By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
Iowa Senator Charles Grassley has called for an investigation by the Justice Department’s Inspector General to determine how a firearm purchased by an official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ended up at a crime scene in Mexico last month.
CBS News and Fox News both reported that an FN Herstal 5.7 pistol was recovered at the scene of a shootout in which a Mexican beauty queen was killed. That handgun was purchased in January 2010 by George T. Gillett, former assistant special agent in charge of the BATF’s Phoenix field office during the time that Operation Fast and Furious was in progress.
That operation allowed some 2,000 firearms get into the hands of Mexican drug cartel gunmen, and some of those guns have been recovered at crime scenes both in Mexico and the United States. The most well-known of those was the murder scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, who was slain on Dec. 14, 2010. His death ignited the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious and revealed serious flaws in its management.
Early in the investigation of Fast and Furious, Gillett’s name came up in a letter Grassley sent to then-Acting BATF Director Ken Melson, alleging that Gillett had confronted whistleblowers about their discussions with Congressional investigators. Several weeks later, Gillett also sought whistleblower protection and began cooperating with the investigation through his attorney.
But this new revelation may not protect him.
CBS News spoke with Gillett, and quoted him as explaining that he sold the pistol last year after posting it on the Internet. CBS News said Gillett would not provide the name of the buyer, but he maintained that he followed the law and did more than was required to make sure the transaction was legal.
On the day the story broke, Gillett reportedly was meeting with the Inspector General.
This is the latest revelation in a story that has gotten, as one Capitol Hill source told TGM, “stranger and more unbelievable” as time has passed. The source, who is familiar with the investigation of Fast and Furious, said that when Grassley, and then Congressman Darrell Issa and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, began snooping into the operation, “nobody imagined” just how far, and strange, the scandal would become.
On the day before the Gillett link was revealed, TGM and other news agencies learned that a Fast and Furious gun purchased by one of the main suspects in the gun trafficking investigation, Uriel Patino, had been recovered at the crime scene where Mexican beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez had died. She was used as a human shield by others involved in a gun battle in Ciudad Guamuchil, Sinaloa, Mexico.
This was apparently the same location where Gillett’s FN pistol was recovered, CBS and Fox News indicated.
Equally disturbing to Grassley is the apparent falsification of an address by Gillett when he bought firearms in Phoenix. On at least one BATF purchase form, Gillette used the address of the BATF office as his home address. As Grassley noted in his letter to Inspector General Michael E. Horwitz, “Lying on a Form 4473 is a felony and can be punished by up to five years in prison, in addition to fines. Many individuals who were arrested in Fast and Furious were charged for lying on the Form 4473. Jaime Avila, Jr. recently plead guilty to a variety of charges, including making false statements in connection with the acquisition of a firearm, and his initial arrest just after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder was for giving a false address on Form 4473.”
The rifle purchased by Patino from an Arizona gun dealer in March 2010 was one of hundreds that Patino bought while under surveillance or investigation by BATF agents.
Grassley has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to answer some questions by Jan. 7, 2013:
- When did the Department of Justice notify the Mexican Government about the connection of this weapon to Operation Fast and Furious?
- Who at the Department provided this information to the Mexican Government?
- Was the Department planning on notifying Congress that a Fast and Furious weapon had been recovered?
- Is the Department aware of any recoveries of the other nine weapons that Patino purchased on March 16, 2010?
- Has the ATF or the Department requested that ATF’s National Tracing Center treat information about traces that connect back to Fast and Furious weapons any differently than a routine trace request? If so, please explain the differences.
Gillett was one of several BATF officials who have been relieved of duty and transferred as a result of the Inspector General’s report on Fast and Furious. He is no longer assigned in Phoenix, and it was recently revealed that a BATF review panel recommended that at least four officials involved in Fast and Furious, including Gillett, be fired.
TGM obtained a copy of Grassley’s letter to Horwitz, along with several attachments that showed the serial number of Gillett’s gun being on a trace request from authorities in Mexico.
One Capitol Hill source noted that even though Gillett may still enjoy whistleblower status, that would not give him any slack where violations of the law may be concerned.
