Hillary Also on Hot Seat Over Fast & Furious

Just a reminder...Fast and Furious happened under Hillary's watch at State.

Hillary Also on Hot Seat Over Fast & Furious

Category: GOA News

Published: Monday, 17 October 2011 20:28 Written by John Velleco

Holder Under Fire for Role in Fast & Furious
Will Subpoenas for Hillary Clinton and Janet Napolitano be Next?

The recent move by Congressman Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, to subpoena scores of documents from Attorney General Eric Holder regarding the Fast and Furious debacle hardly comes as a surprise.

The testimony before the Oversight committee by Holder and numerous officials from the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, and other federal agencies was a clinic on obfuscation -- and it left Issa with little choice.

“It’s time we know the whole truth,” Issa said of this latest development in the widening scandal. “The documents this subpoena demands will provide answers to questions that Justice officials have tried to avoid since this investigation began eight months ago.”

The California Republican is not a lawyer by profession, but Issa, along with his relatively small staff, has managed to go toe-to-toe with the army of lawyers spread across the federal government.

Holder: Point man on guns

Issa’s focus on the Attorney General is well-placed. Holder became the point man on gun control during his stint with the Clintonadministration and was an obvious choice to help navigate the Obama administration through the turbulent waters of gun control.

But he was not alone. Another figure, whose name is conspicuously absent in much of the current debate over Fast and Furious, is also a leader on the gun control issue: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

From the start, Obama, Clinton, Holder and another cabinet member, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, were itching to make headway on restricting guns, but how could that be done without exacting an unacceptable political price?
For that, the foursome looked south. With violence increasing along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2009, the Obama administration found the perfect scapegoat.

Holder was the first to test the waters. In a February 25, 2009 press conference, Holder spoke for the new administration:
There are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons. I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico at a minimum.

Holder was quickly repudiated by Democrats in Congress, more than 60 of whom said in a letter that a renewal of the gun ban was a non-starter, and Holder was forced to back away from his comments.

The 90% Myth

A month later, as she embarked on her first trip to Mexico as Secretary of State, Clinton told CBS news that, “The guns that are used by the drug cartels against the police and the military, 90 percent of them come from America.”

Clinton’s use of the 90% number sent honest reporters looking for verification. Instead, the number was debunked within days. Still, the administration clung tenaciously to the 90% claim.

The following month, in April 2009, speaking at a joint press conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama said:

"This war is being waged with guns purchased not here, but in the United States. More than 90 percent of the guns recovered inMexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border."

Incriminating March 2009 press briefing

Interestingly, the day before Clinton went to Mexico in March, no mention was made of any gun ban or the alleged 90% number at a press briefing on the problem of violence in Mexico held at the White House by Napolitano, Deputy Attorney General David Ogden and Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg (both the number two men in their respective departments).

Ogden spoke in broad terms, noting that, “Attorney General Holder and I are committed to taking advantage of all Department resources and those of associated agencies to target the Mexican cartels.”

Ogden also detailed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) efforts “to fortify its Project Gunnrunner, which is aimed at disrupting arms trafficking between the United States and Mexico.”

From Gunrunner to Fast and Furious

Project Gunrunner was the umbrella under which Operation Fast and Furious, an ATF brainchild in which thousands of firearms were allowed to walk into the hands of Mexico’s most dangerous drug cartels, was developed.

On its face, the intent of Fast and Furious was to allow straw purchasers to illegally buy guns in the U.S. and transfer the weapons to cartel members, with authorities following the guns up the criminal supply chain to bring down the cartels.

But that never happened. Over the protests of U.S. gun dealers and rank-and-file ATF agents, thousands of guns were allowed to be purchased and to simply “walk” across the border. ATF never knew exactly where the guns would end up, and in reality the agency became a supplier of firearms to violent drug cartels.

Subsequently, Fast and Furious firearms were found at the murder scenes of two U.S. government agents as well as over 150 Mexican law enforcement officers. American and Mexican police were killed by guns furnished by the U.S. government and paid for by taxpayers.

While Fast and Furious was not specifically mentioned at the press briefing (it would begin operating later in the year), that meeting at the White house shows that the heads of at least three departments of the federal government were intensely aware of what was happening along the border at the very beginning of the Obama administration.

One by one, however, Obama, Holder, Napolitano and Clinton (plus a host of lower level officials) have denied any knowledge of Fast and Furious prior to 2011.

Rep. Issa is hot on the trail of Holder, thanks to a string of incriminating emails and other evidence. But all four were huddled around the border in early 2009, and all four made trips to Mexico in March-April of that year.

Subpoenas for Clinton, Napolitano?

Dissecting what people in the highest levels of government knew and when they knew it leads only to troubling conclusions. Either they all have lied, under oath or in public comments, about their knowledge of Fast and Furious.

Or there exists an unbelievable level of incompetence at the State Department (for not being aware of thousands of guns being sent to violent gangs in another country), at Homeland Security (which claims no knowledge of guns being allowed to walk across a border which falls under its jurisdiction to control) and at the Justice Department (with high-level officials claiming no knowledge of a multi-million dollar operation occurring right under its nose).

Rep. Issa’s 22-point subpoena of documents related to Holder will pull on strings that could unravel a much wider network of corruption. The available evidence strongly suggests that Holder lied to Congress about his knowledge of Fast and Furious. If that’s the case, while it may not be proof positive that the heads of other departments lied as well, it will at least lead Issa’s investigation to take a much closer look at the roles of Clinton and Napolitano.

And even if Holder and the rest lose their jobs, it shouldn’t end there. Guns were illegally run into Mexico, where they could be “found” by Mexican police and traced back to the U.S. Was this done, as some former ATF agents suggest, to pad statistics in order to justify the 90% number and to serve as a rallying cry for a reinstatement of the semi-auto ban? If so, that is criminal behavior, made infinitely worse by the fact that many innocent people have died as a result.

https://www.gunowners.org/ff10172011.htm

Too bad to check: Project Gunrunner was funded by … the stimulus

POSTED AT 9:30 PM ON JULY 7, 2011
BY ALLAHPUNDIT

I really did think it was too bad to check, despite posts about it at PJM, Weasel Zippers, andFree Republic. But I checked. You’ll find complete PDF and text versions of the final stimulus bill right here. Scroll down to page 16 (of 407!) in the PDF version and behold:

For an additional amount for ‘‘State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance’’, $40,000,000, for competitive grants to provide assistance and equipment to local law enforcement along the Southern border and in High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas to combat criminal narcotics activity stemming from the Southern border, of which $10,000,000 shall be transferred to ‘‘Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Salaries and Expenses’’ for the ATF Project Gunrunner.

And to think, you guys say the stimulus didn’t produce anything. It produced guns for Mexican drug cartels, didn’t it? Says Ben Domenech, in a stroke of perfect black humor: “Shovel ready.”

Actually, as Ed reminds me via e-mail, this is old news. The boss emeritus was all over the stimulus angle to Gunrunner back in March. But since only recently has this story really begun to bubble, replete with growing big-media interest, stuff we already knew is becoming stuff we forgot and then remembered and became horrified at all over again. Rather than have me bore you here, then, take five minutes and read Michelle’s post. The One was asked about Operation Fast and Furious at the time — which is under the umbrella of Gunrunner — and insisted that neither he nor Holder authorized it. In that case, I’m really looking forward to finding out which member(s) of Congress decided to earmark $10 million for Gunrunner and what they thought would be done with the money. Someone in the executive branch must have requested the funding for the ATF. Who?

See what happens when Congress doesn’t read the bills?

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/07/0...-the-stimulus/

The Bones of Fast and Furious: Hillary Clinton Deep In It?

by Maggie •
June 25, 2012

What if Hillary Clinton and a couple of deputies in the State Department, The National Security Council, Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the White House, and maybe Senators Durbin and Feinstein were all complicit in Fast and Furious? What if Hillary led the strategic planning? What if the administration wanted to restrict our Second Amendment rights and both she and Barack Obama told us that 90% of the weapons used in crimes in Mexico came from the United States – after Durbin and Feinstein had already set the mood for 90%? What if that statistic was more like 17% – and at least nowhere near 90% or 80% or 70%, they knew it, but they continued the lie? What if Fast and Furious was devised to walk sufficient weapons into Mexico to meet their 90% goal? What if that is the framework, the whole being of Fast and Furious?

Mike Vanderboegh at Sipsey Street Irregulars is the force behind peeling back the layers of Fast and Furious, of government tyranny and the Second Amendment. You’ll have to spend some time at Sipsey Street and look though his massive Fast and Furious archives there and make your own determination about the worth of his information, but if true, the bones of the story are below:

The Examiner, October 7, 2011:

As previously reported, the meme parroted by Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano, and Hillary Clinton concerning the number of American guns used by criminals in Mexico was patently false, and they knew it was false. This is precisely why the Obama Administration concocted the scheme in the first place. If the facts do not prove that 90% of the guns come from the States, then make sure those numbers can be proved correct by walking the guns straight across the southern border directly into the hands of criminals.

Thus, the State Department, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the ATF, the FBI, ICE, and a host of other federal agencies went to work to send thousands of guns across the border, deliberately placing them in the hands of the cartels…

One month after Hillary’s trip to Mexico, Barack Obama visited with Mexican President Calderon, where he stated once again,

“This war is being waged with guns purchased not here, but in the United States. More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border.”

This was a blatant, barefaced lie.

The much discussed (this past week) press conference of March 24, 2009 happens. Fast and Furious is publicly announced. The issue was important to the President…directed by the President…
.
March 25, 2009, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff asked Holder why he is backing off of an assault weapons ban. The belief is that Holder held off until Fast and Furious could get the guns inside Mexico before hammering gun sellers.

After fierce resistance from the gun lobby and its allies in Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder has dialed back talk about reimposing a federal assault weapons ban to help curb the spiraling violence in Mexico.

Mike Vanderboegh at Sipsey Street Irregulars – October 7, 2011:

It is now the morning of 26 March 2009. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Mexico City. In an interview recorded the day before with Lara Logan, Clinton says,

“We have to recognize and accept that the demand for drugs from the United States drives them north, and the guns that are used by the drug cartels against the police and the military, 90 percent of them come from America.”…

The next month, President Barack Obama is in Mexico City and at a joint press conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, repeats the same meme:

“This war is being waged with guns purchased not here, but in the United States. More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border.”

He also says ‘I have not backed off’ on a new assault weapons ban…

Isikoff, Clinton and Obama were simply parroting a meme begun by notoriously anti-firearm Senators Dick Durbin and Dianne Feinstein during a 17 March congressional hearing.

Durbin said: “According to ATF [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives], more than 90 percent of the guns seized after raids or shootings in Mexico have been traced right here to the United States of America.”

Feinstein added: “It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico used to shoot judges, police officers, mayors, kidnap innocent people and do terrible things come from the United States, and I think we must put a stop to that.”

The “90 percent” allegation was dutifully reported as fact by a whole host of news organizations including the Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC and the Chicago Tribune.

Sipsey Street Irregulars, in the article linked and quoted above, reports that Fox News refuted the 90% stat and “put it closer to 17%.” The 17% was refuted of course and bounced back and forth between 80% and 70%. Details here.

Sipsey Street Irregulars – October 10, 2011 (read the details of Hillary’s State Department enablers here):

…What was the importance of insisting that it was 90 percent, 80 percent, or finally 70 percent? Would such statistics make any difference to the law enforcement tactics necessary to curtail them? No…
Recall what the whistleblower ATF agents told us right after this scandal broke in the wake of the death of Brian Terry: “ATF source confirms ‘walking’ guns to Mexico to ‘pad’ statistics.”

In other words, to accomplish the goal of an assault weapon ban, or other assaults on the Second Amendment that the administration lusted for, American guns, in huge quantities had to be found inside Mexico…so we walked them there.

Indeed, our sources say, Hillary was obsessed with defending the 90 percent meme. There was a pervasive sense at the highest levels of the White House, State, Justice and in DHS that the Mexican agony could provide domestic opportunities for Rahm Emanuel’s dictum: “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” the sources say.

At the strategic level, this meant that there were increasing demands for “better statistics.” In other words, if the 90 percent meme was not provable it must be because enough statistics of the “right” sort were not being gathered. Again, the comparison with Vietnam War body counts was striking, say the sources. The demand this time though, as noted above in Part 2, was for statistics indicating defeat, not victory.

Discussions at the White House and within the State Department and DOJ regarding gunwalking were referred to as “strategy meetings on Mexico and the problem of drug and gun trafficking.” James Steinberg from State often represented Hillary at meetings, a fact that she attested to, saying ”

…”Steinberg had been a “fixture” at a meetings with the National Security Council (NSC) and frequently represented the US State Department at the White House.”

The Examiner (see the first link above):

That statement is key. Hillary herself stayed out of all meetings dealing with strategy…Hillary’s absence would give the impression that she had no connection to the scheme while making sure that her views were represented by Steinberg and Shapiro, both of whom were fully complicit with the details that developed concerning how to pad statistics on U.S. guns in Mexico…

Padding the numbers of weapons that were making their way into Mexico had to be done to justify (in their sick and deviant public service minds) a heavier thumb on gun control. “Walking” the guns had to be done.

Americans, both Republicans and Democrats alike, don’t like politicians messing with the Second Amendment, but these Progressives thought they had a chance to engineer a scenario that would render us impotent. Instead, they killed Border Agent Brian Terry and maybe ICE Agent Jaime Zapata, 200-300 Mexican nationals with more deaths expected.

A Twitter story: Rep. Darrell Issa had a television interview with Jake Tapper who was sitting in for George Stephanopoulous. Issa told Tapper that emails within the ATF discussed using Fast and Furious for an assault weapons ban. Tapper intimated that wasn’t enough to prove stricter gun laws were the purpose of Fast and Furious. Issa said (paraphrasing) we don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg.

I tweeted the following to Tapper:

Maggie Thornton ‏@maggiesnotebook
@JakeTapper Read the docs re: #FastandFurious and 2nd Amendment. Issa: Emails “we can use this” to thwart assault weapons ban

Tapper answered:

Jake Tapper ‏@jaketapper

@maggiesnotebook thats not the same thing as it being the purpose of the operation

I answered back:

Maggie Thornton ‏@maggiesnotebook

@maggiesnotebook@JakeTapper But…we might know which came first, the chicken or the egg, if the docs were released.

THEN I saw this tweet from former Congressman Tom Tancredo and the article above evolved from there:

Tom Tancredo ‏@ttancredo
Breaking: new evidence shows Hillary a mastermind behind Gunwalker

The information Mike at Sipsey Street Irregulars (#justablogger) has uncovered, if accurate, clearly shows that the only goal was to get guns into Mexico, blame American gun sellers and restrict your Second Amendment Rights and mine. Why isn’t Issa hauling Clinton and her deputies from State in front of his Oversight Committee? It’s mindblowing.

Linked at Doug Ross Journal and Larwyn’s Linx – thank you!
Linked at Bad Blue – the baddest news on the planet!
Linked at Grumpy Opinions, and here.
Linked at Before It’s News – thank you!
Linked at Republic Broadcasting Network – many thanks!
Linked by Karen at The Lonely Conservative – thank you!
Linked at Survival Blog in Odds and Sods – thank you!
Linked at Say Uncle – thank you!
Linked at Sipsey Street Irregulars in Speculations Upon Hillary
Linked at World Affairs Brief – thank you!
Linked at Off the Cuff – thanks!

http://www.maggiesnotebook.com/2012/...on-deep-in-it/

Her testimony to Congress on Fast and Furious sounds a lot like her Benghazi testimony the Hillary two step. She doesn't know, she just heard about it etc, etc, subterfuge and avoidance. IMO

Hillary Clinton:‘No Evidence’ DOJ Sought Required License to Send Guns to Mexico in ‘Fast and Furious’

By Fred Lucas | October 28, 2011 | 10:26 AM EDT

(CNSNews.com) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified in the House Foreign Relations Committee Thursday that there was "no record" that the Justice Department had given the State Department a "head up" about Operation Fast and Furious, in which guns were allowed to flow from the United States to drug traffickers in Mexico, and that the State Department had found "no evidence" that DOJ had applied for a license or waiver to send guns to a foreign country, which a member of the committee told her would have been required under U.S. law.

Clinton was responding to questions from Rep. Connie Mack (R.-Fla.), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs.

The federal Arms Export Control Act requires State Department involvement in any decision to send weapons across an international border. Under the act, it is illegal to "conspire to export, import, re-export or cause to be exported ... any defense article ... for which a license or written approval is required ... without first obtaining the required license or written approval from the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls."

Rep. Mack quoted this portion of the law in a letter he sent to Clinton on Wednesday, the day before she testified before the committee.

"I wanted to talk a little bit about Fast and Furious, and specifically at what point did the State Department learn of Operation Fast And Furious?" Mack asked Clinton on Thursday.

"Congressman, I don't know the exact time," Clinton responded. "I can tell you that based on our information from the part of the State Department that would deal with this kind of issue, we have no record of any requests for coordination. We have no record of any kind of notice or heads up. And, you know, I--my recollection is that I learned about it from the press. That's my recollection."

Mack then asked Clinton about whether DOJ had sought a license from the State Department to allow guns to cross the border into Mexico.

"Did the State Department issue the Justice Department a license or a written waiver in order to allow for the transfer of thousands of weapons across the U.S.-Mexico border?" Mack said.

"Well, Congressman, you know, this is the first time I've been asked this, and I can tell you that based on the record of any activity by the bureau that would have been responsible, we see no evidence," Clinton said. "But let me do a thorough request to make sure that what I'm telling you reflects everything we know."

Mack then told Clinton that he had sent her a letter on Wednesday pointing out that he believes federal law required the Justice Department to get a written waiver from the State Deparment to allow arms to be exported to drug traffickers in Mexico.

"Under he Arms Export Control Act, the Justice Department was required to receive a written waiver from the State Department to account for their intent to cause arms to be exported to drug cartels in Mexico," said Mack. "If no such waiver was received, Justice Department officials have violated the law. And you would agree with that, correct?"

"I cannot offer an opinion," said Clinton. "I don't know," she continued. "I mean, this is the first time I'm being asked."

Mack pressed her on the question of whether DOJ would indeed have violated the law if it had not gotten a written waiver.
"I'm not asking you if you--if there was such a written [waiver]," Mack said, "but if they hadn't asked and received by law the Justice Department would be violating U.S. law?"

"I cannot offer you any opinion on that," said Clinton. "I don't have the information or any analysis. I can only tell you the facts as we know them in the State Department."

Mack then stated his view that DOJ violated the law if it did not get the written waiver from Clinton's State Department.

"The State Department is required to give a written waiver for the cause of arms to be exported to drug cartels in Mexico and they didn't do that and that didn't happen, then they are in violation of the law," said Mack.

"And so the question here is: Who do we hold responsible?" said Mack.

"So I look forward to if you would get back to me and the committee ... about the waiver and whether or not the State Department issued that waiver," the congressman told Clinton.

As part of Fast and Furious, the ATF's Phoenix division knowingly allowed about 2,000 guns to "walk" to Mexican drug cartels. The guns were supposed to be tracked to cartel leaders, but federal law enforcement officials lost track of most of the weapons.

The program began in September 2009 but was halted in December 2010 after guns involved in the operation were found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

As CNSNews.com previously reported, President Barack Obama has expressed “complete confidence” in his attorney general, Eric Holder, who has come under fire for his congressional testimony concerning Operation Fast and Furious.

Testifying in the House Judiciary Committee on May 3, 2011, Holder was asked by House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) when he first learned about Operation Fast and Furious. Holder said: “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”

DOJ documents that were released later show that memos sent to Holder in July 2010 discussed Operation Fast and Furious.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has called for a special counsel to probe whether Holder’s testimony was truthful.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/...exico-fast-and