CBS News Lead Story: ATF Whistleblower Alleges Deep Corrupti
CBS News lead story--ATF whistleblower alleges deep corruption
* March 4th, 2011 3:07 pm ET
On the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric last evening, the lead story focused on a whistleblower within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (the ATF) who alleges deep corruption within the agency. A plethora of charges were made involving illegal gun smuggling into Mexico and phony straw purchases of firearms at a gun store in Phoenix.
In previous reports it was noted that the ATF had engaged in placing U.S. guns into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels and bribing at least one gun store owner to allow illegal purchases of firearms by ATF agents--firearms that would then be 'walked' into Mexico.
U.S. Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has launched an investigation into the allegations. CBS interviewed Grassley as part of the segment last evening. But, as Grassley reported during the inteview, requests for information and documents from the Department of Justice, which oversees the ATF, have been met with stonewalling.
According to the whisteblower interviewed by CBS, supervisors and others higher up in the chain of command at the ATF were warned repeatedly about the fact that the guns-to-Mexico scheme was illegal. The official response of the ATF and the Holder Justcie Department, however, is that the entire sordid affair never happened.
Further, the CBS Report focused exclusively on the assumed official explanation for the gun running scheme made by concerned ATF agents rather than delving deeper into more sinister motives. For example, CBS never once questioned the assertion that agents made straw purchases at gun stores and ran guns into Mexico in order to trace the firearms and locate and identify Mexican drug cartels.
The questionable nature of such an explanation is highlighted by the fact that once the guns wound up in the hands of criminals in Mexico, nothing was done to address the problem. No action was taken by the ATF, the DOJ, or any other federal agency to stem the tide of the illegal and deadly activity of the cartels.
And this leads to the original allegation made by investigative reporters who first broke the story--the ATF engaged in a deliberate and sytematic effort to place guns into the hands of the cartels in order to pad statistics that supposedly 'prove' that the vast majority of firearms being used by Mexican criminals came directly from the U.S. In addition, the illegal straw purchases of firearms at gun stores were allegedly used to 'prove' that firearms dealers are breaking the law and must be more closely scrutinized.
As National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea reports, no sooner had CBS lead its broadcast with the story of corruption than the ATF launched into a frantic effort at damage control and to spin the story in their favor. But Senator Grassley apparently has no intention of letting up on the pressure as he persists in demanding that the Holder Justice Department provide necessary information.
http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in ... z1FxozHDpS
