By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
A “minority report” from Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that points the blame for Operation Fast and Furious at officials in Arizona is running into heavy criticism as a partisan smokescreen that protects Obama administration officials from accountability.
The 95-page report is titled Fatally Flawed – Five Years of Gunwalking in Arizona. It was released Tuesday by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, ranking Democrat on the House Oversight committee, 48 hours before embattled Attorney General Eric Holder is scheduled to appear before that committee, chaired by Republican Darrell Issa. That hearing is scheduled Thursday, Feb. 2.
Cummings’ report not only lays blame at the feet of officials in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives field office in Phoenix, it also spends considerable effort in linking gun walking back to an earlier program during the Bush administration.
An executive in the firearms industry who asked for anonymity told TGM, “The ‘but Johnny did it too’ excuse I would expect to hear from my 6-year-old is hardly a defense of the indefensible.”
Operation Fast and Furious allowed an estimated 2,000 guns to be trafficked to Mexican drug cartel gunmen between the fall of 2009 and December 2010. It came to an immediate halt with the slaying of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, and the discovery of two Fast and Furious-linked guns at the crime scene.
Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, who launched the first official Capitol Hill investigation into the operation, issued a blistering statement after getting a copy of the Cummings report.
“The idea that senior political appointees have clean hands in these gunwalking scandals doesn’t pass the laugh test,” Grassley said, “especially considering we’ve seen less than 10 percent of the pages that the Justice Department has provided the Inspector General. They ignored the warning signs and failed to put a stop to it or hold anyone accountable.
“Lanny Breuer is a senior political appointee, and he admits to knowing about gunwalking as early as April 2010,” the senator continued. “Documents turned over late Friday night indicate he was still discussing plans to let guns cross the border with Mexican officials on the same day the Department denied to me in writing that ATF would ever let guns walk. He stood mute as this administration fought tooth and nail to keep any of this information from coming out for a year. It will take a lot more than a knee-jerk defense from their political allies in Congress to restore public trust in the leadership of the Justice Department. The American people want to see those who failed to act be held accountable.”
Grassley’s office is also critical of the Justice Department’s response to the senator’s repeated requests for documents. In a statement, Grassley’s spokesperson noted, “The Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder initially denied gunwalking occurred, but have since withdrawn the denials and admitted that ATF whistlebowers were right to complain about the reckless tactic.”
“Despite the constitutional responsibility of Congress to conduct oversight of the executive branch,” Grassley’s office said, “the Justice Department has stonewalled every step of (the) investigation. In fact, the Justice Department has provided 80,000 pages of documents to the Inspector General, but has provided only 6,000 pages of documents to Congress. Yet, the department has provided no explanation for withholding each of those 74,000 pages.”
There is much information in the report that is damaging to some of the key figures involved in the operation, most notably former Phoenix BATF Special Agent in Charge William Newell. The report quotes an October 2007 e-mail exchanges between Newell and then-Deputy BATF Director William “Billy” Hoover and Carson Carroll, at the time BATF’s assistant director for enforcement programs. This exchange dealt with Hoover’s concerns about gunwalking during the Bush-era operation, called “Wide Receiver.”
In one key message, Hoover specifically told Newell to cease operations and not do anything like gun walking again.
“I’m so frustrated with this whole mess,” Hoover wrote, “I’m shutting the case down and any further attempts to do something similar. We’re done trying to pursue new and innovative initiatives—it’s not worth the hassle.”
Hoover also told Carroll in a separate e-mail, “I do not want any firearms to go South until further notice. I expect a full briefing paper on my desk Tuesday morning from SAC Newell with every question answered. I will not allow this case to go forward until we have written documentation from the U.S. Attorney’s Office re full and complete buy in. I do not want anyone briefed on this case until I approve the information. This includes anyone in Mexico.”
Hoover’s other messages underscore his insistence that any such operation must have the approval of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He asked at one point, “Have we discussed the strategy with the US Attorney’s Office re letting the guns walk? Do we have this approval in writing? Have we discussed this and thought thru the consequences of same?”
Newell is currently assigned to BATF headquarters in Washington, D.C.
In Cummings’ cover letter accompanying the report, he acknowledges that it contains some disappointments, chief among them being the omission of any hearing featuring Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
“Although this report provides a great amount of detail about what we have learned to date,” Rep. Cummings wrote, “it has several shortcomings. Despite requests from me and others, the Committee never held a hearing or even conducted an interview with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey. The Committee obtained documents indicating that in 2007 he was personally informed about the failure of previous law enforcement operations involving the illegal smuggling of weapons into Mexico, and that he received a proposal to expand these operations. Since the Committee failed to speak with Mr. Mukasey, we do not have the benefit of his input about why these operations were allowed to continue after he was given this information.”
Again, critics assert, this amounts to more “Blame Bush” rhetoric than getting to the bottom of the Fast and Furious scandal.
