Project Gunwalker
by “Felony Stupid”
If you haven’t heard or seen a good rant in a while, here is your chance. The C-Span video below is from the third portion of today’s hearings held by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
After Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich reads his prepared testimony, Chairman Darrell Issa starts to light into him with a vengeance. It was beautiful to see Weich squirm knowing he had to sit there and take it. The relevant parts of the video run from the 7:15 mark up to about 12:47 mark. If the video was able to be excerpted – or if I knew how! – I would have presented that alone.
I was disgusted by the obsequious apology from Ranking Member Cummings to Weich when it was Cummings turn to speak. He certainly never apologized for his behavior in many of the hearings he held when he was Chairman of the Committee and it was not his place to apologize for Issa’s comments. I think darn near anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis would have said much worse and would not have been as restrained as Chairman Issa.
Special Prosecutor Time?
Alan Gottlieb of the Citizens’ Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms thinks the time is right for a Special Prosecutor in the Project Gunwalker scandal. He may well be right. The CCRKBA’s release is below.
BELLEVUE, WA – Following more than four hours of testimony before a House committee today by a U.S. Senator, government whistleblowers and relatives of a slain Border Patrol agent, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is calling for the immediate suspension, without pay, of all supervisors involved in a controversial gunrunning sting operation, including the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and his deputies, and the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate and determine who initiated this project and who approved it.
Operation Fast and Furious was the ATF’s botched gun trafficking investigation in Arizona that allowed more than 2,000 guns to be moved into a criminal pipeline leading straight to Mexico. Today’s stunning revelations under oath by ATF agents before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform suggest there were willful violations of ATF policy and procedures that were allegedly ordered by supervisors in Phoenix with the knowledge of the agency hierarchy in Washington, D.C.
“Today’s hearing revealed one outrage after another,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb. “Everybody who was involved in this debacle must be held accountable. That can only happen if there is an independent prosecutor, someone who cannot be influenced by the Justice Department.
“It is clear that members of Congress have been stonewalled,” he continued. “We share Congressman Darrell Issa’s outrage at the conduct of the Justice Department, and particularly the ATF. They’re supposed to be preventing criminals from getting firearms, not facilitating it.
“We think an independent prosecutor is important for another reason,” Gottlieb added. “Attempts by some members of the House Oversight committee to politicize this investigation are disappointing. Finding the truth about how this operation went wrong is not a launch pad for some new gun control effort. Don’t blame our gun laws and gun rights for the criminal acts of people who should have been arrested before anybody got killed.
“For the present,” he concluded, “the ATF should be immediately put under the command of people who clearly understand that it is their job to prevent illegal gun trafficking, instead of allowing it to happen. There has been a serious lack of leadership and accountability, and that needs to be fixed today.”
Irony
Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, in his written testimony submitted for the hearings into Operation Fast and Furious, relies upon a position taken by the head of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan years for refusing to provide all the documents requested by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The most basic justification for the policy follows from the Constitution’s careful separation of legislative and executive powers, the purpose of which is to protect individual liberty. As Charles J. Cooper, the Assistant Attorney General heading the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan Administration, explained in 1986, providing a congressional committee with sensitive, Executive Branch information about an ongoing law enforcement investigation would put Congress in an inappropriate position of exercising influence over or pressure on the investigation or possible prosecution. See Congressional Requests, 10 Op. O.L.C. at 76.
In what can only be called a delicious irony, the most anti-gun administration in recent memory has had to rely upon the writings of pro-gun attorney Charles J. Cooper to defend their position. Cooper and his law firm Cooper and Kirk serve as the attorneys for a number of the Second Amendment lawsuits brought by the National Rifle Association. Among the more notable include Benson v. Chicago which challenges the New Chicago Gun Law and both of the D’Cruz cases in Texas.
(edited)
Oversight Committee Report On Project Gunwalker
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has released their report on Operation Fast and Furious. The highlights of the report are below:
Report: Four ATF Agents Working on Controversial Operation ‘Fast and Furious’ Tell their Story
Agents say DOJ still being untruthful about efforts to let guns ‘walk’ into hands of drug cartels
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) today released a report, “The Department of Justice’s Operation Fast and Furious: Accounts of ATF Agents.” The report includes testimony from four Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) agents offering firsthand accounts about the controversial Operation Fast and Furious that allowed suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns. Two of the approximately 2,000 guns that ATF let criminals walk away with were found at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.
“ATF agents have shared chilling accounts of being ordered to stand down as criminals in Arizona walked away with guns headed for Mexican drug cartels,” said Rep. Issa. “With the clinical precision of a lab experiment, the Justice Department kept records of weapons they let walk and the crime scenes where they next appeared. To agents’ shock, preventing loss of life was not the primary concern.”
“These agents have risked their lives working for the ATF and they’ve risked their careers by coming forward to speak the truth about a dangerous strategy that was doomed from the start,” Sen. Grassley said. “The report shows the street agents’ perspective on this risky policy to let guns walk. It should help people who are wondering what really happened during Operation Fast and Furious understand why we are continuing to investigate.”
Highlights of the report include:
- The supervisor of Operation Fast and Furious was “jovial, if not, not giddy but just delighted about” walked guns showing up at crime scenes in Mexico according to an ATF agent. (p. 37)
- Another ATF agent told the committee about a prediction he made a year ago that “someone was going to die” and that the gunwalking operation would be the subject of a Congressional investigation. (p. 24)
- The shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords created a “state of panic” within the group conducting the operation as they initially feared a “walked” gun might have been used. (p. 38)
- One Operation Fast and Furious Agent: “I cannot see anyone who has one iota of concern for human life being okay with this …” (p. 27)
- An ATF agent predicted to committee investigators that more deaths will occur as a result of Operation Fast and Furious. (p.39)
- Multiple agents told the committee that continued assertions by Department of Justice Officials that guns were not knowingly “walked” and that DOJ tried to stop their transport to Mexico are clearly untruthful. (p. 45-50)
The Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s staff report entitled “The Department of Justice’s Operation Fast and Furious: Accounts of ATF Agents” is embedded below:
ATF Report
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ATF Leadership Not Ignorant Of Gunwalking
In his opening statement, Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) revealed that the upper management of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was intimately aware of what was going on with Operation Fast and Furious.
The documents can be found here.
George Gillett, Jr. was the ASAC of the Phoenix Field Division. When he saw that he was going to be thrown under the bus, he became a whistle-blower. The impact of that decision can be seen in the documents which I assume he furnished the Committee. As I said back in April, Gillett becoming a whistle-blower was the equivalent of a John Mitchell, H.R. Halderman, or John Ehrlichman rolling over on Richard Nixon during the Watergate Scandal.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Moments ago in his opening statement at today’s hearing, Operation Fast and Furious: Reckless Decisions, Tragic Outcomes, Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) released three e-mails detailing the intimate involvement of ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson and Acting Deputy Director Bill Hoover in Operation Fast and Furious:• The first e-mail from March 10, 2010, to Operation Fast and Furious Group VII Leader David Voth indicates that the two most senior leaders in ATF, Acting Director Kenneth Melson, and Deputy Director Billy Hoover, were “being briefed weekly on” Operation Fast and Furious. The document shows that both Melson and Hoover were “keenly interested in case updates.”
• A second e-mail from March 12, 2010, shows that Deputy Assistant Director for Field Operations William McMahon was so excited about Fast and Furious that he received a special briefing on the program in Phoenix – scheduled for a mere 45 minutes after his plane landed.
• A third – and perhaps the most disturbing – e-mail from April 12, 2010, indicates that Acting Director Melson was very much in the weeds with Operation Fast and Furious. After a detailed briefing of the program by the ATF Phoenix Field Division, Acting Director Melson had a plethora of follow-up questions that required additional research to answer. As the document indicates, Mr. Melson was interested in the IP Address for hidden cameras located inside cooperating gun shops. With this information, Acting Director Melson was able to sit at his desk in Washington and – himself – watch a live feed of the straw buyers entering the gun stores to purchase dozens of AK-47 variants.
Darrell Issa On CBS The Morning Show
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was interviewed by Erica Hill on The Early Show this morning. One of the more interesting things that comes out is that he calls out Rep. Elijah Cummings, Ranking Minority Member of the Committee, for trying to obstruct these hearings.
“Stunning Report” Expected To Be Released Today By House Oversight Committee
FoxNews is reporting that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is expected to release a report today on Project Gunwalker. I don’t find anything on the Committee’s website yet but will post it when it is available.
Watch the latest video at <a href=”http://video.foxnews.com”>video.foxnews.com</a>
UPDATE: The report is still not available. However, Mike Vanderboegh cites a Wall Street Journal article by Evan Perez who has seen the report. Go to Sipsey Street Irregulars to read the WSJ article as it has disappeared from the Journal’s website. Here is an excerpt.
ATF agents interviewed by congressional investigators described supervisors trying to tamp down agents’ misgivings about the strategy to allow the weapons purchases.
Larry Alt, an ATF agent, told investigators agents opposed the weapons sales as early as December 2009 and wanted to arrest straw purchasers, who are paid to buy guns for others. Mr. Alt said he agreed with a fellow agent who expressed the view that “someone was going to die.”
Supervisors responded by saying the operation was “sanctioned” by higher-ups. They also cited Mexico’s surging drug violence—187 murders in Sinaloa state in one month— as reason for the strategy.
“I believe we are righteous in our plan to dismantle this entire [trafficking] organization and to rush in to arrest any one person without taking into account the entire scope of the conspiracy would be ill advised. …,” wrote David Voth, an ATF supervisor who was leading Fast and Furious, to fellow agents in an April 2010 email cited in the 51-page report scheduled to be released Wednesday.
UPDATE II: If you are looking for the report from the Oversight Committee, I have it as the top post in the blog and will try to keep it at the top throughout the day. You can also just click the link above.