Thread: DOJ walks back Fast and Furious Gunrunning denial

..Justice Dept. details how it got statements wrong
By PETE YOST

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Friday provided Congress with documents detailing how department officials gave inaccurate information to a U.S. senator in the controversy surrounding Operation Fast and Furious, the flawed law enforcement initiative aimed at dismantling major arms trafficking networks on the Southwest border.

In a letter last February to Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had not sanctioned the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser and that the agency makes every effort to intercept weapons that have been purchased illegally. In Operation Fast and Furious, both statements turned out to be incorrect.

The Justice Department letter was responding to Grassley's statements that the Senate Judiciary Committee had received allegations the ATF had sanctioned the sale of hundreds of assault weapons to suspected straw purchasers. Grassley also said there were allegations that two of the assault weapons had been used in a shootout that killed customs agent Brian Terry.

In an email four days later to Justice Department colleagues, then-U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in Phoenix said that "Grassley's assertions regarding the Arizona investigation and the weapons recovered" at the "murder scene are based on categorical falsehoods. I worry that ATF will take 8 months to answer this when they should be refuting its underlying accusations right now." That email marked the start of an internal debate in the Justice Department over what and how much to say in response to Grassley's allegations. The fact that there was an ongoing criminal investigation into Terry's murder prompted some at the Justice Department to argue for less disclosure.

Some of what turned out to be incorrect information was emailed to Lanny Breuer, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's criminal division. Breuer sent an email saying "let's help as much as we can" in responding to Grassley.

The emails sent to Capitol Hill on Friday showed that Burke supplied additional incorrect information to the Justice Department's criminal division that ended up being forwarded to Breuer. For example, Burke said that the guns found at the Terry murder scene were purchased at a Phoenix gun shop before Operation Fast and Furious began. In fact, the operation was under way at the time and the guns found at the Terry murder scene were part of the probe. Breuer was one of the recipients of that information. In written comments this week to Grassley, Breuer said that he was on a three-day official trip to Mexico at the time of the Justice Department response and that he was aware of, but not involved in, drafting the Justice Department statements to Grassley. Breuer says he cannot say for sure whether he saw a draft of the letter before it was sent to Grassley.

Where Burke got the inaccurate information is now part of an inquiry conducted by the inspector general's office at the Justice Department.

Burke's information was followed by a three-day struggle in which officials in the office of the deputy attorney general, the criminal division and the ATF came up with what turned out to be an inaccurate response to Grassley's assertions.

The process became so intensive that Breuer aide Jason Weinstein emailed his boss, "The Magna Carta was easier to get done than this was." A copy of the latest draft was attached to the emails.

Initial drafts of the letter reflected the hard tone of Burke's unequivocal assertions that the allegations Grassley was hearing from ATF agents were wrong. Later drafts were more measured, prompting Burke to complain in one email: "Every version gets weaker. We will be apologizing" to Grassley "by tomorrow afternoon." Regarding the allegation that ATF sanctioned the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser, the Justice Department denial was scaled back slightly from "categorically false" to "false." ''Why poke the tiger," Lisa Monaco, the top aide to the deputy attorney general, explained in an email to Ron Weich, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs whose signature was on the letter.

In another email, Burke wrote, "By the way, what is so offensive about this whole project" of response "is that Grassley's staff, acting as willing stooges for the Gun Lobby, have attempted to distract from the incredible success in dismantling" Southwest Border "gun trafficking operations" and "not uttering one word of rightful praise and thanks to ATF — but, instead, lobbing this reckless despicable accusation that ATF is complicit in the murder of a fellow federal law enforcement officer."

On Friday night, Grassley spokeswoman Beth Levine said that "Burke personally apologized to Sen. Grassley's staff for the tone and the content of the emails" after learning from the Justice Department that the emails would be released.

It is unusual for the Justice Department to provide such detail of its internal deliberations as it did on Friday with Congress.

The department turned over 1,364 pages of material after concluding "that we will make a rare exception to the department's recognized protocols and provide you with information related to how the inaccurate information came to be included in the letter," Deputy Attorney General James Cole wrote Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is looking into the Obama administration's handling of Operation Fast and Furious.

Operation Fast and Furious involved more than 2,000 weapons that were purchased by straw buyers at Phoenix-area gun stores. Nearly 700 of the Fast and Furious guns have been recovered — 276 in Mexico and 389 in the United States, according to ATF data as of Oct. 20.

Amid probes by Republicans in Congress and the IG, the Justice Department in August replaced Burke, acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson and the lead prosecutor in Operation Fast and Furious.


http://news.yahoo.com/justice-dept-deta ... 22145.html

Justice Department Reveals Origins of False Gun Letter To GrassleyBy Jonathan Strong
Dec. 2, 2011, 6:14 p.m.

The Justice Department released documents today detailing how officials prepared a Feb. 4 letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that Attorney General Eric Holder has since admitted contained false information about Operation Fast and Furious, a botched gun operation under investigation by Congress.

The documents show that Dennis Burke, then a U.S. attorney who has since resigned, and William Hoover, then the deputy director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who has since been reassigned, principally provided the false information to officials who drafted the letter. But the documents do not shed light on whether either knew the information was false at the time.

In the Feb. 4 letter, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich broadly denied that ATF officials had allowed assault weapons to “walk,” which meant ending surveillance on weapons suspected to be en route to Mexican drug cartels, allowing the guns to escape into the wild. “ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico,” Weich wrote.

Grassley’s allegations about Fast and Furious, later revealed to be true, “are based on categorical falsehoods,” Burke wrote in a Jan. 31 email. Faith Burton, a Justice Department official who drafted an early version of the letter, took notes based on a phone conversation with Hoover that read, “ATF doesn’t let guns walk.”

Emails show Lanny Breuer, the assistant attorney general for the department’s criminal division, received versions of the letter on four occasions via email. Breuer forwarded the emails to a personal account but told Congressional investigators in a written statement today he “cannot say for sure” whether he viewed the drafts.

Breuer conceded Oct. 31 he knew federal officials allowed assault guns and other weapons to fall into the possession of Mexican drug cartels as early as April 2010, 10 months before the department denied in the letter to Grassley that the investigative strategy was used.

“Any instance of so-called gunwalking was unacceptable. This tactic was unfortunately used as part of Fast and Furious,” Holder admitted to Senators at a Judiciary Committee hearing Nov. 8. “This should never have happened.”

Breuer’s knowledge of the tactic was about Operation Wide Receiver, a similar, smaller-scale weapons-smuggling investigation that began during President George W. Bush’s administration.

Breuer said in October it was a “mistake” not to alert higher-ranking officials when the information about gunwalking in Fast and Furious “became public,” given his knowledge about Wide Receiver.

The documents released today show tangential involvement by Breuer in preparing the Feb. 4 letter.

“Let me know what’s happening with this,” he wrote in a Feb. 1 email asking for an update.

Jason Weinstein, Breuer’s deputy, responded by saying he had revised the initial draft, written by Burton, to “make it a little tougher.”

The documents show Weinstein was intimately involved in drafting the letter, urging repeated changes to strengthen the tone of its denial over objections from the Office of Legislative Affairs headed by Weich.

Weinstein was also far more familiar than Breuer with the details of Operation Wide Receiver, according to documents released in October. For instance, Weinstein told colleagues in an April 12, 2010, email that the ATF should be “embarrassed that they let this many guns walk” in Wide Receiver.

According to Breuer, Weinstein is now also expressing regret about not connecting the dots between Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious.

“Weinstein has expressed to me that, in hindsight, he wishes he had not relied on those assertions and that, because he did rely so heavily on them, he viewed, incorrectly, the misguided tactics used in Operation Wide Receiver — which resulted in the ATF losing control of guns that then crossed the border into Mexico — as having no relation to the allegations that were being made about Operation Fast and Furious,” Breuer said today in a written statement to Congressional investigators.

The day before the letter was sent to Grassley, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General raised concerns about the scope of the denial it contained.

“In the 2nd full para[graph] — we say ‘categorically false’ — obviously we want to be 300% sure we can make such a ‘categorical’ statement,” Lisa Monaco wrote in an email after reviewing a draft version of the letter. “I’ve developed an aversion to adjectives and oversight letters,” she explained in a later email.

The language was ultimately removed.

Over the course of the letter being prepared, Burke vehemently argued the department should more vigorously deny the allegations.

Quote:

“What is so offensive about this whole project is that Grassley’s staff, acting as willing stooges for the Gun Lobby, have attempted to distract from the incredible success in dismantling [southwest border] gun trafficking operations ... but, instead, lobbing this reckless despicable accusation that ATF is complicit in the murder of a fellow federal law enforcement officer,” he wrote in a Feb. 4 email.

“Well said Dennis. Thank you!” Hoover replied.

However, guns found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder were eventually connected to the Fast and Furious operation.

A spokeswoman for Grassley said, "After a first glance at today's document dump from the Justice Department, there appears to be even more questions for Assistant Attorney General Breuer, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Weinstein and former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke."

http://www.rollcall.com/news/justice...-210742-1.html

Justice Department sends Congress 1,400 pages on 'Fast and Furious'


By Terry Frieden, CNN Justice Department Producer

updated 10:59 PM EST, Fri December 2, 2011

Washington (CNN) -- An intense struggle among several senior Justice Department officials was revealed Friday as internal documents on the gun-running Operation Fast and Furious were released by the department.

About 1,400 pages that had been demanded by Capitol Hill investigators were sent to three key congressional committees in advance of what is expected to be a contentious hearing next Thursday when Attorney General Eric Holder testifies on the subject.

The documents lift the veil on conflicting views among Justice Department executives, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and the Arizona U.S. attorney's office over whether and how to respond to allegations made in letters from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

Grassley had demanded to know whether, as whistle-blowers claimed, the ATF was allowing firearms bought by suspected straw purchasers in Arizona to "walk" across the border into Mexico, and into the arms of drug cartels. Grassley had alleged the ATF's surveillance operation lost track of weapons and two of them ended up at the scene where Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered last December.

In early February 2011, as the issue was heating up, the documents show Justice officials struggled for days over how to respond to Grassley. Repeated drafts were required as the issue rose for discussion among the deputy attorney general's staff. At the last moment, Justice officials halted sending out letters to Grassley because of uncertainty over the facts of Fast and Furious, and over how forcefully to respond.

Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich was especially concerned about protecting the Justice Department position that details about ongoing investigations not be revealed. Other officials, notably in the deputy attorney general's office, said it was crucial in this unusual and important situation to be candid and forthright to a key U.S. senator.

Dennis Burke, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, defended the operation, and appears to have become exasperated at the Justice Department's cautious response.

"Every version gets weaker. We will be apologizing to (Grassley) by tomorrow afternoon," he wrote.

Burke and ATF headquarters officials insisted the charge that agents "allowed the sale of weapons which were transported into Mexico is false." He also insisted the "ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally."

When those claims, included in a February 4 letter to Grassley, later proved to be wrong, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and later Holder were forced to apologize to a Senate committee and to Grassley in particular.

Burke resigned at the end of August, just days after testifying before a congressional committee.

On Friday, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the Justice Department "now formally withdraws the February 4 letter." He said facts have come to light that indicate that the letter contains "inaccuracies."

Holder is expected to again express his "regret" for the misinformation before the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee. Breuer and Holder steadfastly maintain they did not know the assertions were wrong when the department sent Grassley the letter. Justice Department officials claim they were relying on information provided by ATF supervisors and their prosecutors in Phoenix.

The document dump "appears to raise (even) more questions" for various officials involved in the program, said Beth Levine, a spokeswoman for Grassley.

She made specific reference to "disparaging e-mails" from Burke about the Iowa senator. The former U.S. attorney "personally apologized to Senator Grassley's staff for the tone and the content of the e-mails" after learning they'd been released, according to Levine.

www.cnn.com

Added an article from above to the Homepage:
http://www.alipac.us/article-6821--0-0.html

December 2, 2011 6:27 PM

Justice Dept. Fast and Furious emails show disagreement over response to Grassley

By Sharyl Attkisson, CBS Investigative Reporter.

More than 1,000 pages of frenzied email exchanges were fired back and forth among Justice Department officials, as they weighed how to respond to initial inquires about the gunwalker scandal. Today, the agency turned over those subpoenaed records to Congress in advance of a hearing next week with Attorney General Eric Holder.

PICTURES: ATF "Gunwalking" scandal timeline
http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-31727_162-1 ... ontentBody

The emails are marked by intra-office disagreement over how vigorously to defend the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives (ATF) amid questions from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. ATF whistleblowers had told Sen. Grassley that their own agency had let thousands of weapons "walk" into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. They also told Grassley that two of the weapons involved in the case, known as "Fast and Furious," were used at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.


"Those [allegations] are the most salacious, and the most damaging to ATF, both short-and long-term," writes Deputy Asst. Attorney General Jason Weinstein to Justice Department Special Counsel Faith Burton on Feb. 2, 2011.


Weinstein also wrote ATF Acting Director Ken Melson, calling the gunwalking allegations "terribly damaging to ATF," and pushing for "a more forceful rebuttal" than what the Justice Department was considering.


Read the Internal Justice Department Emails
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Attki ... ontentBody

Additional Justice Department Emails
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Attki ... ontentBody

Special Counsel Burton disagreed, telling Weinstein: "Understand the concerns about pushing back on the Terry issue, but think presents significant risks and we should discuss that together in person if nec."


"What 'risk'?" U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke asked the Justice Department's Weinstein. Burke's office oversaw Fast and Furious.


"They're worried if we engage in a detailed discussion of this case with Grassley's staff, that they'll just keep pushing for more and more information. But I think we need to come down hard and firm and say that the allegation is BS," Weinstein tells Burke.


Emails indicate some Justice Department officials were concerned with making sure the facts provided to Congress were entirely accurate. One official with the Arizona U.S. Attorney's office asked whether defenses being proposed were "absolutely true." "Yes, absolutely true," answered another.


After the Justice Department's Weinstein led the internal charge to toughen ATF's defense, he received an email of appreciation from ATF's Congressional liaison Greg Rasnake, who has since left that position. "Whether or not they buy in, you are the man for supporting us like that," writes Rasnake.


Eventually, the Justice Department sent Sen. Grassley a letter stating ATF would never intentionally allow guns to walk. The Justice Department now admits that assertion was false, and Congress has been asking who's to blame.


Justice Department officials have testified that in drafting the inaccurate response, they unknowingly relied on bad information provided to them by "others."


U.S. Attorney Burke also fired off emails after ATF refused to comment on initial newspaper reports about the gunwalker scandal. Emails indicate he was upset the allegations weren't being met with a more vigorous defense.


"(ATF) got smoked today in the Arizona Republic. Just smoked," Burke writes to Justice Department Criminal Chief Lanny Breuer on Feb. 1, 2011. "Just baffling that they refuse to engage even just to protect the integrity of the agency. Seriously, I would recommend a stern missive to them." The next day, referring to a Washington Post article, Burke tells Justice Department officials, "That ATF refused to comment to the Wash Post is truly absurd. Really. Grassley's letter is outrageous and false. That ATF didn't counter that is unbelievable."


Burke resigned six months later.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-5 ... s-scandal/

Documents show Holder was informed of Fast and Furious operation in 2010

By Jordy Yager - 10/04/11 05:56 AM ET

Attorney General Eric Holder was issued multiple memos from senior Justice Department officials about a controversial gun-tracking operation months before he said he first became aware it, according to documents.

In response to questions from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on May 3, 2011, Holder testified before the House Judiciary Committee that he only recently learned about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) Operation Fast and Furious.

The botched gun-tracking operation oversaw the sale of thousands of firearms in the Southwest to known and suspected straw purchasers for Mexican drug cartels and might have contributed to the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

“I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks,” said Holder at the time.

But in a memo from November 2010 Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer notified Holder about a sealed indictment against alleged gun traffickers in Arizona by the DOJ’s organized crime and gang section.

Breuer wrote that the indictment would remain sealed “until another investigation, Phoenix-based ‘Operation Fast and Furious,’ is ready for takedown.”

And in a July 2010 memo from Michael Walther, the director of the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), Holder was notified that NDIC and a Phoenix drug enforcement task force would assist the ATF with an investigation of a suspected gun trafficker, Manuel Celis-Acosta, being run under Operation Fast and Furious.

“This investigation, initiated in September 2009 in conjunction with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Phoenix police department, involves a Phoenix-based firearms trafficking ring,” the memo states.

“Celis-Acosta and [redacted] straw purchasers are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels.”

DOJ officials told CBS News that the case being discussed in the memos was not Fast and Furious, but instead a different gun-tracking case that was started before Holder became attorney general. Operation Wide Receiver was initiated in 2006 and focused on selling firearms to known and suspected straw purchasers in the Tucson, Ariz., region.

The DOJ officials also told CBS that Holder misunderstood Issa’s question and that he was generally aware of Fast and Furious, but he was not privy to the details of the operation.

A former DOJ official told Fox News that Holder, as attorney general, receives dozens of memos every week and most likely does not have the time to read through every one of them.

Earlier this year ATF agents testified to Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, that they were instructed to monitor the sale of the firearms to known and suspected straw buyers — a traditionally discouraged technique in the ATF known as letting guns “walk” — but were ordered not to provide the guns with adequate surveillance to successfully track them.

Instead, agents were told to trace the serial numbers on guns found at subsequent raids and crime scenes back to the serial numbers of the guns sold under the operation, and try to make their cases that way.

A series of emails written in October 2010 between Jason Weinstein, the deputy assistant attorney general of DOJ’s criminal division, and James Trusty, the acting chief of the DOJ’s organized crime and gang section, reveals a fluid knowledge of the operation.

“It’s not going to be any big surprise that a bunch of US guns are being used in MX [Mexico], so I’m not sure how much grief we get for ‘guns walking,’ ” wrote Trusty to Weinstein. “It may be more like, ‘Finally, they’re going after people who sent guns down there … ' ”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, launched the first congressional investigation into the operation at the beginning of the year.

In a February letter to Holder inquiring about allegations over the operation that had been brought to his attention from whistleblowers, Grassley referenced a letter the DOJ had sent him earlier that month refuting any assertions that it had let guns “walk.”

“The Department [of Justice] categorically denied that the ATF ‘knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser ... ’ The Department said the ATF makes ‘every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation into Mexico,’ ” the letter reads.

President Obama has denied knowing about the operation until it was made public by news organizations. Holder has ordered the DOJ’s inspector general to investigate the matter, and in August the acting head of the ATF stepped down.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administ...urious-in-2010