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'Fast & Furious' gets hotter for Holder
By MICHAEL A. WALSHDon't look now, but the real action in Washington this week isn't the parti san wrangling over the debt ceiling but something -- literally -- even more incendiary: Operation Fast and Furious, which seems about to explode right in the face of Attorney General Eric Holder -- and maybe other administration officials, too.
Also known as Project Gunrunner, the Arizona-based operation was supposed to be a sting, under which the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is part of the Justice Department, allowed "straw purchasers" to transfer weapons from gun shops in Arizona to Mexican drug cartels to trace and halt crossborder arms-trafficking.
That's the official version, anyway -- but it's crumbling, fast.
The ATF's acting director, Kenneth Melson, has been singing like a canary to congressional investigators as he pushes back against administration pressure for him to resign and take the fall for something that, at the very least, had to include the US Attorney's Office, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and possibly the Homeland Security Department.
In a letter to Holder released yesterday, Rep. Daryl Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley accused the Justice Department of blocking their investigation into the burgeoning scandal (which has resulted in the deaths of at least two American agents and countless Mexican civilians), muzzling the ATF and involving other federal agencies, including the FBI and the DEA, in funding the crackpot scheme.
"The evidence we have gathered raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons, but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities," they wrote.
"It is one thing to argue that the ends justify the means in an attempt to defend a policy that puts building a big case ahead of stopping known criminals from getting guns. Yet it is a much more serious matter to conceal from Congress the possible involvement of other agencies in identifying and maybe even working with the same criminals that Operation Fast and Furious was trying to identify."
That's the key to this mess -- and the reason that Operation Fast and Furious might turn out to be the biggest Washington scandal since Iran-Contra.
As Issa and Grassley note in their letter, had the other agencies shared information -- theoretically the goal of the post-9/11 revamp of the intelligence and law-enforcement agencies -- "then ATF might have known that gun trafficking 'higher-ups' had already been identified."
So if the identities of the Mexican criminals were known to the feds, what was the point of Project Gunrunner -- and why is Holder so desperately trying to stonewall by withholding hundreds of documents from Congress?
Law-abiding gun owners and dealers think they already know. With the Obama administration wedded to the fiction that 90 percent of the guns Mexican cartels use originate here -- they don't -- many suspect that "Fast and Furious" was a backdoor attempt to smear domestic gun aficionados as part of its stealth efforts on gun control by executive fiat.
"I just want you to know that we're working on it," Obama was quoted as saying to gun-control advocate Sarah Brady in March. "We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar."
Unfortunately for the administration, this one's out in the open now.
Melson testified behind closed doors on July 4, but the country needs to hear him speak -- loudly and publicly. "Let me be clear," Issa wrote to Melson in April, "we are not conducting a concurrent investigation with the Department of Justice, but rather an independent investigation of the Department of Justice."
Exactly. Because this one's not just a domestic issue. A Mexican senator, Rene Arce Islas, told Fox News that he believes whoever is responsible for the monumental, lethal cock-up should be tried not only in America but in Mexico, too.
That's not going to happen, of course. Even if any prominent American officials are implicated, there is zero chance they'd have to face Mexican justice.
But Issa's charge that Holder & Co. are obstructing a congressional investigation is serious. Not even the Justice Department is above the law.
The best way to disinfect the putrid mess that is Operation Fast and Furious is to expose it to sunlight. Let's hear what the attorney general and others have to say in open hearings.
Because somebody's got some "splainin' " to do -- fast, before the American people get furious.
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Dear Fellow American:
I've just returned from the border between the United States and Mexico and I've never witnessed anything like the stinking, rotten level of murder, corruption, cover-up, and conspiracy confronting us today.
This conspiracy ignited two years ago when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder claimed that your Second Amendment rights are to blame for the drug crimes and killings in Mexico.
Holder and other top-level Obama Administration figures -- even the President himself -- claimed that 90% of the guns used by violent drug cartels were coming from American gun dealers.
In short, they blamed our Second Amendment rights for the violence of the Mexican drug cartels.
But leaked U.S. State Department cables have exposed this as a bald-faced LIE.
These Obama Administration cables proved beyond a shadow of a doubt what the Mexican government already knew: That the drug cartels were getting guns -- along with fully-automatic weapons, grenade launchers, anti-personnel mines and other military hardware -- through Central America, NOT THE U.S.
These leaked cables blew a hole in the Obama Administration's grand strategy to use Mexican drug cartel crime as an excuse to advance their gun control agenda, shut down law-abiding gun stores and rip the Second Amendment right out of our Bill of Rights.
While these leaked cables exposed the lies propping up Obama's gun control agenda, administration officials at the highest levels pushed a strategy to fit their gun control aims.
In a display of corruption and arrogance that's shocking even for this Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) launched Operation "Fast and Furious" -- an illegal pipeline for shipping guns into Mexico.
With our government's full knowledge and complicity, BATFE higher-ups ordered firearms dealers to sell these guns illegally to straw purchasers. And it wasn't just a few guns... It was over two thousand!!!
According to just emerging reports, BATFE officials actively supervised the commission of felony violations by merely monitoring this criminal activity instead of enforcing the law and blocking the sales.
At the time, BATFE agents protested the insanity of Operation Fast and Furious, and the sheer stupidity of letting thousands of illegally purchased guns just walk over the border into the hands of criminals.
But BATFE supervisors pushed back saying, "If you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs."
One of those "eggs" broke on the night of December 14, 2010.
That night, 40-year old Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was in a remote Arizona canyon with a six-member tactical team that encountered a group of armed Mexican illegals.
Sources said that the "illegal entrants" were in Arizona to rob cartel drug mules and other illegals. In the initial skirmish, the Border Patrol agents fired low-velocity shotgun beanbag rounds and were met with 7.62x39mm return fire.
Officer Terry died in the exchange. And when the bandits fled, they left behind two AK-style rifles that were traced to sales made under the Fast and Furious operation.
The ugly truth of this conspiracy is the hardest of all to swallow, because it was all a frame-up against gun owners and the Second Amendment. And right now, the only hope of getting the truth out about all of this is you.
Senator Charles Grassley (IA) and Representative Darrell Issa (CA) are defending our Second Amendment rights and fighting for justice for Agent Terry by holding Congressional hearings on Fast and Furious.
But they're being stonewalled by Obama, Holder and others who are bent on sweeping the truth under the rug.
They are withholding government documents that say exactly who ordered the operations. Government e-mails warn witnesses not to cooperate. Congressional subpoenas are being ignored.
This conspiracy has exploded beyond an attack on our firearm freedoms into a full-blown threat to the rule of law at the very foundation of our government.
If you want to help NRA protect our Right to Keep and Bear Arms, our freedoms and our country from corrupt government officials, then I need you to take action today:
When Attorney General Holder was questioned by Senator Charles Grassley about how guns that were allowed to "walk" out of gun shops during Operation Fast and Furious ended up at a U.S. Border Patrol Agent's murder scene, Holder said, "I frankly don't know."
That one statement from our nation's top law-enforcement official cuts right to the heart of the matter and proves that Holder is either covering up for Obama, his failed gun control schemes and the crimes committed, or he's incompetent.
Either way, he can't be trusted with the powers of Attorney General, the law enforcement agencies he commands, the sanctity of the Second Amendment, or the lives of Federal agents.
As Attorney General, he's supposed to enforce the laws that protect American citizens, not cover-up corrupt schemes that threaten our nation.
And when they made the Mexican drug crime crisis a battle about our guns and our freedoms, they made this NRA's fight, and your fight.
That's why NRA is launching a nationwide campaign to gather hundreds of thousands of signatures on this Petition to Fire Eric Holder, one of the chief architects of Obama's gun ban agenda.
And I'm turning to you to help lead this fight by signing our National Petition to Fire Eric Holder.
Together, we will hound Obama and Holder to come clean and surrender all relevant and uncensored documents on Operation Fast and Furious to Congressional investigators. We and all Americans deserve the truth. We will call for the removal of Eric Holder from his cabinet post. And, if Obama fails to fire him, NRA will hammer away and remind the public that crimes have been committed. And with your donation, we will force Obama to carry that weight throughout next year's election.
For more information click here https://www.nra.org/fireholder/Background.aspx
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Most people do not have an understanding of Russia's long term goals...they want to be the dominate force in the United Nations an organization they use to further those goals. Most people think that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War by breaking up the Soviet Union when really the Russians won a long sought after increase in their UN representation. When the UN was founded Russia wanted all her states to have voting rights...she got her way by simply tearing down a wall, just look at the Soviet Block representation today as compared to the years prior to Reagan.