The Latest on Gunrunner the DOJ & ATF

[Critch]

The Inspector General for the DOJ is stepping into this, maybe something will start moving. Has anyone noticed that only Fox and the bloggers are carrying this? I think ABC had a small blurb, but you aren't seeing Joe Scarborough or any of the big morning shows hitting it.

[powell&hyde]

CNN carried it when it first started then dropped off their radar. One small write up in USA today months ago, then poof, gone. Just like that Marine that was killed in Arizona few months back from a swat team breaking into the home. No national paper even mentioned it.

[Rapier]

It can not get any worse, right? Wrong!

Now we have convicted felons buying guns and walking After The Background Check Picked Them Up! 300 guns walked, on camera.

Finally we see the word criminal used in a description of the ATF and FBI activity because knowingly selling a firearm to a felon is a crime. Thus, knowingly allowing such a sale is a crime.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011...ucted-on-fast/

[8X56MS]

Until we change the current administration, nothing will be done. Justice is NOT going to investigate itself, and hussein won't allow anything to happen.

[Rapier]

What Issa is doing if forcing the ATF, FBI and the DOJ folks to paint themselves into a corner. Once he gets one person to lie to the committee, Issa has him by the neck and no one can save him then. Issa caught the chief agent for the ATF yesterday in repeated lies. "Everyone is entitled to their opinion but not their own facts." that is what Issa, angrily told the man to his face.

You saw what happened in the Anthony case for lying to the police, a 4x felon. You lie to congress and you can get many, many years. You tell the committee you did it, you are toast, tell them you did not do it, a lie, and you are really toast. Like a cat playing with a mouse, Issa has hundreds of mice to play with and years to play with them. with just a little patience Issa is going to blow this deal up all over Holder.

[Rapier]

Today we get news that 11 of the guns were used to commit crimes in the US and were recovered at crime scenes. Today also, we are told that submitted documents paint an entirely different picture than the story the DOJ has been telling about what was going on. So I would think when the House reconvenes sparks will fly. DOJ has said they do not know anything about the crimes and the guns, but all the crimes and guns were reported to the FBI by regulations, by codes, and all are on record by serial number. Click - one more notch up on the burner.
Ed

[Rapier]

Now we start where we left off, to go on vacation:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011...rious-scandal/

It appears, by surrendered document, a US Attorney and the ATF conspired to hide the connection of the guns found at the Border Patrol Agent's murder scene to operation Fast and Furious.

Sure does look like a case of "obstruction of justice" is now coming around on the merry-go -round. No wonder the DOJ does not want the family allowed into the court case. As you look at this pile of crap you start to wonder if there is a law that was not broken here, not how many laws were broken.
Ed

[Rapier]

### "I have never seen anything like this. I can see the FBI may have an informant involved but I can't see them tampering with evidence. If this is all accurate, I'm stunned," the former prosecutor said. ###


A third gun linked to "Operation Fast and Furious" was found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, new documents obtained exclusively by Fox News suggest, contradicting earlier assertions by federal agencies that police found only two weapons tied to the federal government's now infamous gun interdiction scandal.

Sources say emails support their contention that the FBI concealed evidence to protect a confidential informant. Sources close to the Terry case say the FBI informant works inside a major Mexican cartel and provided the money to obtain the weapons used to kill Terry.

Unlike the two AK-style assault weapons found at the scene, the third weapon could more easily be linked to the informant. To prevent that from happening, sources say, the third gun "disappeared."

In addition to the emails obtained by Fox News, an audio recording from a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent investigating the Terry case seems to confirm the existence of a third weapon. In that conversation, the agent refers to an "SKS assault rifle out of Texas" found at the Terry murder scene south of Tucson.

The FBI refused to answer a detailed set of questions submitted to officials by Fox News. Instead, agency spokesman Paul Bresson said, "The Brian Terry investigation is still ongoing so I cannot comment." Bresson referred Fox News to court records that only identify the two possible murder weapons.
However, in the hours after Terry was killed on Dec. 14, 2010, several emails written to top ATF officials suggest otherwise.

In one, an intelligence analyst writes that by 7:45 p.m. -- about 21 hours after the shooting -- she had successfully traced two weapons at the scene, and is now "researching the trace status of firearms recovered earlier today by the FBI."

In another email, deputy ATF-Phoenix director George Gillett asks: "Are those two (AK-47s) in addition to the gun already recovered this morning?"

The two AK-type assault rifles were purchased by Jaime Avila from the Lone Wolf Trading Co. outside of Phoenix on Jan. 16, 2010. Avila was recruited by his roommate Uriel Patino. Patino, according to sources, received $70,000 in "seed money" from the FBI informant late in 2009 to buy guns for the cartel.
According to a memo from Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley, who oversaw the operation, Avila began purchasing firearms in November 2009, shortly after Patino, who ultimately purchased more than 600 guns and became the largest buyer of guns in Operation Fast and Furious.

Months ago, congressional investigators developed information that both the FBI and DEA not only knew about the failed gun operation, but that they may be complicit in it. House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, fired off letters in July requesting specific details from FBI director Robert Mueller and Drug Enforcement Administration chief Michele Leonhart.

"In recent weeks, we have learned of the possible involvement of paid FBI informants in Operation Fast and Furious," Issa and Grassley wrote to Mueller. "Specifically, 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."

Sources say the FBI is using the informants in a national security investigation. The men were allegedly debriefed by the FBI at a safe house in New Mexico last year.

Sources say the informants previously worked for the DEA and U.S. Marshall's Office but their contracts were terminated because the men were "stone-cold killers." The FBI however stopped their scheduled deportation because their high ranks within the cartel were useful.

In their July letter, Issa and Grassley asked Mueller if any of those informants were ever deported by the DEA or any other law enforcement entity and how they were repatriated.

Asked about the content of the emails, a former federal prosecutor who viewed them expressed shock.

"I have never seen anything like this. I can see the FBI may have an informant involved but I can't see them tampering with evidence. If this is all accurate, I'm stunned," the former prosecutor said.

“This information confirms what our sources were saying all along -- that the FBI was covering up the true circumstances of the murder of Brian Terry," added Mike Vanderboegh, an authority on the Fast and Furious investigation who runs a whistleblower website called Sipsey Street.

"It also confirms that the FBI was at least as culpable, and perhaps more culpable, than the ATF in the (Fast and Furious) scandal, and that there was some guiding hand above both these agencies (and the other agencies involved) coordinating the larger operation," Vanderboegh said.

[Rapier]

This is interesting in the number of folks involved with the Lone Wolf gun store and the officials that assured the owner and even his attorney that all was well. This dealer started taping his conversations with the ATF. Then the ATF tried to throw him under the bus by ID-ing him as a rogue dealer to the Washington Post. This is slimy.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011...unner-scandal/

[Rapier]

Oh, wow. Now it turns out the DOJ / OIG released the tapes referenced above to the very people under investigation, without notice to or approval of Issa or Grassley.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

"It appears that you did not consider the significant harm that providing these recordings to the very individuals under investigation could cause to either our inquiry or your own. You did not consult with us about the recordings even though the congressional inquiry and reactions to it are discussed at length."

The OIG argues that under discovery rules it is required to turn the tapes over to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The tapes Issa and Grassley refer to were recorded by Andre Howard, owner of the Lone Wolf Trading Co., after he suspected the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was lying to him about the guns they recruited him to sell to buyers of the Sinaloa Cartel.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Obviously, during an investigation, you do not give a suspect evidence, evidence they are not aware of, until after they might incriminate themselves under questioning, unless you are trying to short circuit the investigation. So if you had hope that the OIG was going to help, I think you just got your answer in spades.
Ed

[skeet]

Looks like the whole bunch of 'em are crooks working for the administration to put a black eye on gun ownership..Anything to do away with the 2nd amendment..just like the anti's planting wolves..right in the best hunting in the US... Of course if we don't have hunting we must not NEED guns. Let's put Holder and his boss on trial.. They both knew and you know..this stuff always comes from the top.. under wraps of course. Adobe wall time!!

[Rapier]

Perhaps we are getting closer to the testimony and documents to get this nailed down:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011...est=latestnews

Turns out a DOJ informant was being protected by the DOJ with the knowledge of the Assistant Attorney General and other high ranking officials in the DOJ. The informant was buying guns and drugs with DOJ money given to him by the DOJ. All the time the ATF spent years looking for this guy. Supposedly this is why the ATF was walking guns, trying to find the "Bad Guy" who was all the time, in fact, the DOJ informant or better yet, the DOJ employee. But the ATF was walking guns for the DOJ!!

I think I see the light, why no one was prosecuted, the large scale gun smuggling started with the DOJ. It looks like it never was an investigation of gun smuggling that was going on, that is a red herring, the DOJ started the gun smuggling as a key, trying to get inside the cartels through the door. I think the DOJ created the entire operation from top to bottom, crimes to investigate, investigation, etc. All leading no where. That then explains why there was no trace, there was never supposed to be a trace, only guns walking across the border. The focus was always getting into the cartels, not tracing or stopping guns. The head supplier of guns to the Cartels and a drug dealer to boot, is the DOJ.

The side benefit was giving dealers and gun owners in the US a black eye by diverting the blame for "illegal gun trafficking" to gun shows and the gun culture, etc. Every Anti in the US was eager to buy into this deal, it was just too sweet to pass up. It is why no one wants to report this, except Fox, they are all caught with their collective pants down around their knees.

Hopefully we are about to go past the DEA, FBI, ICE and ATF right to the center of control of this operation from the very start, the DOJ and Holder.
Ed

[skeet]

And how about the guy that gave 'em their marching orders..El Presidente Nobama

[Rapier]

Skeet,
It would be great to tie O'BS and Holder into a neat package, but unless I miss my bet on this, O'BS is too smart to be directly involved where he can be nailed down. I bet there is a go between, who is about as close as you will ever see this get to him. But one can still hope......
Ed

[skeet]

Ed...I believe you are correct..but as for Nobama..I don't think he is too smart..I think he's just slick.. If he was smart he wouldn't be trotting out the same failed stimulous BS to fix the economy that didn't work before..Slick because he knows if he cam get it to fly he will break the economy of this country even more than he has already..which I think is his communistic intient from the beginning.. The commie crats still don't understand that you can't tax and spend yourself out of a depression.. Taking from the rich(successful) and giving to the ones who choose not to work only makes things even worse. This gun thing is terrible..but break one of the Amendments to the Constitution and the whole document would be under attack so they could destroy the basic tenets of this country