Did the Obama administration find it's Scapegoat for Fast & Furious?

[usmarine0352_2005]

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http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/31/politics/justice-gun-walking/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

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Top Justice official expresses regret for failure to warn on 'gun walking'

By Terry Frieden, CNN Justice Producer

updated 10:58 PM EST, Mon October 31, 2011


After months of Justice Department executives staunchly defending what they said was their minimal role in flawed ATF operations, and denials of high-level involvement, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer issued a statement Monday acknowledging his actions in the case.


"I did not draw a connection between the unacceptable tactics used by the ATF years earlier in Operation Wide Receiver and those in Operation Fast and Furious, and therefore did not alert others within department leadership of any similarities between the two. That was a mistake and I regret not having done so," Breuer said in a written statement.

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[publius]

See also:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_1...fficial-knew-of-atf-gunwalking-in-april-2010/

Gunwalking is a controversial investigative tactic in which police allow suspects to traffic guns without stopping them in order to see where they end up. Documents just released this afternoon show the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, Lanny A. Breuer, learned about the tactic of ATF gunwalking as early as April of last year.

In a memo, Breuer's deputy wrote him that, in a case called "Wide Receiver" started under the Bush Administration, "ATF let a bunch of guns walk" in an effort to catch the big fish of Mexican drug cartels and said the gunwalking case could be "embarrassing" to ATF.

Today, Breuer issued a statement saying he "regrets" that he didn't alert others in Justice Department leadership, apparently including his boss Attorney General Eric Holder.

He has lots of regrets. He regrets that he looked at a memo about the similarity between the two cases and failed to grasp the similarity between the two cases. He regrets the he learned we were sending thousands of guns to Mexican criminals and did not put a stop to it, and also regrets failing to inform his bosses.

Does anyone find any part of that believable? I do not.

 

[USAF_Vet]

Did the Obama administration find it's Scapegoat for Fast & Furious?

It appears so. We'll have to watch and see what happend from this point.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

It is a one-two punch. Breuer is jumping under the bus, hoping it stops it from rolling over Holder, and by repeatedly bringing up Wide Receiver, they are trying to reinforce the idea that this is something that both Republicans and Democrats did and that trying to push the issue any further is purely political.

However, the problem with that is that in Wide Receiver, they did actually try to track and interdict weapons. After the smugglers proved better at avoiding them than they did at stopping them and they lost around 200 weapons, they pulled the plug on the program - and if you believe the FFL who participated, they would have pulled the plug on Wide Receiver even earlier but ATF lied to the U.S. Attorney about how successful the weapons tracking was.

Now compare that to Fast and Furious: only one effort to put a tracking device in a weapon - and that made by a frustrated field agent using parts from Radio Shack. Agents ordered to NOT interdict weapons by supervisors. ATF agents actually handing weapons directly to criminals. Over 2,000 weapons "lost". Given that Fast and Furious was run by the same people who had already seen Wide Receiver blow up in their faces, the comparisons are even more puzzling.

I guess the Administration is hoping nobody will look past the "Bush-era" part of Wide Receiver; because if somebody does, then Fast and Furious looks even worse than it did to start with - and it looked plenty bad to start with.

 

[GEM]

Say Scooter and the VP.

Same strategy in play.

NPR had a reasoned report this morning.

Seems that they will try to save the AG, similar to when the ATF and FBI botched Waco.

 

[Murphy4570]

Hrmph, same old siren song, blame it all on the previous administration.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

...this is something that both Republicans and Democrats ...

Bureaucracies tend to rumble along under sheer momentum regardless of what leadership changes occur in the White House or Congress. This is something that ATF did under both Bush and Obama. Operation Wide Receiver was stopped when it became obvious it was not working. Which makes Operation Fast and Furious all the more puzzling to me. Gunwalking did not work the first time it was tried and was discontinued 2007. Why try again in 2009? Very suspicious. And claiming "Bush did it too" ignores it was a bad policy in2007, and actually raises the question: why restart in 2009? It looks suspiciously like it was to produce stats to match the 90% myth sold by Calerdon and Obama. For Obama apologists to calim "Bush did it too" does not really let Obama off the hook because it just raises more questions.

Calderon started a war on the drug cartel's usurpation of power in Mexico: it was not a war on drugs, it was a war on the power of the cartels. It has degenerated into a chaos of the cartels fighting both the Mexican army and police and each other. I think the possible unintended consequences were well-thought out before going full tilt boggie against the cartels. In this drug war, 90% of the casualties are drug cartel members, 8% are Mexican police and army and government officials. Still a thousand children have died in the cross fire.

The real cause is not the guns, the means of violence is a result. The motivation for the violence is the cause. The motivation is the combination of the drugs flowing north and the money flowing south, especially the money. Without the motivation, the means would be irrelevant.

Obama's motivations are open to speculation. From his days in Chicago, in the U Chicago Law school, in Chicago politics, he has been a dyed-in-the-wool "great gun war" warrior for gun control Chicago-style. He jumped on the "Mecican drug war violence caused by US guns" band wagon early on and promoted the 90% myth. Sometimes the underlings take hints from the top and (gun)run with them without explicit orders from headquarters.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

May be Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer actually "failed to warn".

That does not prove the "others within department leadership" did not know already, or that they would have cared if Breuer had warned them. Breuer was their only sorce of info?

Breuer's mea culpa is not as much as it appears.

Plus it is one thing to fall on your sword for your own mistakes; it is another to fall on your sword for the boss's mistakes. I wonder if (like Sarabyn and Chojancki in the Waco affair) Breuer keeps a job and full pension is exchange for taking the blame?

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

One interesting question is that as recently as September 2011, Eric Holder was saying that there was no evidence that anyone in the higher levels of the Justice Department knew anything about gun walking as a tactic being used in investigations.

Now Lanny is saying that he not only knew about that tactic in April 2010; but that he went and talked with the ATF about it back then. Yet, when this whole controversy started, Lanny denied knowing anything about Fast and Furious - even though it involves almost the same exact ATF cast as Wide Receiver.

So why exactly did Lanny wait until the day before his Congressional testimony to admit he knew about gun walking? If you were Breuer's boss, wouldn't you wish that he would tell you that kind of detail BEFORE you got on national TV and said something that Breuer knew not to be true? I'd be really irritated if someone I managed put me in that position.

If we assume Breuer's explanation is true (yah, big assumption), then Breuer either was too stupid to realize that his boss might need to know about the gun walking Breuer was aware of when Fast and Furious broke back in January, OR Breuer intentionally let his boss say things that weren't true, presumably in the hope that it would cover up his own mistakes. So even if we take Breuer's story as charitably as we possibly can, he is either a complete idiot or an active scoundrel. Yet the press is going remarkably easy on him.

 

[cavman]

Ass. Atty. Gen. "more regulations needed"

http://townhall.com/columnists/kati...ond_amendment_for_atfdoj_gun_walking_mistakes

"Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein pushed for more gun control and Breuer expressed his agreement with her statements that American gun laws are too “lax” and therefore result it more violent crime.

Feinstein asked Breuer if he thought a reporting measure for long gun rifles would be helpful to ATF. Breuer answered yes. "--article

 

[230therapy]

Eric Holder is on video last year talking about the program. He perjured himself when testifying.

Now, there is NO way that ANY agent would run guns to a foreign country unless it was blessed on high. Doing otherwise guarantees a stay a Federal prison somewhere. That means his managers were given assurances by those above all the way up to Holder. Now...did the President know? It is likely he knew because the President is responsible for foreign affairs. Providing weapons to enemies of a foreign government is an act of war. Holder would be stupid to do so without Presidential assurances.

Additionally, DOJ KNEW about this because DEA was involved. My source tells me that projects involving more than one agency run out of DOJ. Perhaps this is wrong and someone can correct that data point. Now, if DOJ is running the interagency operation, it seems to me that Holder would be informed about the program.

I bet this will be cast as "rogue agents in Texas and Phoenix run guns". Just watch their managers flee...

 

[blue_ridge]

It looks suspiciously like it was to produce stats to match the 90% myth sold by Calerdon and Obama.

This is the key. Obama and Holder want to address F&F as an unfortunate mistake or even possibly as negligent law enforcement practices. We need to keep our eye on the ball. It isn't about who authorized letting guns walk. It's about why they wanted guns to walk.

It is obvious they didn't just bumble along in the dark and then realize too late that guns were going across the border by the thousands. "Oh my, how did that happen? Who authorized these guns to be freely trafficked across the border? How unfortunate!"

The DOJ pushed all the buttons and took VERY pre-meditated actions to MAKE SURE these weapons went across the border scot-free. The investigation needs to focus on THAT.

 

[Sky]

Archetypally sickening when those who are trusted to uphold the law of the land continue to uphold the welfare of their own skin.

What bothers me about as much as anything is the loss of faith by so many Americans in what government officials say, is anything indeed truthful. Maybe the truth will see the light of day if the probing continues. 500 billion a year in drug money; with a push for open boarders, with motivations not always transparent as more and more comes out for anyone willing to dig.

Is CBS News Silencing Fast and Furious Reporter? http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs...reporter-due-white-house-pressure_595068.html

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...t__furious_before_holder_claimed_he_knew.html