ATF Project Gunrunner

NWPilgrim wrote:

IIRC the problem is that the cartels buying the F&F guns are the ones we were protecting (Sinanola?). It may have been part of our "working relationship" with the cartels: "Do us a favor and buy some guns from US shops, we will guarantee they will be sold to you and oh BTW, remember we gave you a few million dollars via drug purchases so you should have the cash to but these."

The whole thing stinks. DEA and ATF should both be hammered severely for playing so loose with the cartels.
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Yes, the whole thing does stink, and a number of "government agencies/departments" should be hammered severely, which is perhaps an overly polite way of stating the case.

That having been said, we now come to the difference between the way things are, and the way they should be. I submit than none of the above specified or by inference referenced will end up with some much as a "hair seriously out of place", for the bureaucrats take good care of each other, and devil take the hindmost, that being The Body Politic or The Citizenry.
 
Luger_carbine quotijng another post offered the following:

"The career bureaucrats of the Phoenix office of the BATFE ginned up operation Fast and Furious and got it blessed by the US AG for AZ. "

Pardon me for asking a possibly dumb question. The "career bureaucrats" mentioned in the quote, our British cousins might describe then as "senoir civil servants" , supposedly operate in the public interest. How come these "career bureaucrats" or whatever one might call them were operarting in a manner so far removed from the interests of the public?

This aspect of the situation leaves the following question standing there, awaiting an answer. Given that these "public servants/career bureaucrats" weren't operating in the public interest, or in a manner that might foster the interests thereof, in whose interests were these "career bureaucrats" operating, and how come it appears that those interests were so far removed from those of the public, that unloved group who pay the bills, who employ these same "career bureaucrats"?
 
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Re my last post # 2640), and question(s) therein, might it turn out that these "career bureaucrats" are in business for themselves, that the foolishness inherent in Operation Fast & Furious turns out to be a plain old fashioned exercise in the pursuit of ever more, as in even more power and greater authority to and for the same careerists?

Might it be that the unending quest for that "corner office", the bigger desk, the prettier secretary are behind this entire fiasco, and that supposed "adults" the present administration lacked the sense of responsibility needed to check the antics of spoiled rotten children?

Who knows, but the possibilities appear endless.
 
The only problem with limiting responsibility to career bureaucrats is that the heads of agencies ARE responsible for what goes on in their agency. If they are not aware of it then it is dereliction of duty. They are SUPPOSED to know about major projects. The troubling thing is how could an operation that involves foreign parties and govts NOT be on the radar of heads of ATF, DEA, and State?

If mid-level managers were able to pull this off without director approval then those agencies are in serious need of overhaul. Somehow I don't find that scenario credible.

At any rate, regardless of whether they knew what was going on in their own agency, directors are responsible for such large programs that involve another country and drug cartels and should be held to account.
 
NWPilgrim:

In my opinion, both the directors and mid-level managers should be held responsible.

As for the "ATF", that agency has been in need of a major overhaul for lo these many years. Unfortunately, The Congress, under administrations both Democratic as well as Republican has shied away from the necessary action.
 
The only problem with limiting responsibility to career bureaucrats is that the heads of agencies ARE responsible for what goes on in their agency.
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Given that F&F was an OCDETF operation, crossing departmental lines and given somewhat free reign with wiretaps...yes, Holder should have been aware of it. He should have been following it closely.
 
On the "friendly fire".Time will tell,I guess My cynical side thinks 30 days before the election ....nuff said
 
Next I’m sure we will hear the agent Brian Terry jumped on the bullets in a fit of rage over a beer tab or some other absurd thing like lead rain caused by unusual clouds... No suspects in any of this... just absurdity.... and a very honorable agent who lost his life due to a political ploy named F&F..

Anything but place the blame where it belongs...
 
Latest Border patrol shooting - friendly fire?
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Sure does appear that way. Way i read it Ivie may have fired on his fellow agents.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/...ath-details-20121006,0,865431.story?track=rss

Three agents fired unknowingly at each other after they separately responded to a tripped sensor in a rugged canyon in southeastern Arizona, Cochise County Acting Sheriff Rod Rothrock told The Times on Saturday.

FBI officials said a preliminary investigation showed that Border Agent Nicholas J. Ivie died in a "friendly fire" shooting that only involved the agents. Another agent was shot in the buttocks and ankle and is recovering at home. A third agent was not injured. Authorities have not released their names.

Ivie, a six-year agent, was shot while he and two other colleagues on horseback patrolled an area a few miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, between Naco and Bisbee. The area is considered a corridor for drug and human smuggling near the Mule Mountains.

The three agents had communicated with each other and knew they were all in the area. Ivie was about 20 yards away from the other two agents and “interpreted defensive postures from the other as aggressive postures,” Rothrock told the Arizona Daily Star, an account he confirmed with The Times.
George McCubbin, union president of the National Border Patrol Council, elaborated. He said the agents converged from opposite directions, descending down hills into a relatively level area thick with brush.
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An interesting way to look at this is what if this had been reversed? What if Mexico had initiated a identical operation to this from its side and we had the effects Mexico got....
 
This thread is about the ATF's Fast & Furious operation and issues directly related to it. It is not about border fences or immigration policy. Posts on those matters will be treated as being off-topic.
 
BGutzman said:
An interesting way to look at this is what if this had been reversed? What if Mexico had initiated a identical operation to this from its side and we had the effects Mexico got....
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We would be calling it exactly what it is -- an act of war against a sovereign nation.
 
We will see what happens now that this guy is back in the U.S. Hopefully, Issa will jump on him like a duck on a June Bug.

SOURCE

Kevin O’Reilly, Uncooperative Witness on Fast and Furious, Returns to U.S. From Sudden Posting to Iraq
By Fred Lucas
October 10, 2012

(CNSNews.com) – Obama administration employee Kevin O’Reilly -- who congressional investigators called “the link connecting the White House to the [Fast and Furious] scandal” -- is back in the United States now after abruptly leaving his White House job to work in Iraq in 2011 after emails concerning him and Fast and Furious had surfaced.

<MORE>
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....And still, no one has been arrested for selling, or directing the sale of, guns to known straw purchasers!
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Exactly! If they claim protection of it being a LEO operation, then they should have to prove they were responsibly tracking the firearms after they went across the border. They should be held accountable for a full inventory accounting of each firearm.

If they basically let them walk unaccounted for then that should be a felony, not some admin boo-boo.

Get some of the ATF guys going off to prison and I bet we would hear more singing all up the chain of command.
 
quoting from another post NWPilgrim offered:

"....And still, no one has been arrested for selling, or directing the sale of, guns to known straw purchasers! "

He followed with the following: "Exactly! If they claim protection of it being a LEO operation, then they should have to prove they were responsibly tracking the firearms after they went across the border. They should be held accountable for a full inventory accounting of each firearm."

"If they basically let them walk unaccounted for then that should be a felony, not some admin boo-boo.

Get some of the ATF guys going off to prison and I bet we would hear more singing all up the chain of command. "
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Re his closing, the bit about ATF guys going to prison, while it might be all to appropriate, I suspect that given administration /political CYAing, it is something that is unlikely to happen, barraing the unusual.
 
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