The Next Obama Scandal: “Gun Walking”

Operation Fast and Furious was an idiotic attempt by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to get proof that Mexican drug cartels are buying guns from American gun shops. This reckless operation had no chance of success and it got people killed, including American Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. What's more, it has all the hallmarks of being politically motivated and is likely to reach into the White House.

Starting in 2009, the ATF, part of Eric Holder’s Justice Department, got cooperative Phoenix-area gun shops to sell guns illegally to Mexicans. Rather than arrest these buyers, as they would have done in the past, the ATF instructed its agents to turn a blind eye to the sales. This has been called “gun walking” because they let these guns walk out the door. The ATF hoped the guns would be recovered from Mexican crime scenes, which they believed would let them build conspiracy cases against Mexican drug cartels. It didn’t. In fact, it couldn't because the entire concept is flawed. Consider this:

1. By telling the gun shops to knowingly sell the guns illegally, the agency itself made it possible for the guns to reach Mexico. Thus, this operation cannot stand as proof that American gun shops are selling to Mexicans because it was the ATF itself that made this possible and there is no evidence that any non-cooperating gun shops made similar sales.

2. Secondly, there’s no way to connect the drug cartels to the gun sales because the ATF didn’t keep track of the guns. In other words, even if cartel members used these guns in Mexico, there’s no way to trace the gun from the purchase to the cartel. And if the ATF's plan was just to assume the connection (something that is not permissible in a court of law) then why even bother releasing the guns?

Thus, even if the operation worked perfectly, it still could not have achieved the ATF's goals.

But more importantly, what was the cost of this stupidity? Republicans Rep. Daryl Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley just issued a 51 page report damning Operation Fast and Furious. From the start, this operation was criticized by experienced ATF agents as “reckless.” Said Grassley: “Both line agents and gun dealers who co-operated with the ATF repeatedly expressed concerns [about the operation]. . . but ATF supervisors did not heed those warnings. Instead, they told agents to follow orders because this was sanctioned from above.” And when ATF bosses were told this could result in people getting killed, they responded: “if you are going to make an omelet, you need to scramble some eggs.” In other words, they didn’t care. Apparently, they even threatened to fire or punish agents who complained.

It is unknown how many crimes these guns were used to commit because the ATF had no way to monitor what happened to the guns. But before the operation was stopped, 1,730 guns were allowed to disappear onto the black market, including hundreds of AK-47s and sniper rifles. One of those AK-47s was later used to kill Board Patrol Agent Brian Terry. And when he was killed, the ATF embarked on a cover up. William Newell, the special agent in charge of the operation, ordered the arrest of 20 of the minor gun buyers and then declared the operation a success even though nothing was ever linked to a single senior cartel member. When he was asked if the guns the ATF had let disappear were deliberately allowed to end up in the hands of criminals, he lied: “Hell no!”

So what you have here is a government agency that embarked on a policy that could not achieve the goals for which it was planned, which endangered thousands of American and Mexican lives, and which covered up the mess it created. If that’s not an argument for reining in the government, then nothing is.

Naturally, Obama has denied any knowledge of the operation and I’m sure Eric Holder will too. There is speculation that acting ATF director Kenneth Melson will be made the scapegoat here. But this is not the kind of operation that happens without higher up approval. In fact, one ATF agent has stated that this operation was cleared by the State Department, i.e. Hillary Clinton (who "coincidentally" came to the border to decry American guns right before this operation started).

To dodge this scandal, the Democrats are spinning this as the fault of the gun lobby for blocking the appointment of Obama’s choice to run the ATF -- that's the same Democrats who had a 60 seat majority but didn't confirm the guy. They also are trying to claim this started in 2006, which is true of the overall operation but not of the gun walking -- which only started in 2009 apparently after the approval of State. The ATF is trying to spin this as the result of the ATF not having enough personnel to monitor the guns, but that begs the question why they even started the operation.

In fact, why would they do this at all? The ATF says they wanted to get a better grasp on how cartels work, but that kind of knowledge is already available and this wouldn’t have helped them in any event. The real goal, in my opinion, was to create data to prove what Obama/Hillary/Holder were all arguing: that gun control is needed because American gun shops are arming Mexican drug cartels. That argument wasn’t working because everyone knows better. As I pointed out at the time, it’s silly to think Mexican cartels were buying guns from American gun shops when they have co-opted whole departments of the Mexican police and whole military units -- they could easily get better hardware out of Mexican armories. BUT. . . if American guns with serial numbers known to the ATF could suddenly be traced to a significant portion of murders in Mexico, then Obama/Clinton/Holder would have a new argument to aid them in their gun control attempts.

It strikes me this is a prime example of politicians abusing law enforcement to generate a controversy to help them score political points. People died so Team Obama could score those points. This is shameful and needs to be investigated.