http://www.foxnews.com/politic...running-scandal.html

The House Oversight Committee released a scathing report Wednesday that accuses former Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice of covering up Operation Fast and Furious and misleading Congress’ investigation into the botched gun-running operation.

The nearly 300-page report states that the Justice Department under Holder actively tried to hide the facts from the loved ones of slain Border Patrol Brian Terry – seeing his family as more of a “nuisance” than one deserving straight answers -- and at times being openly hostile to them.

Terry was killed on Dec. 14, 2010, in a gunfight between Border Patrol agents and members of a six-man cartel "rip crew," which regularly patrolled the desert along the U.S.-Mexico border looking for drug dealers to rob. The cartel member suspected of slaying the Border Patrol agent, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, was apprehended in April by a joint U.S.-Mexico law enforcement task force.

Terry’s death exposed Operation Fast and Furious, which was a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) operation in which the federal government allowed criminals to buy guns in Phoenix-area shops with the intention of tracking them once they made their way into Mexico. But the agency lost track of more than 1,400 of the 2,000 guns they allowed smugglers to buy. Two of those guns were found at the scene of Terry's killing.

“More than five years after Brian’s murder, the Terry family still wonders about key details of Operation Fast and Furious,” the report states. “The Justice Department’s obstruction of Congress’s investigation contributed to the Terry family’s inability to find answers.”

The new report states that the Justice Department knew before Terry’s death in 2010 that the ATF was “walking” firearms to Mexico and knew the day after the agent’s death that weapons from Fast and Furious were involved in the shootout, despite denying these facts to the media.

The report also says that Holder’s Justice Department stonewalled inquiries from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and deceptively told him that the “ATF makes every effort to interdict” firearms purchased by straw buyers. The controversial act of straw purchases – where a person who is prohibited from buying firearms uses another person to buy a gun on his or her behalf – has been a popular method that Mexico’s drug cartels use to obtain guns.

The House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, was holding a hearing Wednesday on the panel’s lengthy report.

it seems like nobody at any level was really held accountable for this.

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:
it seems like nobody at any level was really held accountable for this.

Yet...

quote:

Originally posted by Bigboreshooter:

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:
it seems like nobody at any level was really held accountable for this.

Yet...

As much as they need to held accountable, I'd be very surprised if anyone ever is.

Wasn't Holder held in contempt of Congress for refusing to provide information on this?

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
Wasn't Holder held in contempt of Congress for refusing to provide information on this?

As I recall, he was.

Yeah and O'buttmunch pardoned him...for the contempt. Maybe some charges will be filed for the actual criminality of the transferring of weapons. Are the deaths resulting from it also able to be attached to the firearms violations?

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
Wasn't Holder held in contempt of Congress for refusing to provide information on this?

Yes... And nothing came of it.

quote:

Originally posted by Jimbo Jones:
Yeah and O'buttmunch pardoned him...for the contempt. Maybe some charges will be filed for the actual criminality of the transferring of weapons. Are the deaths resulting from it also able to be attached to the firearms violations?

There was no pardon. There was no prosecution, because contempts of Congress are prosectued by the Department of Justice, headed by uhhh, errr, ahhh, Eric Holder.

Thank you for posting this. I think it's important to remember the context of 2008-2010... the Obama administration was poised to make significant anti-gun legislation and we were hearing all the rumbling about how our lax gun laws were fueling the chaos in mexico. Didn't their shitty president come here and lecture our congress? Anyway, I continue to believe that F&F releasing guns was part of a wider scheme to facilitate a political environment where increased gun legislation was more palatable.

I know that sounds conspiratorial, and I certainly have nothing more than my own speculation. But the context of many speeches, coordinated democrat events, F&F, all those things have lead me to believe that the previous administration had a plan to allow Mexican violence to pressure us into increasing gun laws here, and the whole thing blew up in their faces. Just my opinion.

Tempest in a tea pot. Light, smoke and mirrors. Congress seems to have no teeth and no stomach for tough stuff.

Just pretty hearings to make us think they are working on our behalf.

RMD

quote:

The agency lost track of more than 1,400 of the 2,000 guns they allowed smugglers to buy.

Beyond the absurdity of the idea itself, the execution was a monumental failure.

It would be nice to know the current employment and legal status of every single person involved in this mass cluster fuck. Was *anyone* with the ATF or DOJ fired or prosecuted?

These betrayals will continue as long as all that results is talk and scowling .

Perhaps, I repeat, perhaps it is a start.....we can always hope!!

How were the guns supposed to be tracked? What was the failure in tracking them?

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
How were the guns supposed to be tracked? What was the failure in tracking them?

The plan was to track the guns when they were recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. No kidding. The dead Mexicans were just collateral damage. In the end the BATFE tracked a few hundred guns found at the site of murders and other crimes in Mexico, but only did so after F&F was exposed.

The entire operational plan was never intended to break up cartels or smuggling, it was to create a the grounds to create a new assault weapons ban that really banned them and to undermine our Rights.

Sig2340 nails it.

Sound? Check.
Fury? Check.
Smoke? Check.
Mirrors? Check.
Prosecution? Nope? Check.
Back to my nap? Che.......zzzzzzzz

At least one "holder" gun was recovered at the scene of one of the Paris attacks.