Email Confirms ‘Gunwalker’ Known Throughout Justice Department
Attorney General Holder's credibility takes another hit.
July 6, 2011 - 8:20 am - by Bob Owens

An email cited in Senator Charles Grassley’s testimony in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Operation Fast and Furious indicates that knowledge of the program was spread across the highest levels of the Justice Department. This lends even greater suspicion to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s claim that he knew nothing about the program until well after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed.

The October 27, 2009 email from ATF Phoenix Field Division Special Agent in Charge (SAC) William Newell regarded a Southwest Border Strategy Group meeting that focused on Fast and Furious. It contained a laundry list of high ranking Justice Department officials that attended the meeting, including:

Assistant Attorney General (Criminal Division) Lanny Breuer,
Kenneth Melson, Acting Director, ATF
William Hoover, Acting Deputy Director, ATF
Michele Leonhart, Administrator, DEA
Robert Mueller, Director FBI

Four other Justice Department directors or their representatives came from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), Bureau of Prisons (BOP), U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), and the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA). The chair of the Attorney Generals Advisory Committee (AGAC) also attended the session. Their names were redacted in the released document. U.S. attorneys for all four southwest border states also attended.

Operation Fast and Furious, now known to many by the more accurate name of “Gunwalker,â€