Holder -- the man holding the tiger by the tail.
AG Holder has to be sweating big time. If he tosses Melson under the bus, then he's free of goverment restraints and can volunteer his testimony to the Oversight Committee. If he keeps him in his current acting director slot, Melson can be compelled by subpeona to appear before Congress, no doubt with a battery of DOJ-supplied lawyers who will object to every question, question the legitimacy of the hearings, etc. ad nauseum.
Or... Holder can install Andrew "What RKBA?" Traver as "interim acting director" (subject to congressional approval) and muzzle Melson by returning him to his prior U.S. Attorney role. In that case, Melson puts in his paperwork to retire and exit the DOJ which frees him to testify.
I expect Holder to try this last tactic at least for the delay it gives him. But none of these will work if Issa and the House oversight committee push hard and demand Melson appear under subponea. The fight over his appearance will certainly scream "Cover up!" in 36 point type.
Bartholomew Roberts makes a good point with the WaPo articles.
The recent DOJ attempt to muddy the waters around Issa's briefing was badly done. WaPo published two articles on it and as I understand, retracted one or both. The only other "news" organization that ran with the story was the Huffington Post (no surprise here). HuffPo still had it up as of this morning.
Most damning and most supportive of "our" collective view that this program was implemented to give ATF/DOJ/Feds statistics to invoke more gun control and/or resume the so-called "assault weapons" ban is the WaPo's "Hidden life of guns". That involved parties knew that local FFL's (like LWTC and Carter's Country) were cooperating with Fast & Furious, yet providing their names as FFL's making potentially "illegal sales" helps make the case that the ATF was seeking to blame border FFLs while keeping secret their role in the sales of those guns. It is also libelous and slanderous on the part of the participants. I hope these FFLs join together to sue DOJ for the damage done to their businesses.
The ATF violated the
Brownsville Agreement which prohibits US law enforcement actions inside Mexico without the permission and cooperation of the Mexicans and the
Merida Initiative which is a cooperative agreement between the US, Mexico, Central America, etc.
There's little doubt here that the Fast & Furious plan would run afoul of
Brownsville and not informing the Mexicans would violate
Merida. Since international treaties were involved (indeed, international relations) there is little to doubt that someone had to ask State about it. Moreover, it eems impossible that any U.S. Attorney would decide to "go ahead" to violate these treaties without informing Holder or his deputy. Especially since lawyers are very good at CYA and the DOJ is loaded iwth them.
Questions include;
- Who authorized the program.
- Who else knew about and gave approval to the program? State? DOJ? DHS? The President?
- Were limitations of
Brownsville and
Merida discussed? Why not or what was the outcome?
- Who architected this plan? Who ordered the plan developed?
It'd be worthless to ask what the intent of the program was. We would only get the excuse that they wanted to get "the big fish" gun dealers and the cartels. We can make our own judgements as to any "political" motivations.
ETA: I think it's important to note that
Project Gunrunner was initiated as a pilot program near Laredo, Tx. in 2005 and expanded to a nationwide program in 2006, under the Bush administration. During the 2006-2008 period Project Gunrunner;
- Interdicted 5,457 firearms and 535,262 rounds of ammunition
- 608 defendants are serving an average of 94 months in prison
- 233 defendants have been convicted and await their sentence (as of 2010)
- 789 defendants (63%) faced charges related to ftreanns trafficking.
- ATF identified 49,625 firearms that FFLs could not locate in inventory or account for by sale or other disposition.
- By working with industry members. Industry Operations Investigators (lOis) located either the firearms or the records to confirm the disposition of 43,249. or 87% of the missing firearms.
These are the stats from the OIG's report of 2010. By all accounts, Gunrunner was having an impact with over 1200 people recommended for prosecution and over 5,400 weapons seized. Fast and Furious did not begin until 2009, when a new administration took office.
You can draw your own conclusions.
