Posts Tagged ‘ATF’
ATF Manager says he shared ‘Fast & Furious’ operation details with White House in 2010
CBS NEWS: At a lengthy hearing on ATF’s controversial gunwalking operation today, a key ATF manager told Congress he discussed the case with a White House National Security staffer as early as September 2010.
The communications were between ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office, Bill Newell, and White House National Security Director for North America Kevin O’Reilly. Newell said the two are longtime friends. The content of what Newell shared with O’Reilly is unclear and wasn’t fully explored at the hearing.
It’s the first time anyone has publicly stated that a White House official had any familiarity with ATF’s operation Fast and Furious, which allowed thousands of weapons to fall into the hands of suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels in an attempt to gain intelligence. It’s unknown as to whether O’Reilly shared information with anybody else at the White House.
Congressional investigators obtained an email from Newell to O’Reilly in September of last year in which Newell began with the words: “you didn’t get this from me.”
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Holder Lied to Congress about ‘Fast and Furious’: DOJ News Release Shows Obama Admin Approved ATF Mexico Weapons Smuggling
Eric Holder gave false info. to a Congressional Committee last May about ATF operations tied to the deaths of two U.S. Agents; we have the proof.
SALEM NEWS: Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and Special Agent Jaime Zapata from ICE both died from
Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and Special Agent Jaime Zapata from ICE both died from weapons that were sent to Mexico from the United States. There is no knowledge as to how many lives the U.S. weapons smuggling programs claimed in Mexico.
weapons that were sent to Mexico from the United States. There is no knowledge as to how many lives the U.S. weapons smuggling programs claimed in Mexico.
(SALEM, Ore.) – New information indicates that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s actions are squarely behind the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) operation known as “Fast and Furious”, which orchestrated the delivery of almost 2,000 weapons to Mexican drug cartels[1].
Holder openly proclaimed his connection to the operation in April 2009 during a publicized speech in Mexico, then told a Congressional Committee in May 2011, “I probably heard of Fast and Furious the first time in the last few weeks.”[2]
The ATF weapons smuggling ring involved the arrest of several government officials with the city of Columbus, New Mexico including the mayor and police chief, but that is all[3].
They were apparently known from the beginning and the weapons deals with ‘straw buyers’ were videotaped. Smuggled U.S. weapons from this operation, described as mostly semi automatic versions of military weapons like the AK-47, were found to be used in the shooting deaths of two U.S. federal agents.
The new information, which is not really new at all, proves that Holder had to be aware of the U.S. government weapons smuggling operation planned and implemented by federal agents from ATF which he denied to Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) less than two months ago, as detailed below.
Background on Fast and Furious ‘Gunrunner’ Operation:
As we have reported with the help of our Photojournalist Robert Plumlee, who is a former CIA asset, we know that around 1,800 weapons were funneled through the Chaparral Gun Store in Chaparral, New Mexico, and into the hands of the murderous cartels. As referenced, the gun shop was directly tied to the mayor, police chief and city council of Columbus, New Mexico, a town famous for the Pancho Villa border raids a century before[4].
Weapons from the ATF Gunrunner or Gunwalker scheme as it came to be known, were recovered from the desert where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry died in a shootout with cartel members. A U.S. gun that allegedly was smuggled into Mexico from Dallas, Texas, was used to murder an Immigration Customs Enforcement Agent named Jaime Zapata[5].
Considering how big of a problems guns and violence already are in Mexico, it should be a mystery how this U.S. / Mexico weapons smuggling program was ever launched, and according to Holder’s earlier testimony, included in our report, Feds Call Meeting with Journalist Who Reported Human Remains and Cartel Weapon Build up with U.S. Ties, it is a mystery[6].
‘Fast and Furious’ scandal was effort by Obama and Holder to discredit Second Amendment
INVESTORS: If “Operation Fast and Furious” was merely a botched attempt at law enforcement, why was a supervisor of the operation, David Voth, “jovial, if not, not giddy but just delighted about” marked guns showing up at crime scenes in Mexico, as career Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent John Dodson told Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight Committee?
Perhaps because all was going as planned until it was learned that two of the AK-47s recovered at the scene of the fatal shooting of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in December were bought in ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious. That wasn’t supposed to happen.
“Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals — this was the plan,” Dodson testified to the panel. “It was so mandated.”
ATF agent Olindo James Casa said that “on several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms.”
Yet, as we’ve noted, gun-tracking operations stopped at the border.
That seems odd if the purpose was to catch gun traffickers and their drug-lord bosses. It makes sense, however, if the real purpose was to perpetuate, in the interests of pursuing the administration’s gun-control agenda, what Bob Owens of Pajamas Media calls the “90% lie.”
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