Remember Watergate? I do. There are still a quite a few of us around that remember the two things headlining the nightly news in the early 70's. Vietnam and Watergate. Both were extremely divisive and both were tearing the country apart at the seams.
Ask anyone what they know about President Richard Millhouse Nixon and you'll usually get a one word response: Watergate.
There was a whole lot more to his presidency than Watergate. Nixon opened relations with China. He escalated, then ended, our involvement in Vietnam. He reaffirmed agreements with the Soviet Union over Cuba, started the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration, oversaw the first large scale integration of public schools and endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment (although it was never ratified by the requisite 38 states). Whether you're pro or con on these things doesn't matter, they are still a part of his legacy. Very few people remember his responsibility for any of these and I don't believe he is given credit for them with today's students but they do credit him for, and remember, Watergate.
Did Nixon break into the Watergate complex? Of course not. Watergate wasn't so much about the actual break in as it was about the scandal of the President of the United States attempting to cover up the fact that he knew about it and so did high level members of his cabinet and others close to him.
Apparently we now have another President trying to cover up. Who knew about Operation Fast and Furious and when did they know have been among questions the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have been asking. Some of the President's supporters are already crying foul and saying this isn't the same thing. Well guess what, I agree with you. This isn't the same. Innocent people didn't die because of Watergate but they have, and still are, dying because of "Fast and Furious."
For the few who may not be familiar with Operation Fast and Furious it was an undercover investigation which began in late 2009 with a teleconference between Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, ATF Director Kenneth Melson, DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart, and Director of the FBI Robert Mueller. This conference also involved several prosecutors from the Southwest. It was an attempt to track guns to kingpins of the Mexican drug cartels. It was to be run by the ATF's Phoenix office. They were going to attempt to identify and eliminate arms trafficking networks instead of just street level, or low level, buyers. Some of the key players were supposedly street racers operating from an auto repair shop, thus the name from the movie Fast and Furious.
I was a Law Enforcement Officer for 23 years. Most of that time as an investigator/detective. For several of those years I served in an undercover capacity working narcotics and gun running cases. Every Law Enforcement Agency is there to "Serve and Protect." You are there to protect and never, ever, put the public at risk. Never allow guns or drugs to get away from you. Occasionally we had to do a "walking" sting where the guns or drugs were allowed to leave my possession for a short time but they were always kept under strict surveillance and tracking. I worked cases in conjunction with the ATF and and the agents I worked with never would have allowed guns to disappear. Once we tracked them to their final destination we immediately made arrests and reclaimed them. You NEVER allow guns or drugs to get onto the streets. If it looked as if we would lose the item the operation was immediately shut down and the weapons or drugs were taken back into our possession. If these items were lost during an operation in which I was involved I would have been fired on the spot, and should have been. There are no excuses.
Therein lies the problem with Operation Fast and Furious. There was no attempt at interdiction of the weapons which were being purchased and transferred to the cartels in Mexico. They were allowed to "walk." In other words just let them go. Department of Justice and ATF policy have always required gun shipments to be intercepted. Apparently their thinking was that we'll just arrest who ever has the weapon in their possession when we see it again. This has to be one of the most ill advised operations in history. A rookie officer would have known this was just plain stupid. This wasn't just a few guns, over two thousand including the FN 57 which carries an armor piercing .224 caliber round, AK-47's, .50 caliber sniper rifles and assorted other rifles and pistols were allowed to get into the hands of Mexican drug runners. This was very controversial within the ATF as the agents knew people were going to die from the weapons they were letting walk. They had been through this type of gunrunning operation earlier where the guns were tracked, surveillance carried out, and arrests were made when they were handed off. During Fast and Furious the agents were not allowed to intercept the suspects and weapons. Two agents, Olinda Casa and John Dodson attempted to intervene and were stopped by their supervisors. Supervisor David Voth sent out an email in March 2010 in an attempt to quell the questions within the agency over Fast and Furious. http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Grassley_2011_03_page14.pdf
Guns traced back to operation fast and furious started turning up quickly at crimes scenes on both sides of the border. One of the most notable was that of Border Agent Brian Terry. On December 14th, 2010 Terry and other agents were patrolling approximately 11 miles from the Mexican border in Arizona when they came across five illegal immigrants. A firefight occurred leaving Agent Terry dead on the desert floor. Two AK-47 type rifles were found at the scene and traced to operation fast and furious. After hearing of the murder Dodson and several other agents attempted to bring the operation to the attention of ATF Headquarters, ATF Chief Counsel, the Ethics office and even the Justice Department's Inspector General and didn't receive a response. Several then decided they had no alternative but to contact someone who may be able to stop this madness. I'm sure they knew this was probably a career breaker but morally felt they had no alternative. So they contacted Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa who was the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and an investigation was started into Fast and Furious.
In January 2011 Senator Grassley sent two letters to Acting Director of the ATF. One requesting information into the operation and a second accusing the ATF of going after the whistleblowers. Congressman Darrell Issa began a congressional investigation as Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and, as it should be, he has been like a pit bull and not backing down regardless of political pressures.
As has been the Obama administration's answer to everything that has gone wrong since they came into power, they gave the same answer to this debacle, "It's Bush's Fault." Sorry, not this time. The ATF did carry out a similar operation during 2006 and 2007. Only a few hundred guns were purchased and this was done with the knowledge and assistance of the Mexican government. It was agreed that the Mexican officials would intercept the weapons once they crossed the border and the suspects would be arrested. Surveillance was done and tracking devices placed on the weapons. Once the criminals learned of the tracking devices they figured out how to disable them. When the firearms started disappearing the operation was shut down and the files closed with the notation, "Never Again." During Fast and Furious the Mexican government was never notified an operation was ongoing. There was never an attempt to arrest the suspects or retrieve the weapons on the Mexican side of the border. How could they when the US was conducting these operations without their knowledge?
The Attorney General, Eric Holder testified, under oath, to the House Judiciary Committee on February 3rd, 2011 stating that he had only heard about the operation "for the first time over the last few weeks." Documents were revealed that showed he had been sent briefings on the operation as early as July 2010. On June 7th Holder testified for the seventh time, still stating there were no "high level officials" with knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious. By this time several thousand pages of documents had been turned over to investigators. There are still approximately 1400 pages which have been subpoenaed and not turned over. Holder continued to refuse to turn over these documents and was threatened with a contempt citation. Early on June 20th President Obama invoked executive privilege over the documents after Holder had earlier sent a letter requesting Obama to do this.
If there is nothing to hide why did Holder only turn over documents in a piecemeal fashion? Why did he request the President invoke executive privilege? From everything I can find a President can only invoke executive privilege in a case he was personally involved in. So if he didn't know about Fast and Furious he can't make the claim. If he did know then he has some serious explaining to do.
It seems I still have more questions than answers. Why did the news media not start reporting on this from the beginning? They only made mention of Fast and Furious after the threat of the contempt citation. Where are our Woodward and Bernstein? We need someone to really go after the truth. Without a strong and free press we may never know what really happened. I'm talking about a press that does not attempt to whitewash everything this president does.
Heads should roll over this. If it goes all the way to the top, then so be it. If it doesn't then why not turn over the documents? Either way the American Public needs the truth. If not for each one of us in this country, then at least for the people killed by these weapons which were placed into the hands of criminals by this administration.
Please get the facts and look at all sides of this argument. Don't just take my opinion on this. Get on the internet, look at reliable news sources from the TV or radio. I hope that everyone who reads this will share it via Facebook, email, whatever it takes to get the population to stand up and shout. Call your elected representatives and beg them to get to the bottom of this. Our country cannot take much more scandal from our elected politicians. Thanks for reading.
The Attorney General, Eric Holder testified, under oath, to the House Judiciary Committee on February 3rd, 2011 stating that he had only heard about the operation "for the first time over the last few weeks." Documents were revealed that showed he had been sent briefings on the operation as early as July 2010. On June 7th Holder testified for the seventh time, still stating there were no "high level officials" with knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious. By this time several thousand pages of documents had been turned over to investigators. There are still approximately 1400 pages which have been subpoenaed and not turned over. Holder continued to refuse to turn over these documents and was threatened with a contempt citation. Early on June 20th President Obama invoked executive privilege over the documents after Holder had earlier sent a letter requesting Obama to do this.
If there is nothing to hide why did Holder only turn over documents in a piecemeal fashion? Why did he request the President invoke executive privilege? From everything I can find a President can only invoke executive privilege in a case he was personally involved in. So if he didn't know about Fast and Furious he can't make the claim. If he did know then he has some serious explaining to do.
It seems I still have more questions than answers. Why did the news media not start reporting on this from the beginning? They only made mention of Fast and Furious after the threat of the contempt citation. Where are our Woodward and Bernstein? We need someone to really go after the truth. Without a strong and free press we may never know what really happened. I'm talking about a press that does not attempt to whitewash everything this president does.
Heads should roll over this. If it goes all the way to the top, then so be it. If it doesn't then why not turn over the documents? Either way the American Public needs the truth. If not for each one of us in this country, then at least for the people killed by these weapons which were placed into the hands of criminals by this administration.
Please get the facts and look at all sides of this argument. Don't just take my opinion on this. Get on the internet, look at reliable news sources from the TV or radio. I hope that everyone who reads this will share it via Facebook, email, whatever it takes to get the population to stand up and shout. Call your elected representatives and beg them to get to the bottom of this. Our country cannot take much more scandal from our elected politicians. Thanks for reading.
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