Holder Searches For F&F Answers

This past Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder found himself on the hot seat before the House Oversight Committee questioning him about his involvement in the deadly Operation Fast and Furious. Finding no answers that would exonerate him in law or reality, Holder searched for exoneration wherever he could find it. His answers did little to alter his image as less an attorney than a Chicago politician.

Holder turned first to his speech and debate training, and instead of answering a direct question, attempted to use the tu quoque (thou also) argument. Pardon the metaphor, but that gun backfired. Hoping to deflect the spotlight from himself to the Bush administration, Holder brought out an old Bush-era operation which he claimed was just like Fast and Furious. The problem is that the operation (called Wide Receiver) was nothing like Fast and Furious.

Holder wanted to stymie the Committee by stunning them with an "everybody does it" non-responsive answer. According to Holder, Wide Receiver also "walked guns" to the Mexican cartels. Holder's "gotcha" moment quickly turned into a complete rout. The media attention he wanted to draw to the Bush administration and off his own won't happen because he got the facts wrong. In the alternative, he may have been given the wrong facts, or was attempting to spin the true facts, but the Committee members were prepared in advance for just such an attempt.

Wide Receiver was indeed an early attempt to track cartel members and the weapons they purchased in the United States. The operation didn't work, largely because just like Fast and Furious, the people who came up with the bright idea relied on high-tech and unproven methods to trace the purchases, and that technology was simply not available. Entirely unlike Fast and Furious, Wide Receiver was strictly a local ATF operation which never really got off the ground, and never even got close to being presented to the higher echelons of law enforcement or the Justice Department. Few weapons went to cartel members, nobody got killed, and the guns are largely accounted for.

So far, the Washington Post is the only major newspaper to accept Holder's claim of equivalence and "plenty of blame to go around" as an excuse for his own failed policy. Since the Post supports the Obama/Holder gun control agenda, it blindly missed the point that Wide Receiver was designed to prevent widespread cartel purchases of weapons while Fast and Furious was designed to get guns into the cartels' hands so that more rigid gun-control laws could be passed in the United States.

Holder should have known he set a trap for himself. Also on the Committee's agenda that day were the e-mails that strongly indicate that Holder's knowledge of Fast and Furious was a long way from incidental. Within those e-mails was a specific mention of Wide Receiver, and how it could be used to enhance Fast and Furious. The e-mail was sent to Holder's chief deputy AG Jason Weinstein. If Holder didn't know, he should have known.

Wide Receiver involved a botched local ATF operation. Fast and Furious involved the FBI, DEA, ATF, and possibly even Homeland Security. He might be excused for not knowing about a hare-brained local ATF scheme, but not knowing about Gunwalker and Fast and Furious, involving so many agencies directly or indirectly under his control, is either disingenuous or grossly incompetent. One also has the right to expect that a major operation fully-discussed with his chief deputy would reach the Attorney General himself before being given the green light.

If Holder didn't know of it, and/or didn't authorize or monitor it, then at best his department is out of control. Most recent evidence shows that Holder was personally informed of the death of Border Agent Brian Terry, who was murdered with a Fast and Furious gun. So even if Holder didn't know about the operation at an earlier date (which is highly doubtful), Terry's murder and its connection were known to Holder much earlier than he claimed he first heard about Fast and Furious. If he isn't lying, then his Alzheimer's has advanced too far for him to continue in office.

After stuttering and stammering his way around this self-created mess, Holder then fell back on his favorite dodge: "This matter is currently under investigation, and I therefore refer you to the office of the Inspector General." And why not? The Inspector General, Cynthia A. Schnedar, is an old crony of Holder's. While both were in lesser positions in the Justice Department, they worked together on somewhere between fifteen and twenty major cases. They have both filed briefs and written articles advocating strict gun control. That creates a clear conflict of interest when Holder refers matters to his buddy, the Inspector General.

What's a boy to do? Holder couldn't allow himself to be so easily and so clearly publicy humiliated. So right after the hearing, he went into high spin cycle. With the assistance of the compliant mainstream media, Holder put on his best righteous indignation mask and declared the hearing a political ambush. He puffed himself up to declare that he had to defend his honor. Yeah, right.

Knowing that he couldn't claim to be a strong law enforcement kind of guy (see: New Black Panthers), and not daring to attack the law enforcement officers who are most at risk in this dangerous venture, he instead attempted to deflect the issue away from himself. "I could not sit idly by as a Majority Member of the House Committee (Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Arizona) suggests, as happened this week, that law enforcement and government employees who dedicate their lives to protecting our citizens be considered 'accessories to murder.'" Gosar, of course, said nothing of the kind, and if Holder disagreed with what Gosar did say, a good government servant and top lawyer would have addressed that in his answers at the hearing.

And then, almost unbelievably, Holder concluded his remarks to the MSM by proving the point conservatives and Second Amendment supporters have been arguing all along: "Current [gun] laws are insufficient to stop weapons trafficking." If this all adds up correctly, the suspicions of Holder's opponents will be confirmed. For all its danger, and its deadly results, Holder apparently approved of Fast and Furious in order to undo the effects of two major decisions of the United States Supreme Court upholding the individual right of Americans to keep and bear arms.

If this can all be proven conclusively, Holder should resign, or face impeachment and removal. He should also prepare to defend himself against multiple criminal charges, including lying to Congress. Scooter Libby went to prison for far less.