BELTWAY GUNRUNNERS By Aaron Klein
© 2011 WND

Is this why White House funded 'guns-to-drug-lords' scheme?

Misleading data target gun owners in scandal that could rock Obama


Project Gunrunner, the controversial government program that runs guns into Mexico, under the Obama administration has contributed to fraudulent statistics seemingly targeting U.S. gun owners.

The misleading data raise questions about the intentions of Project Gunrunner, which some believe could be a defining scandal for the White House.

In February 2008, William Hoover, assistant director for field operations of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified before Congress that over 90 percent of the firearms that have been recovered in or intercepted in transport to Mexico originated from various sources within the U.S.

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Hoover's statistics officially were released by the ATF and subsequently were cited in a flurry of news media pieces claiming the vast majority of illicit firearms in Mexico originate in the U.S.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office also used the ATF's 90 percent statistic in an official report to Congress about American firearms. The Justice Department even incorporated the data in several of its programs.

After a series of independent reports contradicted the ATF claims, however, the bureau then admitted in November 2010 that its 90 percent figure cited to Congress "could be misleading" because it applied only to the small portion of guns verified through its eTrace system, an Internet-based firearm database that Project Gunrunner was built around.

The ATF admitted its statistics were based on the guns it traced, all of which originated in the U.S., thus skewing the data.

Project Gunrunner was first founded under President Bush as a bipartisan effort in 2005, when it had its inception as a pilot run by ATF in conjunction with the Justice Department and the FBI.

While the operation was run by a few dozen officers under Bush, it has since received an infusion of cash from the Obama administration, becoming a full-time project staffed by more than 200.

As WND reported, tucked away inside Obama's stimulus was $10 million in funding for the ATF's Project Gunrunner. This is in addition to $11 million already provided to the program under Obama, and another $12 million more requested by the White House for the end of this year.

Project Gunrunner is purportedly meant to stop the sale and export of U.S. guns to Mexico by denying Mexican drug cartels firearms. However, the project allegedly has resulted in allowing thousands of guns to cross into Mexico, where many of the weapons currently are untraceable and in the hands of Mexican criminals.

The same guns run into Mexico under the Project Gunrunner scheme reportedly have been recovered from crime scenes in Arizona and throughout Mexico.

One gun, reportedly recovered at the scene, is allegedly the weapon used to murder Customs and Border Protection Agent Brian Terry on Dec. 14, 2010.

The entire project revolves around tracing the U.S. guns that are allowed into Mexico using the eTrace system. eTrace does not electronically tag any of the guns. It simply serves as an online database that contains all registered information for each gun, including the personal information for all registered owners as well as whether law enforcement has information the gun was ever used in a crime. In essence, eTrace is a giant firearms monitoring database.

Once a gun enters the black market, the system cannot provide future information on a firearm unless the weapon is retrieved in a crime or once again enters into official registration.

eTrace was thought to have been advantageous to Project Gunrunner because it could provide information on "straw purchases," meaning proxies who legally purchase a gun for a known criminal.

The ATF repeatedly has stated its tracing system was not designed to collect statistics. Still, the agency used information it claimed to have garnered from Project Gunrunner to release what turned out to be highly misleading information about U.S. guns.

Who will be held accountable?

Project Gunrunner and its various inceptions, including "Operation Fast and Furious," are coming under newfound scrutiny with a public investigation headed by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Obama himself responded to the controversy in an interview with a Spanish-language television station in which he stated someone must take the fall.

"There may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made. If that's the case, then we'll find out and we'll hold someone accountable," he told Univision TV.

Acting ATF director Kenneth Melson told Issa in an emergency meeting on July 4 when he first learned about Border Agent Terry's murder and the scheme he was "sick to my stomach."

Melson reportedly told Issa that those who ran the controversial project at the ATF were reassigned, but that he couldn't tell Congress the reason for the reassignments.

Issa followed up with a letter accusing the Justice Department, headed by Eric Holder, of obstructing his investigation.

"If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand," Issa wrote. "That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation."

In subsequent testimony before Issa's committee this past week, Holder stated under oath that he only learned about the gunrunning project "in the last few weeks."

However, BigGovernment.com found a 2009 speech by Holder on the Department of Justice's own website in which Holder boasts about "Project Gunrunner."

Stated Holder in 2009: "Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels. My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion. DHS is making similar commitments, as Secretary Napolitano will detail."


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