Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted a story about the ongoing investigation of Operation Fast and Furious.
The article reports on how Fast and Furious worked:
"Under DOJ's new strategy, gun shop owners would be given the names of suspected straw purchasers and would report to ATF the serial numbers of guns that they sold to those purchasers. However, the purchasers themselves were not kept under surveillance and no effort was made to stop them from transferring the guns to Mexican drug gangs. On the contrary, such transfers were the hoped-for result, on the theory that identifying the guns when they later turned up at crime scenes in Mexico or on the U.S. side of the border would "create a 'nexus' between the drug cartels and the straw purchasers." Under this theory, approximately 2,000 AK-47s and other weapons were allowed to pass from known straw purchasers into the hands of the drug cartels."
Many of the ATF agents complained about the policy, stating that it would put agents in greater danger and increase violence among the drug cartels. The program allowed the weapons to be taken into Mexico without interdiction, and surveillance efforts stopped at the Mexican border. There is no way that this program was going to succeed as a law enforcement operation. So what was the program about? Why were we allowing the sale of weapons to people buying them for known drug cartels?
Bob Owens at Pajamas Media has a theory:
"At the same time in 2009 that federal law enforcement agencies (the ATF, the DOJ, and presumably Janet Napolitano's Department of Homeland Security) were creating the operation that led to the executive branch being the largest gun smuggler in the Southwest, the president's team was crafting the rhetoric to sell the crisis they were creating.
"On television, in various news outlets, and even in a joint appearance with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama pushed the 90 percent lie, implying that 90% of the guns recovered in Mexican cartel violence came from U.S. gun shops.
"At the same time they were damning gun dealers in public, the administration was secretly forcing them to provide weapons to the cartels, by the armful and without oversight. More than one gun industry insider suggests that the administration extorted cooperation and silence from these gun shops. As the ATF has the power to summarily shut dealers down for the most minor of offenses, that is very, very possible."
In March 2009, CBS News quoted Hillary Clinton:
"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on a visit to Mexico, said Wednesday that America's inability to prevent weapons being smuggled across the border is causing the deaths of Mexican police officers, soldiers and civilians."
The plan was to shut down the gun dealers claiming that it was necessary to protect Mexican police officers, soldiers and civilians.
Pajamas Media concludes:
"The Department of Justice claims that their inspector general will investigate Gunwalker, but it appears obvious to the very agents that brought this scandal into the open that they have a clear conflict of interest. There are already calls for a special prosecutor to investigate Gunwalker.
"Considering the arming of narco-terrorist gangs, the destabilizing geopolitical effect on Mexico, the foreign policy ramifications, and the possibility of extrajudicial and criminal activity at the highest levels of the executive branch, a special prosecutor should be just one avenue of investigation. This could possibly lead to prison for senior administration officials and an indictment against President Barack Obama himself."
I suspect there will be more information to come about Operation Fast and Furious. Thanks to Darrell Issa and the Congressional Oversight Committee, the Second Amendment is still intact.
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