Showing posts with label ATF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ATF. Show all posts

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Pathological Politics – Predatory Partners and Persecuting Patriots

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By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton - the NoisyRoom

In the notorious tradition of Nixon’s Enemies List, Obama is now openly persecuting patriots at every opportunity. He tries to shame them, taint them, marginalize them and if all that doesn’t work, he sends goons after them and either imprisons them or threatens them with imprisonment. He’s using every agency at his disposal, with a special emphasis on the EPA, FDA, IRS, SEC, ATF and Fish and Wildlife authorities. And he has hired a whole governmental ‘army’ to enforce his dictates and go after his enemies. Welcome to the American Stasi.

We have watched how Obama smears those who would dare to donate to Mitt Romney’s campaign. That should make us want to donate even more, not back down and cower in fear. We all know that Obama is determined to be reelected legally or illegally – he doesn’t care. He just wants to hold on to his power, so he can finish what he started – destroying America with his pathological politics of corruption, greed and evil. If the elections don’t suffice, he’ll invent an emergency to ensure his death grip on the throat of America.

Look at how Gibson Guitars has been treated. They have been raided multiple times, but they can’t defend themselves because in the last three years, this administration won’t say what crime they are charging them with. They are destroying a good and honest company that creates jobs and does business production here in America. Their crime – successful capitalism. Something Obama will not tolerate.

Then there are farmers. The EPA is clamping down on the Amish and others who don’t follow every regulation in an effort to put them out of business and it is working. I hear the stealthy, sly footsteps of Cass Sunstein. Soon, very soon, the government will control all our farmland and food. Then if you step out of line, they’ll just starve you to death. Farming on your own property will be illegal. It’s coming – bet on it. Right now they are seizing farmer’s bank accounts. The FDA is now using the terrorist based “Bank Secrecy Act” as justification to invade, investigate and even confiscate the bank accounts of Americans in the agricultural business.

From The Examiner:

The Bank Secrecy Act that came out of the events of 9/11, which has been expanded during the decade long war on terror, is now being used to criminally attack farmers who choose not to use banks as their sole or primary source for monetary transactions. This is especially relevant after the credit crisis of 2008, where many American[s] began withdrawing money from banks after bank solvency came into question.

This banking law, which allows for the unwarranted confiscation and seizure of funds based solely on perceived impropriety, is one of many new policies created under the Bush and Obama administrations to control the public, and the flow of money in the United States. Beginning in 2013, new capital controls are set to be implemented which will make it extremely difficult to move dollars in and out of the country, and more recently, the Obama administration diverted funds from other departments to hire thousands of IRS agents for the new healthcare system that will also commence in 2013.

Ted Nugent on Regulations

Glenn Beck – We Are All Criminals Now

Now, we turn to Ted Nugent, who has been all over the news as of late. Evidently Obama has had Ted Nugent in his sights for at least two years and probably much longer. Nugent was charged with breaking a law – of which the judge hadn’t even heard – while hunting black bear in Alaska. But you can bet the Feds did and they brought charges hoping to snare Nugent. But that didn’t work out as they intended – Nugent accepted that he ‘unknowingly’ broke the law and the sentence carried the same weight as jaywalking, a misdemeanor offense. They tried to snag him in California and accused him of baiting a deer. A total falsehood and you’d have to be a moron to do it since he was airing the episode on TV. They stormed three of his friends’ homes and then searched a room not covered by the search warrant. They found a set of brass knuckles and told Nugent’s friend they would drop the felony charge if he would help them ‘get’ Nugent. Fortunately Ted has very good friends. But they took all kinds of stuff from their homes.

Now, they have made Nugent slaughter his pigs in Michigan – labeling them as feral. Since when is livestock you keep in a pen ‘feral?’ Obviously they either don’t know or more likely, don’t care what the definition is. They were the wrong color and thus deemed ‘feral’ and Nugent was forced to slaughter them. It’s tempting to draw conclusions about motives related to winning points with the Dearbornistan locals, given that the “reason” for slaughtering the pigs is clearly a pretext; one wonders to oneself, could squeezing pig farmers be calibrated to curry favor with a Muslim community?

He’s also been persecuted for his Oryx in Texas as well. They are harassing him about raising these animals when he brought them back from the brink of extinction. A three legged little one was born and he is not being allowed to put it out of its misery. It will die a slow and painful death. How is that compassion? If he puts it down, it’s a felony.

Someone high up would not allow Nugent to attend a SEAL’s funeral when it was the hero’s final wish. His concerts have been cancelled in several cases as well. The Feds interviewed him over comments he made at an NRA conference recently. He was cleared, but I guess free speech is no longer very ‘free’ in this country. Nugent is a good man – a patriotic man. That’s a lot more than you can say about Obama and his thugs.

This isn’t just about Ted Nugent folks – it’s about each and every one of us. They are coming after the bloggers, the patriots, small businesses, you name it. There is no way we can avoid violating one of these bogus laws. It’s only a matter of time. Obama doesn’t care about the Constitution – it means nothing to him. They are coming and we had better stand together, or we will all hang separately as patriots. The way Nugent is being treated is absolutely disgraceful.

From Kim Strassel at the Wall Street Journal:

He’s targeted insurers, oil firms and Wall Street—letting it be known that those who oppose his policies might face political or legislative retribution. He lectured the Supreme Court for giving companies more free speech and (falsely) accused the Chamber of Commerce of using foreign money to bankroll U.S. elections. The White House even ginned up an executive order (yet to be released) to require companies to list political donations as a condition of bidding for government contracts. Companies could bid but lose out for donating to Republicans. Or they could quit donating to the GOP—Mr. Obama’s real aim.

We all know of Obama’s Enemies List, but do you know who his predatory partners are? Along with Communists and radicals, he has a special fondness for the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, he has opened the front door of the White House and has told them to make themselves at home. These are the evil asshats who support and fund Hamas. These are Islamic terrorists of the ilk that carried out 9-11 and Obama embraces them while persecuting American patriots.

Rumors of War III

Obama is not even subtle about it. They have removed all references to radical Islam in federal publications. They allow Shariah Law to be carried out on American soil. Obama’s best friend is the Prime Minister of Turkey who gives him advice on his daughters. You see, it doesn’t matter whether Obama is a Muslim or not, his father was. Obama has Islamic street cred. It even gives him a basis for using Taqiyya against Americans. Obama is actively and aggressively promoting Islam around the planet and especially here at home. The only thing that matches his love of Islam, is his hatred of Israel.

If one is known by who his friends and enemies are, then Obama’s predatory partners and the patriots he persecutes are screaming volumes at us. It’s clear that his campaign of pathological politics and communism is on a set of tracks that leads somewhere we dare not go.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Origins of Fast and Furious accidentally revealed by White House

Origins of "Fast and Furious" accidentally revealed by White House
Coach is Right ^ | 10/19/2011 | Doug Book

Re-Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 2:37:18 PM by Oldpuppymax at FreeRepublic

Intent upon linking the genesis of ”gunwalking” to the Bush Administration, the Obama Regime has unwittingly revealed compelling leads to the birth of Operation Fast and Furious, its possible father, former Agent in Charge of the ATF’s Phoenix Branch, William Newell and the man who may be the Operation’s D.C Godfather, White House National Security Council staffer Kevin O’Reilly.

At the beginning of October, the White House released a number of emails shared between Newell and O’Reilly during the summer of 2010. By this frequently employed method of ”selective release”, the Regime intended to relay the ”fact” that as neither Fast and Furious nor “gunwalking” were mentioned in the correspondence, the topics were obviously not directly discussed by the pair. (1)

It was hoped that this would bolster the White House claim that it knew nothing of the Operation until TV news reports brought it to the attention of the nation at large in 2011.

But in its expectation that linking gun walking to Bush might take Fast and Furious pressure off the Regime, the White House habit of deliberately providing carefully crafted half-truths or misinformation to media lackeys took a careless turn for the worse.

After it was leaked to him by the White House, AP reporter Pete Yost was only too glad to run with the story of 2007 ATF Operation Wide Receiver and its loss of firearms across the Mexican border during the Bush Administration.

But the Regime’s Ministry of Disinformation provided Yost with too much material. For it was also revealed that the man in charge of that purely accidental ”gun walking” by the Bush led ATF was Phoenix Agent in Charge Bill Newell.

(Excerpt) Read more at coachisright.com ... - POSTED BY COACH COLLINS, ON OCTOBER 19TH, 2011

Political Cartoons by Gary McCoy

 Origins of Fast and Furious accidentally revealed by White House

By Doug Book, staff writer

Intent upon linking the genesis of ”gunwalking” to the Bush Administration,  the Obama Regime has unwittingly revealed compelling leads to the birth of Operation Fast and Furious,  its possible father, former Agent in Charge of the ATF’s Phoenix Branch,  William Newell and the man who may be the Operation’s D.C  Godfather,  White House National Security Council staffer Kevin O’Reilly.

At the beginning of October,  the White House released a number of emails shared between Newell and O’Reilly during the summer of 2010. By this frequently employed method of  ”selective release”,  the Regime intended to relay the  ”fact”  that as neither Fast and Furious nor “gunwalking” were mentioned in the correspondence,  the topics were obviously not directly discussed by the pair.  (1)

It was hoped that this would bolster the White House claim that it knew nothing of the Operation until TV news reports brought it to the attention of the nation at large in 2011.

But in its expectation that linking gun walking to Bush might take Fast and Furious pressure off the Regime,  the White House habit of deliberately providing carefully crafted half-truths or misinformation to media lackeys took a careless turn for the worse.

After it was leaked to him by the White House,  AP reporter Pete Yost was only too glad to run with the story of 2007 ATF Operation Wide Receiver and its loss of firearms across the Mexican border during the Bush Administration.
But the Regime’s Ministry of Disinformation provided Yost with too much material. For it was also revealed that the man in charge of that purely accidental  ”gun walking”  by the Bush led ATF was Phoenix Agent in Charge Bill Newell.

In short, by managing Wide Receiver in Phoenix,  Newell had gained first hand experience in the walking of guns to Mexico!

In early 2009,  Barack Obama,  Hillary Clinton and other Regime members systematically advanced the phony claim that 90% of weapons found at Mexican crime scenes originated in US gun stores. What better way for Newell to impress his new bosses than by suggesting that walking guns to Mexico might make the 90% claim come nearer to the truth!  

And of course,  in White House NSC staffer Kevin O’Reilly,  Newell had a friend in very high places. So,  as Fast and Furious reporter Mike Vanderboegh puts it,  ”…Newell may have  ”weaponized”  the desire for more better statistics on the part of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others to support the…meme…that 90% of weapons seized in Mexico…actually came from American civilian market sources.”

So Newell makes the suggestion,  O’Reilly delivers it to the right people in the White House and Fast and Furious is born. Could it have happened that way?

Apparently Congressman Darrell Issa’s House Government Reform Committee  takes the possibility quite seriously,  for it has just subpoenaed  ”all communications TO OR FROM  (my caps)  William Newell…between December 14th,  2010 to January 25th,  2011 and March 16th  to March 19th,  2009.”  The date specific requests mean the Committee must have reliable information regarding the associations and correspondence of Newell during those periods. And Newell is known to have spoken often with O’Reilly during that time.  

Unlike other Fast and Furious participants who have been promoted or transferred to new positions in Washington D.C.,  Kevin O’Reilly has been shuffled off to Iraq by the Obama/Holder Department of Justice,  out of subpoena range of the Issa/Grassley congressional committees. Remember,  there are no coincidences in the Obama Regime.

So did a suggestion to a White House ensconced friend by a practiced “gunwalker” hoping to make a name for himself with the new administration lead to the deadly Fast and Furious scheme? If so, who but Barack Obama & Co could create such a tangled and convoluted web from such a simple beginning!

Use this site to contact your Congressional Representative:

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

  To read more about this issue use these links:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20114184-10391695.html

http://news.yahoo.com/ap-exclusive-second-bush-era-gun-smuggling-probe-202043091.html?ugccmt_success=NONJS_POST_SUCCESS#ugccmt-post-frm-container

http://reasonedpolitics.blogspot.com/2011/04/hillary-eric-wikileaks-and-batfe.html

http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/10/ssi-exclusive-is-this-any-way-to-run.html

http://blogs.ajc.com/jamie-dupree-washington-insider/2011/10/12/fast-and-furious-subpoenas/

Further reading: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20083772-10391695.html

http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-st-louis/gun-trafficking-as-compared-to-william-newell-s-definition-of-gunwalking

http://www.scribd.com/doc/65906548/Newell-Letter-to-Oversight-Committee

http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/10/sipsey-street-exclusive-was-gunwalker.html

Related posts: http://www.coachisright.com/fridays-white-house-fast-and-furious-e-mail-dump-means-pressure-increasing-on-obama/

http://www.coachisright.com/ooops-trying-to-cover-up-obama-tripped-up-attorney-general-holder-on-fast-and-furious/

http://www.coachisright.com/fast-and-furious-spin-wont-help-holder-obama-next-to-fall/

http://www.coachisright.com/rep-issa-chooses-bloggers-to-replace-legacy-media-in-fast-and-furious-reporting/

See Coach on Youtube! Go to the new Coach’s Locker Room page to see and what the Coach has to say on the issues that conservatives care about.  In this world you may have knowledge or you may have repose, but you may not have both.  What have you done today to deserve to live in America?

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Monday, October 3, 2011

"Fast And Furious" Just Might Be President Obama's Watergate… or Will It Be Solyndra, Light-Squared… or?

In a classic Friday night F&F Document Dump… (a sure sign of an administration with something to hide)  It  Shows ‘”Extensive” Communication with White House  The feds released to congressional investigators a month’s worth of e-mail correspondence in the summer of 2010 between Bill Newell, then head ATF agent in Phoenix, and his friend Kevin O’Reilly, a former White House national-security staffer for North American affairs. Demanding answers: Rep. Darell Issa is asking for a special prosecutor for Fast & Furious.

Why a gunrunning scandal codenamed “Fast and Furious,” a program run secretly by the U.S. government that sent thousands of firearms over an international border and directly into the hands of criminals, hasn’t been pursued by an army of reporters all trying to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein is a story in itself.

Two US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms an...

Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

But the state of modern journalism aside, this scandal is so inflammatory few realize that official records show the current director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), B. Todd Jones — yes the individual the Obama administration brought in to replace ATF Director Kenneth Melson Aug. 30 in an effort to deflect congressional criticism — also has questions to answer about his involvement in this gunrunning scandal.

Fast and Furious was an operation so cloak-and-dagger Mexican authorities weren’t even notified that thousands of semi-automatic firearms were being sold to people in Arizona thought to have links to Mexican drug cartels. According to ATF whistleblowers, in 2009 the U.S. government began instructing gun storeowners to break the law by selling firearms to suspected criminals. ATF agents then, again according to testimony by ATF agents turned whistleblowers, were ordered not to intercept the smugglers but rather to let the guns “walk” across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hands of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.

When the Gunrunning Program Began

A Jan. 8, 2010 briefing paper from the ATF Phoenix Field Division Group VII says: “This investigation has currently identified more than 20 individual connected straw purchasers…. To date (September 2009-present) this group has purchased in excess of 650 firearms (mainly AK-47 variants) for which they have paid cash totaling more than $350,000.”

This is an important fact because the U.S. Justice Department hasn’t made it clear to tell congressional investigators when the Fast and Furious operation began and who authorized it; as a result, this ATF briefing paper’s mention of September 2009 is thus far the earliest we can trace the operation.

The next important event we know of occurred in October 2009 when the ATF’s Phoenix Field Division established a gun-trafficking group called “Group VII.” Group VII began using the strategy of allowing suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns, according to a report from the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the staff of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. The report says, “The purpose was to wait and watch, in hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case…. Group VII initially began using the new gunwalking tactics in one of its investigations to further the Department’s strategy. The case was soon renamed ‘Operation Fast and Furious.’”

This report and later official explanations from the ATF say the Fast and Furious program was created to deal with the problem that arresting low-level suspects doesn’t necessarily help ATF agents get to the heads of Mexican cartels.

On Oct. 26, 2009, a month or so after Fast and Furious seems to have been initiated, a document shows that a teleconference was held between 13 officials. One of the issues discussed was the possible “adoption of the Department’s strategy for Combating Mexican Drug Cartels.” The officials listed to have been in on the call included Kenneth Melson, who was then the director of the ATF, Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI and a number of attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice. B. Todd Jones, the current director of the ATF, was not listed in the document, but the title he held in September 2009 is listed as being in on the conference call. It doesn’t take much reporting to find out that in September 2009 Jones was the chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC) and so was at least supposed to be in on the conference call. (When asked about the teleconference, an ATF spokeswoman told us “we don’t discuss active investigations.”)

Read full article here at: Forbes  -  Frank Miniter, who wrote this piece, is the author of Saving the Bill of Rights and The Ultimate Man's Survival Guide.

The joke goes that anything named “Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms” ought to be a convenience store instead of an arm of the federal government, but what’s going on in Washington these days with the embattled agency is no laughing matter. Hardly a week passes now without some revelation about the Obama administration’s complicity in what may yet turn out to be one of the worst and most lethal scandals in American history: Operation Fast and Furious. In a classic Friday document dump -- a sure sign of an administration with something to hide -- the feds released to congressional investigators… and Gunwalker is Furiously Runraveling but may soon be joined by others…

The question is really how long the American people intend to be blind… Fast and Furious, Solyndra, LightSquared and now another $5 Billion in Solar Energy Loans that could include more crony capitalism to Nancy Pelosi’s Brother-in-law, after the F&F, Solyndra and LightSquared had already broken and were under investigation.

The ongoing investigations are showing that these bad judgments, scandals, conspiracies, or whatever you want to call them lead to the DOJ and the White House… and very likely all the way to the top…

Related:

The Secret Gov’t Bank That’s Financing More Solyndras

Crony Capitalism:  $737 Million Green Jobs Loan Given to Nancy Pelosi’s Brother-in-Law?!?

Feds Rush Through Another $5 Billion in Solar Energy Loans

Top Obama Fundraiser OK’d Solyndra Loan

Ask Marion - h/t to Jean Stoner

Monday, September 26, 2011

U.S. Government Used Taxpayer Funds to Buy, Sell Weapons During 'Fast and Furious,' Documents Show

By William Lajeunesse  -  Published September 26, 2011 | FoxNews.com

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AP  This Jan. 25 picture shows part of a cache of seized weapons displayed at a news conference in Phoenix.

Not only did U.S. officials approve, allow and assist in the sale of more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa cartel -- the federal government used taxpayer money to buy semi-automatic weapons, sold them to criminals and then watched as the guns disappeared.

This disclosure, revealed in documents obtained by Fox News, could undermine the Department of Justice's previous defense that Operation Fast and Furious was a "botched" operation where agents simply "lost track" of weapons as they were transferred from one illegal buyer to another. Instead, it heightens the culpability of the federal government as Mexico, according to sources, has opened two criminal investigations into the operation that flooded their country with illegal weapons.

Documents Detail ATF Involvement in 'Fast and Furious'

The following documents detail the role the ATF played in buying and selling weapons as part of its controversial "Fast and Furious" operation.

Operation Fast and Furious began in October 2009. In it, federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives encouraged gun stores to sell weapons to an arms smuggling gang, then watched as the guns crossed the border and were used in crimes. Each month, the agency allowed hundreds of guns to go South, despite opposition from some agents.

All told, the gang spent more than $1.25 million for the illegal guns.

In June 2010, however, the ATF dramatically upped the ante, making the U.S. government the actual "seller" of guns.

According to documents obtained by Fox News, Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy six semi-automatic Draco pistols -- two of those were purchased at the Lone Wolf gun store in Peoria, Ariz. An unusual sale, Dodson was sent to the store with a letter of approval from David Voth, an ATF group supervisor.

Dodson then sold the weapons to known illegal buyers, while fellow agents watched from their cars nearby.

This was not a "buy-bust" or a sting operation, where police sell to a buyer and then arrest them immediately afterward. In this case, agents were "ordered" to let the sale go through and follow the weapons to a stash house.

According to sources directly involved in the case, Dodson felt strongly that the weapons should not be abandoned and the stash house should remain under 24-hour surveillance. However, Voth disagreed and ordered the surveillance team to return to the office. Dodson refused, and for six days in the desert heat kept the house under watch, defying direct orders from Voth.

A week later, a second vehicle showed up to transfer the weapons. Dodson called for an interdiction team to move in, make the arrest and seize the weapons. Voth refused and the guns disappeared with no surveillance.

According to a story posted Sunday on a website dedicated to covering Fast and Furious, Voth gave Dodson the assignment to "dirty him up," since Dodson had become the most vocal critic of the operation.

"I think Dodson demanded the letter from Voth to cover both himself and the FFL (Federal Firearm Licensee). He didn't want to be hung out to dry by Voth," a source told the website "Sipsey Street Irregulars."

Subsequent to this undercover operation, sources told Sipsey, "Dodson just about came apart all over them (his supervisors). In a 'screaming match' that was heard throughout the Phoenix office by many employees, Dodson yelled at Voth and Assistant Special Agent in Charge George Gillett, 'Why not just go direct and empty out the (ATF) arms room?" (to the cartels), or words to that effect.'

After the confrontation, ATF managers transferred Dodson to a more menial job. Months later, after the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, Dodson blew the whistle and went public about the federal government's gunrunning operation.

Source:  Fox News

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

"Fast and Furious" Goes All the Way to the White House - Updated

"Fast and Furious" Goes All the Way to the White House: By now, “Gunwalker” and “Fast and Furious” have both entered the national lexicon. And although the amount of information known about the operations varies from person to person, the majority of Americans know they have something to do with the selling of guns to “straw purchasers” in the U.S., who were supposed to smuggle the guns into Mexico and put them in the hands of cartel members, who were then to be arrested. more

YOUR "justice" system @ work.  Champion of "justice," Eric Holder is seen here, down Mexico way, getting rid of some junk in his trunk.  What do you do when you've got to have evidence to support your gun control fantasies?  You can entrust the job to a rogue government agency, or just dream it up yourself.  I'm sure border agent Brian Terry's family will understand that it takes some sacrifices to keep the Great Society moving…  And how about the ranchers only 75 miles from the Tucson AZ border living in a battleground?

 

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I first ran into the concept of plausible deniability during my freshman year of college. A definition:

The term most often refers to the denial of blame in (formal or informal) chains of command, where upper rungs quarantine the blame to the lower rungs, and the lower rungs are often inaccessible, meaning confirming responsibility for the action is nearly impossible. In the case that illegal or otherwise disreputable and unpopular activities become public, high-ranking officials may deny any awareness of such act or any connection to the agents used to carry out such acts.

I was reading Tom Clancy’s Clear and Present Danger at the time, a novel that hinged on a fictional president deciding to change the war on drugs by descending into illegal covert activity.

Twenty-two years later, we are contemplating whether a sitting and all-too-real American president can claim plausible deniability for Operation Fast and Furious, Operation Castaway, and two unnamed but alleged operations in Texas that make up the Gunwalker scandal, which threatens to bring down the administration of Barack Obama.

The public scandal began when ATF whistleblowers disclosed that a multi-agency federal law enforcement operation in Arizona — Operation Fast and Furious — supplied weapons found at the crime scene of murdered U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

It was quickly revealed that federal law enforcement officers, supervisors, and administration appointees ensured that straw purchasers would be able to purchase weapons intended for the Sinaloa drug cartel without the threat of arrest. As federal agents watched — essentially acting as cartel security — 2,020 firearms were purchased, and the majority of them were “walked” by straw purchasers into the hands of the violent drug gang.

Mexican authorities claim that an estimated 150 Mexican law enforcement officers and soldiers, plus an unknown number of civilians have been murdered with weapons “walked” under the eyes of the federal task force. Three U.S. federal agents have also been shot in crimes using Fast and Furious weapons. Two died.

Initially, the Obama administration attempted to scapegoat acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson. When that failed, they colluded with the Washington Post and later possibly the New York Times on attempted character assassinations of Congressman Darrell Issa. Issa, along with Senator Charles Grassley, is leading the charge to investigate the scandal.

A month following Melson’s testimony to Issa’s committee, the Gunwalker landscape has changed considerably. Emails have been unearthed, additional figures with inside knowledge of the operation are testifying, and more congressmen and senators have joined the probe of the Department of Justice to see just how wide and high the administration’s knowledge of and participation in the gunwalking program — or programs — truly went.

All of these evolving disclosures are increasing the pressure on administration officials such as U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, both of whom simply must have known of the operations considering the high-level collaboration between multiple agencies under their control.

Which leads to President Obama: how is it possible that the White House was not aware of Fast and Furious while it was occurring? We now know the following:

· The #2 man in the ATF, Acting Deputy Director William Hoover, tried to shut Operation Fast and Furious down in March of 2010 but was rebuffed.

· Officials with the Justice Department and ATF tried to evade Senator Grassley’s attempts to discover where the guns came from.

· A National Security Council (NSC) operative in the White House named Kevin O’Reilly was in direct contact with Bill Newell, the agent in charge of the operation. (Are we to believe that the benign emails released between the two men were their only Gunwalker conversations, and that O’Reilly wasn’t briefing the National Security Council or the president?)

· The U.S. attorney involved in Fast And Furious, Dennis Burke, is a long-time Napolitano ally and was her chief of staff while she was governor from 2003-2008. Burke is also on the attorney general’s Advisory Committee border and immigration law enforcement subcommittee. He recently opposed a routine filing by murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s family, in a move that appears designed to protect him in criminal and civil trials regarding Gunwalker.

· Emails reveal that every law enforcement director in DOJ was briefed on Operation Fast and Furious. All have been silent on the allegations except the scapegoated Melson and the DEA administrator, who surfaced long enough to deny that her agency was involved in the criminal actions.

· The Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Treasury were involved (State and CIA have allegedly had roles in the operation, but these allegations have not been confirmed by evidence).

With this level of cooperation across at least three (Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury) departments and among at least eight directors, with long-term personal contacts between friends and political allies that have been fingered as key players in this scandal, and with the president’s own words and deeds regarding his radical views towards gun rights in this country, is it rational to believe the president and his closest advisers had nothing to do with this murderous plot?

When we see a cover-up being orchestrated, we should rationally assume that the cover-up exists to hide criminal culpability. When we see corruption spread across the highest and most connected levels of government, we should rationally assume that the person at the top, President Obama, likely was involved.

With the latest evidence, Barack Obama and his co-conspirators no longer have plausible deniability. It remains to see how they will fare with criminal culpability, as more whistleblowers come forward from Justice and DHS to avoid prison time themselves.

Bob Owens blogs at Confederate Yankee and Bob's Gun Counter. - Posted at: Pajamas Media

· FARAGO: Was CIA behind Operation Fast and Furious?

Wednesday, August 17, 2011 9:18:30 AM · by bkopto

The Washington Times ^ | August 11, 2011 | Robert Farago

According to a CIA insider, the agency had a strong hand in creating, orchestrating and exploiting Operation Fast and Furious. The CIA’s motive is clear enough: The U.S. government is afraid the Los Zetas drug cartel will mount a successful coup d’etat against the government of Felipe Calderon. Founded by ex-Mexican special forces, the Zetas already control huge swaths of Mexican territory. They have the organization, arms and money needed to take over the entire country. Former CIA pilot Robert Plumlee and former CIA operative and DEA Director Phil Jordan recently said the brutally efficient Mexican drug cartel has stockpiled...

· ATF promotes supervisors in controversial gun operation (Fast and Furious)

Tuesday, August 16, 2011 8:15:19 AM · by Libloather · 63 replies

LA Times ^ | 8/15/11 | Richard A. Serrano

ATF promotes supervisors in controversial gun operation The three, who have been criticized for pushing on with the border weapons sting even as it came apart, receive new management jobs in Washington. By Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau August 16, 2011 Reporting from Washington— The ATF has promoted three key supervisors of a controversial sting operation that allowed firearms to be illegally trafficked across the U.S. border into Mexico. All three have been heavily criticized for pushing the program forward even as it became apparent that it was out of control. At least 2,000 guns were lost and many turned up...

· ATF's 'Fast and Furious' firearms tracked to at least 11 violent crimes

Tuesday, August 16, 2011 8:00:01 PM · by Nachum · 4 replies

Los Angeles Times ^ | 8/16/11 | Richard A. Serrano

Firearms illegally trafficked under the ATF’s Fast and Furious program turned up at the scenes of at least 11 “violent crimes” in this country in addition to being involved in the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in southern Arizona last year, the Justice Department has acknowledged to Congress. Although Justice did not provide any details about those crime scenes, it has been learned that the additional violent crimes occurred in cities…

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

CONGRESSMAN SAYS FAST & FURIOUS WAS OBAMA ADMINISTRATION CONSPIRACY TO REGULATE AND LIST GUN OWNERS- CALLS ON HOLDER TO RESIGN

Video:  Congressman Says Fast & Furious Was Administration Conspiracy To Regulate Gun Owners

Gunwalker: ATF Target Were Actually FBI Informants

Writing from the Los Angeles Times Washington Bureau, Richard Serrano reveals that at least six of the ATF’s targets in Operation Fast and Furious were paid FBI informants.

Your tax dollars at work:

In a letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, the investigators asked why U.S. taxpayers’ money apparently was paid to Mexican cartel members who have terrorized the border region for years in their efforts to smuggle drugs into this country, and to ship U.S. firearms into Mexico.

“We have learned of the possible involvement of paid FBI informants in Operation Fast and Furious,” wrote Rep. Darrel 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. The two have been the leading congressional critics of the program.

“At least one individual who is allegedly an FBI informant might have been in communication with, and was perhaps even conspiring with, at least one suspect whom ATF was monitoring,” they wrote.

The FBI and DEA did not tell the ATF about the alleged informants. The ATF and congressional investigators learned later that those agencies apparently were paying cartel members whom the ATF wanted to arrest.

To simplify: the Department of Justice was paying ATF agents to ignore federal laws in order to provide weapons to criminal informants paid by the FBI, who then distributed those weapons to other cartel members who killed federal agents from Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement plus an estimated 150 soldiers and police in Mexico.

The development draws FBI Director Robert Mueller further into the scandal, and suggests that acting ATF Director Ken Melson was being truthful when he claimed he was unaware of key elements of Operation Fast and Furious. Congressional investigators now need to interview the FBI director and determine if Mueller was also being provided with only partial details about the operation.

If that turns out to be the case, it is a damning indictment of the Justice Department and senior officials within the Department, who learned nothing about the disastrous and deadly effects of compartmentalization which were partially to blame for the success of Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001. The “wall of separation” created by Clinton-era Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick seems to have been embraced by her successor Eric Holder, who is now the attorney general under Barack Obama.

The “wall” was created to safeguard the civil liberties of terrorists by keeping counter-terrorists from communicating with federal prosecutors, but can be twisted to serve a far more nefarious purpose, as the various “Gunwalker” operations being uncovered seem to show.

“Operation Fast and Furious” was run out of Phoenix as a multi-agency operation, and Congress is now pursuing leads into “Operation Castaway,” an operation based out of Tampa that seems to have mirrored the goals and tactics of the Arizona operation while providing weapons to the violent MS-13 gang in Honduras. Additionally, ICE Agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila were ambushed — and Zapata killed — with a weapon traced back to a yet-unnamed operation based out of Dallas. A steady recovery of weapons to southern Mexico out of the Houston area seems to indicate the possibility of a fourth operation.

It has been know from the beginning of the scandal that Operation Fast and Furious was a multi-agency operation involving elements of the Department of Justice (ATF, DEA, FBI, etc.) the Department of Homeland Security, the IRS, and almost certainly the State Department. It is suspected that this operation violated the Arms Export Control Act, and turned federal law enforcement officers into felons.

While the administration originally tried to scapegoat acting ATF Director Melson and a key source indicates that Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco is now being set-up to take the fall, neither man has the authority or reach to initiate or approve this kind of operation. It is unlikely that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was unaware of such wide-ranging and vast operations that involved every law enforcement agency within the Department of Justice. It is also possible — even probable at this point — that he perjured himself in congressional testimony.

Holder either knew of the operation and purposefully committed his agencies to committing thousands of felony acts, or he is a serial incompetent playing the role of patsy for a cabinet-level peer or his superior.

July 19, 2011 - 12:00 am - by Bob Owens

Gunwalker and Fast & Furious Updates: Holder, DOJ, FBI, Operation Castaway, ATF

Email Confirms ‘Gunwalker’ Known Throughout Justice Department The October 27, 2009 email from ATF Phoenix Field Division Special Agent in Charge (SAC) William Newell regarded a Southwest Border Strategy Group meeting that focused on Fast and Furious. It contained a laundry list of high ranking Justice Department officials that attended the meeting, including: * Assistant Attorney General (Criminal Division) Lanny Breuer, * Kenneth Melson, Acting Director, ATF * William Hoover, Acting Deputy Director, ATF * Michele Leonhart, Administrator, DEA * Robert Mueller, Director FBI Four other Justice Department directors or their representatives came from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task... Read Full Article Here

Grassley/Issa fire double broadsides at FBI & DEA. and NAME NAMES.

http://www.sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/ ^ | 7/18 | Sipsey Street Irregulars

Posted on Monday, July 18, 2011 8:09:15 PM by RummyChick

... Please also include any communications of the following individuals at DEA relating to Operation Fast and Furious or Manuel Fabian Celis-Acosta:

1) Elizabeth Kempshall, Special Agent in Charge, Phoenix

2) Doug Coleman, Acting Special Agent in Charge, Phoenix

3) Chris Feistle, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Phoenix

4) Albert Laurita, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Tucson

5) David Hathaway, Resident Agent in Charge, Nogales

6) Joe Muenchow, Resident Agent in Charge, Yuma

---

To help us better understand the role of the FBI in this multi-agency OCDETF case, we request that you produce communications relating to Operation Fast and Furious by FBI personnel based in Phoenix, Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, and El Paso, Texas, including the below-listed officials:

1) Nathan Gray, Former Special Agent in Charge, Phoenix Field Division

2) Annette Bartlett, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Phoenix Field Division

3) Stephen Cocco, Acting Special Agent in Charge, Phoenix Field Division

4) Steven Hooper, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Phoenix Field Division

5) John Iannarelli, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Phoenix Field Division

6) John Strong, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Phoenix Field Division

7) David Cuthbertson, Special Agent in Charge, El Paso Field Division

8) The Case Agent from the Tucson office in charge of the Brian Terry murder investigation

h/t to Jean Stoner

Cartoon by Michael Ramirez

Pajamas Media ^ | 7/19/2011 | Bob Owens

Remember when Cindy Sheehan and the left claimed "absolute moral authority" for the families of those killed in the line of duty? Think they'll fight for Agent Zapata's family? U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila were ambushed by eight cartel members in Mexico in February. Avila survived, Zapata did not. One of the guns used in the murder was a Romanian-made semi-automatic AK-pattern pistol called the “Draco,” which is basically an AK-pattern rifle without a shoulder stock and featuring a much shorter barrel. It was traced back to a gun shop in the United States....

h/t to Jean Stoner

Friday, June 24, 2011

Editorial: Was Fast And Furious A Gun-Control Plot?

Posted 06/22/2011 06:47 PM ET

Scandal: Rather than a botched attempt to catch criminals, was the ATF program actually an attempt to advance gun-control efforts by an administration that has blamed Mexican violence on easy access to U.S. weapons?

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."

Unwilling to guarantee a secure southern border, and as part of a campaign to reinstate an expired assault weapons ban, the administration has charged that much of Mexico's gun violence is our fault. Both governments have pushed the myth that 90% of weapons confiscated by Mexican authorities originate in the U.S.

Fox News has reported that, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico sent about 11,000 guns to the U.S. for tracing in 2007-08, out of about 35,000 confiscated. Of that 11,000, 6,000 were successfully traced. And of that number, 5,114, or 90%, were found to have originated in the U.S.

Weapons that originated in foreign countries are not sent to the U.S. for tracing. Neither are weapons of Mexican army deserters or those stolen from armories.

Bill McMahon, ATF deputy assistant director, testified that of 100,000 weapons recovered by Mexican authorities, only 18,000 were made, sold or imported from the U.S. And of those 18,000, just 7,900 came from sales by licensed gun dealers. That's 8%, not 90%.

So why the lie and why create Fast and Furious, a program designed to put dangerous weapons into criminal hands? We forget that from 1994 to 2002 President Obama was a director of the Joyce Foundation, a progressive organization dedicated to "social justice" and eroding Second Amendment rights.

Obama has advocated what he called "sensible restrictions" on gun ownership and even thought the District of Columbia's total gun ban was constitutional before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled otherwise.

During the 2008 campaign, when Hillary Clinton attacked Obama's famous remark about bitter Pennsylvania townsfolk clinging to their guns, then-Sen. Obama dismissingly called her "Annie Oakley" and said she was pandering to gun owners.

Was Fast and Furious merely a poorly conceived scheme about which Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama knew little or nothing? Or was it a deliberate attempt to inflate the embarrassingly low true number of guns traceable to the U.S.?

Was Watergate just a third-rate burglary?

Related:

Agenda Behind Fast and Furious Gunrunner Program

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Feds sneaking around Congress to regulate firearms


Posted: December 23, 2010 -  9:15 pm Eastern  © 2010

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or ATF, has a long history of excess and overreaching … and they're at it again.

Using exaggerated reports of gun smuggling from the U.S. into Mexico as their justification, the agency has filed for an emergency regulation requiring gun dealers to keep track of their customers and file special reports to ATF whenever a customer purchases more than one semi-automatic rifle within any 5-day period. Such special reporting is already required for multiple sales of handguns and has proven to be thoroughly useless as a law enforcement tool.

ATF's requested regulation – which is unconstitutional, violates a statutory prohibition against firearms registration schemes and was obviously filed as an "emergency" simply as a means of bypassing Congress – would be "temporary," meaning that it would have to be renewed in four or five months, and is said to only apply to gun dealers in states bordering Mexico, though the regulation, as submitted, seems to be missing that specific limitation.

At this point the proposed regulation is awaiting approval from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Political observers will recall that OIRA is headed by President Obama's old friend Cass Sunstein, who famously advocated for the abolition of all hunting and for the extension of legal rights – including the right to have a court-appointed attorney – to animals.

While Mr. Sunstein is an attorney and college professor specializing, in part, in constitutional law, his record shows that his Constitution does not include the Second Amendment. It is expected that Sunstein's office will approve ATF's Emergency Regulation by the first week of January unless there is immediate and vehement objection from members of Congress and the public.

In the late '70s, shortly after my late father, Neal Knox, took over the NRA's lobbying efforts, ATF leaders attempted to expand their power by implementing a regulatory scheme requiring that gun manufacturers add a government-defined 13-digit serial number to every gun and that dealers report detailed information, including that new serial number, to ATF for every sale. Records of those sales, guns, and purchasers were to be stored in ATF computers. It was gun registration, pure and simple. The scheme might have slipped through had it not been for the heightened visibility of ATF due to Dad's efforts and his immediate sounding of the alarm when the proposal was introduced.

Congress had upon numerous occasions debated the idea of a federal gun registration law and had rejected the idea on each occasion. For ATF to decide to bypass Congress and implement such a registration scheme via regulation was rightly perceived as an affront by many members of Congress, and their indignant response was to remove some four million dollars from the agency's operating budget (the amount ATF said they expected to spend on the scheme.)

That overreach, along with egregious abuses of honest gun dealers by the ATF led to the introduction of the McClure-Volkmer Firearms Owners Protection Act to repeal some of the more onerous and confusing sections of the Gun Control Act of 1968.

It is to be hoped that current members of Congress will have a similarly indignant response to ATF's overreaching in this instance, as here again the agency is trying to implement by regulation something which the Congress has considered and rejected in the past.

Rights opponents will argue that rights activists like me are overly sensitive and unyielding in our positions and that we reactively oppose any firearms regulations regardless of how benign or effective they may be. There will be an inclination to accept ideas like this and then place the burden of proof upon rights advocates to explain why it's a bad idea.

Really, the burden of proof belongs to those who wish to interfere with our rights. It is up to ATF to show the legal authority to institute this proposed regulation and that it does not violate the spirit or intent of any existing law. It is also up to the ATF to show that their proposed regulation will be effective and productive as a means of fighting illegal gun trafficking.

The fact is that ATF can present no such evidence in support of their idea, just the suggestion that the proposal sounds reasonable and might be of use. That's not good enough.

It is overreaching for an agency to follow after Congress and enact regulations where Congress has refused to enact laws, especially where Congress considered and discarded those exact actions.

It is extra-legal for an agency to ignore statutory limitations barring the collection or archiving of information about gun purchasers, not to mention limitations under the Paperwork Reduction Act forbidding unnecessary increases in paperwork burdens.

The multiple-sales reporting scheme claims to be aimed at keeping guns out of Mexico, but it fails on that point as well.

First, it will have little effect on gun smuggling in Mexico, for smugglers familiarize themselves with the laws they are breaking. They will easily avoid ensnaring themselves in such an obvious trap.

Second, while the actual number of guns that arrive in Mexico from the USA is impossible to determine, we know that the number being reported is inflated since the ATF only traces those guns selected by the Mexican authorities. There is strong evidence that American civilian gun shops are only one of many sources of guns in Mexico, and a minor one at that. Pictures of confiscated arms in the Mexican press routinely include grenades, rocket launchers and heavy machine guns, arms that aren't in the U.S. civilian inventory.

Finally, the proposed multiple-sale scheme places a significant burden on dealers and puts them at increased risk of prosecution for clerical errors if they fail to detect a repeat buyer in a timely fashion.

You can tell the ATF and Congress that you oppose the ATF's overreach through any − or all − of the following ways:

  1. Call the Office of Management and Budget, Office of Information and Regulation Affairs, Department of Justice, desk officer at (202) 395-6466
  2. E-mail Barbara A. Terrell, ATF, Firearms Industry Programs Branch at Barbara.Terrell@atf.gov
  3. Call your senators and representative through the United States Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121

There is no such thing as reasonable infringement on liberty.



Jeff Knox is a second-generation political activist and director of The Firearms Coalition. His writing can regularly be seen in Shotgun News and Front Sight magazines as well as here on WorldNetDaily.