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

[Ed Jewett]

Congressman: Obama Admin May be Accessory to Murder with Fast and Furious'

By Matthew Boyle

October 05, 2011 "The Daily Caller" -- Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona told The Daily Caller on Wednesday that Obama administration officials responsible for Operation Fast and Furious might be accessories to murder.
"We're talking about consequences of criminal activity, where we actually allowed guns to walk into the hands of criminals, where our livelihoods are at risk," Gosar said in a phone interview. "When you facilitate that and a murder or a felony occurs, you're called an accessory. That means that there's criminal activity."
Gosar said the government should be held to the same standard as everyone else. Fast and Furious weapons were used to kill U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, as well as scores of Mexican citizens, and he thinks administration officials should be held accountable.
"We impugn the private sector, we impugn main street America, and the bureaucracy cannot be held to any different standard whatsoever," Gosar told TheDC, insisting that Justice Department and ATF officials "intentionally intentionally violated the law."
Gosar said the administration was "showing an intentional, wanton disregard for the law," and that "there's got to be consequences for that."
"Leadership has a price," he added.
Gosar said he's confident the Congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious will eventually include either the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, or both.
"I've said all along, you're dealing with a foreign country, you're talking about an international border that's the Secretary of State and of Homeland Security," Gosar said. "If you weren't briefing them, it's even worse that we had vigilantes from DOJ going unchecked and we did not tell our folks in Mexico about this."
"This should have been a Cabinet [issue], and I keep saying it all along," Gosar continued. "He [Holder] points to Homeland Security Secretary [Janet] Napolitano in this and I would have no doubts I'm a common sense person that this should have also involved the secretary of state, which means everybody knew and we're starting to see that in the document dump from the White House."
As new documents showing how many more senior political officials in the Obama administration were aware of Fast and Furious continue to surface, Gosar said it's becoming clearer that senior officials in the Obama administration are responsible for the program. The latest documents to surface indicate that Attorney General Eric Holder was briefed on Operation Fast and Furious at least two times in 2010, despite Holder's May 3 testimony that he had only learned of the gun walking operation a few weeks before his Congressional appearance.
Like House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Gosar thinks that May 3 testimony was "misleading."
Chaffetz told the TheDC on Tuesday that he thinks Holder was "less than candid." Smith has called for an investigation into the truthfulness of Holder's comments, and Issa has publicly questioned the attorney general's veracity as well.
"I certainly believe that he either misrepresented the facts or he's sufficiently incompetent that he didn't know what was in his weekly briefings," Issa told CNN's Anderson Cooper Tuesday evening.
At this time, it's unclear what Holder's future will be. When TheDC asked Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan if he thinks Holder should resign over these allegations, Jordan replied that he's not sure at this point, but he expects Issa and Smith to bring Holder in front of their committees to answer the questions under oath again.
"I spoke with Darrell [Issa] briefly this morning," Jordan told TheDC at a Wednesday breakfast for reporters. "I think that they're looking to get the attorney general to come in and testify."
"My guess is it might be a joint hearing of both Judiciary and Oversight with the attorney general," Jordan added. "So we'll see. And I think what's appropriate is let's get him under oath in front of the respective committees and then see how that process plays out."
Gosar said that while it's troubling that the attorney general may have misled or lied to Congress, it's important not to lose sight of the real issue here: The Obama administration allowed guns to walk to Mexico in Operation Fast and Furious, which he says is more "egregious" than the possibility that Holder lied to Congress.
"You had gun dealers who said, Listen, I don't feel comfortable selling these guns,' and the ATF said, Sell the guns,'" Gosar said. "Then, when you had special agents trying to do surveillance, they [the ATF] told them to stand down. They were intentionally doing this, they're showing an intentional, wanton disregard for the law, and there's got to be consequences for that."
Will Rahn contributed to this report.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...e29309.htm

[Ed Jewett]

[hey, Maggie, I will get to my chores as soon as I can, but life is sometimes comin' at me fast & furious]

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[Ed Jewett]

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2011

Reports of Sharyl Attkisson being kidnapped by network trolls are greatly exaggerated. Resurrection of "Katie Graham's tit" spells doom for Holder.

"Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published." -- U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell to Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein, 1972.

Is CBS News Silencing Fast and Furious Reporter?

In a word, no.

Sources familiar both with the CBS network and Sharyl's reporting caution not to panic. She has not been kidnapped by network trolls -- not that there AREN'T any network trolls at CBS, there certainly are. However, the CBS net is apparently inundated since yesterday with interview requests for her. It is reported by the sources that every conservative outlet and blogger wants to talk to her and there's no way she could do them all even if CBS wanted her to. Her editors are reported to want her to focus on the story, which they now think is terrific and don't want to try to pick and choose certain interviews for her to do.

That, in any case is the explanation. Not that the White House isn't still pissed at her. It is.

Another source said, "The White House press flack coming all apart on her (Sharyl) was the Gunwalker scandal's 'Graham's tit' moment." He added, "It was priceless and likely guaranteed Eric Holder's doom. He'll be thrown overboard any day now to try to save the S.S. Obama."

Posted by Dutchman6 at 5:32 PM

[If people need more information on this poster [Dutchman6] or the site, just ask. It can be discovered easily on its own, so there are no mysteries...]

[Ed Jewett]

[hey, Maggie, I will get to my chores as soon as I can, but life is sometimes comin' at me fast & furious]

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[reviewed and 'organized' the 700KB of text and wonderful videos last night..., and some of these same names and claims were in there...]


http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141128178/...t=1&f=1001

[Ed Jewett]

Gunwalker: Gunning Down the Bush Did It, Too' Lie

The Bush Justice Department ran a sting operation intended to interdict weapons. Guns were never allowed to walk.
October 6, 2011 - 6:45 am - by Bob Owens













When Associated Press reporter Pete Yost uncritically repeated claims by anonymous Department of Justice officials that the Bush-era Operation Wide Receiver was "the same tactic" used by the Obama Justice Department in Operation Fast and Furious and other operations, I called him out, knowing the claim was incorrect.
A later article by Sharyl Attkisson of CBSNews found a dealer who participated in Wide Receiver, and acting ATF Director B. Todd Jones (himself possibly implicated in Gunwalker) agreed that gun-walking had occurred while President Bush was in office. Yet something felt wrong, but I couldn't recall the information I had previously heard to rebut the claim.
Luckily a reader had a better memory than I, and led me to the June 15 article by Jim Shepherd in The Outdoor Wire. Shepherd's piece reveals just how different the botched sting of Wide Receiver was from the intentionally criminal Fast and Furious:

In Operation Wide Receiver, Tucson agents allowed the sales of more than 500 firearms to known straw purchasers. Like Gunrunner/Fast and Furious, the operation apparently backfired.
Some firearms in Wide Receiver were equipped with RFID tracking devices. In Wide Receiver, it seems the illegal purchasers seemed more than slightly knowledgeable of the ATF and how to take their aerial and electronic tracking procedures down.
Knowing the time aloft numbers for virtually all planes used in government surveillance, the buyers had a simple method of getting their purchases across the border undetected. They simply drove four-hour loops around the area.
As surveillance planes were forced to return to base for refueling, the smugglers simply turned and sprinted their cargo across the border.
The RFID tags also turned out to be problematic.
Rather than making large enough holes for the tags to be laid out inside weapons, agents force-fit them into the rifles.
That cramming caused the antennae to be folded, reducing the effective range of the tags. And an already short battery life (36-48 hours maximum) meant that should purchasers allow the firearms to sit, the tracking devices eliminated themselves.

Thar's quite a bit of difference between the two operations.
Wide Receiver sought to track and interdict guns being smuggled south using a combination of RFID-tracking devices embedded in the shipments and overheard surveillance aircraft. Wide Receiver failed because of the limitations of the technology used, compounded by the ineptness of its installation and the unexpected resourcefulness of the cartel's gun smugglers.
As a result of the mistakes made in Wide Receiver, guns were lost: approximately 450 made it into Mexico. As a result, the botched operation launched in 2006 and in this instance, actually botched was shut down in 2007.
Compare the mistakes of Wide Receiver to the operations launched under Eric Holder's Department of Justice, which had the advantages of learning from the postmortem failures of Wide Receiver two years before.
Fast and Furious used neither tracking devices nor aircraft, ran interference for smugglers with local law enforcement on multiple occasions, and federal agents were not allowed to interdict weapons.
Wide Receiver shut down within a year after 450 weapons went missing in a botched law enforcement operation. Fast and Furious purposefully ran at least 2,020 weapons to the Sinaloa cartel without any intention of arresting the straw purchasers and smugglers. Other operations in other states CBS News' Attkisson cites allegations of "at least 10 cities in five states" allow the possibility that (if the other operations were as prolific as Fast and Furious) Holder's Department of Justice may have intentionally sent more than 12,000 guns into criminal hands in the U.S and Mexico, enough to arm three U.S. Army brigades.
Law enforcement operations sometimes go horribly wrong, and every indication is that Operation Wide Receiver executed by the ATF during the Bush administration while Alberto Gonzales was the attorney general was a "keystone cops" operation of the first magnitude. It was a horrible failure.
But Fast and Furious was no accident.
Nor was it within spitting distance of being a law enforcement operation. Fast and Furious and the alleged gunwalking operations based in Houston, Dallas, Charlotte, Indiana, Tampa, and elsewhere were specifically designed to assure that straw purchasers and cartel weapons smugglers would be under the de facto protection of the Obama adminstration, with no attempts at interdiction and with interference on behalf of the criminals being traced to the ATF, FBI, and DOJ.
Let us hear no more false comparisons: Wide Receiver was botched law enforcement, while the gun-walking programs of the Obama administration were intentionally criminal and arguably terrorist acts, arming violent narco-terrorists waging war on a U.S. ally.

Bob Owens blogs at Confederate Yankee and Bob's Gun Counter.

[Ed Jewett]

Fox News coverage of an ATF slide show from March 2010 of crime scenes with F&F weapons, Holder's Chief of Staff, plus the note about the nine US sherrifs' press conference and their suggestion: Attorney Gen'l Holder's resignation


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmI7RQJVruA...player_embedded

[Ed Jewett]

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http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pKMevxZA6o0/To...holder.jpg

[Ed Jewett]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20...91695.html


Deputy AG received detailed Fast and Furious briefing


Documents recently turned over by the Justice Department to Congressional investigators indicate that then-Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler received a detailed briefing on Fast and Furious more than a year and a half ago.
"Deputy Attorney General" is the Justice Department's No. 2 figure, directly under Attorney General Eric Holder.


Grindler moved from Deputy Attorney General to a spot as Holder's chief of staff last January.


The briefing Grindler attended was on March 12, 2010, six months into ATF's Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed thousands of weapons on the street in an attempt to track down Mexican drug cartels. Portions of the documents are redacted.


In handwritten notes about Fast and Furious that are not all legible, Grindler writes about "seizures in Mexico" and "links to cartel." He also noted "seizures in Mexico" on a map of Phoenix, the home base for Fast and Furious, and Mexico locations where some guns ended up. And Grindler made notations on a photograph of several dozen rifles.


There is no specific mention of the controversial tactic known as "letting guns walk" which, law enforcement sources say, was the heart of the Fast and Furious case.


Late today, a spokesman for the Justice Department told CBS News that "Much like presentations given in 2010 on the status of ATF's investigative efforts along the SW Border to many others - including a briefing to Chairman Issa within the same timeframe - this one did not get into the operational tactics that have since raised concerns... Indeed, as both the former U.S. Attorney in Arizona and the former Acting Director of ATF (who provided this briefing) have made clear, they did not themselves know the operational details and did not brief Justice officials on them."


Yesterday, the President stated he has full confidence in Holder and reiterated that neither he nor Holder knew of the controversial tactics being used in Fast and Furious. Holder has asked the Inspector General to investigate.


As we reported on the Early Show, a CBS News Investigation has uncovered allegations of "gunwalking" in ten cities and five states, some of them dating back as far as 2006, under Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

[Ed Jewett]

Today ten Arizona Sheriffs demanded an independent investigation of Fast and Furious, a government operation that allowed more than 2,000 guns to cross the border into the hands of criminals in Mexico. In a news conference at the Arizona Peace Officers Memorial in Phoenix, the sheriffs called the ATF operation "unconscionable".


"This is one of the highest of betrayals", said Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu. Noting state law enforcement was never warned or included, despite the fact that the operation took place in their state, the sheriffs called for a special counsel to conduct an independent investigation outside the Department of Justice.


The five Democrats and five Republicans in the group, which included the President of the Arizona Sheriffs Association, said the issue is not about politics. They called it a public safety concern, since guns allowed into Mexico have been linked to crime scenes on both sides of the border. "I feel like we've been betrayed by our government in Washington, D.C. and we need answers", said Mohave County Tom Sheahan.


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20...91695.html

[Ed Jewett]

Over at my blog, I've posted up the deep "bookends" of a string of communications through the grapevine. The DPF administration, or at least key members of it, are fully cognizant of who is on that grapevine; one of them is Robert "Tosh" Plumlee. It is my understanding that , in the past, some of what "Tosh" has proffered has not been well-received, or has been the target of someone. Much of that was before my time here, so I have no comment. We live in a world and a time when every piece of information has to be held up and examined to see if it is opaque, or transparent, or if it resonates with what we know or perceive. At this point in time, I have no information with which to cast detractions or dismay at it, or him, or anyone involved in this transmission of information.

I took the 715 kilobytes of data and added some emphasis and highlighting for the reader, chopped a little fat, and trimmed up two filets: some historical background going back two years, and the most recent part of the 65 page-long file I'd created.

I left out a couple of minor bits that I think were previously posted, or which were a little too gruesome. The video link blessedly didn't work so I didn't have to verify the actual act of a chainsaw murder; the rest simply lends some credence to what we already know. The world is in turmoil, there are some ugly and evil people out there, etc.

I do intend to re-visit the material I did not include to see what there may be of further value, but the Fast & Furious disclosures are now out into the mainstream media, and I felt this material ought not to wait any longer before being posted.

I have posted, in my own blog, those two filets under the titles of

[URL="http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=57&showentry=1338"]"those who think it does not effect the United States are just flat crazy"

[/URL]just flat crazy (part two)