized by Mexican authorities have traceable serial numbers. In 2008, GAO reported that the Mexican government seized 30,000 guns, and only 6,700 were confirmed to have originated in the U.S. That represents only 22 percent, not 90 percent.

The administration's claim was widely criticized as being wrong — which may have provided a political motivation for an ill-advised operation that poured U.S. weapons into Mexico. This could provide the administration with a public-relations coup that supported its claims when it unveiled its prosecutions. Perhaps that's why one ATF supervisor was described as "jovial, if not, not giddy, but just delighted" [sic] when Fast and Furious guns were found at Mexican crime scenes, and why Acting Director of the ATF Kenneth Melson took such a personal interest that he watched live feeds from secret ATF cameras in guns stores while sitting at his desk.

The bottom line is that considerations other than objective, professional law enforcement judgment seem to have driven the decision-making of the Holder Justice Department. The result has been tragedy and violence — and the bloodshed will persist as these weapons continue to be used.

 

[Anonymous]

Gunrunning to Mexico has been going on since the days of the Juaristas and old Pancho Villa...Not sure if it was even illegal back then...

But I'm curious how would all you Kojaks go about investigating and making a case against these criminal elements in both the US and Mexico that are conspiring to illegally take US firearms into Mexico and furnishing the drug cartels with them :???: ....

I'm interested to hear....

Taking down the mules could be done any day- but with the big profits to be made there will be hundreds of new ones standing in line... How do you propose you make a case against the major players- the big money conspirators?

 

[Anonymous]

The Mexicans threw down two AK47s. Looks like they could have taken them with them. I think that the whole thing with the shooting was executed by the Mexicans to expose the ATF and get them off of their case.