The Project Gunrunner Scandal
Some of you may recall stories like this surfacing in the last couple of years about the 'huge' problem of American guns flowing into Mexico and fueling the drug violence south of the border.
That supposed flow of guns was then used by the President and other administration officials to lie about America's role in the Mexican violence and the Justice Department to discredit gun shop owners and call for new gun control legislation.As an unprecedented number of American guns flows to the murderous drug cartels across the border, the identities of U.S. dealers that sell guns seized at Mexican crime scenes remain confidential under a law passed by Congress in 2003.
"One of the reasons that Houston is the number one source, you can go to a different gun store for a month and never hit the same gun store," said J. Dewey Webb, special agent in charge of the Houston field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "You can buy [a 9mm handgun] down along the border, but if you come to Houston, you can probably buy it cheaper because there's more dealers, there's more competition."
Drug cartels have aggressively turned to the United States because Mexico severely restricts gun ownership. Following gunrunning paths that have been in place for 50 years, firearms cross the border and end up in the hands of criminals as well as ordinary citizens seeking protection.
"This is not a new phenomenon," Webb said.
What is different now, authorities say, is the number of high-powered rifles heading south - AR-15s, AK-47s, armor-piercing .50-caliber weapons - and the savagery of the violence.
Federal authorities say more than 60,000 U.S. guns of all types have been recovered in Mexico in the past four years, helping fuel the violence that has contributed to 30,000 deaths. Mexican President Felipe Calderon came to Washington in May and urged Congress and President Obama to stop the flow of guns south.
Gun rights groups cried foul, claiming that if existing laws and border security were properly enforced, such a flow would not exist; and that gun shop owners were following all legal requirements and working with the ATF to stop guns making it to Mexico.The Obama administration on Friday will seek another round of comments on its controversial proposal to require gun dealers in four states on the U.S.-Mexico border to report the sale of multiple rifles.
In a bid to curb the flow of guns into Mexico, where drug cartels have waged deadly wars to protect their business, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has sought to tighten reporting requirements in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California.
Under the proposal, dealers would have to report sales of two or more rifles to the same person at one time or during any five business days if the rifles are semi-automatic, with a caliber greater than .22 and detachable magazines.
The proposal will be published in the government's Federal Register on Friday seeking comments for 30 days, according to a copy obtained by Reuters on Thursday.
It was first published in December and had a 60-day comment period that garnered almost 13,000 responses. About 30 percent opposed the reporting requirement and 70 percent favored it, ATF said.
The second round of comment is typical for new regulations, according to ATF, and no substantive changes were made. After reviewing the new comments submitted, the proposal could be implemented or altered.
The proposed requirement has drawn intense criticism from the powerful gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, which has accused the Obama administration of using the violence in Mexico as a pretext to try to clamp down on gun sales.
Well, as it turns out, President Obama was correct, there was a deadly flow of American guns into Mexico. The only problem? It was, in fact, his own Justice Department, through the ATF, facilitating the sales.
Project Gunrunner" deployed new teams of agents to the southwest border. The idea: to stop the flow of weapons from the US to Mexico's drug cartels. But in practice, sources tell CBS News, ATF's actions had the opposite result: they allegedly facilitated the delivery of thousands of guns into criminal hands.
CBS News wanted to ask ATF officials about the case, but they wouldn't agree to an interview. We were able to speak to six veteran ATF agents and executives involved. They don't want to be quoted by name for fear of retaliation. These are their allegations.
In late 2009, ATF was alerted to suspicious buys at seven gun shops in the Phoenix area. Suspicious because the buyers paid cash, sometimes brought in paper bags. And they purchased classic "weapons of choice" used by Mexican drug traffickers - semi-automatic versions of military type rifles and pistols.
Sources tell CBS News several gun shops wanted to stop the questionable sales, but ATF encouraged them to continue.
Jaime Avila was one of the suspicious buyers. ATF put him in its suspect database in January of 2010. For the next year, ATF watched as Avila and other suspects bought huge quantities of weapons supposedly for "personal use." They included 575 AK-47 type semi-automatic rifles.
ATF managers allegedly made a controversial decision: allow most of the weapons on the streets. The idea, they said, was to gather intelligence and see where the guns ended up. Insiders say it's a dangerous tactic called letting the guns, "walk."
One agent called the strategy "insane." Another said: "We were fully aware the guns would probably be moved across the border to drug cartels where they could be used to kill."
On the phone, one Project Gunrunner source (who didn't want to be identified) told us just how many guns flooded the black market under ATF's watchful eye. "The numbers are over 2,500 on that case by the way. That's how many guns were sold - including some 50-calibers they let walk."
50-caliber weapons are fearsome. For months, ATF agents followed 50-caliber Barrett rifles and other guns believed headed for the Mexican border, but were ordered to let them go. One distraught agent was often overheard on ATF radios begging and pleading to be allowed to intercept transports. The answer: "Negative. Stand down."
CBS News has been told at least 11 ATF agents and senior managers voiced fierce opposition to the strategy. "It got ugly..." said one. There was "screaming and yelling" says another. A third warned: "this is crazy, somebody is gonna to get killed."
Sure enough, the weapons soon began surfacing at crime scenes in Mexico - dozens of them sources say - including shootouts with government officials.
One agent argued with a superior asking, "are you prepared to go to the funeral of a federal officer killed with one of these guns?" Another said every time there was a shooting near the border, "we would all hold our breath hoping it wasn't one of 'our' guns."
Then, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. The serial numbers on the two assault rifles found at the scene matched two rifles ATF watched Jaime Avila buy in Phoenix nearly a year before. Officials won't answer whether the bullet that killed Terry came from one of those rifles. But the nightmare had come true: "walked" guns turned up at a federal agent's murder.
"You feel like s***. You feel for the parents," one ATF veteran told us.
Hours after Agent Terry was gunned down, ATF finally arrested Avila. They've since indicted 34 suspected gunrunners in the same group. But the indictment makes no mention of Terry's murder, and no one is charged in his death.
Kent Terry said of his brother, "He'd want them to tell the truth. That's one thing my brother didn't like was a liar. And that's what he'd want. He'd want the truth.
In a letter, the Justice Department which oversees ATF says the agency has never knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to suspected gunrunners.
And the demonized gun shop owners? Well, they tried to stop the process.
Seriously, you can't make this stuff up folks.Federal agents and prosecutors last year encouraged Arizona gun dealers to sell firearms to buyers for Mexican cartels even after the store owners fretted that weapons might be used to kill Border Patrol agents, according to e-mails obtained by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that the e-mails refute earlier Justice Department denials. The e-mails were exchanged by a federal agent and an Arizona gun dealer last April and June.
"In light of this new evidence, the Justice Department's claim that the ATF never knowingly sanctioned or allowed the sale of assault weapons to straw purchasers is simply not credible," Grassley wrote in the letter sent Wednesday.
The letter and e-mails were made public Thursday.
Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C., could not be reached late Thursday, and a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives declined to comment.
The controversy stems from Operation Fast and Furious, an Arizona investigation in which agents monitored weapons and buyers after suspicious sales in an effort to track guns to cartel members.
After U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in a December shootout near Nogales, Ariz., two AK-47s found at the scene were traced to Operation Fast and Furious. They had been purchased in Glendale 11 months earlier.
Federal authorities previously denied that gun-store owners were encouraged to continue selling firearms to cartel operatives, some of whom visited shops repeatedly, purchasing dozens of assault rifles.
The e-mails released by Grassley contradict those statements. In correspondence with an unidentified gun dealer last April, ATF Supervisor David Voth wrote:
"I understand that the frequency with which some individuals under investigation by our office have been purchasing firearms from your business has caused concerns for you. . . . However, if it helps put you at ease, we are continually monitoring these suspects using a variety of investigative techniques which I cannot go into (in) detail."
The firearms vendor responded by asking for a letter to ensure that he would not face repercussions for selling dozens of weapons to a suspected criminal: "I want to help ATF with its investigation, but not at the risk of agents' safety because I have some very close friends that are U.S. Border Patrol agents in southern Arizona."
Terry was killed six months later in a firefight with suspected border bandits. No one has been charged in the slaying.
In summary, the President of the United States, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of State each lied on multiple occasions to inflate the 'crisis' of American guns flowing into Mexico. They then used that fabricated crisis to propose new gun control legislation. All the while, it was in fact the US government through the ATF that was the largest supplier of American guns to Mexico... guns that were responsible for the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of Mexicans and at least one American border patrol agent.
As of today, the administration is stonewalling congressional investigations of the scandal, while the Mexican government has been completely caught off guard.When you give guns to the Mexican cartels, they use them to kill people. That is the finding of an investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which involved allowing thousands of guns collected through suspicious purchases to walk across the Mexican border. The guns were later used against U.S. Border Patrol agents. You can read more about the scandal from CBS News here.
Ever since Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in December, the "gunwalker" scandal has been slowly growing. Two guns recovered on the scene of the murder had been deliberately allowed by BATF to walk across the border. The Justice Department continues to evade responsibility for this investigation gone wrong, and Senate Democrats seem to have no interest in holding them accountable.
House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has been investigating, and receiving minimal cooperation from the administration. He released this statement upon the indictment of Terry's killer:
“The announcement of an indictment against Manuel Osorio-Arellanes for the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry is certainly good news, but leaves critical questions unanswered. The Justice Department still hasn’t said how and why guns purportedly being tracked and monitored by federal law enforcement officials as part of Operation Fast and Furious ended up in the hands of Agent Terry’s killers. It angers me to think that this death might not have occurred had it not been for reckless decisions made by officials at the Department of Justice who authorized and supported an operation that knowingly put guns in the hands of criminals. For these officials to imagine that this operation would result in anything other than a tragic outcome was naive and negligent. Sen. Charles Grassley and I continue to demand accountability as we investigate this matter.”
This scandal is especially striking given all the complaining and the false numbers that President Obama released at the beginning of his administration over the number of U.S.-bought guns being used by cartels in Mexico.
Nearly two weeks after extensive reports on the gun-walking scandal have come to light, no senior figure in Mexico's federal government has yet denounced the ATF's tactics (including Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, who recently found no difficulty in expressing his anger at WikiLeaks revelations about US criticism of his "war on drugs"). While Mexico's bicameral commission on national security begins to speak with federal officials only this week, senior members of the Calderón government have yet to give a date for their appearances before congress. These include powerful Mexican politicos like the country's minister of the interior, Francisco Blake Mora, and the head of the country's national security council, Alejandro Poiré.
Even as Mexico shakes its fist at the United States and demands detailed explanations, it seems that questions remain to be answered closer to home. Since the ATF's gun-walking operations began in 2008, thousands of firearms were permitted into the hands of Mexico's cartels (over 2,500 weapons in one operation alone). If Mexican authorities knew that the ATF was allowing weapons to "walk" – on a supposedly temporary basis – did they not inquire how many of these were being recovered? If Mexican counter-trafficking officials were being kept up-to-date on the ATF's gun-tracking operations, were they also aware that the ATF knew their weapons were being used in specific shootouts with Mexican and US officials (including the AK-47 that killed US border patrol agent Brian Terry, last December). Was this of concern to them? If ATF agents reported seeing a correlation between their activities and the growing violence in Mexico, how did Mexican security officials not?
Since "Project Gunrunner" began in 2008, over 30,000 cartel-related deaths have been recorded in Mexico. Thus far, the only reported successes from these operations appear to be the arrest of 20 arms traffickers by the ATF this January. Given the immeasurable damage that these operations are likely to have caused, and the little information available on them so far, both governments still have a lot of explaining to do – and soon.
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Originally Posted by Strike For The South
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