William Lajeunesse
FoxNews.com
7/26/2011
The failed federal anti-gunrunning program known as Operation Fast and Furious got so out of control in November 2009, it appeared the U.S. government was single-handedly “arming for war” the Sinaloa Cartel, documents show, even as U.S. officials kept lying to fellow agents in Mexico about the volume of guns it helped send south of the border.
Those shocking allegations are revealed in the latest congressional report investigating the operation.
At one point, agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives say guns sold under the program took just 24 hours to travel from a gun store in Phoenix to a crime scene in Mexico. ATF agents there pleaded for help but were told nothing about Fast and Furious, which was intended to let guns “walk” in order to track them to higher-profile traffickers.
Meanwhile, the report claims the agents’ superiors in Washington met every Tuesday, to review the latest sales figures and the number of guns recovered in Mexico.
“How long are you going to let this go on?” Steve Martin, an assistant director of intelligence operations asked the ATF top brass at meeting Jan. 5, 2010, according to a transcript of the meeting contained in the congressional report. None of the men responded and several quickly left the room, the transcript reveals.
By Feb. 27, 2010, Lanny Breuer, the head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., was allegedly told that the ATF had successfully helped sell 1,026 weapons worth more than $650,000 to members of the Sinaloa cartel. The briefing included all top ATF officials, including the agents in charge in Los Angeles and Houston, as well as a half dozen top Justice Department attorneys.
“So there’s no doubt after this briefing that guns in this case were being linked to the Sinaloa cartel?” a congressional investigator asked Martin during a July 2011 interview…
The article continues, with video, at FoxNews.com
H/T Ace of Spades HQ:
…Let’s see if I have this straight:
The smartest administration in the history of the world conceived of this plan.
The plan was to just let thousands of weapons flow to murderous drug cartels.
And then take those cartels down.
But they didn’t take the cartels down, because they didn’t track the guns.
They instead were to follow the money, but they also didn’t do that.
A US border agent was killed due to the illegal arms sent to a neighboring sovereign country in this massive covert operation.
In addition, so was the brother of a Mexican attorney general.
So were a number of other Mexican citizens murdered with these weapons — we don’t know the number yet.
In conducting this massive covert action, we lied to officials in this neighboring sovereign country, even though their people (and cops, and officials) were getting killed with our weapons.
As far as I know, we haven’t taken any action beyond arresting a few straw buyers… who could have easily been arrested, with the weapons, when they attempted to smuggled them or sell them.
We have not taken down any cartels at all.
In fact, we’ve not done anything except murdered people by indirect, but perfectly foreseeable, US covert action.
And the only outlet that is following this is FoxNews, so you can tell Fox is biased.
