When Is An ATF Agent Not An ATF Agent?

When he's a J. P. Morgan six-figure employee. Or at least that's what the Obama administration claims. In fact, Bill McMahon is drawing his full salary from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF, ATF) while working as a top security official at J. P. Morgan. Bill McMahon was the assistant director in the Phoenix office of ATF, and he was up to his neck in Operation Fast and Furious.

But now he's “on leave, drawing his full salary while awaiting complete vesting of his federal pension, medical and retirement benefits. Is this illegal? Maybe. Is it unethical? You bet your bippie it is, and at the same time it's another example of the favoritism and coverups being perpetrated by Barack Obama and Eric Holder.

One whistleblower in the Justice Department disputes the Department of Justice's conclusions about the dismissal of charges against the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia, and he's sent to the DOJ equivalent of Siberia. ATF Special Agent John Dodson gives testimony before Congress that points the finger at McMahon's involvement in Fast and Furious, and he is told that he must wait until the Inspector General's report is complete before the DOJ can consider retracting the false statements made about him by McMahon et al during testimony and in memos from DOJ to Congress. McMahon, on the other hand, gets sent to the Fountain of Wealth.

I should note that the Inspector General's report is now complete, but we can't see it, nor can Congress, because it is currently “under review” by Attorney General Holder and his political lawyers. These are the same people who time and again stonewalled Congress and/or simply refused to provide information requested by committees in both the House and the Senate. There is little doubt that McMahon was fully-involved and active in Fast and Furious, but it's unlikely to look that way when DOJ gets done tampering with the Inspector General's report

Billy Boy is doing just fine, making big bucks at J. P. Morgan while hiding from Congress and enjoying his “leave” from ATF. Committee head Darrell Issa in the House, and ranking committee minority member Chuck Grassley in the Senate are both demanding answers as to why McMahon is being allowed to double-dip and at the same time use his private employment as a shield from Congressional investigators. If for no other reason, shouldn't the Obama administration be miffed with McMahon for taking a job with one of those evil Wall Street corporations (sarcasm off)?

Hard evidence, including e-mails to and from McMahon were presented to Congress which proved conclusively that McMahon knew about Fast and Furious, and was actively involved in its planning and subsequent coverup. Yet McMahon continued to claim he was just a low-level agent who knew nothing about any of the details of Fast and Furious. In doing so, he also maligned the character and veracity of agent John Dodson and other ATF agents who testified clearly about McMahon's involvement. Right up until the heat was getting too great and he took his “leave.”

McMahon and his shysters at DOJ now claim that the “leave” means that McMahon is no longer technically a federal employee, and has every right to assert “no comment” to any questions posed to him as a private employee of J. P. Morgan. The final Congressional Report nevertheless found that McMahon's fingerprints were all over Fast and Furious. He was a high-level supervisor in Phoenix where the Fast and Furious operation was launched during his tenure.

His records and e-mails clearly show that he knew that straw purchasers had bought over nine hundred sophisticated weapons which ended up in the murderous hands of Mexican cartel members. At the hearings, McMahon even admitted that he rubber-stamped Fast and Furious documents without reading them, but that his actions were negligent rather than intentional. As if that matters. Either way, he is at least partially-responsible for a serious breach of national security and the duty to protect American citizens. He was a vital link between the Phoenix field office and ATF headquarters in Washington DC.

McMahon claimed that it was not his duty to as a mere supervisor to ask questions about operations in the field. Sounds a lot like “I was only following orders.” He did admit that it was his duty at least to review the documents in front of him, but that failure to do so was a minor failure, not even a dereliction of duty. If carefully monitoring agent activities was not his major duty as a supervisor, what was?

In the long run, McMahon's actions and inactions, followed by his lies and coverups, have left hundreds of innocent victims dead in Mexico and perhaps dozens on our side of the border. Poetic justice would require that McMahon and Holder be required to submit to a face-to-face confrontation with the loved ones and relatives of the dead, specifically including the family of murdered Border Agent Brian Terry. But that won't happen, because McMahon is busy performing his duties at J. P. Morgan and Holder is busy re-writing the Inspector General's report.