ATF Project Gunrunner
- Thread starter Al Norris
- Start date
Here is the current article related to the "Daft and Delirious" extradition desires in Mexico...
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/0...ion-for-us-officials-responsible-for-botched/
Sorry I botched the first one...
Brent
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/0...ion-for-us-officials-responsible-for-botched/
Sorry I botched the first one...
Brent
publius42 wrote: An ATF History Moment:
Quote:
On April Fool’s Day, 1927, Treasury elevated the Prohibition Unit to bureau status within the department.
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An interesting read, which leaves one wondering as to how things went so badly wrong, as they certainly appear to have?
As to the rest of it, I'd be very surprised if it turns out that anyone above the level of "convenient sacrificial lamb" is actually prosecuted or punished, assuming that anyone is so dealt with. Yes, that paints a very bleak picture, but that is how it appears to me. Never-the-less, I would be the last to recommend that the fight to get things fixed, which in my view includes repeal of existing legislation, be given up.
Quote:
On April Fool’s Day, 1927, Treasury elevated the Prohibition Unit to bureau status within the department.
------------------------------------------------------
An interesting read, which leaves one wondering as to how things went so badly wrong, as they certainly appear to have?
As to the rest of it, I'd be very surprised if it turns out that anyone above the level of "convenient sacrificial lamb" is actually prosecuted or punished, assuming that anyone is so dealt with. Yes, that paints a very bleak picture, but that is how it appears to me. Never-the-less, I would be the last to recommend that the fight to get things fixed, which in my view includes repeal of existing legislation, be given up.
To nobody's surprise, Time Magazine gets the number wrong on guns crossing the border, "The U.S. is also a primary source of the weapons the cartels use to unleash their mayhem: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimates that 70% of the guns seized in Mexico in the past two years were smuggled from north of the border." page two at http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2080608,00.html#ixzz1RIUNIEZC
The article, though, is worth the read because it helps quantify the extraordinary level of violence occurring south of the border and the effect it is having.
The article, though, is worth the read because it helps quantify the extraordinary level of violence occurring south of the border and the effect it is having.
Melson chose to testify on July 4th, somewhat under the radar. According to a letter sent to the Attorney General, the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s office directly supervised Fast & Furious, the DEA and FBI were involved, and Melson was aware that many of the guns acquired in straw purchases were being lost. The letter also warns DoJ against attempting to throw Melson under the bus for this.
HarrySchell
New member
See pdf file at http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2011/07/joint_staff_rep.php
exceprts from the Joint Staff report from the House Committee, from David Hardy:
"The Department’s leadership allowed the ATF to implement this flawed strategy, fully aware of what was taking place on the ground. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona encouraged and supported every single facet of Fast and Furious. Main Justice was involved in providing support and approving various aspects of the Operation, including wiretap applications that would necessarily include painstakingly detailed descriptions of what ATF knew about the straw buyers it was monitoring."
"While leadership at ATF and DOJ no doubt regard these deaths as tragic, the deaths were a clearly foreseeable result of the strategy. Both line agents and gun dealers who cooperated with the ATF repeatedly expressed concerns about that risk, but ATF supervisors did not heed those warnings. Instead, they told agents to follow orders because this was sanctioned from above. They told gun dealers not to worry because they would make sure the guns didn’t fall into the wrong hands."
"After months and months of investigative work, Fast and Furious resulted only in indictments of 20 straw purchasers. Those indictments came only after the death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry."
"It was not until after whistleblowers later reported the issue to Congress that the Justice Department
finally issued a policy directive that prohibited gunwalking."
Email from a supervisor: "Whether you care or not, people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case .... we are the tip of the ATF spear when it comes to Southwest Border firearms trafficking ... If you don't think this is fun you are on the wrong line of work, period!"
That's about as strong a statement of "if you don't like running guns to Mexico, HQ will see that you are fired" as you are likely to see in a bureaucratic communication.
A whistleblower agent: "When we hit the ground in Phoenix, say, and the original 40 straw purchasers were identified, and I can’t remember if it is 240 or 270 guns that they knew at that point that these guys were responsible for ... we should have landed on every one of those people the minute that we hit here. And the ones that we landed on that we couldn’t make cases on, at least they would have been on notice that we were watching and they would have stopped buying, or every time they did, the flag went up and we could have been on them then.
And of all the ones that we didn’t land on, several of them would have spoken to us, a couple of them even maybe would have worked for us as a confidential informant or sources, which is how you climb the ladder in an investigation into an organization."
Another agent: "I cannot see anyone who has one iota of concern for human life being okay with this..."
An agent so frustrated at being told NOT to stop a straw buyer's car full of guns that his radio response made other agents think he was in distress and needed help. The buyer had spotted that he was being tailed and there was no longer any reason to hold off and let him get away. "there is a verbal screaming match over the radio about how . . . what are you talking about? There is no better time or reason to pull this guy over than right now."
Agent describes a supervisor: "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." Supervisors saying, if want an omelette, you have to break some eggs.
A DoJ letter: "At the outset, the allegation described in your January 27 letter – that ATF “sanctioned” or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico – is false." Another: "It remains our understanding that ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious did not knowingly permit straw buyers to take guns into Mexico."
Looks pretty clear what needs to be done. Convene a grand jury, indict and try the perps in criminal court. Take their pensions on conviction, as well as some quality time with other criminals.
Maybe this will happen...
exceprts from the Joint Staff report from the House Committee, from David Hardy:
"The Department’s leadership allowed the ATF to implement this flawed strategy, fully aware of what was taking place on the ground. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona encouraged and supported every single facet of Fast and Furious. Main Justice was involved in providing support and approving various aspects of the Operation, including wiretap applications that would necessarily include painstakingly detailed descriptions of what ATF knew about the straw buyers it was monitoring."
"While leadership at ATF and DOJ no doubt regard these deaths as tragic, the deaths were a clearly foreseeable result of the strategy. Both line agents and gun dealers who cooperated with the ATF repeatedly expressed concerns about that risk, but ATF supervisors did not heed those warnings. Instead, they told agents to follow orders because this was sanctioned from above. They told gun dealers not to worry because they would make sure the guns didn’t fall into the wrong hands."
"After months and months of investigative work, Fast and Furious resulted only in indictments of 20 straw purchasers. Those indictments came only after the death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry."
"It was not until after whistleblowers later reported the issue to Congress that the Justice Department
finally issued a policy directive that prohibited gunwalking."
Email from a supervisor: "Whether you care or not, people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case .... we are the tip of the ATF spear when it comes to Southwest Border firearms trafficking ... If you don't think this is fun you are on the wrong line of work, period!"
That's about as strong a statement of "if you don't like running guns to Mexico, HQ will see that you are fired" as you are likely to see in a bureaucratic communication.
A whistleblower agent: "When we hit the ground in Phoenix, say, and the original 40 straw purchasers were identified, and I can’t remember if it is 240 or 270 guns that they knew at that point that these guys were responsible for ... we should have landed on every one of those people the minute that we hit here. And the ones that we landed on that we couldn’t make cases on, at least they would have been on notice that we were watching and they would have stopped buying, or every time they did, the flag went up and we could have been on them then.
And of all the ones that we didn’t land on, several of them would have spoken to us, a couple of them even maybe would have worked for us as a confidential informant or sources, which is how you climb the ladder in an investigation into an organization."
Another agent: "I cannot see anyone who has one iota of concern for human life being okay with this..."
An agent so frustrated at being told NOT to stop a straw buyer's car full of guns that his radio response made other agents think he was in distress and needed help. The buyer had spotted that he was being tailed and there was no longer any reason to hold off and let him get away. "there is a verbal screaming match over the radio about how . . . what are you talking about? There is no better time or reason to pull this guy over than right now."
Agent describes a supervisor: "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." Supervisors saying, if want an omelette, you have to break some eggs.
A DoJ letter: "At the outset, the allegation described in your January 27 letter – that ATF “sanctioned” or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico – is false." Another: "It remains our understanding that ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious did not knowingly permit straw buyers to take guns into Mexico."
Looks pretty clear what needs to be done. Convene a grand jury, indict and try the perps in criminal court. Take their pensions on conviction, as well as some quality time with other criminals.
Maybe this will happen...
Bartholomew Roberts
Moderator
In addition to the numerous shocking twists from Melson's testimony, it appears that Deputy AG James Cole was informed by Melson of much of this news by June 16. You may recall Cole as his confirmation to the post of Deputy AG was blocked by Sen. Grassley. Sen. Grassley released the hold in return for access to DOJ documents on Gunrunner and Melson's testimony.
Whatever else you can say about DOJ, they aren't trying to tread lightly on this. At the rate they are going, I'm surprised Holder hadn't dropped his pants and relieved himself on the Judiciary committee just to make his point more clearly.
ETA: Just to summarize my understanding of the Issa/Grassley July 5 letter, it appears Melson testified that:
1. The "high level" target of the whole Fast and Furious operation was apparently a paid informant of the FBI and DEA, meaning that the millions of dollars and thousands of guns were spent in pursuit of someone ATF was never going to be able to indict.
2. There is a strong possibility that the money the confidential informant received from the FBI and DEA was actually being used to purchase the illegal guns from ATF - meaning that not only did we allow thousands of illegal guns into Mexico; but we even thoughtfully financed the purchase.
3. Melson provided documents to the Inspector General of DOJ as far back as April that still have not been provided to the Judiciary Committees by DOJ.
4. Unsuprisingly, DOJ has been selectively releasing documents to the Judiciary Committee.
5. DOJ apparently failed to inform Melson or any of the other potential witnesses that they could meet with Congress without ATF/DOJ lawyers present, even though this was part of the deal between DOJ and the Judiciary committees to release the hold on DOJ business before the committee.
6. DOJ has known about the DEA/FBI angle since April at least; but has declined to share that information with the Judiciary committee.
Whatever else you can say about DOJ, they aren't trying to tread lightly on this. At the rate they are going, I'm surprised Holder hadn't dropped his pants and relieved himself on the Judiciary committee just to make his point more clearly.
ETA: Just to summarize my understanding of the Issa/Grassley July 5 letter, it appears Melson testified that:
1. The "high level" target of the whole Fast and Furious operation was apparently a paid informant of the FBI and DEA, meaning that the millions of dollars and thousands of guns were spent in pursuit of someone ATF was never going to be able to indict.
2. There is a strong possibility that the money the confidential informant received from the FBI and DEA was actually being used to purchase the illegal guns from ATF - meaning that not only did we allow thousands of illegal guns into Mexico; but we even thoughtfully financed the purchase.
3. Melson provided documents to the Inspector General of DOJ as far back as April that still have not been provided to the Judiciary Committees by DOJ.
4. Unsuprisingly, DOJ has been selectively releasing documents to the Judiciary Committee.
5. DOJ apparently failed to inform Melson or any of the other potential witnesses that they could meet with Congress without ATF/DOJ lawyers present, even though this was part of the deal between DOJ and the Judiciary committees to release the hold on DOJ business before the committee.
6. DOJ has known about the DEA/FBI angle since April at least; but has declined to share that information with the Judiciary committee.
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Another FOX news segment, about the above. It's hard to visualize this thing outside of a Robert Ludlum novel.
http://video.foxnews.com/v/1040953929001/sources-atf-director-claims-doj-obstructing-probe
http://video.foxnews.com/v/1040953929001/sources-atf-director-claims-doj-obstructing-probe
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rantingredneck
New member
Another take on the Melson testimony from July 4:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gunwal...-blows-the-whistle-on-the-justice-department/
All I can say is this keeps getting worse.
Either the DOJ knew that ATF was targeting an FBI/DEA CI and didn't care to stop it as their goal of padding the gun trafficking was paramount or they were so inept that they didn't know that two of the agencies reporting to DOJ were working at cross purposes. I'm not sure which one scares me more.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gunwal...-blows-the-whistle-on-the-justice-department/
All I can say is this keeps getting worse.
Either the DOJ knew that ATF was targeting an FBI/DEA CI and didn't care to stop it as their goal of padding the gun trafficking was paramount or they were so inept that they didn't know that two of the agencies reporting to DOJ were working at cross purposes. I'm not sure which one scares me more.
rantingredneck
New member
I suppose he felt compelled to do something to avoid being the scapegoat that gets pilloried in the media and perpwalked into a Mexican prison.
Bartholomew Roberts
Moderator
Melson is a non-career Senior Executive Service employee currently, which means he can be terminated at any time with a 1-day notice and he has no right to appeal. He had previously been a career SES employee with 21 years in; but got talked into taking the non-career track in 2007 in order to receive a Presidential appointment at the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, and then Acting Director ATF. Presidential appointees who leave Presidential appointment are entitled to reinstatement of career SES status if the reason for leaving isn't misconduct, neglect of duty or malfeasance. So he has some personal investment in not being the designated fall guy for Fast and Furious.
Smart move on his part not to rely on DOJ counsel and get his own lawyer.