ATF Project Gunrunner

Re Mr. O'Reilly's safe return from Iraq or wherever, that might depend on that old story line, the one that goes as follows:

An unnamed party has a really fat envelope of documents to be opened and distributed in the event of my untimely demise or disappearance. So long as I show up when and where expected, in good health and or make scheduled, verifiable contact, the previously mentioned envelope stays sealed.

Yes it does sound corny, akin to a badly written mystery or spy tale, but then but then truth might be stranger than fiction.
 
Eghad said:
"A Civil Service employee does have some rights. Unless these 450 agents can be released for cause there has to be a Reduction In Force (RIF) which takes several factors into consideration such as length of service, reviews, veterans preferences ect. The only way to do this would be to reduce the authorized positions for the agency by 450. The agency can decide which 450positons get cut. However theere are guidlines for determining who stays and who goes. So the agency would have to follow those rules to decide who stays and who goes. "

Don't lose sight of the fact that the government employee's unions are a powerful voting block that most every congress-thing will pander to for re-election.

Also remember that the information about this scandal indicates the FBI, DEA, State Department and the IRS were involved as well.

Frankly, I would dance a jig if all these alphabet soup agencies were flushed down the toilet....but I won't hold my breath in anticipation of such an event.
 
With the exception of the few whistleblowers who've already come forward, I don't get the sense that any of these senior level staffers are the least bit inclined to spill the beans. They're not getting this guy out of country to silence him, they're getting him out of the country to shut up the House committee.

These staffers aren't executing policies they're troubled by. They're true believers and despise private firearms ownership and will stop at nothing to curtail it - apparently by any means available, legal or no.
 
Oops, I thought someone had already posted this cartoon but I guess not. Need to break things up now and then with some comic relief.

mlXog.jpg


/Got to love C&H.
 
csmsss writes:

With the exception of the few whistleblowers who've already come forward, I don't get the sense that any of these senior level staffers are the least bit inclined to spill the beans. They're not getting this guy out of country to silence him, they're getting him out of the country to shut up the House committee.

These staffers aren't executing policies they're troubled by. They're true believers and despise private firearms ownership and will stop at nothing to curtail it - apparently by any means available, legal or no.
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The foregoing are both interesting and troubling. See also that nearby cartoon, which of and in itself, might speak volumes.
 
Hopefully the dots are not connected, but it does seem a little ripe that former Obama OMB director Peter Orszag and then the dipstick governor of SC come up within a week of each other advocating less democracy/delayed elections as ways to break the gridlock in DC.

Perdue's remark is being spun as a joke, but she either wasn't or has a very odd sense of humor from the video...and Orszag was absolutely serious. In light of the House hearings, I suspect it is unlikely sweeping gun control legislation will get to the proposal stage, except for Carolyn McCarthy's usual stuff.

And if F+F was still "under the radar"? One has to ask.
 
Harry, the dipstick governor, as you say, is from NC, not SC. SC's current governor is firearms AND Constitution friendly.
 
BGutzman wrote:ATF - All Types of Felons..... sorry to paint with so wide a brush but its a sad state of affairs...
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The observation/characterization has a certain ring, it seems to me.

alloy wrote:Forbes has a fairly comprehensive piece on the topic of Fast and Furious.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin...mas-watergate/
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Strikes me that Forbes, essentially a business related publication has a lengthy piece on Fast and Furious is more than just "interesting", it seems.

Additionally, re the following excerpt, "Why a gunrunning scandal codenamed “Fast and Furious,” a program run secretly by the U.S. government that sent thousands of firearms over an international border and directly into the hands of criminals, hasn’t been pursued by an army of reporters all trying to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein is a story in itself", seems a most interesting question. Might media's traditional anti gun slant have a bearing on what seems the conspicious lack of activity by "investigative reporters" regarding this entire fiasco, or might it be that it has been run under a Democratic Administration bear on the seeming lack of media interest, a question that has been, I believe, previously raised.

Seems as if the cheese gets ever more binding.
 
The FBI informant who was buying the guns for the cartels was actually an undercover DEA agent, reports CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson.

According to Grassley and Issa, if the DEA and FBI had shared information with ATF, "then Operation Fast and Furious may have ended as many as ten months sooner than it did. This would have prevented hundreds of assault-type weapons from being illegally straw purchased on behalf of Mexican drug cartels."

The letter outlines an amazing alleged failure of DEA and FBI to share crucial investigative information with ATF.

It says while ATF was trying to identify the unnamed financier behind a gun trafficking ring leader named Manuel Celis-Acosta, the DEA and FBI already knew who the financier was - and had in fact turned him into a confidential informant. Yet, the letter states, the financier was allowed to continue to purchase weapons from Acosta over the course of a year, without ATF ever knowing that the man they were seeking to identify... was a government informant.

The letter also states that prior to becoming a confidential informant, the financier may have used $3,500 in taxpayer money, "official law enforcement funds," to finance weapons trafficking. He allegedly received the money - not knowing it came from the U.S. government -- by selling narcotics to another government confidential informant.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment.
Click to expand...

Who should be coordinating the activities of these agencies again? Eric Holder, who knew nothing about what his various agencies were doing and the laws they were breaking.
 
The fact that this article appeared in Forbes is good.

I haven't seen staff reporters at the major news organization produce much on this, but I have a feeling they will start. The staff reporters in the major MSM outlets are losing out, and it's somewhat of a goldmine of news. Despite the political views of the reporters and their managers - no one can afford to be outclassed and out-scooped.

I think that one of the things that Frank Miniter has done in this article better than any single article on the scandal so far is that he shows that it's doubtful the operation was put together to somehow build a case against the cartels - none of the requisite work to accomplish that was ever done. There are gaping holes in standard investigative processes, inexplicable lapses in planning and an incredible lack of foresight and planning - if they were really trying to build a case against the cartels.

However, if they were simply trying to show that lax gun laws in the United States were responsible for arming the Mexican drug cartels - they had everything they needed to accomplish that.

In order to show that irresponsibly lax gun laws were responsible for arming dangerous Mexican drug cartels, they merely had to get U.S. guns into the hands of the cartel, have the guns show up at crime scenes, have a straw buyer in custody and be able to trace the guns to U.S. gun stores. I’ll admit that there were some problems with this plan – such as having any of the gun store owners reveal that the sales to straw purchasers would not have even been completed except at the urging of the BATFE. But maybe to the BATFE, that was considered a minor PR detail that could have been glazed over.

The Forbes article does make it clear that if the intent of Operation Fast and Furious was to build a case that there are problems with current gun law – then they mostly had their bases covered. If the intent was to build a case against the cartels – it was inexplicably lacking in basic investigative procedures. In that regard, the operation was so poorly, planned and so poorly executed that it calls into question the stated intent of the operation.
 
It's more than the media. Issa and Grassley are having trouble getting traction with other members of the US congress. Those in congress who claim to care about our Second Amendment rights are saying little or nothing about Fast and Furious. My congressman did not answer my letter and e-mail on the subject.

Take a look at this organizational chart and tell me that someone high in the US justice Dep't will be held accountable for the Fast and Furious debacle. In a worst case scenario some career bureaucrats will be "censured" and retire.

http://www.justice.gov/agencies/index-org.html
 
The letter also states that prior to becoming a confidential informant, the financier may have used $3,500 in taxpayer money, "official law enforcement funds," to finance weapons trafficking. He allegedly received the money - not knowing it came from the U.S. government -- by selling narcotics to another government confidential informant.
Click to expand...

So, the FBI gave their informant $71,000 of taxpayer money to buy guns (see earlier post). The ATF bought 6 Draco pistols with taxpayer money, which it later sold to people working for the informant (who presumably paid in taxpayer money). Meanwhile, there is some secondary financing going on as other government informants buy $3,500 worth of drugs from the cartel with taxpayer money.

I am starting to get the impression that the U.S. taxpayer is a significant source of funding for these cartels. Maybe if we stopped giving them money, that would help the Mexican government? :rolleyes:
 
I think that one of the things that Frank Miniter has done in this article better than any single article on the scandal so far is that he shows that it's doubtful the operation was put together to somehow build a case against the cartels - none of the requisite work to accomplish that was ever done. There are gaping holes in standard investigative processes, inexplicable lapses in planning and an incredible lack of foresight and planning - if they were really trying to build a case against the cartels.

However, if they were simply trying to show that lax gun laws in the United States were responsible for arming the Mexican drug cartels - they had everything they needed to accomplish that.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the difference between the avowed goal and results is so great, one has to wonder what the real goal is. Worse, this kind of basic gap exists between so many other policies and results thereof of this administration. The broad pattern of saying "A" and getting "B" as a result is awful broad to be simple ineptitude or accident.
 
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