ATF Awarding Promotions to Fast and Furious Architects?

Earlier this week, the Los Angles Times had reported that three supervisor level ATF officials from the agency's Phoenix office were promoted and transferred to Washington D.C.

The three supervisors have been given new management positions at the agency's headquarters in Washington. They are William G. McMahon, who was the ATF's deputy director of operations in the West, where the illegal trafficking program was focused, and William D. Newell and David Voth, both field supervisors who oversaw the program out of the agency's Phoenix office.

McMahon and Newell have acknowledged making serious mistakes in the program, which was dubbed Operation Fast and Furious.



"I share responsibility for mistakes that were made," McMahon testified to a House committee three weeks ago. "The advantage of hindsight, the benefit of a thorough review of the case, clearly points me to things that I would have done differently."



Three Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokesmen did not return phone calls Monday asking about the promotions. But several agents said they found the timing of the promotions surprising, given the turmoil at the agency over the failed program.



McMahon was promoted Sunday to deputy assistant director of the ATF's Office of Professional Responsibility and Security Operations — the division that investigates misconduct by employees and other problems.



Kenneth E. Melson, the ATF's acting director, said in an agency-wide confidential email announcing the promotion that McMahon was among ATF employees being rewarded because of "the skills and abilities they have demonstrated throughout their careers."



Newell was the special agent in charge of the field office for Arizona and New Mexico, where Fast and Furious was conducted. On Aug. 1, the ATF announced he would become special assistant to the assistant director of the agency's Office of Management in Washington.



Voth was an on-the-ground team supervisor for the operation, and last month he was moved to Washington to become branch chief for the ATF's tobacco division.

Shortly after the Los Angeles Times article, the Justice department confirmed that the three had been transferred to D.C. but defined the move as a 'lateral transfer' to 'adminstrative duties'.



The ill-fated Operation Fast and Furious involved the agency allowing weapons purchased on the American side of the border to 'walk' into Mexico- in many cases against the wishes of ATF field agents- where they would supposedly be tracked to leaders of the different Mexican cartels. No cartel leaders were arrested as a result of Fast and Furous- the weapons instead turned up at the scene of the December 2010 shooting death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in Arizona and at several crime scenes south of the border.



Additional House Oversight Committee hearings on Operation Fast & Furious are scheduled for later on this year.



Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) sent a letter to the Justice Department demanding answers to reports that there were similar ATF "gun-walking" programs operated out of Texas.

“Until Attorney General (Eric) Holder and Justice Department officials come clean on all alleged gun-walking operations, including a detailed response to allegations of a Texas-based scheme, it is inconceivable to reward those who spearheaded this disastrous operation with cushy desks in Washington,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Last month, acting Director Kenneth Melson admitted to congressional investigators that his agency, in at least one instance, allowed sales of high-powered weapons without intercepting them. Melson accuses his superiors at the Justice Department of stonewalling Congress to protect political appointees in the scandal over those decisions.

Arizona Gun Store Sues Feds Over ATF Order Requiring Tracking of Long Gun Sales in Border States

A Yuma, AZ gun shop is one of two plaintiffs suing the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms over a directive to report multiple sales of long guns at gun stores in border states.

The directive, which was passed last month, requires that stores report to the ATF purchases of two or more semiautomatic rifles greater than .22 caliber over the span of five days. The ATF Order comes amid Congressional hearing on the ATF's disatrous Operatation Fast & Furions in which senior ATF officials ordered field agents to allow guns purchased by suspected straw buyers in the USA to 'walk', i.e. be illegally exported to Mexico where they were sold to cartels and other criminal organizations before eventually turning up at crime scenes on both sides of the border- including the fatal December 2010 shooting of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

The move comes after gun control advocates met with Obama administration and Justice department officials earlier this year. In a quote attributed to none other than Sarah Brady, President Obama assured prominent gun control adovcates in a meeting that he was working on gun control 'under the radar'- in other words, through regulatory means and executive orders instead of leaving the volatile and often unpopular issue to the Senate or House of Representatives prior to an election year.

While at first blush, the ATF directive may not seem particularly onerous, kindly consider that this is the agency whose senior officials allowed thousands of weapons to be illeaglly exported to Mexico where they were used by criminal gangs and cartels to kill scored Mexican civilians, public officials, police officers and soliders. Now THE VERY SAME AGENCY is responsible for enforcing this directive?

Even more galling, many retailers were repeatedly warning the ATF about suspicous customers during the Fast & Furious operation; the agency urged them to continue with the transactions nonetheless.

It's also worth contemplating how this month-old directive would prevent arms trafficking when according to diplomatic cables released via Wikileaks, the Mexican cartels are increasingly arming themselves with military-grade weaponry such as rocket launchers, grenades and plastic explosives from poorly-guarded military armories in Central America, not semiautomatic rifles or shotguns from US retailers.

ATF Gunrinning Operation to Mexican Cartels- AKA 'Fast & Furious'- Comes Under Congressional Scrutiny This Week

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry- slain in December 2010. Weapons from ATF's Operation Fast & Furious Were recovered at the crime scene along the Arizona/Mexico Border

Earlier this week, certain politicians and media outlets that support gun control were frantically out there trying to establish the 70% myth [i.e. the narrative that '70% of the weapons recovered in Mexico' come from America, which curiously is down from 90% in a few short months- NANESB!] just days ahead of the House Committee on oversight and Government Reform hearings into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms operation Fast & Furious.

As predicted, this is one of the downside of the Anthony Weiner fiasco- probably the most important Congressional hearings in three decades is usurped by the media circus surrounding the former Congressman from Queens. Outside of CBS News' Sheryl Atkinson, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms poorly-conceived Operation FAst & Furious didn't get alot of coverage in the mainstream media- let alone the Congressional inquiry.

The full committee hearings got underway at Capitol Hill on Wednesday with testimony from Brian Terry's family, 6 months to the day after the Border Patrol was shot and killed by Mexican smugglers armed with AK-variant rifles acquired by straw purchasers who were under surveillance as part of the ATF operation. Yet instead of interdicting the guns before they could be moved across the Mexican border, field agents were ordered the allow the guns to 'walk'. Two of the guns found at the scene of Terry's murder were part of thousands the ATF allegedly allowed gun traffickers to purchase.

The ATF called it letting "guns walk" -- a tactic they hoped would lead to them to drug kingpins. Agents who disagreed with the strategy blew the whistle.

"To walk a single gun is in my opinion an idiotic move," said ATF senior special agent Pete Forcelli. "We weren't giving guns to people who were hunting bear. We were giving guns to people who were killing other humans."

After Terry's murder, ATF quickly rounded up gun trafficking suspects they'd watched for a year. That's when the first reports of gunwalking began to surface. Asked if they were true at the time, ATF Phoenix chief Bill Newell told reporters "hell no" -- surprising those who worked for him.

"I was appalled, because it was a blatant lie," Forcelli said. Newell didn't respond to interview requests.

Also under attack: the Justice Department which oversees the ATF. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich says the agency is cooperating with Congress, but Rep. Darryl Issa says information is being withheld.

"You should be ashamed of yourself," Issa said at the hearing Wednesday holding up a blacked-out sheet of paper. "The pages go on like this forever. You've given us black paper instead of white paper. How dare you make an opening statement of 'cooperation.'"

Issa pressed Weich on who in Washington authorized the program -- and received no answer.

"There was serious profound disagreement about strategy -- but the common goal was to stop gun trafficking to Mexico," Weich said. "Some of the testimony provided today is of great concern. That is why the attorney general asked the inspector general to look into it."

When Brian Terry was gunned down last December, he'd already mailed Christmas gifts.

"The gifts that Brian had picked out with such thought and care began to arrive in the mail that same week," recalled Terry's cousin Robert Heyer, a Secret Service agent. "With each delivery, we felt the indescribable pain of Brian's death."

Terry's family wants someone to accept responsibility. The Department of Justice inspector general is investigating -- and any gunwalking that was taking place has been halted.

Perhaps to nobody's surprise, the Democrats on the Oversight Committee attempted to make the hearings about gun control rather than any sort of accountability from the Department of Justice or ATF. On top of apologizing to Assistant Attorney General Ronald Wiech after Committee Chair Darrel Issa (R- CA49) berated the Justice Department official for turning over pages of redacted documents in response to a subpoena, Representative Elijah Cummings (D- MD7) has proposed setting up a separate minority-led hearing with witnesses of his choosing. In doing so, the Democrats have demonstrated that they are deliberately ignoring the fact that even if the entire United States had strict gun control laws reminiscent of Chicago or Washington D.C. there's still the fact that it was a government agency that facilitated the acquisition of at least 2000 weapons to Mexican criminals. On top of that, US Diplomatic cables released by wikileaks indicate that the overwhelming number of weapons seized in Mexico- including explosives, grenades and anti-tank weapons- are actually procured by cartels from poorly-guarded military armouries in Central America before being smuggled into Mexico.

[I know I've asked this before, but it bears repeating- the Los Zetas organization is mostly comprised of former soldiers from the Mexican army, including Special Forces. Now, keeping in mind their connections to not only the black market, but the international arms market- why should I believe for a second that they are shopping for guns at Cabela's or Wal Mart?- NANESB!]

Weapons allowed across the border under Fast & Furious (or Rapido y Furiosa in the Mexican press) continue to turn up throughout Mexico- in April, Mexican police raided a house in Ciudad Juarez that turned up a half dozen Romanian-made AK-variant rifles that were traced back to the ill-conceived ATF operation [the raid also turned up dozens of grenades and three anti-aircraft machine guns, which probably weren't purchased from American gun stores- NANESB!] .

In May, Mexican soldiers came under fire and a Mexican Air Force helicopter was forced to make a crash landing during an anti-narcotics operation in Michoacan- weapons seized from there were also traced back to Fast & Furious.

Some of the preliminary findings of the Committee include:

● Agents expected to interdict weapons, yet were told to stand down and “just surveil.” Agents therefore did not act. They watched straw purchasers buy hundreds of weapons illegally and transfer those weapons to unknown third parties and stash houses.

● ATF agents complained about the strategy of allowing guns to walk in Operation Fast and Furious. Leadership ignored their concerns. Instead, supervisors told the agents to “get with the program” because senior ATF officials had sanctioned the operation.

● Agents knew that given the large numbers of weapons being trafficked to Mexico, tragic results were a near certainty.

● Operation Fast and Furious contributed to the increasing violence and deaths in Mexico. This result was regarded with giddy optimism by ATF supervisors hoping that guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico would provide the nexus to straw purchasers in Phoenix.

That last finding is sure to anger Mexico, which has so far been muted in its criticism. In a March 2010 memo, ATF says it allowed gun smugglers to buy 359 guns while 958 people died in Mexico the same month. Internally, the agency was “trumpeting up the violence that was occurring as a result of an ATF sanctioned program

A full PDF file of the Committee's reports can be found HERE

Prior to the hearings and Agent Terry's murder, a number of gun stores in Arizona, Texas and New Mexico went to the ATF with their concerns about suspicious transactions and concerns that the guns could be used against Border Patrol agents and other lawmen. However, the ATF assured dealers that the suspected straw purchasers and the guns purchased were being 'continually monitored'. More disturbingly is that the ATF reportedly didn't even bother contacting Mexican law enforcement (however compromised, corrupt or ineffective) or military to let them know that criminals were trafficking weapons from the USA to their jurisdiction- not even after Fast & Furious guns were recovered at crime scenes south of the border.

So in a nutshell, you had the supervisors in the ATF facilitating the sale of guns to Mexican cartels through proxies to prove that Mexican cartels were getting firearms from American stores.

[Cross posted on Pundit Press]

Borderline Psychosis (Mostly) El Norte Edition- ATF Arming Mexican Criminals? Border Patrol Agent Armed w/Beanbag Rounds in Deadly Shootout

ARIZONA: You know how gun control advocates have been lobbying for stricter gun control laws in the USA citing the number of American weapons turning up at crime scenes in Mexico? I initially derided such claims as unmitigated bullshit, but it turns out they were more on the nose than anybody thought. But what nobody banked on was that the cartels and Mexican criminals were arming themselves thanks in large part to the complicity of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms.

BATF Agent John Dodson has come forward and in an interview with CBS went on record as saying that allowing suspect sale of firearms to straw purchasers in Arizona go through before they were smuggled to Mexico in a tactic known as letting the guns 'walk'.

Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico.

ATF named the case "Fast and Furious."

Surveillance video obtained by CBS News shows suspected drug cartel suppliers carrying boxes of weapons to their cars at a Phoenix gun shop. The long boxes shown in the video being loaded in were AK-47-type assault rifles.

So it turns out ATF not only allowed it - they videotaped it.

Documents show the inevitable result: The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by watching thousands of weapons hit the streets... the Fast and Furious group supervisor noted the escalating Mexican violence.

One e-mail noted, "958 killed in March 2010 ... most violent month since 2005." The same e-mail notes: "Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during March alone," including "numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles."

Dodson feels that ATF was partly to blame for the escalating violence in Mexico and on the border. "I even asked them if they could see the correlation between the two," he said. "The more our guys buy, the more violence we're having down there."

Senior agents including Dodson told CBS News they confronted their supervisors over and over.

Their answer, according to Dodson, was, "If you're going to make an omelette, you've got to break some eggs."

There was so much opposition to the gun walking, that an ATF supervisor issued an e-mail noting a "schism" among the agents. "Whether you care or not people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case...we are doing what they envisioned.... If you don't think this is fun you're in the wrong line of work... Maybe the Maricopa County jail is hiring detention officers and you can get $30,000 ... to serve lunch to inmates..."

Agent Dodson and others knew that allowing the guns to walk wouldn't end well, and their fears were confirmed in December 2010 when two guns from Fast & Furious were recovered from the scene of an Arizona shootout that killed US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Not surprisingly, Mexican authorities were kept in the dark about Fast & Furious as well. Mexican diplomats have petitioned the US Department of Justice for more details regarding the operation over the weekend.

Dodson has formally sought protection as a whistleblower under Federal law and has been providing information to the Senate Judiciary committee, chaired by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

ELSEWHERE ALONG THE BORDER: Speaking of the late Agent Brian Terry, documents detailing the Dec 14th gunbattle outside of Nogales, AZ in which the Border Patrol agent was killed indicates that the Border Patrol agents were instructed to use non-lethal beanbag rounds in their shotguns.

The documents say the group of illegal border entrants refused commands to drop their weapons after agents confronted them at about 11:15 p.m. Two agents fired beanbags at the migrants, who responded with gunfire. Two agents returned fire, one with a long gun and one with a pistol, but Terry was mortally wounded in the gunfight.

Terry's brother, Kent Terry, said the other agents who were there that night told him that they were instructed to use the non-lethal beanbags first. It's a policy that doesn't make sense to Kent Terry.

"You go up against a bandit crew that is carrying AKs, and you walk out there with guns loaded with beanbags - I don't get it," Terry said in a phone interview from Michigan. "It's like going to the Iraqi war with one knife. It boggles my mind. ... These guys (Border Patrol agents) are professionals; they should be able to use their judgment call on their own."

[snip]The Terry family remains upset about allegations that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed a gun smuggler it was investigating to purchase and smuggle into Mexico the weapons used in the shootout in which Terry died. The Justice Department has denied the allegations, but U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, continues to insist on the validity of the claims.

"Your government is telling you to use beanbags, but you are selling guns back to the Mexicans," Kent Terry said. "There's a lot of questions that they haven't answered."

The Border Patrol has declined comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

WASHINGTON D.C.: In a meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon at the White House last week, President Obama announced that a tentative agreement had been reached with Mexico that would allow Mexican truck drivers to use US Highways in exchange for Mexico dropping retaliatory tariffs on American goods once the first Mexican truck completes its run inside the USA.

OK....let me just come right out and say that this is like the layer cake of bad ideas.

Let me count the ways: I guess to start off with, expedited border crossings from Mexico mean that some criminal enterprise is going to take advantage of this which will most likely lead to expedited drug smuggling or human trafficking, abetted by corrupt officials on both sides of the border.

Last I heard, things like weigh stations, logbooks, preventative maintenance, hours of service, and safety inspections were these whimsical, novel foreign concepts to the majority of truckers on the Mexican side of the border. Even if Mexico reciprocates and allows American truckers to drive further into Mexico's interior, there's the the matter of rampant crime in the form of hijackings and roadblocks set up to rob drivers or steal their cargo. Either that or set it on fire as part of an impromptu blockade while one cartel or another lays siege to a Mexican city.

And lastly, I fail to see how allowing more Mexican trucks onto US highways would benefit the American economy or create American jobs- union or non-union.

MEXICO CITY: A Major in the Mexican Army is suspected of leaking information to drug cartels, training hitmen and enforcers through a private security company and funnelling weapons from the Mexican military to cartels like Los Zetas, according to a US diplomatic cable released on Wikileaks.

Major Arturo Gonzalez Rodriguez was assigned to President Calderon's security detail before being arrested in December 2008 for accepting $100,000 a month bribes from multiple cartels in exchange for relaying the travel plans of Calderon.

"Based on statements from a former cartel member turned witness code-named 'Jennifer,' PGR (federal attorney general's office) has accused González of passing information related to the activities and travel plans of Mexican President Felipe Calderón to the Arturo Beltran Levya organization (ABLO).

"González also stands accused of leaking military intelligence, training ABLO hit men through a private security company and supplying military weapons to various (drug trafficking organizations), including los Zetas."

The cable also alleges that another official working for the Calderon administration leaked copies of his medical file to drug traffickers.

CHIHUHUA: The 20 year old woman who found herself in the limelight in 2010 for becoming police chief of the border town of Praxedis G Guerro after her predecessor was murdered and beheaded by narotrafficantes was fired on Monday after failing to show up for work.

City officials released a statement saying that the mayor had decided to remove Marisol Vallez Garcia from office after she failed to show up after a leave of absence in which she had to attend to a family emergency. She was accompanied by a local official as far as the International Bridge connecting El Provenir with Ft. Hancock, TX last week.

Marisol Valles, then a 20 year old criminology student studying at the University of Guadlajara, was the only person willing to take the job and was sworn in on October 18, 2010 a year after the previous police chief was kidnapped, murdered and beheaded and his severed head left outside the Paxedis G Guerro police station.

Valles is reportedly seeking asylum in Texas after her infant son was being treated for an unspecified illness there. She also was reportedly subjected to a number of anonymous death threats during her brief tenure as police chief.