Thread: ATF tries to block whistleblowing agent’s ‘Fast and Furious’ book

By John Solomon
The Washington Times
Sunday, October 6, 2013


The Justice Department is seeking the dismissal of a House lawsuit demanding that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. produce records on Operation Fast and Furious. President Obama has invoked executive privilege in the matter. (Associated Press)

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is blocking the main whistleblower in the Fast and Furious case from publishing a book for pay, claiming his retelling of the Mexico "gun-walking" scandal will hurt morale inside the embattled law enforcement agency, according to documents obtained by The Washington Times.

ATF's dispute with Special Agent John Dodson is setting up a First Amendment showdown that is poised to bring together liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and conservatives in Congress who have championed Mr. Dodson's protection as a whistleblower.

The ACLU is slated to become involved in the case Monday, informing ATF it is representing Mr. Dodson and filing a formal protest to the decision to reject his request to publish the already written book, sources told The Times, speaking only on the condition of anonymity.

The battle also could have repercussions on Capitol Hill, where the two lead investigators who helped uncover the Fast and Furious scandal, Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, Calif. Republican, had written a foreword to the book, the sources said.

ATF officials declined Sunday night to discuss Mr. Dodson's specific matter, citing personnel privacy. But the officials said it was possible for an agent to be rejected for publishing a book for pay but get permission to publish it for free. No manuscript for any Fast and Furious book has received approval for unpaid publication, however, the officials said.

Mr. Dodson was the first ATF special agent to go public in 2011 with allegations that his supervisors had authorized the flow of semi-automatic weapons into Mexico instead of interdicting them, touching off a scandal that toppled most of the top leadership of ATF in Washington and Phoenix. The controversy also led to angry recriminations in Mexico, which dealt with a wave of violent crime linked to the weapons, and high-profile congressional hearings that embarrassed the Obama administration.

Mr. Dodson began penning a book late last year about his role as the central whistleblower in the case and in June sought formal permission for outside employment that would allow him to engage a publisher and publish the book.

Documents show that one of Mr. Dodson's supervisors in Arizona, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Carlos Canino, rejected his request July 19 and was backed in the decision by the agent in charge of the office, Thomas G. Atteberry, four days later.

Their rejection made no claims that the book would release sensitive or classified information or compromise ongoing law enforcement proceedings.

Rather, the supervisors offered a different reason for their decision. "This would have a negative impact on morale in the Phoenix [Field Division] and would have a detrimental effect on our relationships with DEA and FBI."

The ATF general counsel's office subsequently sanctioned the decision, all but killing the book project.

"An employee's supervisory chain may disapprove any outside employment request for any reason, at any supervisory level," ATF attorney Greg Serres wrote Mr. Dodson on Aug. 29, underlining the word "any" for emphasis. "The Office of Chief Counsel cannot approve outside employment requests in lieu of the supervisory chain's disapproval.

"Therefore, your request to engage in outside employment is denied," he said.

Separately, a top ATF official has been reviewing Mr. Dodson's manuscript for any concerns about sensitive or classified information, potentially leaving open the possibility a process by which it could be published for free, a senior law enforcement official told The Times.

The gun-walking strategy — part of an undercover case called Fast and Furious — violated ATF's long-standing policy to interdict weapons from straw buyers.

In all, ATF officials permitted more than 1,700 semi-automatic weapons to flow through the hands of straw buyers for the Mexican cartels, with many crossing the border.

Senior ATF officials hoped to trace the guns to crimes, then make a bigger case against the Mexican drug lords. The strategy, however, backfired when hundreds of the weapons began showing up at crime scenes on both sides of the border, including at the December 2010 murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

The Justice Department initially denied guns knowingly had been allowed to flow across the border, then months later reversed course and admitted the tactic had been used for more than a year. The change in story led to allegations of a cover-up.

The revelations exploded into public in spring 2011, catapulting Mr. Dodson and other ATF field agents who had objected into dual investigations by Congress and the Justice Department inspector general.

President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. both claimed they knew nothing about the strategy until the controversy erupted, but the president has invoked executive privilege to block Congress from seeing certain documents, thus thwarting the completion of that probe. A court recently ruled in favor of Congress in the ongoing legal dispute.

Both the congressional and inspector general investigations concluded that the gun-walking tactics were poorly conceived and put lives in jeopardy. The fallout forced the ouster of numerous top officials, including the U.S. attorney in Phoenix, Dennis Burke, and the acting director of the ATF, Kenneth Melson.

The ATF, under new director B. Todd Jones, says it has imposed sweeping procedures to ensure gun-walking doesn't occur in future cases.

The book dispute with Mr. Dodson, however, is not the first First Amendment controversy to erupt in the aftermath of the scandal.

Last year, Mr. Jones raised alarm in Congress and inside his own agency when he released a videotaped message that warned agencies that there would be "consequences" if agents blew the whistle on wrongdoing outside their chain of command.

The message led to claims that whistleblowing would be chilled, and ATF subsequently clarified Mr. Jones' remarks to emphasize that the agency would not interfere with legitimate whistleblowing activities.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-fast-and-fur/

OP/ED WSJ|

10/06/2013
Larry Bell

Will Fast And Furious Justice Finally Befall Eric Holder?



U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder testifies during a Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing about the controversial the 'Operation Fast and Furious' gun running program. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)


Serial abuses of justice by America’s top law enforcement official should be enough to make just about any tinhorn banana republic dictator blush. Yet regarding any embarrassment evidenced by the leader of the free world… not so much. Despite the fact that our attorney general has been indicted for contempt of Congress on both felony and civil charges, has repeatedly lied under oath, and has routinely turned a blind eye to laws that he is duty-bound to enforce, Mr. Holder continues to serve at the behest of his presidential mentor. At least he has so far.

Apparently not so very much of that promised transparency after all:

On September 30, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman turned down Holder’s Justice Department request to dismiss a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee lawsuit seeking “Operation Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal documents hidden by the self-proclaimed“most transparent administration in history”.

Up until now, Obama and company have refused to do so after the president asserted executive privilege. Their position argued that the oversight committee’s demand for information had been settled by a February 4, 2011 letter to Congress in which Assistant Attorney General Ron Welch stated that“the allegation that ATF ‘sanctioned’ or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of weapons…is false”. DOJ pleaded that since their letter contended that they had done nothing wrong, and that there was nothing more to see following its issuance, the matter should be settled. Congress should just accept their word… get over it… move on.

Call them a disagreeable lot, but the House oversight committee chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) wasn’t sufficiently trusting to do that. After they sued to obtain the outstanding records, the administration filed for dismissal. They maintained that if the lawsuit were allowed to proceed, every new document request would be unjustifiably subject to litigation.

But then a pesky problem arose. It seems that that February 4 letter that was supposed to end the House committee inquiry was…gasp…untruthful after all. As Deputy Attorney General James Cole was compelled to admit in another letter to Congress: “Facts have come to light during the course of this investigation that indicate the Feb. 4 letter contains inaccuracies.”

“Inaccuracies”? That’s one way to put it. Welch had contended that The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.” Another document dump at the same time confirmed what agent testimony and other information had already shown… that the letter, and almost everything in it, was a complete fabrication. It was well known at the time that Fast and Furious was much more than simply a “botched” but well-intentioned operation in which the government simply “lost track” of thousands of weapons that eventually wound up in the hands of the Sinaloa cartel. Instead, it was actually intended to let guns be delivered to Mexican drug cartels.

As reported by Fox News at the time, ATF Agent John Dodson was provided with a letter allowing him to purchase semi-automatic weapons from federal firearms dealers without filling out required forms and was ordered to do so. Dodson then sold the guns to illegal buyers who took them to a stash house. Dodson’s request for 24-hour surveillance was disapproved, and he and his surveillance team were ordered to stand down. Violating those orders, Dodson stayed behind. A week later, when a vehicle showed up to transfer the weapons to their ultimate destination, he called for an interdiction team to move in, seize the weapons and arrest the traffickers. Again, his request was refused, and the guns disappeared without surveillance.

Appearing before Issa’s committee, Dodson testified: “Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals — this was the plan. It was so mandated.”

On May 3, 2011, three months after the Feb. 4 letter, the attorney general was asked when he first heard of “Operation Fast and Furious”. In response, hefalsely testified to Congress: “I’m not sure the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.” Yet the head of the National Drug Intelligence Center, Michael Walther, had clearly informed Holder about Fast and Furious in a July 2010 memo, and subsequent revelations show he knew all along. This being the case, he obviously did nothing to stop the illegal operation.

Tragically, two of the weapons linked to Fast and Furious were recovered from the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2011 where he had been shot by illegal immigrants who were smuggling drugs. Two other of those weapons were found at the scene of the murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico on February 15, 2011. Three more turned up at a violent crime location in Mexico where a local police chief and his bodyguard were killed by cartel members.

In June 2012, following a 16-month investigation, the House of Representatives voted to hold Holder in Contempt of Congress for his continued refusal to produce requested documents about the scandal. He was the first-ever sitting Cabinet member to be held in contempt…including both criminal and civil violations.

Obama’s grant of the DOJ’s 11th -hour request to hide the sought-after documents was issued on the eve of that vote. Yet it was not made known to Congress until just before the scheduled hearing and vote Issa received a letter from Deputy AG Cole stating : “I write now to inform you that the president has asserted executive privilege over the relevant post-Feb. 4, 2011 documents.” Remarkably (or perhaps not), it reportedly wasn’t mentioned during a last-minute meeting between Issa and Holder on that evening before.

Judge Jackson’s recent finding rejected the White House argument that the House oversight committee lawsuit to obtain documents would somehow threaten the separation between branches of government and inundate the courts with litigation in subsequent disputes. While clarifying that she wasn’t ruling on the merits of the lawsuit, she disagreed with arguments offered for dismissal. Her decision stated: “The court rejects the notion that merely hearing this dispute between the branches would undermine the foundation of our government, or that it would lead to the abandonment of all negotiation and accommodation in the future, leaving the courts deluged with subpoena enforcement actions.”

On the other hand, some additional subpoenas are probably long overdue:

President Obama has steadfastly retained an individual in America’s top law enforcement role who has made other false statements under oath to Congress. Holder previously lied to Congress claiming “decisions made in the New Black Panther Party case were made by career attorneys in the department.” In reality, his Associate A.G. Thomas Perrelli, an Obama political appointee, had overruled a unanimous recommendation for prosecution by DOJ attorneys.

The president stood by Attorney General Holder after he was caught once again lying to Congress about knowing about his DOJ secretly subpoenaing personal phone records and emails in a trumped-up criminal co-conspirator information leak charge against Fox News reporter James Rosen. This action was in direct contravention of the First Amendment. The warrant also approved of tracking Rosen’s movements into and outside the State Department. As it turned out, Holder had personally signed off on that warrant. DOJ then unsuccessfully “shopped it around” to two judges before finding a third who would approve it without allowing Rosen to be notified as required.

The mainstream media finally began to show real signs of concern about DOJ’s breaches of constitutional rights when, during the same month, the AP learned that the DOJ had secretly collected phone records of some of its own reporters and editors. Here, the DOJ chose to avoid the court system altogether by serving subpoenas directly upon phone companies without telling the AP. They did so in exception to their own internal policy of notifying a media company in advance of a subpoena because doing so “would pose a substantial threat to the investigation.”

The attorney general has also failed to enforce legally mandated federal laws. Most recently, he directed federal prosecutors to conceal amounts of drugs seized during an arrest in order to circumvent mandatory minimum sentences set by Congress in 1986.

The AG has violated legally established voting rights and immigration policy decisions as well. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Eric Holder that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act is“unconstitutional”, and that “the formula can no longer be used as a basis for subjecting jurisdiction to preclearance”. But instead of complying with that ruling, Holder’s Justice Department filed suit ordering Texas to submit to preclearance in defiance of Congress’ authority to legislate. DOJ has ignored the Supreme Court’s authority to rule on the constitutionality of the law as well.

Undaunted by the Tenth Amendment which makes explicit the idea that the federal government is limited to only those powers granted in the Constitution, Holder’s DOJ is now once again suing Texas in an attempt to overturn state voter ID laws established to ensure election integrity. In response to Holder’s claim that such laws are racist, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott responded: “Voter IDs have nothing to do with race, and they are free to anyone who needs one.” Abbott also said: “Eric Holder’s outrageous claim that voter ID is a racist plot to disenfranchise minority voters is gutter politics and is offensive to the overwhelming majority of Texans of all races who support this ballot integrity measure.”

There can be no doubt that the Holder DOJ Texas suit to overturn state voting integrity safeguards is only the beginning of a national plan. About 20 states have photo-ID laws on the books or are in the process of implementing them. And by all appearances, DOJ is not alone in pursuing that agenda. The latest Texas litigation came on the heels of the harassment of True the Vote (TTV) founder Catherine Engelbrecht by the IRS, the BATF, and OSHA. As discussed in my May 30 article, this is in addition to separate IRS targeting of TTV and Engelbrecht’s other King Street Patriots non-profit for tax-exempt status interference.

Last year the Obama administration announced that it will stop deporting illegal immigrants under the age of 30 in a “deferred action” policy to circumvent immigration laws. That was after Congress rejected a similar measure about a year earlier. Since then, more than 500,000 illegals have received the deferment, while only 20,000 have been rejected. Meanwhile, law-abiding applicants must wait in line.

In July 2010, the Justice Department sued Arizona for a law requiring state officials to enforce federal immigration laws. Yet attacking a state for upholding federal law would again seem to violate the 10th Amendmentwhich says “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Arizona didn’t add any new laws. It simply gave local authorities the power to enforce federal responsibilities that were being neglected; failures which were impacting the security and well-being of its citizens. Article 4.4 clearly states that the U.S. shall protect states from invasion. Nothing in the Constitution prohibits states from assisting in enforcing federal laws. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has openly violated federal laws it is supposed to enforce, including allowing municipalities to declare immunity from those laws as “sanctuary cities”. Protecting sovereign borders is a federal responsibility, not an option.

As presumed legal scholars, President Obama and Eric Holder must be aware that our nation’s founding document established three co-equal branches of government, an Executive Branch, a Congress with legislative responsibility, and a Supreme Court with top judicial authority. Article 2, Section 3, Clause 5 of that marvelous document requires that the president “…shall take care that the Laws be carefully executed.”

A central and sustaining purpose of our Constitution is to preserve individual liberties and restrain government from grabbing unlimited power. While the president has authority to check the Legislative Branch by recommending legislation to be passed by Congress, or through presidential veto, neither he/she or the attorney general are permitted to legislate through executive fiat or pick which parts of the law to comply with or decline. Above all, their roles in the highest legal offices in our land are to set lofty standards that exemplify the wisdom of our laws and the character of our system of justice.
Our ancestors, current citizens and future generations deserve far better examples. The families and friends of slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata must certainly agree.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybel...eric-holder/2/

bttt

Added first article to the Homepage:
http://www.alipac.us/content.php?r=2...us’-book

October 7, 2013
Jim Kouri
examiner.com

A leading government watchdog on Monday jumped into the Operation Fast and Furious controversy by taking up the cause of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) special agent who penned an expose` of the ATF's "gun-walking" strategy.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the group's officials sent a biting letter defending Special Agent John Dodson, whom they claim is a whistleblower whose book will blow the lid off the alleged ATF and White House coverup of a flawed, perhaps illegal, government program.

There are millions of Americans who believe that ATF gun-smuggling operation resulted in at least two American law enforcement officials being killed -- Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Jaime Zapata -- as well as hundreds of Mexican citizens.

Dodson's book is expected to give an insider's view of the actual Operation Fast and Furious fiasco as well as the intense coverup in the aftermath of the ATF's snafu.

Special Agent Dodson is credited with revealing to CBS News in 2011 that the ATF ran an operation allowing more than 2,000 firearms to go across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hands of narco-terrorists who then used the guns in a number of homicides and shootings, including the Dec. 14, 2010 murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Since Terry killing, GOP lawmakers in congress led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., begged and threatened the Obama Administration over the scandal, demanding documents and conducting hearings.

Now Dodson is seeking the publication of his tell-all book, to be titled “The Unarmed Truth”. However, the ATF told Dodson that he cannot publish anything about Operation Fast and Furious.

Most federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies demand that employees must first submit manuscripts to their superiors for review in order to protect government secrets that if leaked out may place other agents in danger or reveal classified operations.

According to Dodson, he received a memorandum from an ATF official stating that the book “would have a negative impact on morale in the Phoenix Field Division.”

The ACLU in its letter to the ATF asserts that the agency's attempt to block the publication of Dodson's book was an infringement of his First Amendment rights.

According to the ACLU letter, the ATF denied the author's request to try to publish a book about his personal experiences in Operation Fast and Furious based on the prediction that the book's publication would have "a negative impact on morale in the Phoenix (Field Division) and would have a detrimental" impact on ATF relationships with other federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies such as the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency.

http://www.examiner.com/article/aclu...-whistleblower

Family of Brian Terry Responds to ATF Censorship of Fast and Furious Whistleblower John Dodson

Katie Pavlich | Oct 08, 2013
townhall.com



Early Monday morning it was revealed supervisors within the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms have censored whistleblower John Dodson by denying an outside work application to publish a book about Operation Fast and Furious. The family of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry is expressing their support for Dodson and want his book to be published.

"The family of slain U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry stands behind ATF whistleblower John Dodson and supports his attempts to publish his manuscript pertaining to the flawed gun trafficking investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious. Recently, ATF officials told Dodson that he was prohibited from releasing his memoir because it would have a negative impact on morale in the Phoenix office of the ATF and would have a detrimental effect on ATF’s relationships with the DEA and the FBI. Do we really need to remind ATF leadership that the men that killed Brian Terry were carrying weapons supplied to them by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious, an investigation that both President Obama and Attorney General Holder have publicly called ill-conceived? This latest incident reignites concerns that ATF leadership is again seeking to avoid responsibility for the deadly errors made in allowing the flawed gun walking tactics," President of the Brian Terry Foundation Ralph Terry said in a statement. "This should not be an issue of what some in ATF call “an opportunity for Dodson to get rich” rather it should be about accountability and transparency. ATF leadership has yet another opportunity to close an ugly chapter in its history by letting John Dodson publish his memoirs and tell the story of Operation Fast and Furious with the goal of never repeating the same mistakes. The Terry family and the American public deserve to hear what Dodson has to say. They also need to know that ATF has learned from its mistakes."

From September 2009-December 2010, ATF knowingly allowed thousands of high powered firearms to be illegally purchased in the United States and transferred to narco-terrorists in Mexico. Weapons from Operation Fast and Furious were left at Agent Terry's murder scene in 2010 after a firefight with an illegal rip crew working for Mexican cartels.

Newly minted ATF Director Todd B. Jones, who has been accused of whistleblower retaliation in the past, is being urged to allow Dodson to publish his manuscript in order to prove ATF no longer has anything to hide.

"The Terry family urges new ATF Director Todd B. Jones to reconsider his agency’s position and allow Dodson to publish his manuscript. It’s important that Director Jones shows that ATF has nothing to hide in the aftermath of Operation Fast and Furious, and that his agency is not involved in any kind of retaliation against Special Agent Dodson for his whistleblower actions which ultimately exposed and stopped the tactics of gun walking," Terry said. "Many Americans believe that ATF and DOJ have hidden certain aspects of the ill-conceived gun trafficking investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious that resulted in the death of Brian Terry; allowing the publication of John Dodson’s manuscript would go a long way in showing that ATF has nothing to hide."

The ACLU has sent a letter to ATF requesting Dodson's application to publish his manuscript be approved and asks that ATF revise its "outside work" policies in order to meet constitutional standards. According to ACLU attorneys, current ATF policies about outside work violate the First Amendment, whistleblower protections and Supreme Court precedent.

http://oneoldvet.com/

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepa...odson-n1719178