Harassment in the 21st century...

...classy move. I wonder how Attorney General Holder will react to the Senator's request. I'm predicting that this story will just go away, and no investigation will be opened by the DOJ. Flip the ideologies, and you better believe that Holder would have hearings and investigations and arrests. At least that's my $0.02. Read the original here.
Senator Asks DOJ to Investigate SWAT-ting Attacks on Conservative Bloggers

Jun 6, 2012 6:37pm

Arlette Saenz

ABC NEWS

A number of conservative bloggers allege they have been targeted through the use of harassment tactics such as SWAT-ting (fooling 911 operators into sending emergency teams to their homes), in retaliation for posts they have written, and now Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., has stepped into the matter. He has sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to investigate the SWAT-ting cases to see if federal laws have been violated.

“I am writing with concern regarding recent reports that several members of the community of online political commentators have been targeted with harassing and frightening actions. Any potentially criminal action that incites fear, seeks to silence a dissenting opinion, and collaterally wastes the resources of law enforcement should be given close scrutiny at all levels,” Chambliss wrote in the letter.

“Regardless of any potential political differences that may exist, threats and intimidation have no place in our national political discourse. Those who choose to enter into that political discourse should not have to worry about potential threats to their or their family’s safety,” Chambliss continued. “While I am certain that local law enforcement is reviewing each of these instances, I am asking you to please look into each of these cases as well to determine if any federal laws may have been violated. Future targets of SWAT-ting, whether engaged in political speech or not, may not be so fortunate as to escape physical harm.”

ABC News spoke with two prominent conservative bloggers who were victims of SWAT-ting, a hoax tactic used by some hackers to infiltrate a victim’s phone system, often through voice over IP (VOIP) technology to make calls appear as if they are coming from a residence. The perpetrators call police to report a violent crime at that home to which the police respond, sometimes with SWAT teams.

Just after midnight on July 1, 2011, Patrick Frey, a deputy District Attorney in Los Angeles and a conservative blogger who writes under the name “Patterico,” heard a pounding at his door as sheriff’s deputies arrived to investigate a call from Frey’s home about a man who claimed he had killed his wife. But no one in Frey’s home had been killed, and no one had made a phone call to the police.

“It’s a phone call that could have gotten me killed,” Frey wrote on his blog about the incident.

Frey was cuffed by police while they woke up his wife, who was asleep in their room, and questioned her about the safety of the children. Helicopters swarmed overhead with searchlights as the sheriff’s deputies investigated.

Frey told ABC News he received email threats prior to the SWAT-ting incident.

Late last month, Erick Erickson, the editor of the conservative site RedState.com, was the victim of the same type of targeting. He had written about Frey’s case just a few days before.

Erickson sat at home in Macon, Georgia with his family while his children played outside over Memorial Day weekend when two sheriff’s deputies drove to the house after receiving a phone call about Erickson allegedly shooting his wife.

“My first thought was, ‘What have the kids done?’” Erickson said after seeing the police car outside his home. “The police officer approached me in the driveway and said it was a call about an accidental shooting. According to the 911 call, the person claimed I had killed my wife.”

Erickson, who said he has received other types of threats in the past, had alerted the sheriff’s department after Frey’s experience in case he became the victim of a similar occurrence.

The Bibb County District Attorney’s office in Georgia currently is investigating the case and could not offer comment on it. Asked who he suspected was responsible for the phone call to police, Erickson declined to speculate.

But several conservative bloggers have been vocal about who they believe is responsible for the SWAT-tings and other forms of harassment — Brett Kimberlin, a man who was convicted of a series of bombings in Speedway, Indiana in the 1980s and made headlines in 1988 when he claimed to have once sold marijuana to then-vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle.

The group of conservative bloggers organized “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day” on May 25, during which they urged the blogging community to write about the actions of Kimberlin.

Kimberlin, who is now the director of a non-profit organization called Justice Through Music, told ABC News that he did not commit or ask anyone to conduct the SWAT-ting hoaxes that were perpetrated against Erickson and Frey.

“Of course not, it’s ridiculous. It’s totally irresponsible for them to even say this,” Kimberlin told ABC News. “There is no truth to anything about the SWAT-ting.”

But some conservative bloggers contend Kimberlin and his associates are responsible for other forms of harassment as well. Robert Stacy McCain, a contributor to the American Spectator and founder of The Other McCain Blog, wrote about Kimberlin, and shortly after, his wife’s place of employment received a phone call from Kimberlin accusing McCain of harassment. Based on Kimberlin’s ability to find his wife’s employer, McCain became concerned Kimberlin also knew the location of his home, so the McCain family relocated to an undisclosed location.

“If I was going to continue doing this story, I couldn’t do it from my home,” McCain told ABC News. ”This kind of intimidation — it’s a threat to protected first amendment expression.”

“It’s being treated as these are just bloggers playing around on Twitter, but this is serious business. It’s much more serious I think than most people now realize,” McCain said.

Ali Akbar, the president of the National Blogger’s Club, an organization established to support bloggers, recently was targeted by an anonymous website which posted the address of his mother’s home in Forth Worth, Texas, along with a picture of the house. Akbar and other bloggers believe the website, “Breitbart Unmasked,” is linked to Kimberlin.

The National Blogger’s Club recently started a relief fund to help ease the financial woes of bloggers who are undergoing lawsuits, including one lawsuit by Kimberlin against blogger Aaron Walker, and Akbar believes the anonymous post of his mother’s home address was a response to the creation of this fund.

“They decided to take this from a discussion about me trying to help some members of my club, and they tried to disable us,” Akbar said.

Akbar and his mother are cooperating with the Tarrant County District Attorney’s office regarding the incident.

Kimberlin denied he was responsible for the post, even saying that he does not maintain any online presence and said he and his family have been victims of threats themselves and accused the bloggers of constructing a “false narrative” about him.

“I don’t blog, I don’t comment, I don’t tweet on any blogs at all. This is a right-wing attack on me and my organizations and it’s a smear job. It’s a swift boat action against us,” Kimberlin said. “What they’re doing is an obstruction of justice and it’s defamatory. We’re cooperating with the authorities in this matter. They have engaged in a massive smear campaign against us that has resulted in death threats to me and my family and to others associated with us.”

The FBI has investigated a number of SWAT-ting incidents in the past. In 2009, Carlton Nalley was sentenced to nine years in federal prison after pleading guilty to offenses related to a SWAT-ting conspiracy in Fort Worth, Texas.

Churches campaigning for State?

There's so much about this that I have issue with: 

 #1. Separation of church and state, right? Why would pastors be campaigning for a specific candidate in their church? But whatever, they want to preach the word of POTUS, I guess they have the right to. 

 #2. Why is the Attorney General, the head of the US Department of Justice, anywhere near this? 

 #3. Why is the Internal Revenue Service, anywhere near this? #4. And I'm sorry, I do find it terribly ironic that preachers are going to be campaigning for the man that has turned out to be the most secular and religiously opportunistic President in recent memory. I'm sorry, but does anyone really believe that this is a faith based voting, rather than a race based vote? Either way, read the original here.

Holder to brief black pastors on campaign 2012
byJoel Gehrke Commentary Staff Writer

Attorney General Eric Holder, the IRS, and the liberal lawyers at the ACLU will brief several hundred pastors in the African American community on how to participate in the presidential election -- which the Congressional Black Caucus chair expects will help President Obama's campaign.

"We will have representatives from nine denominations who actually pastor somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10 million people, and we're going to first of all equip them with the information they need to know about what they can say and what they cannot say in the church that would violate their 501c3 status with the IRS," Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., told MSNBC today.

"In fact, we're going to have the IRS administrator there, we're going to have the Attorney General Eric Holder there, we're going to have the lawyers' organization from around the country, the ACLU -- all giving ministers guidance about what they can and cannot do," he noted.

Cleaver said they would not tell pastors which candidate to support. They will let them know who to regard as the bad guys, though (hint: not Democrats). "We're going to talk about some of the draconian laws that have cropped up around the country as a result of the 17 percent increase in African American votes," Cleaver said, describing voter ID laws as a form of Jim Crow-style "poll tax" on seniors and black voters.

The CBC chairman is confident that "President Obama is going to get 95 percent of the [African American] vote," and wants to keep that turnout high. "We want to let them know that there is a theological responsibility to participate in the political process, at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition," he said.

Did President Bush also let guns slip into Mexico?

What do you think? Read the original here.

SF Chronicle Story Repeats AP 'Fast & Furious' Misinformation

Bush also did it!
Bush also did it!

That is the current talking point desperately being promoted by the Associated Press, and now picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle, to try to explain away the selling of guns to members of the Mexican drug cartel by the Obama administration. The only problem is that the Associated Press left out a key detail as pointed out by Katie Pavlich of Townhall. First the misleading claim by AP:

The federal government under the Bush administration ran an operation that allowed hundreds of guns to be transferred to suspected arms traffickers — the same tactic that congressional Republicans have criticized President Barack Obama's administration for using, two federal law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

When Bush, a Republican, was president, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Tucson, Ariz., used a similar enforcement tactic in a program it called Operation Wide Receiver. The fact that there were two such ATF investigations years apart in separate administrations raises the possibility that agents in still other cases may have allowed guns to "walk."

And now Pavlich explains how incredibly misleading that AP claim about Bush allowing guns to walk is:

The problem is, the "same tactic" under heavy criticism by the House Oversight Committee was not used under President Bush. Operation Fast and Furious started in Fall 2009 and was an offshoot of the Project Gunrunner program implemented under the Bush Administration. Project Gunrunner started as a pilot program in Laredo, Texas and went national in 2006. Project Gunrunner involved the surveillance of straw purchasers buying weapons, but those purchasers were immediately apprehended before crossing back into Mexico or tranferring arms to dangerous criminals. Shortly after Obama took office, Operation Fast and Furious allowed straw purchasers working for Mexican drug cartels to purchase mass amount of weapons in the United States and then take them back to Mexico in addition to allowing them to be lost at stash houses and tranferred to dangerous cartel members. ATF agents who have testified before Congress about the program said the idea was to "trace" those weapons, but the tracing ended up being a total failure as GPS batteries ran out and thousands of guns were lost in Mexico and only found at final violent crime scenes. Did both operations allow for straw purchasers to buy guns under ATF/DOJ surveillance? Yes, however, the key difference between Operation Fast and Furious under Obama and Project Gunrunner under Bush is that under Obama guns were allowed to go back into Mexico without interdiction or arrests. According to Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa, straw purchaser arrests and prosecutions have been way down under this administration, so much so it's almost as if the Obama Justice Department has no interest in prosecuting illegal straw purchasers at all. (A straw purchaser is someone who buys guns illegally for those who cannot buy them. In this case, cartels members can't buy guns, so they hired "straw purchasers" to buy weapons for them).

So what the AP conveniently neglects to mention is that under the Bush administration, the guns were quickly apprehended BEFORE crossing the border. And now that the AP has set up a Fast & Furious excuse to pathetically explain away the Obama administration allowing guns to cross the border, the San Francisco Chronicle has latched onto the same excuse by citing this misinformation promoted by AP as you can see in this article by the Hearst Washington Bureau correspondent, Puneet Kollipara:

Texas GOP Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday demanded an independent investigation of whether Attorney General Eric Holder misled Congress on what he knew about the botched gun-tracking operation known as "Fast and Furious" - and when he found out about it.

Also on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that the George W. Bush administration conducted a program similar to Fast and Furious, in which Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents were instructed to let Mexican drug cartel straw purchasers buy guns in the Phoenix area to follow the trail to higher-ups.

Known as Operation Wide Receiver, the Bush-era operation also let guns be transferred to suspected arms traffickers. Justice Department prosecutors have brought charges against nine people involved in the operation, according to AP; two have pleaded guilty.

And now we await a correction of this misinformation making it seem that the Bush administration also allowed guns to cross the border from both the Associated Press and copycat misinformer Kollipara in 5...4...3...2...

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/pj-gladnick/2011/10/05/sf-chronicle-story-repeats-ap-fast-furious-misinformation#ixzz1ZvEsWgdQ

ATF Fast and Furious: New documents show Attorney General Eric Holder was briefed in July 2010

Read the original here.

ATF Fast and Furious: New documents show Attorney General Eric Holder was briefed in July 2010
BySharyl Attkisson
October 3, 2011 5:59 PM

WASHINGTON - New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.

On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, "I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

Yet internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious.

Read the July 5, 2010 memoRead the "It's a tricky case" email Read the memo to AG Holder from Asst. AG Lanny A. Breuer

The documents came from the head of the National Drug Intelligence Center and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer.

In Fast and Furious, ATF agents allegedly allowed thousands of weapons to cross the border and fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

Gunwalking scandal uncovered at ATF

It's called letting guns "walk," and it remained secret to the public until Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered last December. Two guns from Fast and Furious were found at the scene, and ATF agent John Dodson blew the whistle on the operation. Agent: I was ordered to let guns "walk" into Mexico

Ever since, the Justice Department has publicly tried to distance itself. But the new documents leave no doubt that high level Justice officials knew guns were being "walked."

Two Justice Department officials mulled it over in an email exchange Oct. 18, 2010. "It's a tricky case given the number of guns that have walked but is a significant set of prosecutions," says Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division. Deputy Chief of the National Gang Unit James Trusty replies "I'm not sure how much grief we get for 'guns walking.' It may be more like, "Finally they're going after people who sent guns down there."

The Justice Department told CBS News that the officials in those emails were talking about a different case started before Eric Holder became Attorney General. And tonight they tell CBS News, Holder misunderstood that question from the committee - he did know about Fast and Furious - just not the details.

Emails show top Justice Department officials knew of ATF gun program

Read the original here.

Emails Show Top Justice Department Officials Knew Of ATF Mexico Gun Program
richard.serrano@latimes.com

Reporting from Washington—

Senior Justice Department officials were aware that ATF agents allowed firearms to be "walked" into Mexico, according to a series of emails last year in which they discussed two undercover operations on the Southwest border, including the failed Fast and Furious program.

In the emails that the department turned over to congressional investigators, Justice Department officials last October discussed both the Fast and Furious gun-trafficking surveillance operation in Phoenix and a separate investigation from 2006 and 2007 called Operation Wide Receiver. In Wide Receiver, which took place in Tucson, firearms also were acquired by illegal straw purchasers and lost in Mexico, the emails say.

The term "gun walking" is central to the failure of Fast and Furious. Agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them. But they lost track of more than 2,000 weapons, and the Mexican government says some of them have turned up at about 170 crime scenes there. Two were recovered at the scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent's slaying in Arizona in December.

Justice Department officials have said repeatedly that they knew nothing of Fast and Furious tactics until ATF whistle-blowers went public this year with allegations that guns were being illegally purchased with the ATF's knowledge.

Justice Department officials, who asked not to be identified because of the ongoing investigations into Fast and Furious, said that although senior department officials knew that guns were "walked" in the Wide Receiver investigation, they were unaware that ATF agents were using similar tactics in Fast and Furious.

Jason Weinstein, deputy attorney general in the criminal division, brought up both cases in an October 2010 email, apparently concerned that they were going to overlap.

"Do you think we should try to have Lanny participate in press when Fast and Furious and [the] Tucson case are unsealed?" he asked about his boss, Lanny A. Breuer, head of the criminal division. "It's a tricky case given the number of guns that have walked but it is a significant set of prosecutions."

James Trusty, acting chief of the department's organized crime and gang section, responded, "I think so but the timing is tricky too."

He said the Tucson case would be ready for indictments before Fast and Furious, and that "it's not clear how much we're involved in the main F and F case."

Either way, he added that "it's not going to be any big surprise that a bunch of US guns are being used in MX, so I'm not sure how much grief we get for 'guns walking.' It may be more like, 'Finally they're going after people who sent guns down there' "

Investigators working for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, view the emails as strong evidence that Justice Department officials knew about "gun walking" tactics in Fast and Furious.

Fast and Furious ran from fall 2009 to January, culminating in charges against 20 people — none of them cartel leaders. It was unclear whether any indictments were issued in the Wide Receiver operation.

July 2010 memos, part of weekly reports, discussed an illegal straw purchaser in Fast and Furious who bought 1,500 weapons "that were then supplied to Mexican drug-trafficking cartels."

October and November memos said that "Phoenix-based 'Operation Fast and Furious' is ready for takedown" — several months before the investigation was officially closed.

Copies of all of the memos were heavily redacted.

Justice Department officials said Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. routinely received reports about myriad ongoing investigations around the country, and that the reports did not disclose that ATF agents were purposely "walking" the weapons. They said Issa received a similar Fast and Furious update last year.

But congressional investigators said the memos suggested Holder had hedged what he knew.

According to the emails, Holder was told generally about Fast and Furious in the memos in July, October and November 2010, well before he told congressional committees he had first learned of the program.

On March 10, Holder testified before a Senate subcommittee that he had just learned about the Fast and Furious gun-walking allegations and had asked for the inspector general's investigation. "We cannot have a situation where guns are allowed to walk," he said.

On May 3, he was asked by Issa when he first learned about Fast and Furious. "I'm not sure of the exact date," Holder testified. "But I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

Justice Department officials said Holder was referring to the date when he first learned about the operational details of Fast and Furious, not the program itself.

More shady stuff with "Fast & Furious" investigation

Read the original here.

Corrupt as Hell: Acting DOJ Inspector General Tips Off Obama's Gunwalker Co-conspirators

Perhaps you've read about the audiotapes posted to CBS news, of a conversation between the gun dealer that sold many Fast and Furious guns and the ATF agent that was part of the operation.

Now we find out that those tapes came out after the acting Inspector General leaked them to the suspects in the case, jeopardizing the Oversight investigation.

In a letter released on Wednesday to Acting Justice Department Inspector General Cynthia Schnedar, they expressed deep concern over her decision to turn over to U.S. prosecutors in Arizona audio recordings obtained during her investigation.Representative Darrell Issa, head of the House Oversight Committee, and Charles Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Schnedar apparently did not consider the significant harm caused by giving the recordings to those under investigation.
They criticized the move as potentially obstructing the congressional probe into the operation because potential witnesses may have colluded about what to tell investigators.

Schnedar needs to be fired, and if statutes allow it, charged for obstruction of justice and any related charges (aiding and abetting the enemy?).

This is mob-lawyer-level actions committed by a federal official in charge or one of the most important investigations in U.S. history... and considering the hundreds dead, I'm not overselling that at all.

Did Attorney General Holder know about "Fast & Furious"?

Is there a cover up? I don't think there's any doubt there's some stonewalling going on. Read the original here.

Republicans Step Up Pressure On Holder As More Details Surface On 'Fast And Furious'

Congressional Republicans once again are turning up the heat on Attorney General Eric Holder, asking more questions about whether he had a role in the controversial anti-gunrunning operation known as "Fast and Furious."

The new inquiry comes from Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. Despite recent personnel changes at the Justice Department, Smith told Holder in a letter Friday the department cannot "pin this scandal on a few individuals and expect it to be forgotten."

"Fast and Furious was a result of systemic problems at the ATF. Congressional interest will continue until we fully understand who authorized the failed program," Smith said.

The idea behind Fast and Furious, hatched in the ATF's Phoenix office, was to let so-called straw buyers purchase guns in the United States so they could be traced to big-time gunrunners in Mexico. But documents and testimony now show that U.S. officials lost track of thousands of guns, some of which later were found at the scenes of violent crimes, including the murder of a U.S. border agent.

On Friday, National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre accused Holder of stonewalling Congress.

"This is the biggest cover-up since Watergate, and it's time to ask the Watergate question. Who authorized Fast and Furious, and how high up does it go?" LaPierre asked during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando.

According to a source close to the investigation, despite numerous subpoenas and demands for potentially thousands of pages of records, the Justice Department has turned over just 12 documents. Unless the House Oversight Committee can cut lose more incriminating documents from the Justice Department or additional whistleblowers come forward, the investigation could stall, said a person familiar with the situation.

So far, the scandal has produced headlines but only one resignation, that of the U.S. attorney in Arizona.

The paper trail however has revealed blatant lying by the Justice Department, which originally told Sen. Charles Grassley the ATF did not "walk" guns. That position conflicts with agent testimony and pages of internal emails.

A document obtained Friday by Foxnews shows the following agencies all had some hand in Operation Fast and Furious: ATF, IRS, DEA, ICE, the U.S. Marshall's Service, Phoenix police and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The operation allowed members of the Sinaloa Cartel to buy in excess of 1,900 weapons for more than $1.25 million dollars over a one-year period beginning October 2009, according to a briefing paper dated last January. The briefing paper did not delineate the duties of each agency, but other records have shown the IRS investigated the income sources of the straw buyers, Phoenix police assisted occasionally with surveillance, the DEA shared its informant and ICE “saw everything and had access to everything” the ATF did, according to an agent tasked to Fast and Furious.

But throughout the operation, the agency recovered just over 10 percent of the weapons.

An ATF whistleblower agent told Fox News the agency made "absolutely no attempt to follow the weapons." And even though agents used electronic vehicle trackers, they only used them on the strawbuyers, not on those to whom they transferred the weapons.

This does not jibe with an amended statement issued Thursday by ATF Agent in Charge Bill Newell, who claimed in a letter to Congress his the agency used "a wide variety of well established law enforcement investigative techniques" to interdict and seize weapons.

In his letter to Holder on Friday, Rep. Smith demanded to know what oversight role the Justice Department had over Fast and Furious. He also noted that President Obama promised a new era of government "transparency and openness" when elected in 2008, a promise that Smith says rings empty.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/23/republicans-step-up-pressure-on-holder-as-more-details-surface-on-fast-and/#ixzz1ZbIA8bOV

"Fast & Furious" update: ATF directly bought sold guns to cartel?

Read the original here.

Fast & Furious “smoking gun”?
POSTED AT 11:25 AM ON SEPTEMBER 29, 2011 BY ED MORRISSEY

The New York Post’s Michael Walsh wonders when the media outrage will arrive in the aftermath of the disastrous and deadly Operation Fast and Furious. The latest revelation shows that the ATF wasn’t really interested in stopping illegal gun sales or stopping the movement of guns across the border, Walsh writes, but something else entirely. And until the national media exposes the “lies” coming from the Department of Justice, Americans simply won’t get answers as to what purpose the ATF and DoJ really intended:

This just might be the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for to break the festering “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal wide open: the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.

Let that sink in: After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.

Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy four Draco pistols for cash and even got a letter from his supervisor, David Voth, authorizing a federally licensed gun dealer to sell him the guns without bothering about the necessary paperwork. …

On orders, Dodson then sold the guns to known criminals, who first stashed them away and then — deliberately unhindered by the ATF or any other agency — whisked them off to Mexico.

At least one mainstream media outlet has stuck with the case. The Los Angeles Times’ Richard Serrano, who broke the news to which Walsh refers, extends the story today by reporting that F&F guns turned up in El Paso, Texas in January 2010 in what should have been a huge red flag that the operation had spun out of control:

A cache of assault weapons lost in the ATF’s gun-trafficking surveillance operation in Phoenix turned up in El Paso, where it was being stored for shipment to Mexico, according to new internal agency emails and federal court records.

Forty firearms along with ammunition magazines and ballistic vests were discovered in Texas in January 2010 during the early stages of the program, meaning the firearms vanished soon after the program began. …

The El Paso case is the first example of Fast and Furious weapons turning up on this side of the border outside the Phoenix area.

The big question is why the ATF didn’t suspend the operation after discovering that it had lost control of the guns. The answer seems to be that they didn’t care that they had lost control of the guns, since they were allowing the F&F guns to go across the border anyway. Walsh writes that this demonstrates that the explanations offered in defense of F&F are simply false. Instead, Walsh deduces that only two explanations are possible any longer — or maybe three:

There are two possible explanations. The first is that the anti-gun Obama administration deliberately wanted American guns planted in Mexico in order to demonize American firearms dealers and gun owners. The operation was manufacturing “evidence” for the president’s false claim that we’re to blame for the appalling levels of Mexican drug-war violence.

If this is true, then Holder & Co. have got to go — and the trail needs to be followed no matter where it leads. For the federal government to seek to frame its own citizens is unconscionable.

A second notion is that the CIA was behind the whole thing, which accounts for all the desperate wagon-circling. Under this theory, the Agency feared the los Zetas drug cartel was becoming too powerful and might even mount a coup against the Mexican government. So some 2,000 weapons costing more than $1.25 million were deliberately channeled to the rival Sinaloa cartel, which operates along the American border, to keep the Zetas in check.

Of course, there’s a third explanation — that both scenarios are true, and that those in charge of Fast and Furious saw an opportunity to shoot two birds with one Romanian-made AK Draco pistol.

I’m going with option C. And if that’s the case, then include Leon Panetta among those who has to hit the road, too.

Update in the "Fast & Furious" GunRunning investigation

Gotta love trying to skip the weekly news cycle. Read the original here.

New Fast and Furious docs released by White House
By Sharyl Attkisson

September 30, 2011 9:35 PM

WASHINGTON - Late Friday, the White House turned over new documents in the Congressional investigation into the ATF "Fast and Furious" gunwalking scandal.

The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell - who led Fast and Furious - and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O'Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O'Reilly are long time friends.

Newly-released White House documents (pdf)

ATF agents say that in Fast and Furious, their agency allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to be sold to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels. At least two of the guns turned up at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.

ATF Manager says he shared Fast and Furious with the White House

The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. They discuss ATF's gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O'Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office's gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as "letting guns walk."

A lawyer for the White House wrote Congressional investigators: "none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to allow guns to 'walk.'"

ATF Fast and Furious: Who at the White House knew?

Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF's Newell sent the White House's O'Reilly an "arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up." The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.

Newell email (09.03.10) (pdf)
Arizona Gunrunner Impact Team chart (pdf)

In response, O'Reilly wrote on Sept. 3, 2010 "The arrow chart is really interesting - and - no surprise - implies at least that different (Drug Trafficking Organizations) in Mexico have very different and geographically distinct networks in the US for acquiring guns. Did last year's TX effort develop a similar graphic?"

O'Reilly email (09.03.10) (pdf)

The White House counsel who produced the documents stated that some records were not included because of "significant confidentiality interests."

Also included are email photographs including images of a .50 caliber rifle (left) that Newell tells O'Reilly "was purchased in Tucson, Arizona (part of another OCDTF case)." OCDTF is a joint task force that operates under the Department of Justice and includes the US Attorneys, ATF, DEA, FBI, ICE and IRS. Fast and Furious was an OCDTF case.

An administration source would not describe the Tucson OCDTF case. However, CBS News has learned that ATF's Phoenix office led an operation out of Tucson called "Wide Receiver." Sources claim ATF allowed guns to "walk" in that operation, much like Fast and Furious.

Congressional investigators for Republicans Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have asked to interview O'Reilly by September 30. But the Administration informed them that O'Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq and unavailable.

One administration source says White House national security staffers were "briefed on the toplines of ongoing federal efforts, but nobody in White House knew about the investigative tactics being used in the operation, let alone any decision to let guns walk."

Immigration Reform?

Well, I suppose deciding to enforce laws the way you want is a kind of reform. Read the original here.

Obama to deport illegals by 'priority'
Washington Times:

Bowing to pressure from immigrant rights activists, the Obama administration said Thursday that it will halt deportation proceedings on a case-by-case basis against illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria, such as attending school, having family in the military or having primary responsible for other family members’ care.

The move marks a major step for President Obama, who for months has said he does not have broad categorical authority to halt deportations and said he must follow the laws as Congress has written them.

But in letters to Congress on Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she does have discretion to focus on “priorities” and that her department and the Justice Department will review all ongoing cases to see who meets the new criteria.

“This case-by-case approach will enhance public safety,” she said. “Immigration judges will be able to more swiftly adjudicate high-priority cases, such as those involving convicted felons.”

The move won immediate praise from Hispanic activists and Democrats who had strenuously argued with the administration that it did have authority to take these actions, and said as long asCongress is deadlocked on the issue, it was up to Mr. Obama to act.

“Today’s announcement shows that this president is willing to put muscle behind his words and to use his power to intervene when the lives of good people are being ruined by bad laws,” said Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat, who has taken a leadership role on the issue since the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in 2009.

The new rules apply to those who have been apprehended and are in deportation proceedings, but have not been officially ordered out of the country by a judge.

Ms. Napolitano said a working group will try to come up with “guidance on how to provide for appropriate discretionary consideration” for “compelling cases” in instances where someone already has been ordered deported.

Administration officials made the announcement just before Mr. Obama left for a long vacation out of Washington, and as members of Congress are back in their home districts.

The top House Republican on the Judiciary Committee said the move is part of a White House plan “to grant backdoor amnesty to illegal immigrants.”

“The Obama administration should enforce immigration laws, not look for ways to ignore them,” said Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican. “The Obama administration should not pick and choose which laws to enforce. Administration officials should remember the oath of office they took to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the land.”

Immigration legislation has been stalled in Congress for years as the two parties have sparred over what to include.

Republicans generally favor stricter enforcement and a temporary program that would allow workers in the country for some time, but eventually return to their home countries. Democrats want the legislation to include legalization of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants now in the country, and want the future guest-worker program to also include a path to citizenship so those workers can stay permanently.

Since 2007, when the issue stalled in the Senate, more than 1 million illegal immigrants have been deported.

Democrats said those deportations are breaking up families and that it’s an unfair punishment for a broken system.

Hispanic voters are a key voter bloc as Mr. Obama seeks re-election next year, but many of them felt he broke his promise to them to work on legislation once he took office. Thursday’s move already was paying dividends as Hispanic advocacy groups praised the steps.

“After more than two years of struggle, demonstrations, direct actions and other activities, the administration has signaled that they are capable of delivering direct relief for immigrant families,” said Casa de Maryland, a pro-immigrant group. “We eagerly await confirmation from community members that their families can now expect to remain together.”

Two years ago, some staffers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had prepared a draft memo arguing that the administration retained broad powers that could serve “as a non-legislative version of ‘amnesty.’ “

But agency leaders and others in the administration had argued that the memo was inaccurate.

It was unclear Thursday how many people might be affected by the new rules. Pressure groups said up to 300,000 people could be eligible. In fiscal year 2010 alone, the government deported nearly 200,000 illegal immigrants who it said did not have criminal records.

Given the case-by-case basis of Thursday’s announcement, though, the groups said the actual number of people allowed to stay could be far lower.

In June, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that handles interior immigration law enforcement, issued guidance expanding authority to decline to prosecute illegal immigrants. The goal, ICE leaders said, was to focus on catching illegal immigrants who have committed other crimes or are part of gangs.

The chief beneficiaries of the guidance are likely to be immigrant students who would have been eligible for legal status under the Dream Act, which stalled in Congress last year.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, who asked Homeland Security this year to exempt illegal-immigrant students from deportation, said the move will free up immigration courts to handle cases involving serious criminals.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

How high up does Gunwalker scandal go?

Read the original here.

Operation Fast And Furious: Designed To Promote Gun Control
by Katie Pavlich
7/13/2011

"Internal ATF emails seem to suggest that ATF agents were counseled to highlight a link between criminals and certain semi-automatic weapons in order to bolster a case for a rule like the one the DOJ announced yesterday [Monday]."

Townhall has obtained the email which states "Can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same FfL and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks Mark R. Chait Assistant Director Field Operations."




The rule:

“The international expansion and increased violence of transnational criminal networks pose a significant threat to the United States. Federal, state and foreign law enforcement agencies have determined that certain types of semi-automatic rifles – greater than .22 caliber and with the ability to accept a detachable magazine – are highly sought after by dangerous drug trafficking organizations and frequently recovered at violent crime scenes near the Southwest Border. This new reporting measure -- tailored to focus only on multiple sales of these types of rifles to the same person within a five-day period -- will improve the ability of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to detect and disrupt the illegal weapons trafficking networks responsible for diverting firearms from lawful commerce to criminals and criminal organizations. These targeted information requests will occur in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas to help confront the problem of illegal gun trafficking into Mexico and along the Southwest Border.”


Once again, liberals and the Obama Administration are focused on guns rather than criminals and federal government incomptence. Operation Fast and Furious is looking more and more like a set up from the beginning to push Obama and Holder's radical anti-Second Amendment agenda as they used law abiding gun shop owners to enable government officals to break the law, then turned around and blamed the very same gun shops for illegal gun trafficking, despite those shops being forced by ATF to help ATF agents carry out Operation Fast and Furious, and now, those shops are being punished through new Justice Department gun control measures. Obama and Holder both have long records of being outspoken opponents of gunrights and both support the reinstatement of the "assault" rifle ban, better described as a ban on semi-automatic rifles. From the June issue of Townhall Magazine:

President Obama is calling for "commonsense" gun reforms, but as a man with a long a history of acting to limit Second Amendment rights and advocating gun control who tapped an attorney general with the same ideology -- and possibly the biggest gun trafficking scandal in U.S. history with his name written all over it -- is the president really calling for reforms or more government control?

As an Illinois state senator, Obama endorsed and spoke in support of an outright ban on ownership of all handguns and favored the licensing and registering of gun owners. Before his run for public office in 1996, Obama filled out a questionnaire expressing his support for a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.

Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley continue their investigation of Operation Fast and Furious and have requested detailed communications records, including emails, memos, briefing papers and handwritten notes from and between senior DOJ officials in two letters sent to Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday. Records referring to large firearms trafficking within the Phoenix ATF office have also been requested. This information must be provided by July 18 at noon:

As our investigation into Operation Fast and Furious has progressed, we have learned that senior officals at the Department of Justice, including Senate-confirmed political appointees, were unquestionably aware of the implementation of this reckless program. Therefore, it is necessary to review commncations between and among these senior officials. As such, please provide all records relating to communications between and among the following individuals regarding Operation Fast and Furious:

1) David Ogden, Former Deputy Attorney General

2) Gary Grindler, Office of the Attorney General and Former Acting Deputy Attorney General

3) James Cole, Deputy Attorney General (editors note: Cole issued the new reporting rules for border state gun shops Monday)

4) Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General

5) Kenneth Blanco, Deputy Assistant Attorney General

6) Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General

7) John Keeney, Deputy Assistant Attorney General

8) Matt Axelrod, Associate Deputy Attorney General

9) Ed Siskel, Former Associate Deputy Attorney General

10) Brad Smith, Office of the Deputy Attorney General

11) Kevin Carwile, Section Chief, Capital Case Unit

12) Joseph Cooley, Criminal Fraud Section

Gunwalker probe being blocked?

...by the DOJ? Read the original here.

Justice Department Obstructing 'Fast and Furious' Gun Probe, ATF Director Says
By William Lajeunesse
Published July 06, 2011
FoxNews.com

The Justice Department is obstructing the congressional investigation of a U.S. law enforcement operation intended to crack down on major weapons traffickers on the Southwest border, according to the embattled leader of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Ken Melson, the acting director of the ATF, lobbed the accusation when he sneaked in for an interview with congressional investigators on July 4, two days ahead of his scheduled interview with the inspector general about the operation known as "Fast and Furious," Fox News has learned.

"If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand," Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder. "That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation."

The Justice Department is reportedly looking to oust Melson, who has been acting ATF director since April 2009, as the agency deals with its biggest scandal in nearly two decades. Andrew Traver, who was tapped in November by President Obama to become the permanent ATF director, could be named as acting director until the Senate acts on his nomination, sources have said.

In a separate development, congressional sources have learned that not only was U.S. taxpayer money being used to buy guns that were later sent to Mexico, but the main target of the investigation was actually a FBI informant and former drug dealer who had been deported years ago.

"Fast and Furious" has been at the center of an investigation by Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. The operation began in the fall of 2009 as an effort to trace and stop the trafficking of illegal guns on the Southwest border, but instead allowed thousands of guns to get into the hands of Mexican cartel members.

The two say they learned about the program after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in December 2010. At the crime scene were two guns linked to the "Fast and Furious" operation.

At an Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing last month, three federal firearms investigators testified that they wanted to "intervene and interdict" loads of guns, but were repeatedly ordered to step aside to allow suspected smugglers to carry the weapons over the border.

Issa and Grassley have urged Holder to cooperate and turn over subpoenaed records that would reveal the scope of the government coverup.

The alleged coverup involves three law enforcement agencies: the ATF, FBI and the DEA, or Drug Enforcement Administration.

According to sources, unbeknown to the ATF, the target of their operation was a FBI confidential informant, a fact that only became known to them in April of this year after an 18-month investigation that cost millions of dollars of tax dollars.

"They were going after someone they could never have," a source in Washington told Fox News. "The Mr. Big they wanted was using government money to buy guns that went to the cartels. The FBI knew it and didn't tell them."

The confidential informant is a former high-level drug dealer who had been deported by the DEA. The FBI, however, recruited him as a counter-terrorism informant, providing information on potential dirty bombs or Al Qaeda suspects moving through the border region.

The FBI informant was picked up on a DEA wiretap, and forwarded to the ATF.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/06/justice-department-obstructing-fast-and-furious-gun-probe-atf-director-says/#ixzz1RLYFXDcm