From USA Today - sounds a bit tweaked for Holder?

Illegal guns from 'Fast and Furious' still on street




Part of a cache of seized weapons is displayed at a news conference in Phoenix last year. / Matt York, AP


WASHINGTON -- A scathing internal Justice Department report on a botched gun-trafficking investigation that allowed about 2,000 weapons to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartel enforcers is not likely to close the book on the scandal.

Federal officials acknowledge that there are serious concerns about the hundreds of guns that have yet to be recovered by Mexican and U.S. authorities.

About 1,300 firearms, most of them AK-47 assault rifles, are unaccounted for since suspected cartel associates began purchasing the weapons along the Mexican border from licensed U.S. gun dealers in 2009 as part of the trafficking inquiry known as Operation Fast and Furious.

"There are a number of weapons in the illegal stream of commerce (from the operation) that may wash ashore," said B. Todd Jones, the new interim director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the agency that launched the flawed investigation.

Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz., urged the federal government to "engage with Mexico and ask for full and complete help" in finding the weapons.

An accounting of the weapons that are not recovered is listed deep inside a sweeping report issued Wednesday by the Justice Department's inspector general who found "serious failures" in oversight of the trafficking probe at various levels of federal law enforcement. It recommended discipline for more than a dozen federal agents and prosecutors involved in the investigation.

The controversial operation, an attempt to track weapons to top cartel leaders, was shut down following the Dec. 14, 2010, slaying of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Two weapons linked to the trafficking investigation were found at the scene of the murder. The gun used in the killing has not been identified.

No one responsible for the case at either the ATF Phoenix Field Division or the U.S. Attorney's Office raised a serious question or concern about the government not taking earlier measures to disrupt a trafficking operation,'' the report said.

A House committee, which has been conducting a separate investigation into the gun operation, met Thursday to review the inspector general findings and its politically divided membership expressed rare agreement on some conclusions, including that Attorney General Eric Holder was never informed of the operation's tactics until after the investigation had been shutdown.
Asked about the internal Justice report in an interview Thursday with Univision, President Obama said Holder had his "complete confidence.''

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House oversight and committee, vowed to continue the panel's investigation.