The Latest on Gunrunner the DOJ & ATF

[Rapier]

"When the Operation Fast and Furious indictment was announced back in January, it was depicted as a big bust. Twenty suspects were charged with numerous counts of conspiracy, money laundering, gun running and drug trafficking. The defendants faced 5 to 20 years on a single count.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives(ATF) along with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix claimed to have dismantled a major weapons trafficking organization from top to bottom- from the end user of the weapons in Mexico to the money men, those who smuggled and transported the weapons from the U.S. into Mexico, and the buyers on our side of the border.

Yet after thousands of man hours and millions of dollars spent, only one of the 20 suspects remains behind bars. Most were released within 24 hours of their arrest. In the end, all prosecutors got was one middle man and a handful of straw buyers." Fox News

It is amazing to me that Castaway in Tampa is almost identical to F & F in that one fellow was charged and a thousand guns walked and people are dead. Yet the Feds say the two operations are not connected. Hum, sounds like a husband caught cheating to me; "are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?"

There is a reported email from a Deputy Director of the ATF instructing agents to pursue gathering evidence from these operations in order to bolster a need for gun control legislation on gun sales. Now you have, for a fact, the DOJ issuing new rules on sales within the border states.

It appears more and more that this operation (s) was not intended to catch anyone it may in fact have been intended to create a “need” in the public eye for stiffer controls on gun sales and Obama while appearing to do nothing about helping his anti gun zealot buddies was in fact trying to destroy the second amendment “below the radar.” We shall see where the bread crumbs lead.

Now if you accept the anti gun legislation theory, then you get to something much more sinister, and something that is very difficult for me to accept, that anyone in US political office would be so cynical as to kill hundreds of innocent people to make pure political gain from their deaths. Think about that for a minute. That would be a very evil person, not deserving of any office, elected or appointed.

[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.

[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.

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"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.

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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

[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