It would not suprise me if a new Fast and Felonious is already in the works and just waiting for the dust to clear... which it wont before the election... the people behind this kind of thinking are not discouraged by laws, the constitution or common sense....
Do we have proof of this?They sold their plan up the chain to the political appointees of the BATFE and to the US attorney for AZ. The career bureaucrats in the Phoenix office of the BATFE then implemented their plan and pursued it with great zeal and vigor.
Do we have proof of this?
Gun-rights advocates point to such statements as evidence that Fast and Furious was part of a gambit to justify gun control.
But Operation Wide Receiver seems to challenge that assertion. That investigation, based in Tucson during 2006-07, allowed nearly 300 guns to be smuggled into Mexico. The objective, according to federal records: catch cartel kingpins.
Even Dobyns, one of the agents behind cleanupatf.org, discounts notions that the gun-walking tactic originated in Washington, D.C. He says Fast and Furious was concocted by an Arizona field agent and endorsed by ATF bosses up the line from Phoenix.
"I think it was a ploy at self-glorification," he said. "When the OIG report came out and said, 'Hey, ATF, you're failing miserably,' I think they decided to prove him wrong. They said, 'I'm going to get the big fish, and how do you like me now?' "
Time to take legal action and hold him in Contempt if the GOP is serious.
Actually, wasn't his offer to "cooperate" sort of along the lines of, "I'll agree to give you what you ask for if you agree to only ask me for what I want to give you"?Eghad said:Right now Holder has said he would cooperate..we know what his word is worth. Time to take legal action and hold him in Contempt if the GOP is serious.
In response, a spokeswoman for Issa's committee, Becca Glover Watkins, said Holder's letter "only seems to indicate a willingness to offer a selective telling rather than full disclosure of key events that occurred after February 4, 2011.
"We expect the Justice Department to quickly provide necessary details about how it is prepared to alter its opposition to producing subpoenaed documents," the spokeswoman added, without addressing Holder's proposal for a face-to-face meeting with Issa.
The point is, I seriously doubt that a group ("cabal") of career BATFE agents ever decided that running guns into Mexico, where the BATFE has no authority or jurisdiction, would be a good idea and then sold it to their superiors in Phoenix and Washington.
Who at Justice authorized this program?
Mr. WEICH. As I have said, Mr. Chairman, the Office of the Inspector
General——
Chairman ISSA. Who at Justice—if you know, I ask you to answer,
who do you know was involved in the authorization of this,
today? Do you know?
Mr. WEICH. We——
Chairman ISSA. Do you know?
Mr. WEICH. Well, Mr. Chairman, if you will permit me to answer
the question. We sent a letter to Chairman Smith, who asked a
question like that. We pointed out that this operation, as with
other law enforcement operations, originated in the ATF’s Phoenix
office——
Chairman ISSA. That is not authorization. Who authorized it at
the highest level?
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There were several instances. Whenever he would get a trace
report back . . . he was jovial, if not, not giddy, but just delighted
about that, hey, 20 of our guns were recovered with 350 pounds
of dope in Mexico last night. And it was exciting. To them it
proved the nexus to the drug cartels. It validated that . . . we were
really working the cartel case here.
Agent Alt described in great detail his disgust at the self-satisfaction of ATF leadership for sending guns into what they knew to be a war zone. He also expounded on his view that the Group Supervisor should have been more concerned with those deaths in Mexico rather than
with motivating his team. He testified:
Why then do we stand by and try to motivate agents to do
something more to stem the homicides . . . with no further mention
on the homicides and correlate that with the number of guns
recovered in Mexico in a given month, when we should be saying
how many of those guns left this state that we knew about in
relationship to our cases in conjunction with these murders? That
didn’t happen.
B. “You Need to Scramble Some Eggs”
According to the ATF agents, their supervisors in Phoenix were sometimes shockingly insensitive to the possibility the policy could lead to loss of life. Agent Dodson explained:
Q.omebody in management . . . used the terminology “scramble
some eggs.”
A. Yes, sir.
Q. If you are going to make an omelette you have got to scramble
some eggs. Do you remember the context of that?
A. Yes, sir. It was – there was a prevailing attitude amongst the group
and outside of the group in the ATF chain of command, and that
was the attitude. . . . I had heard that . . . sentiment from Special
Agent [E] Special Agent [L], and Special Agent Voth. And the
time referenced in the interview was, I want to say, in May as the
GRIT team or gunrunner initiative team was coming out. I was
having a conversation with Special Agent [L] about the case in
which the conversation ended with me asking her are you prepared
to go to a border agent’s funeral over this or a Cochise County
43 Agent Dodson Transcript, at 117-118.
44 Agent Alt Transcript, at 174.
Page | 39
deputy’s over this, because that’s going to happen. And the
sentiment that was given back to me by both her, the group
supervisor, was that . . . if you are going to make an omelette, you
need to scramble some eggs.45
And we should believe Agent Dobyns ... why?thallub said:Doubt whatever you want to doubt. Contrary to popular belief; all devious federal schemes do not originate in the white house. BATFE agent Dobyns was in the Phoenix office of the BATFE. He says F&F originated at the Phoenix office of the BATFE. The Justice Department spokesman at the 15 June, 2011 committee hearing on F&F said as much.
Case in point. Do you actually believe that field agents dreamed up "Fast and Furious" ... which involved SENDING guns to Mexico with no way to track them once they crossed the border ... as a response to criticism that they were allowing too many guns to cross into Mexico? Think about that one for a few minutes ...thallub said:The DOJ IG criticized agents in the field for their failure to stop guns from going into Mexico. Fast and Furious was the response to that IG criticism. In the minds of senior agents in the Phoenix office; Operation Fast and Furious was a logical extension of Project Gunwalker.