BATF got the bright idea that they would tell certain FFLs to ignore straw purchases
Oh, no. It was worse than that. They openly PRESSURED FFLs to sell guns to suspected traffickers. I know because I was one of them. The Fulton County DA had me (and several other Atlanta area dealers) file an affidavit to that effect.
The reason the story broke was because they had done it to a guy named Andre Howard, proprietor of Lone Wolf Gun Supply in Glendale. A potential customer asked him to order over a dozen WASR-10s. The conversation led him to believe the customer would be trafficking the guns.
Howard called the ATF. They showed up and told him they wanted him to go through with the transaction. Promises were made that the guns would be tracked and that he'd be helping with an investigation. They even put cameras in his shop.
Howard was smart enough to record his conversations with them.
Problem is, the guns walked because nobody from the ATF bothered to follow up. Then one of them was recovered from the scene when Brian Terry was killed. The ATF "leaked" the trace data to the press, and Howard was branded a criminal. It nearly destroyed his business and reputation.
The media hounded him but wouldn't listen when he swore he was cooperating with the ATF. He even offered the recordings. Nobody listened.
Finally, Sharyl Attkison at CBS agreed to talk to him. He pointed out the cameras and played her the recordings. In one of those recordings, he's openly anxious about whether or not the guns are being tracked, and he's reluctant to cooperate. An ASAC named Hope McAllister tells him, "you want to be on our good side. You don't want to know what happens when you're on our bad side."
Howard's story was not at all unique. This happened all over the place. It was the foundation of Fast & Furious. Even when the information went public, it still took months for Congress to investigate.
It's worth noting that our current President was making phone calls to pressure Representatives to drop the investigation. There was a ton of obstruction, including from the US Attorney General. He'd later be held in contempt of Congress TWICE for withholding and/or destroying evidence of the operation.
Holder served out the rest of his term without punishment of any sort. In fact, not a single person involved has ever been charged or so much as demoted. Many of the agents involved on the ground were simply transferred to other offices to get out from under scrutiny.
We had
a huge running thread on this at the time with a great deal of information.
A few key bits:
- there were never any tracking devices installed
- there were whistleblowers within the ATF. They were intimidated into silence by SAC Gillett in the Tucson office.
- at one point, SAC David Voth sent out this email to intimidate naysayers within the office
- in some cases, ATF agents were buying guns themselves and trafficking them. One of them was George Gillett. That gun was used in a mass shooting at a wedding in Mexico.
- Yes, there had been a similar operation under the Bush administration, but it had been shut down with prejudice when about 3 dozen guns were lost.
- President Obama was confronted about it in January of 2011 and claimed he was aware of it and was looking into it. AG Holder would later tell Congress he wasn't aware of it until April or May. Yes, this went to the top.
This is a huge scandal and a personal sore point for me.
