Thread: Report on U.S. 'Fast and Furious' refers 14 for discipline

Report on U.S. 'Fast and Furious' refers 14 for discipline

2:20 p.m.
EDT, September 19, 2012


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The 's internal watchdog on Wednesday referred 14 department employees, including senior official Lanny Breuer, for possible internal discipline in connection with a botched gun probe in Arizona.

A 471-page report was released following a 19-month review by the department's inspector general into "Operation Fast and Furious," which allowed about 2,000 potentially illegal firearms to cross the border into Mexico.


(Reporting by David
Ingram and Will Dunham)
Report on U.S. 'Fast and Furious' refers 14 for discipline - Courant.com

Report was released at 2PM. More articles to fllow.

Major report released on Fast and Furious, DOJ official resigns

Published September 19, 2012

FoxNews.com

A major report released Wednesday on the Operation Fast and Furious scandal faulted a range of federal agencies for the failed anti-gunrunning program -- and has resulted in the resignation of one Justice Department official.

Jason Weinstein, the deputy assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, is resigning in the wake of the Justice Department inspector general report on Fast and Furious. The report essentially concludes that he is the most senior department official who was in a position to stop Fast and Furious.

The nearly 500-page report was completed after investigators reviewed 100,000 documents and interviewed 130 people.

The reports also says that no one responsible for the case at ATF Phoenix or the U.S. Attorney's Office raised a serious question or concern about the government not taking earlier measures to stop Fast and Furious.

Read more: Major report released on Fast and Furious, DOJ official resigns | Fox News



Jason Weinstein at a House subcommittee hearing on intellectual property
Jason Weinstein | Main Justice

Management failures cited in ‘Fast and Furious’ report

By Jerry Seper and Chuck Neubauer
The Washington Times
Wednesday, September 19, 2012

**FILE** Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. speaks July 26, 2012, in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington. (Associated Press)



The Justice Department's Office of Inspector General on Wednesday blamed the failure of Operation Fast and Furious on a series of “misguided strategies,” but found no evidence that Attorney General Eric. H. Holder Jr. knew of the misguided gunrunning investigation before its public unraveling in January 2011.

The long-anticipated 471-page report cites “errors in judgment and management failures” on the part of officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives headquarters in Washington and in the Phoenix field office, and says “questionable judgments” by Justice Department officials in Washington marred the department’s response to Capitol Hill inquiries.

The investigation came to light after two AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifles purchased as a part of Fast and Furious were found at the scene of the killing nearly two years ago of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. The report recommended that 14 department employees be reviewed for possible sanctions or other disciplinary actions.

The report also says Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler, Mr. Holder’s chief of staff, received a briefing about Fast and Furious in March 2010, but that the briefing “failed to alert Mr. Grindler to problems in the investigation.” The report says Mr. Grindler learned three days after the Dec. 14, 2010, death of Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry of the link between weapons found at the scene of the killing and Fast and Furious, but did not tell Mr. Holder. It said he should have “informed the attorney general as well as made an appropriate inquiry of ATF or the U.S. attorney's office about the connection.”

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, who reviewed Fast and Furious wiretap applications, resigned Wednesday in the wake of the report, which says he should have asked more questions about Fast and Furious, given his knowledge of a similar 2006 program known as Operation Wide Receiver. Former Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson, named in the report as failing to maintain “appropriate oversight” of Fast and Furious, announced his retirement Wednesday, effective immediately.

Seriously flawed

According to the report, both Fast and Furious and Wide Receiver were “seriously flawed and supervised irresponsibly” by ATF’s Phoenix field division and the U.S. attorney's office in Arizona, “most significantly in their failure to adequately consider the risk to the public safety in the United States and Mexico.” It said both investigations sought to identify the higher reaches of firearms-trafficking networks by deferring any overt law enforcement action against the individual straw buyers — such as making arrests or seizing firearms — even when there was sufficient evidence to do so.

“The risk to public safety was immediately evident in both investigations,” the report says. “Almost from the outset of each case, ATF agents learned that the purchases were financed by violent Mexican drug-trafficking organizations and that the firearms were destined for Mexico.”

Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which investigated Fast and Furious, said Wednesday the report confirmed findings by Congress of a “near total disregard for public safety in Operation Fast and Furious, contrary to the denials of the attorney general and his political defenders.” Mr. Issa said the report notes that information in wiretap applications approved by senior Justice Department officials in Washington “did contain red flags showing reckless tactics” and they fault Mr. Holder’s inner circle for their conduct.

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz is scheduled to testify to the committee on Thursday on the findings of his investigation.

Holder’s response

Mr. Holder said Wednesday the report’s key conclusions are “consistent” with what he and other Justice Department officials have said for many months: The inappropriate strategy and tactics employed were field-driven and date back to 2006; the leadership of the department did not know about or authorize the use of the flawed strategy and tactics; and the department’s leadership did not attempt to cover up information or mislead Congress about it.

“I want to assure the American people that I, and my colleagues at the department, will continue to focus on our mission of protecting their rights and their security and doing so in a manner that is consistent with the high standards of the Department of Justice,” he said.

The report identifies persons ranging from field agents and prosecutors in Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., to senior ATF officials in Washington who “bore a share of responsibility” for ATF’s failures in both Fast and Furious and Wide Receiver to interdict firearms illegally bound for Mexico, and for pursuing “this risky strategy without adequately taking into account the significant danger to public safety that it created.”

“We operated with complete and total independence in our search for the truth, and the decision about what to cover in this report and the conclusions we reached were made solely by me and my office,” Mr. Horowitz said. “I am pleased that we are able to put forward a full and complete recitation of the facts that we found, and the conclusions that we reached, with minimal redactions by the department to our report.”

Story Continues →
View Entire Story

Read more: Management failures cited in 'Fast and Furious' report - Washington Times Management failures cited in 'Fast and Furious' report - Washington Times
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Lawmakers to hear from 'gun-walking' investigator

9/20/2012 3:47:27
By PETE YOST
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Republicans investigating a bungled gun-trafficking probe in Arizona see vindication in a long-awaited watchdog report that criticizes one of their favorite targets: Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department. But Justice's inspector general absolved Holder himself of blame.

The department's internal watchdog, Michael Horowitz, will be the only witness Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a day after he faulted the department for misguided strategies, errors in judgment and management failures in an operation that disregarded public safety and allowed hundreds of guns to reach Mexican drug gangs.

"The inspector general's report confirms findings by Congress' investigation of a near total disregard for public safety in Operation Fast and Furious," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the committee's chairman.

However, committee Republicans will have to tread carefully. The IG's report knocks down some of the many accusations Republicans have made about the Obama administration during their year-and-a-half-long investigation of the operation by the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In places, the report reads like a rebuttal of House Republicans' past statements.

"We found no evidence" that staff at the department or at ATF informed the attorney general about Operation Fast and Furious before 2011, the report says.

Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler received a briefing on Operation Fast and Furious in 2010.

"We found, however, that the briefing failed to alert Grindler to problems in the investigation," the report says.

"We found no evidence to suggest" that Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, was aware that the ATF and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona had adopted a strategy of not interdicting firearms, the report adds.

Still, the inspector general's report was a form of validation for the Republican-led investigation, saying lower-level officials should have briefed Holder about the investigation much earlier.

The inspector general referred 14 people for possible department disciplinary action in Operation Fast and Furious and a separate, earlier probe known as Wide Receiver, undertaken during the George W. Bush administration - Grindler, Breuer and two other people from the Justice Department, four from ATF headquarters, four at ATF in Phoenix and two from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix.

A former head of the ATF, Kenneth Melson, and a deputy assistant attorney general in Justice's criminal division in Washington, Jason Weinstein, left the department upon the report's release Wednesday - the first by retirement, the second by resignation.

Operation Fast and Furious involved "gun-walking," an experimental tactic barred under longstanding department policy. ATF agents in Arizona allowed suspected straw purchasers, in these cases believed to be working for Mexican drug gangs, to leave Phoenix-area gun stores with weapons in order to track them and bring charges against gun-smuggling kingpins who long had eluded prosecution, but they lost track of most of the guns.

Two of the 2,000 weapons thought to have been acquired by illicit buyers in the Fast and Furious investigation were recovered at the scene of a shootout that claimed the life of U.S. border agent Brian Terry. About 1,400 of the total have yet to be recovered.

The experimental operations were a response to widespread criticisms of the agency's anti-smuggling efforts. Because of thin ATF staffing and weak penalties, the traditional strategy of arresting suspected straw buyers as soon as possible had failed to stop the flow of tens of thousands of guns to Mexico - more than 68,000 in the past five years.
Fast and Furious has produced charges against 20 gun traffickers, 14 of whom have pleaded guilty so far.

Horowitz indicated he will continue his investigation of matters related to Fast and Furious, Issa noted, including a look at possible retaliation against whistle-blowers and an effort to have the Justice Department unseal wiretap applications that were approved by senior officials.

A cover memo reviewed by Weinstein for one of the wiretap applications in Fast and Furious "clearly suggests" ATF agents had allowed a known illicit gun purchaser to continue his illegal activities for a gun-trafficking ring selling weapons to a Mexican drug cartel, the inspector general's report found.

In response to the criticism, Weinstein's lawyer said that before reviewing any Fast and Furious wiretaps, Weinstein had been assured by ATF Deputy Assistant Director William McMahon that guns were being aggressively interdicted.

During the House committee's investigation, President Barack Obama ordered Holder to withhold from the House committee, under executive privilege, some documents describing how the Justice Department responded to the panel. The Republican-controlled House voted to hold Holder in contempt, and Issa's committee has filed a civil lawsuit to make the administration turn over the documents. Horowitz said he was not denied access to any of the documents.

Lawmakers to hear from 'gun-walking' investigator - Local News - Clarksburg, WV | NBC News

Here's One Reason To Doubt The New Fast & Furious Report That Exonerates Eric Holder

Michael Kelley
September 19,2012

The Justice Department "found no evidence" that Attorney General Eric Holder knew before January 2011 of the "inappropriate tactics" used in Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal, according to a report released Wednesday by the Office of the Inspector General.We're still going through the 471-page report, but there's at least one reason within the report that raises doubt in its conclusion.

"Gun-walking" or "letting guns walk" was a tactic of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) whereby agents purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell U.S. weapons to illegal straw buyers in the hopes of tracking those weapons to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arresting them.

The Fast and Furious operation (2009-2011) was the largest of several gun-walking operations—including Operation Wide Receiver (2006- 8—that took place under a broader initiative known as Project Gunrunner (2006-2011), which was intended to reduce the flow of firearms into Mexico.

One reason to doubt the new report is that it ostensibly found no evidence that Michael Mukasey, Attorney General from November 2007 to January 2009, was "made aware of Operation Wide Receiver, or of the investigative tactics that were employed by ATF during that investigation."

However, a Justice Department memo to Mukasey from Nov. 16, 2007, outlines failed attempts by federal agents to track walked guns across the border into Mexico.

AsAP reported last year, the memo "marks the first known instance of an attorney general being given information about the tactic known as 'gun-walking.'"

The memo goes on to state that while Wide Receiver was unsuccessful, the ATF "would like to expand the possibility of such joint investigations and controlled deliveries."

Wide Receiver monitored the sale of about 450 guns and lost almost all of them while Fast and Furious monitored the sale of more than 2,000 firearms, of which nearly 700 were recovered as of October 2011.

The obvious question:Why does the new Inspector General report contradict the earlier Justice Department memo?

A follow-up question:If the earlier Justice Department memo is to believed, wouldn't Holder, who followed Mukasey as Attorney General, also be informed of the "inappropriate tactics" used in gun-walking operations when he took office?

The operations of Project Gunrunner became controversial when weapons from Fast and Furious were recovered from the Arizona desert where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry died in a shootout with cartel members on December 14, 2010.
The AP story noted that, according to ATF data, 94,000 weapons were recovered in Mexico from 2006 to 2011 with 64,000 of them traced to the United States.

Read more: Fast & Furious: Is Eric Holder Clear? - Business Insider

I want to know if Weinstien and LannyBreuer are going to keep their law licenses. Breuer was Eric Holder's partner at Covington & Burling.

RELATED

http://www.alipac.us/f12/atf-acting-...urious-264217/