Investigations Into BATFE Accelerate (A Crude Chronology Since late March 2011)

[Ed Jewett]

Lethal fiasco
A Justice Dept. 'Fast & Furious' coverup?

"... In a joint April 2009 appearance with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama said: "Our focus is to work with . . . everybody who is involved with this, to coordinate with our counterparts in Mexico, to significantly ramp up our enforcement of existing laws. In fact, I've asked Eric Holder to do a complete review of how our current enforcement operations are working and make sure we are cutting down on the loopholes that are causing some of these drug-trafficking problems."

Fast and Furious began a few months later. Coincidence?

Its apparent goal was to "prove" Obama's ludicrous claim that "more than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border." That charge fits with the liberals' guns-are-evil, America-is-always-to-blame worldview -- but it's not true. The best guesstimate is that about 17 percent of firearms in Mexico come from El Norte.

Yet every new revelation makes Fast and Furious look more like a sting operation against law-abiding Americans. A clandestine assault on the citizenry by the US government cannot be tolerated in a free society....."


Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/ope...z1TkpUNoXo

****

Posted on Sun, Jul. 31, 2011

Back Channels: How ATF delivered assault weapons to drug cartels

Attorney general should explain how misguided sting operation failed to trace guns.


By Kevin Ferris
Inquirer Columnist


"... The plan was to allow straw purchasers to make their deliveries, and then the ATF would trace the flow of the weapons.

But one huge detail was left unaddressed: The ATF made no provisions to actually trace the guns once they crossed the border.

The agency wasn't attaching electronic-tracking devices to the guns, and agents were not pursuing them into Mexico. They were forced to stop and watch the weapons "walk." Maybe Mexican authorities could have picked up the trail - but the ATF never told its counterparts across the border about the operation.

So, essentially, the U.S. government was now arming the very drug cartels that it was supposed to be helping Mexican officials fight.

Agents themselves were appalled. "It goes against everything we've been taught," Special Agent Carlos Canino said last week at the latest in a series of hearings on Fast and Furious by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

More than 2,000 weapons walked. Fewer than 600 have been recovered. And recovered usually means found at the scene of a crime, often a shooting or a homicide, in the United States or Mexico....

At last week's public hearing, one ATF official apologized for mistakes made, and agent William Newell said more "risk assessment" should have been conducted.

That's a start, but not enough. Rep. Pat Meehan (R., Pa.), a member of Issa's committee, agrees.

"You've got the highest-level local and regional people from ATF who are taking a fall for the team," Meehan said after the hearing. "But it's clear that they were operating with authority from above, certainly in collaboration with the prosecutor's office and, one would believe, with approvals right on up to the highest level of the Department of Justice."

Holder needs to be more forthcoming on the decisions that led to the death of Terry and others. He needs to detail how he plans to recover the other 1,400 weapons that "walked" before they end up at a crime scene. Finally, he needs to explain how the administration went from wanting to ban assault weapons to supplying them to drug lords."

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inq...rtels.html

[Ed Jewett]

"Super Congress" to Target Second Amendment

Unconstitutional body created by debt deal to get "even greater super powers"

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Infowars.com
Monday, August 1, 2011

The so-called "Super Congress" that is about to be created with the debt ceiling vote will have powers far beyond just controlling the nation's purse strings its authority will extend to target the second amendment eviscerating normal protections that prevent unconstitutional legislation from being fast-tracked into law.
As the Huffington Post reported last month, the debt deal that has already been passed by the House and faces the Senate tomorrow will create an unconstitutional "Super Congress" that will be comprised of six Republicans and six Democrats and granted "extraordinary new powers" to quickly force legislation through both chambers.

Legislation decided on by the Super Congress would be immune from amendment and lawmakers would only be able to register an up or down vote, eliminating the ability to filibuster.

The Speaker of the House would effectively lose the power to prevent unpopular bills from making it to the House floor.

But far from just being a committee that would make recommendations concerning the debt ceiling, the body is now to be granted "even greater super powers, according to multiple news reports and congressional aides with knowledge of the plan," writes Michael McAuliff.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pulled no punches in making it plain that the Super Congress would have supreme authority. "The joint committee there are no constraints," Reid said on the Senate floor. "They can look at any program we have in government, any program. … It has the ability to look at everything."

That includes introducing laws to restrict the second amendment, states a Gun Owners of America bulletin, warning that the body would be "a super highway for gun control legislation".

"Gun owner registration … bans on semi-automatic firearms … adoption of a UN gun control treaty all of these issues could very well be decided over the next 24 hours," states the GOA release.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) echoed Reid's sentiment, asserting that the Super Congress was "not a commission, this is a powerful, joint committee."

The Obama administration has already indicated that it will take the deciding vote as the de facto 13th member of the Super Congress. During his press briefing today, White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the government would work with the Super Congress to hike taxes in 2012 and beyond.

Barack Obama has already exercised his fetish for executive autonomy by launching the attack on Libya without Congressional approval, bypassing Congress and having the EPA declare carbon dioxide a pollutant, as well as the appointment of ten state governors directly selected by him who will work with the federal government to help advance the "synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States".

The administration's zeal to target the second amendment "under the radar," as Obama promised earlier this year, has also manifested itself in the form of ATF harassment of gun owners who purchase two or more firearms, despite the fact that the law to mandate such a policy failed to pass.

The establishment of a "Super Congress" will completely demolish the credibility and the authority of the system of elected representatives. It represents another final nail in the coffin of the American Republic and its replacement with an executive dictatorship run by the political elite.

Intel Hub Note: I warned American on July 23rd, 2011 that this Super Congress would effectively have the power to change other laws that have nothing to do with the debt ceiling.

http://theintelhub.com/2011/08/01/super-...amendment/

[Ed Jewett]

Feds Allowed Sinaloa Cartel to Move Cocaine Into U.S.

August 4th, 2011
Via: El Paso Times: http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_18608410?s...ost_viewed

U.S. federal agents allegedly allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel to traffic several tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to court documents filed in a U.S. federal court.

The allegations are part of the defense of Vicente Zambada-Niebla, who was extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges in Chicago. He is also a top lieutenant of drug kingpin Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman and the son of Ismael "Mayo" Zambada-Garcia, believed to be the brains behind the Sinaloa cartel.

The case could prove to be a bombshell on par with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' "Operation Fast and Furious," except that instead of U.S. guns being allowed to walk across the border, the Sinaloa cartel was allowed to bring drugs into the United States. Zambada-Niebla claims he was permitted to smuggle drugs from 2004 until his arrest in 2009.

Randall Samborn, assistant U.S. attorney and spokesman for the Justice Department in Chicago, declined comment.

Posted in Covert Operations, Economy

http://cryptogon.com/?p=23928

[Ed Jewett]

DEA acknowledges supporting role in Operation Fast and Furious


By Richard A. Serrano
August 5, 2011, 10:25 a.m.
Reporting from Washington The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration has acknowledged to congressional investigators that her agency provided a supporting role in the ill-fated Operation Fast and Furious run by the group's counterparts at the ATF.

Michele M. Leonhart, the DEA administrator, said DEA agents primarily helped gather evidence in cases in Phoenix and El Paso, and in the program's single indictment last January that netted just 20 defendants for illegal gun-trafficking.

The development marks the first time another law enforcement agency has said it also worked on Fast and Furious cases other than the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is under two investigations into why it allowed at least 2,000 firearms to be illegally purchased and then lost track of the guns' whereabouts.

Nearly 200 of the weapons showed up at crime scenes in Mexico, and two semi-automatics were recovered after a U.S. Border Patrol agent was slain south of Tucson.

Leonhart made the acknowledgement in a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. A copy of the letter was obtained Friday by The Times.

Leonhart wrote that her agents in Phoenix and El Paso were "indirectly involved in the ATF operation through DEA-associated activity. "

She added, "the DEA El Paso Division responded to a duty call in March 2010 from ATF for assistance in conducting an ongoing surveillance operation in the El Paso area as part of Operation Fast and Furious."

But she said her agents in Phoenix "had the most notable associated investigative activity, though DEA personnel had no decision-making role in any ATF operations." That included helping obtain phone numbers and addresses, issuing subpoenas for information on the phone subscribers, and paying linguist costs of $128,000 to help translate intercepted calls.

Her agency further helped in the "round up phase of the case with the execution of search warrants, participated in debriefing some of the 20 gun-smuggling defendants who were arrested in the Phoenix area, and attending the Jan. 25 press conference announcing those arrests.

Dawn Dearden, a DEA spokeswoman in Washington, declined to comment further Friday on the DEA's role in Fast and Furious. "The letter stands on its own," she said. "We're still in a fact-finding mode, so there's not much more we can say."

Document: Read the letter: http://documents.latimes.com/dea-acknowledges-role/

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-...6124.story

****

Gunwalker: It Must Have Been Eric Holder
... Or higher. An informed examination of the facts leaves no other answer.
August 5, 2011 - 9:37 am - by Bob Owens

Now that the debt ceiling debate is over and done, let's turn our attention back to Operation Fast and Furious and its alleged sister operations. The multi-agency operation (or operations) of the U.S. government allowed thousands of guns to be supplied to Mexican drug cartels, while American federal law enforcement effectively provided the straw purchasers and smugglers with the cover to operate with impunity.

Despite the tens of thousands of words of outrage written about the Obama administration's botched Operation Fast and Furious, most of the focus has been on the horrific impact of the program as measured by the number of firearms smuggled over the border and the number of lives lost. Some attention has been consequently paid to the potential political and criminal impact of the operation and cover-up within the Department of Justice.

Sadly, the media has focused very little attention on the probable origins of the plot, or why Gunwalker was created as an adjunct of the longer-running and more successful Gunrunner campaign.

Of course, that may not be entirely true. The crack investigative reporters of print, network, and cable news organizations may very well have done the research and followed the various clues about the origins of Gunwalker to their logical conclusion, and then simply decided that the most probable story was one they not dare tell.

The story is this: no competent federal law enforcement officer would ever have concocted an operation as obviously doomed to catastrophic failure as Operation Fast and Furious.

Let us count the reasons why:

Federal law enforcement agents don't let guns "walk." A gun that is allowed to flow into criminal hands is a gun that could end up killing a fellow cop or citizen. As a result, all prior known operations under the long-running and successful Gunrunner program ended when a straw purchaser was allowed to make the purchase, and then arrested on the spot or shortly thereafter. Throughout the process of these stings, the suspects were under constant surveillance whenever they had firearms in their possession, and officers considered it catastrophic failure if surveillance was lost.

Federal law enforcement agents knew that this operation would not lead to cartel kingpins. The profiling of criminal activity has become a blend of art and high science in recent decades, and when combined with the intelligence provided by informants and a history of thousands of arrests, the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and IRS agents assigned to the task force knew from the beginning that cartel leaders could not be implicated in Fast and Furious, because they simply aren't involved. Obtaining weapons for cartel gunmen is a problem for the lower to middle ranks of a cartel's hierarchy, no different than acquiring vehicles or safehouses. The most commonly used cartel weapons are viewed by the organizations as consumable commodities to be bought, used, and discarded. Do CEOs, company presidents, and vice presidents, or even middle managers go out shopping for paper clips and pens?

Federal law enforcement agents knew from the outset that they could never arrest their targets, who were outside of their jurisdiction. Jurisdictional battles between federal, state, and local agencies are legendary, and sensitivity to jurisdictional issues is something every law enforcement agent learns, often with frustration. Knowing for a fact that the individuals running cartel gun acquisition would be based in Mexico, and staying in Mexico, agents would have realized from the mission planning phase well before operational implementation that effecting arrests of the operation's stated targets was nearly impossible.
Middle managers in government would never dare to try such a dangerous, high-risk operation without express orders from above. All agencies public or private are saddled with bureaucracy, internal politics, and institutional inertia, which forms a powerful and pervasive cultural force that significantly inhibits change.

Changes that threaten the equilibrium of agencies are viewed as a threat, and the more radical the proposed change, the more resistance there is to block it from occurring. Resistance to change occurs even when change is thought to be strongly beneficial.From the ground up and at the very beginning, Fast and Furious was a radical and dangerous proposal that would threaten the very existence of the ATF.

There is no way a politically experienced operative like Phoenix Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Bill Newell would have offered up such a plan merely out of the self interest of furthering his own career. Federal law enforcement officers never would have conceived of and did not support the implementation of Operation Fast and Furious. Agents fought tooth and nail with supervisors over the plot, as has been documented extensively in congressional testimony.

Operation Fast and Furious would not have come from agents in the field.

Operation Fast and Furious could not have come from regional SACs.

The one and only way that this multi-agency operation could have been organized and forced into action against the wishes and better judgment of seasoned professionals is through a top-down push from high-level executives within the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, State, and Treasury, which all played a role in the plot. Four executive branch departments, led by cabinet-level political appointees loyal to the Obama administration, worked on an operation together that was explicitly doomed to failure from the outset.

Was the goal of the project ever law enforcement?

The most logical explanation for Fast and Furious and related operations was that it was not a law enforcement operation, but a political operation designed to advance an anti-gun political agenda that Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama have been pursuing since the beginning of this presidency.

This explosive scandal at the heart of Gunwalker isn't a matter of "what did he know and when did he know it?" It now instead seems to be a matter of who will come forward, and how much evidence will they provide to implicate officials at the highest levels of a lawless government.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gunwalker-i...ic-holder/

[Phil Dragoo]

Ed


In your #23 above, the story is amplified somewhat by the inclusion of the court document at its center in a story by William LaJeunesse:


http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/08/05/ame...z1UAxevcEp




U.S. federal agents allegedly cut a deal with the Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed it to traffic tons of narcotics across the border, in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to documents filed in federal court.


Click here to view the Sinaloa Cartel case document. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/08/05/sin...rtel-case/


The allegations are made by Vicente Zambada-Niebla, a top ranking cartel boss extradited to the U.S. last year on drug charges. He is a close associate of Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and the son of Ismael "Mayo" Zambada-Garcia.


Both remain fugitives, in part, because of the deal Zambada- Niebla made with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, according to a defense motion filed last Friday in the case.


Alvin Michaelson, the Los Angeles attorney representing Zambada- Niebla who wrote the brief, refused comment.

The deal allegedly began with Humberto Loya-Castro, a Sinaloa cartel lawyer who became an informant for the D.E.A. after a drug case against him was dismissed in 2008.


According to the motion, the deal was part of a 'divide and conquer' strategy, where the U.S. helped finance and arm the Sinaloa cartel, through Operation Fast and Furious, in exchange for information that allowed the D.E.A. and FBI to destroy and dismantle rival Mexican cartels. Operation Fast and Furious is the failed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives anti-gun trafficking program which allowed thousand of guns to cross into Mexico.


"Under that agreement, the Sinaloa Cartel, through Loya, was to provide information accumulated by Mayo, Chapo, and others, against rival Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations to the United States government. In return, the United States government agreed to dismiss the prosecution of the pending case against Loya, not to interfere with his drug trafficking activities and those of the Sinaloa Cartel, to not actively prosecute him, Chapo, Mayo, and the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel, and to not apprehend them."


Zambada- Niebla was arrested in Mexico City in March 2009 and extradited to the U.S. in February to stand trial on narco-trafficking-related charges. The indictment claims he served as the cartel's "logistical coordinator" who oversaw an operation that imported tons of cocaine into the U.S. by jets, buses, rail cars, tractor-trailers, and automobiles. Zambada-Niebla is now being held in solitary confinement in a Chicago jail cell.


The motion claims Mayo, Chapo and Zambada- Niebla routinely passed information through Loya to the D.E.A. that allowed it to make drug busts. In return, the U.S. helped the leaders evade Mexican police.

It says: "In addition, the defense has evidence that from time to time, the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel was informed by agents of the DEA through Loya that United States government agents and/or Mexican authorities were conducting investigations near the home territories of cartel leaders so that the cartel leaders could take appropriate actions to evade investigators- even though the United States government had indictments, extradition requests, and rewards for the apprehension of Mayo, Chapo, and other alleged leaders, as well as Mr. Zambada-Niebla."


In 2008, "the DEA representative told Mr. Loya-Castro that they wanted to establish a more personal relationship with Mr. Zambada-Niebla so that they could deal with him directly."


In March 17, 2009, Loya set up a meeting at the Sheraton Hotel in Mexico City with two D.E.A. agents, identified as Manny and David. There, the four men met and Zambada-Niebla claims he received immunity from an indictment out of federal court in Washington D.C.


"There is also evidence that at the hotel, Mr. Zambada-Niebla did accept the agreement and thereafter in reliance on that agreement, provided further information regarding rival drug cartels. Mr. Zambada-Niebla was told that the government agents were satisfied with the information he had provided to them and that arrangements would be made to meet with him again. Mr. Zambada-Niebla then left the meeting.


Approximately five hours after the meeting, Mr. Zambada-Niebla was arrested by Mexican authorities. "

Experts who reviewed the document say the U.S. typically has written agreements with paid informants that spell out each other's responsibilities. They doubt Zambada-Niebla had one, although Loya probably did. The defense here is hoping to obtain DEA reports that detail the agencies relationship with the Sinaloa cartel and get the agents on the stand.


In response in court, the U.S. doesn't dispute that Zambada-Niebla may have acted as an informant - only that he did not act with D.E.A. consent.


The D.E.A. and the federal prosecutors in Chicago had no comment.


Former D.E.A. director Karen Tandy told Fox News "I do not have any knowledge of this and it doesn't sound right from my experience."

~

I learned of this from the former U.S. Customs agent John Carman who ran customscorruption.com and was retaliated against by the Feds culminating in his being framed and sent to Federal prison in 2007, released this May.



http://www.defraudingamerica.com/carman_..._2007.html



The letter linked above was sent to Grassley in 2007; no action was forthcoming. I spoke with Grassley's Judiciary staffer and re-sent the letter via fax last week.



Now, on top of Ramos and Compean sentenced to a dime while "my good friend" Johnny Sutton immunized mule Aldrete-Davila for his then-recent loads of 700- and 1,000-pounds, we now have Border Patrol Agent Jesus Diaz facing over a decade for "misusing handcuffs"--while the mule and the Mexican government high-five:



http://www.advocatescouncil.us/US-vs-JDiaz.htm



Fast and Furious armed the cartels, was meant as a false-flag operation to disarm Americans, and, in my view, fits into a pattern of Federal complicity in enabling drug smuggling.



From the compromise of our government for the services of Lansky, to the war fought for access to the Golden Triangle, to the business in Nicaragua (see Reed: Compromised), to the ten-year campaign in the land of the poppies, to a Fast & Furious attempt to neutralize our law enforcement and citizen outrage, we've met the enemy in the War on Drugsand, Pogo, you were right.

[Ed Jewett]

Thank you, Phil. It's another piece or two of the puzzle about what is going on inside the top levels of the US government. The phraseology I used in the draft outline of the podcast was this:

"The US government engages in activities that are inimical to the interests of the American people.

I am often accused of using big words that cause people to run to their dictionaries and their thesaurus: let me save you a trip. The word means hostile, unfriendly.

In this and similar cases, here is perhaps not too strong a word to use: treasonous.

[Ed Jewett]

Fast and Furious: Report Says Sinaloa Cartel Has Enough U.S. Guns to be an Army
Posted on July 27, 2011


Sen. Charles Grassley [R-Iowa] has released a shocking new report on which claims the bungled federal gun sales program called "Operation Fast and Furious" turned more than 2,000 high-powered weapons over to "straw men" for Mexican drug dealers.


The result, according to the report, is the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico now has enough weapons to launch a Mexican government take-over. [ read the report here: http://grassley.senate.gov/judiciary/upl...xico-2.pdf .]

The report released to coincide with a third day of testimony in the Congressional investigation of "Fast and Furious."

[ here is the report and video of the hearing: http://www.uncoverage.net/2011/07/fast-a...g-cartels/ ]

ATF Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City testified they were denied information about Operation Fast and Furious that was being run out of the Phoenix Field Division. Once they found out, they said they were "disgusted" that so many guns had fallen into the hands of violent drug dealers. The testimony was that Mexicans and agents will be in danger for decades due to the reckless sales of Americans guns to cartels, which was ordered by ATF supervisors.

Senator Grassley summarizes yesterday's hearing and what's to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr9ESxioO...r_embedded

The failed federal anti-gunrunning program known as Operation Fast and Furious got so out of control in November 2009, it appeared the U.S. government was single-handedly "arming for war" the Sinaloa Cartel, documents show, even as U.S. officials kept lying to fellow agents in Mexico about the volume of guns it helped send south of the border.

Those shocking allegations are revealed in the latest congressional report investigating the operation.

At one point, agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives say guns sold under the program took just 24 hours to travel from a gun store in Phoenix to a crime scene in Mexico. ATF agents there pleaded for help but were told nothing about Fast and Furious, which was intended to let guns "walk" in order to track them to higher-profile traffickers.

Meanwhile, the report claims the agents' superiors in Washington met every Tuesday, to review the latest sales figures and the number of guns recovered in Mexico.

"How long are you going to let this go on?" Steve Martin, an assistant director of intelligence operations asked the ATF top brass at meeting Jan. 5, 2010, according to a transcript of the meeting contained in the congressional report. None of the men responded and several quickly left the room, the transcript reveals.

By Feb. 27, 2010, Lanny Breuer, the head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., was allegedly told that the ATF had successfully helped sell 1,026 weapons worth more than $650,000 to members of the Sinaloa cartel. The briefing included all top ATF officials, including the agents in charge in Los Angeles and Houston, as well as a half dozen top Justice Department attorneys.

"So there's no doubt after this briefing that guns in this case were being linked to the Sinaloa cartel?" a congressional investigator asked Martin during a July 2011 interview.

"I'd say yes." Martin replied.

"Very apparent to everyone in the room?" the investigator asked.

"That's correct," Martin said.

Meanwhile, ATF agents in Mexico were seeing a flood of weapons coming south. When asked, ATF brass told the resident ATF attaché in Mexico things were "under control."

"They were afraid I was going to brief the ambassador on it or brief the government of Mexico," said Darren Gil, former ATF attaché in Mexico.

For months, officials assured Gil that Fast and Furious was going to be "shut down," but it wasn't.

"We're getting hurt down here," Gil told ATF International Affairs Chief Daniel Kumor."

http://www.uncoverage.net/2011/07/fast-a...e-an-army/

[Ed Jewett]

Insider: CIA Orchestrated Operation Fast and Furious -gov allowed Mexican drug cartel to import tons of cocaine
Posted by James adap2k on August 12, 2011 at 12:25pm in Current News/Events


Federal government allowed Mexican drug cartel to import tons of cocaine into United States

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, August 12, 2011


Washington Times journalists Robert Farago and Ralph Dixon cite a "CIA insider" to make the claim that Operation Fast and Furious was a Central Intelligence Agency-orchestrated program to arm the Sinaloa drug cartel, a group that was also given the green light to fly tons of cocaine into the United States.

"In congressional testimony, William Newell, former ATF special agent in charge of the Phoenix Field Division, testified that the Internal Revenue Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were "full partners" in Operation Fast and Furious. Mr. Newell's list left out the most important player: the CIA. According to a CIA insider, the agency had a strong hand in creating, orchestrating and exploiting Operation Fast and Furious," report Farago and Nixon.

The program, with its designated cover of tracking where guns went so drug lords who purchased them could later be arrested downstream, was actually a deliberate effort to prevent the Los Zetas drug cartel from staging a successful coup d'etat against the government of Felipe Calderon by arming rival gang Sinaloa, according to the Times writers, a relationship that extended to "(allowing) the Sinaloas to fly a 747 cargo plane packed with cocaine into American airspace unmolested."

"The CIA made sure the trade wasn't one-way. It persuaded the ATF to create Operation Fast and Furious a "no strings attached" variation of the agency's previous firearms sting. By design, the ATF operation armed the Mexican government's preferred cartel on the street level near the American border, where the Zetas are most active," states the report.

The notion that Fast and Furious was used as a cover through which to arm the the Sinaloa cartel would explain why the feds showed little interest in following up where guns ended up once they left the United States.

The Obama administration and the ATF claim that the Fast and Furious program was part of a sting operation to catch leading Mexican drug runners, and yet it's admitted that the government stopped tracking the firearms as soon as they reached the border, defeating the entire object of the mission.

It would also account for the fact that the federal government failed to prevent Sinaloa importing tons of cocaine into the U.S.

Back in April, Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, the "logistical coordinator" for the Sinaloa drug-trafficking gang that was responsible for purchasing the CIA torture jet that crashed with four tons on cocaine on board back in 2007 told the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago that he had been working as a U.S. government asset for years.

According to court transcripts, Niebla was allowed to import "multi-ton quantities of cocaine" into the U.S. as a result of his working relationship with the FBI, Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

But the notion that Fast and Furious was solely an effort to isolate the Los Zetas cartel isn't consistent with the fact that one of the gang's kingpins recently told Mexican federal police that the group purchased its weapons directly from U.S. government officials inside America.

"They are bought in the U.S. The buyers (on the U.S. side of the border) have said in the past that sometimes they would acquire them from the U.S. Government itself," Rejón Aguilar told police.

As we reported years ago, former DEA agent Cele Castillo has blown the whistle on how the US government controls the Los Zetas drug smuggling gang and uses it as the front group for their narco-empire.

With the gang having first been trained at the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, Castillo affirms that Los Zetas are still working for the US govern... in protecting drug routes to keep the wheels of Wall Street well-oiled. Castillo has gone on the record to state that the commandos are working directly for the US government drug cartel in carrying out hits on rival drug smugglers who aren't paying their cut.

Fast and Furious may have served a dual purpose for the Obama administration.
Some evidence indicates the program was a plot on behalf of the administration to discredit the second amendment. While the feds were selling guns to Mexican drug gangs, Obama was simultaneously blaming drug violence on the flow of guns from border states to Mexico.

Even after the revelations surrounding the program became public, the ATF cited the trafficking of guns to Mexico as justification for a new regulation that has led to ATF intimidation of both gun sellers and purchasers, a policy which arrived months after President Obama told gun control advocate Sarah Brady that his administration was working "under the radar" to sneak attack the second amendment.

During a March 30 meeting between Jim and Sarah Brady and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, at which Obama "dropped in," the president reportedly told Brady, "I just want you to know that we are working on it (gun control)….We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar."

The quote appeared in an April 11 Washington Post story about Obama's gun control czar Steve Croley.

*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.

http://12160.info/forum/topics/insider-c...-allowed-m

[Ed Jewett]

[Ed Jewett]

ATF Promotes Operation Fast and Furious Supervisors

August 16th, 2011
Via: Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/...6977.story

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 at crime scenes in Mexico and two at the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.

The three supervisors have been given new management positions at the agency's headquarters in Washington. They are William G. McMahon, who was the ATF's deputy director of operations in the West, where the illegal trafficking program was focused, and William D. Newell and David Voth, both field supervisors who oversaw the program out of the agency's Phoenix office.

McMahon and Newell have acknowledged making serious mistakes in the program, which was dubbed Operation Fast and Furious.

"I share responsibility for mistakes that were made," McMahon testified to a House committee three weeks ago. "The advantage of hindsight, the benefit of a thorough review of the case, clearly points me to things that I would have done differently."

Three Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokesmen did not return phone calls Monday asking about the promotions. But several agents said they found the timing of the promotions surprising, given the turmoil at the agency over the failed program.

Posted in Atrocities, Covert Operations, False Flag Operations

http://cryptogon.com/?p=24248