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.

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Darrell, Why Persecutest Thou Me?

Attorney General Eric Holder is shown during one of many trying moments for him during Thursday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing into Operation Fast and Furious. Since Holder last appeared before a Congressional committee on the subject, multiple e-mails, memos and notes from Justice Department staff became available to Congress. It is over the differences in these documents from Holder’s former testimony that he was brought back to testify.

Things didn’t go well for Holder from the get-go. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, asked that Holder be placed under oath. Issa is somewhat suspicious of Holder’s veracity, to say the least. Holder had earlier refused to take the oath, and Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) did not want Holder to escape without answering questions, so he merely ruled that Holder was “deemed” to be under oath since he had sent Holder a letter reminding him of his responsibility to be truthful.

Lying under oath is perjury—a felony. But if a court were later to decide that Holder’s refusal to be placed under oath protected him from a perjury charge, he could still be found guilty of other statutory violations such as lying to Congress and impeding a Congressional inquiry. If a later Justice Department official were to pursue the matter, Holder would not get off entirely scot free. Smith’s compromise kept Holder in the room, and probably made him very nervous as well.

During the questioning, the proceedings got very heated more than a few times. Some of the various committee members threatened Holder with everything from impeachment to charges of contempt of Congress for his evasiveness. Issa called Holder’s testimony “outright lying,” and he had stacks of documents in front of him that seem to support that conclusion.

In one exchange, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) took a very combative line. “Do you think the buck stops with you?” he asked. Then, as Holder seemed to shrink behind the witness table, Sensenbrenner went on to remind Holder that lying to Congress is a federal crime. But he softened the charge by following up with “I don’t want to say you lied, but what are you going to do to clean up the mess?”

In his answer to the not-too-veiled charges of lying, Holder channeled Clinton’s “it all depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Confronted with serious inconsistencies between known fact and supporting evidence and Holder’s prior testimony, he punted. His Justice Department had made a very unusual move a few days earlier by “withdrawing” a letter it had sent to the committee in answer to certain committee questions. The DOJ actually called its answers “misleading.” That withdrawal followed earlier testimony by ATF Special Agent William Newell that was also “withdrawn” as Newell termed his answers as “lacking completeness.”

Facing questions about these major inconsistencies and DOJ backtrackings, Holder was then asked by Sensenbrenner how “misleading” and “lying” were different from each other, if they are indeed different. Holder said that the difference between “lying” and “misleading” was state of mind. But Holder was merely tossing out a legal distinction that, though true, doesn’t apply to this matter. He hoped nobody would notice.

If one “misleads” because he has himself been misled or misinformed, and has a reasonable excuse for not knowing the true facts, there is no intent to lie. But if one misleads, knowing that the words used to mislead are incorrect, then “misleading” becomes “lying.” The DOJ, ATF and DEA testimony that Congress had already determined was intentionally misleading was available to Holder and his department long before Congress ever saw it. Ergo, he lied.

During the testimony, Democratic committee members frequently attempted to protect Holder from hard scrutiny and/or turn the investigation of Holder’s part in Fast and Furious into a forum on gun control. The spin was marvelous to behold. Attempting to prove how dangerous all weapons in the hands of individuals are, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) asked “how many firearms had been sold to Al Qaeda terrorists, to other convicted felons, to domestic violence perpetrators, and to white supremacists.”

He neglected to ask about how many had been sold to the Crips or the Bloods. But even if he had been an equal opportunity disarmer, the question would have been entirely irrelevant, given what the hearing was actually about. The hearing is about Operation Fast and Furious, why it was so poorly-planned and deadly in execution, and most importantly, who knew what, and when. But that didn’t stop Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California) from asking why there is no requirement for a federal firearms dealer to report, say, the sale of 100 AK-47s.

The final exchange was between Issa and Holder. Issa suggested contempt of Congress for Holder’s refusal to release committee-requested document without citing Constitutional or case law to support the refusal. Holder responded: “We will respond as other attorneys general and other Justice Departments have done.” Issa snapped back with: “That’s how John Mitchell responded (referring to the Watergate hearings of the Nixon administration).”

Holder, who has the same ability as Obama and Nixon to play the victim rather than the perpetrator, channeled McCarthy hearing defense counsel Joseph Welch and pleaded: “As they said at the McCarthy hearings, have you no shame?” Quick, get me a hankie. I need to wipe away the tears I’m shedding for poor, innocent, persecuted Eric Holder.

At the end of the hearings, Rep. Dan Lungren (R-California) summed up Holder’s testimony and the attempts of the Democrats to change the subject: “You screwed up, you admit you screwed up, but don’t use your screw-up as an attempt to justify your actions and extend your authority.”

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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.

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Barack Obama, Republican?

After suffering an historic repudiation in the last election, the Democrats are in a tizzy. Should they move further left? Should they just throw tantrums? Should they block everything? What would Barack do? Oh oh, Barack’s moved to the right, further right than even the RINOs. What’s worse, he keeps undercutting the Democrats. What is going on?

When the Democrats got blasted in 1994, Bill Clinton realized pretty quickly that he had to move to the center to survive. The strategy was called triangulation. And what it entailed was to let the Republicans have their way, and then claim ownership of their best ideas. Occasionally, Clinton would also criticize his own side, but rarely in stark terms and he never undercut them. Essentially, he became everyone’s friend.

Obama is now faced with a similar dilemma and he’s opted for triangulation as well. But Obama isn’t like Clinton, and his triangulation isn’t the benign sort Clinton tried. His version of triangulation involves undercutting the Democrats over and over. Indeed, things are getting ugly!

The first obvious example of triangulation occurred right after the election when Obama endorsed the idea of extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich. The Democrats intended to play hardball on that issue and were already staking out a typically nasty class-warfare position, when Obama suddenly announced he would agree to extend the tax cuts in exchange for more stimulus spending. The Democrats were beside themselves with rage. “He’s undercut us!” they scream, along with a few profanities. In fact, the House held a closed-door meeting of Democrats where they took turns swearing at, blasting, and lampooning Obama.

The next instance of triangulation involved Obama’s retention of Bill Daley as his replacement for “center-right” (**chuckle, chuckle**) Rahm Emanuel. The selection of Daley, a noted non-leftist Democrat with massive Wall Street ties, was seen as an attempt by Obama to get back into the good graces of big business. The Democrats were despondent.

Then came the Tucson shooting. As the left wound up their hate machine and began calling for the blood of their critics, all under the guise of whining about the atmosphere of hate their critics created, Obama came along and told everyone that rhetoric had nothing to do with the shooting. Once again, he cut the legs out from beneath them and there were furious.

Now, Obama has stolen the idea of Paul Ryan and Darrell Issa to go through the Code of Federal Regulations (“CFR”) and identify for removal any regulations that are hindering economic growth. What makes this all the more interesting is that (1) this has the potential of crippling years of Democratic legislative victories, (2) doing this won’t stop Issa from embarrassing the Democrats through his hearings, where businessmen will come and blast the regulations they’ve put in place, and (3) this provides a tremendous amount of cover for the Republicans from Democratic attacks that they’re undermining government. Wow!

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Obama has suddenly become a Republican. There were political reasons for each of these acts. The Republicans simply weren’t going to cave in on the tax issue, so why not get what he could and declare victory. Obama needs to reconnect with Wall Street to finance his billion dollar campaign, and Daley is the man to do that. By the time he spoke about Tucson, it was increasingly clear the shooter was a leftist and a backlash was growing against the left’s attacks. And Obama knows that economic growth is his only chance to get re-elected. So these decisions were political, not principled.

But in each instance, Obama could have achieved his goals without so ruthlessly cutting the legs out from under the Democrats. So why do it this way? I think the answer lies in the difference between Obama and Clinton. Clinton was a master at following the crowd. He had no principles whatsoever, so he stuck his finger into the wind and went where it led him. But more importantly, he was savvy enough to chart the safest course to the front of the bandwagon for himself and his friends.

Obama lacks Bill Clinton’s savvy, and he is not and never has been a team player. So now that he finds he need to chase a few bandwagons to get re-elected, he doesn’t even bother thinking about his friends and allies. It’s every man for himself. And that’s why the Democrats keep finding themselves stranded as Obama runs off and shells the land he had led them to.

So this has led Obama to tax cuts, deregulation, spending cuts, and stopping attempts to stifle gun rights and free speech. If Obama keeps this up, he may actually end up being one of the better Republican presidents before his term is over. . . and what’s left of the Democratic Party is going to hate him.

Finally, let me throw this out there for you to chew on. Putting aside our natural and well-earned cynicism for dealing with Democrats, it's also just possible that Obama's change of heart on these issues is an indication that he's grown wiser and he's starting to understand that the destructive class-warfare preached by the Democratic Party is no way to run a country? Wouldn't that be interesting?

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Republicans Play Smart!

Prior to the Giffords shooting, the media was busy trying to discredit House Republicans for their first week in power. They spun stories of a lavish “Republican” fundraiser (though only a handful of Republicans attended), they whined about two Republicans not being properly sworn in (a non-issue at best), and they complained that Republicans didn’t cut $100 billion from the budget on day one. Of course, few people fell for these smears. What's more interesting though is something that's gone almost entirely unnoticed by the media, something that could turn out to be significant.

Years back, the Congress put a limit on the size of the federal debt. But the federal budget is so out of control that the Treasury keeps running into that limit. Consequently, the Congress must repeatedly vote to raise the debt ceiling or face the music as government spending grinds to a halt and the government begins defaulting on its obligations.

One such moment came up prior to the election. But with the Democrats likely to lose the election, they decided to set a trap for the Republicans. By voting only to extend the debt ceiling for a few months worth of spending, the Democrats hoped that one of the first votes the new Republican Congress would need to make would be to raise the debt ceiling. The Democrats hoped this would embarrass the Republicans and alienate them from their Tea Party allies. It seemed like a nice trick.

But like everything else the Democrats do, this one has blown up in their faces. Indeed, rather than just hold their noses and vote to raise the debt ceiling, as the Democrats expected, the Republicans decided to hold out until Obama agrees to budget concessions. Said Speaker John Boehner:

"The American people will not stand for such an increase unless it is accompanied by meaningful action by the president and Congress to cut spending and end the job-killing spending binge in Washington. While America cannot default on its debt, we also cannot continue to borrow recklessly, dig ourselves deeper into this hole, and mortgage the future of our children and grandchildren."

Even the RINOs are on board. Said Lindsey Graham (RINO-S.C.):

“This is an opportunity to make sure that the government is changing its spending ways. I will not the vote for the debt ceiling increase until I see a plan in place that will deal with our long-term obligations, starting with Social Security.”

Graham’s demands are similar to those of many Tea Party activists -- raise the retirement age for Social Security, means test benefits, and slash non-security discretionary spending to 2008 levels. The Republican leadership is on board as well, as are most members, though some are opposed to raising the debt ceiling under any circumstances.

Obama first tried to castigate the Republicans for “playing chicken” with “catastrophe,” but now indicates he’s willing to reach a deal with the Republicans. Harry Reid too has climbed on board, though many on the left continue to resist. Said Dick Durbin (D-Ill): "Using this doomsday scenario and putting the American economy at risk I don't think is a responsible way to govern." Wah!! What does Durbin know about responsibility?

What makes this such an interesting issue is that the Republicans could well be on the verge of obtaining actual, serious concessions from Obama. Consider that for a moment. When the Republicans won the House but not the Senate, the assumption was that nothing would happen until 2012, when Obama could be replaced and a majority obtained in the Senate. But through the careful application of political pressure, the Republicans may be about to obtain concessions that begin to right our fiscal house and reshape the federal budget toward conservative goals.

Combined with actual cuts ($35 billion in the House budget), Issa’s deviously clever plan to let American business have a hand in slashing regulations, and the seeming easy unity of Tea Party people and RINOs (and even some Democrats), things appear to be off to a pretty good start in Washington. Maybe these really aren’t the same old Republicans?

What do you think?

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Is Issa On To Something?

As the incoming Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Darrell Issa (R-Ca) will be critical to Republican hopes of defeating Obama in 2012. Indeed, as the point man for Congressional oversight over the Obama administration, Issa occupies a position that could let him destroy Obama. . . or could destroy the Republicans amid charges of witch hunts and grandstanding. At this point, I’m still not sold that Issa’s plan will be good for the Republicans, but I’m starting to get a good feeling.

Prior to the election, Issa made a lot of very aggressive noises about dragging administration people before his committee to explain everything he could dream up. This sounded like his plan was to conduct round-the-clock witch hunts in the hopes that the spectacle of constant investigations would damage the Obama Administration. That would have reflected very poorly on the Republicans, particularly at a time when people are starting to demand greater results from their representatives and less political grandstanding.

But a week ago, Issa softened his tone and started sounding more statesman-like, talking about trying to work with the White House rather than beating them up. He even met with Joe Biden and declared that there would be no reason to use subpoenas to drag people before his committee. That sounded doubly-positive. For while I don’t want witch hunts, which always backfire, I do want solid investigations of issues where the Obama Administration has failed or has violated the law and I want to see legislation introduced to correct those problems.

Yesterday, Issa issued his list of investigations, and again I wasn’t too thrilled. The list seemed like a grab bag of unrelated issues that had more to do with re-fighting the blame game for the financial meltdown than it did anything approaching the kinds of oversight that are needed today -- oversight like restricting unaccountable czars, accounting for slush funds, and repealing stifling regulations.

Then a key new fact emerged regarding Issa’s plan. Apparently, he has sent letters to 150 trade associations and companies, in which he asks them to identify the regulations that have been put into place that are restricting job creation and growth. I see this as brilliant on many levels:

● First, this should be a wonderful education for the public on the nature of regulation and its connection to the creation/destruction of jobs.

● Secondly, if done properly, these hearings will result in a steady drumbeat of business leaders (not Republican Congressmen) bashing the Obama administration and its policies. This should lead to a devastating public relations nightmare for an Obama Administration that is already seen as anti-business.

● Third, this should actually result in useful legislation that targets the most harmful regulations and seeks their repeal. Indeed, done properly, this could easily lead to a deregulatory wave of the like not seen since the Reagan Administration, and could easily sweep away recent power grabs like the EPA’s attempt to regulate carbon and the FCC’s attempt to impose net neutrality.

To me, this is one of those pleasant surprises where you start to think that the people you’ve put your faith into may actually know what they’re doing.

Add in that the Democrats are taking the wrong tact on ObamaCare and this has quickly turned into a hopeful week -- rather than defending ObamaCare across the board as a single item, the Democrats are mistakenly defending only the popular parts, e.g. plugging the “donut hole” and covering the uninsurable. If the Democrats aren’t careful, the Republicans will call their bluff on this and will offer a repeal of all but those handful of provisions, and the Democrats will be trapped.

Between this strategic mistake by the Democrats and the solid plan by Issa to let business blast the Obama Administration, this could be a very bad year for the Democrats and their agenda.

Let’s hope.


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