Posted on WND.com-By Michael Carl-On July 8, 2011:
“A new member of Congress who rode into office during the 2010 American rejection of Washington’s business-as-usual practice today said that a special prosecutor needs to review the actions of Attorney General Eric Holder regarding the “Fast and Furious” gun scandal where weapons were sold to carriers known to supply Mexican drug lords, and the circumstances make it appear that President Obama could have dirty hands in the deal.
During an appearance on the Steve Gill Show, U.S. Rep. Allen West said the roads that appear to lead to those responsible for the botched program that was supposed to trace guns to high-ranking drug lords are alarming.
“This is just another sad chapter in the Eric Holder book of ineptness and incompetence,” West said. “Eric Holder needs to be brought before an investigative committee and if those charges are warranted he needs to be held accountable.
“At least the president needs to realize that Eric Holder needs to be removed from the Department of Justice … or else it appears President Obama is complicit and in approval of the actions of his attorney general,” he said.
The comments:
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West’s comments came in the wake of word from Acting Director Kenneth Melson of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that the DOJ blocked him and other senior agency officials from cooperating with members of Congress who were investigating the scandal.
West, R-Fla., said the solution is an independent special prosecutor who would be assigned to look into the roles of top DOJ officials, such as Holder, regarding the “Fast and Furious” gun-running scheme.
“If all roads lead to him as far as obstructing justice, then we’ve got to have that special investigation,” West said.
Those revelations by Melson are fueling the outrage among members of Congress who have had concerns about the situation, especially because it appears at least one of the weapons dispatched by the federal government to a drug gang was used in an attack that killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
Officials with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have been looking into the circumstances, but were tight-lipped today in light of the new developments.
“I can say that this is an ongoing investigation and that when details become available, Mr. [Darrell] Issa [Republican from California] will make them public,” the committee’s press office explained.
It was in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that Committee Chairman Issa and Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley said after Melson’s Monday testimony, they were disturbed to learn that guns may have been taken across the border by known criminals and that they’re determined to learn more.
“The evidence we have gathered raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities. While this is preliminary information, we must find out if there is any truth to it,” Issa and Grassley wrote.
The letter also said that Melson only learned about the charge of criminals carrying the guns to Mexico after the fact.
“According to Acting Director Melson, he became aware of this startling possibility only after the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and the indictments of the straw purchasers, which we now know were substantially delayed by the U.S.,” Issa and Grassley wrote.
Firearms law analyst and writer David Codrea believes that even if there is evidence to prove that known criminals took the guns to Mexico with taxpayer money, nothing is likely to be done with the evidence.
“If left to Holder’s Justice Department, nothing, because it shows this had to be top-level DoJ-authorized. That’s probably a question for Issa’s office, although I doubt they’d be inclined to respond and we’ll need to see how things play out with them as further hearings are held,” Codrea said.
According the committee report, other federal agencies have also been drawn into the operation. The DEA, FBI and upper-level DOJ officers, including the U. S. attorney’s office in Phoenix have been named.
The Issa-Grassley letter also says Melson was surprised about the depth of the operation
Once the Fast and Furious operation was made public, several agents and supervisors were reassigned from the Phoenix office. Melson allegedly made the reassignments but was told by DOJ officials not to report the reassignments to Issa’s committee.
Spokeswoman Becca Watkins of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said there was pressure being applied.
“He [Melson] didn’t say anything to the committee because the ATF operates under the DOJ,” Watkins said.
Codrea said the explanation for Melson’s silence is something the DOJ will have to tell under oath, but he has his own suspicion.
“That is a question for DOJ officials – under oath. My sense is because any shared information provides another thread to pull, and they don’t want the fabric to unravel, so they’re keeping a lid on all information and only providing bare minimal responses that have been carefully vetted for damage control,” Codrea said.
There is also speculation about whether Melson will resign, something that Issa and Grassley address in their letter to Holder.
“In the last few weeks, unnamed administration officials have indicated to the press that Acting Director Melson would be forced to resign. According to Mr. Melson, those initial reports were untrue. Regardless of what we might have thought before about how he should handle a request to resign, we now know he has not been asked to resign,” the letter stated.
“We also now have the benefit of hearing his side of the story and will have a chance to examine what he said and compare it to the other evidence we are gathering. However, that will take some time,” the letter added.
The Issa-Grassley letter asserts that Melson is being pressured to leave, even though Melson knew that the appointment was supposed to be temporary.
“In 2009, he said he was asked to take over as acting director of the ATF. Acting director of the ATF is by its nature a temporary job. According to Mr. Melson, he was willing to serve the department with the understanding that after a short tenure as acting director, he would return to a position as a career senior executive elsewhere within the department,” the letter read.
“However, two days after he told Acting Deputy Attorney General Cole about serious issues involving lack of information sharing, the Wall Street Journal reported that unnamed sources said that Melson was about to be ousted,” the letter added.
Codrea agrees with that assessment and says the administration has a political motive.
“They wanted him to go quietly and they’d get their preferred anti-gun advocate Andrew Traver to bring the Chicago Way to the Bureau – either as acting or through a recess appointment as he’s already pretty much been rejected through normal channels,” Codrea said.
Melson’s admissions were made public in a “Tweet” posted by Issa on his Twitter account.
The Tweet said, ATF Acting Director Melson spilling the beans to Darrell Issa! Issa Tweet! Darrell Issa
#AskObama: who is right on #fastandfurious: Eric Holder or #ATF Dir.Melson, whom we just interviewed? INFO:http://1.usa.gov/pvqXJQ #2nd.
PDF File letter by Issa & Grassley http://oversight.house.gov/images/stories/Letters...”
Source:
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=319861
Note: The following articles and/or blog posts relate to this disturbing issue-You Decide:
I. Issa Says He Doesn’t Believe Holder’s Testimony Was Accurate!
Posted on CNSNews.com-By Fred Lucas-On July 7, 2011:
“(CNSNews.com) - House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) says he does not believe Attorney General Eric Holder gave accurate testimony when Issa questioned him in the House Judiciary Committee on May 3.
In that testimony, Holder told the Judiciary Committee he had “probably” heard only in the “last few weeks” about the Justice Department’s “Operation Fast and Furious.” Issa told CNSNews.com he is convinced—“absolutely”—that Holder knew about the operation earlier than he claimed.
Operation Fast and Furious, begun in 2009, purposefully allowed known and suspected smugglers to purchase weapons at licensed gun dealers in the United States—sometimes while under active surveillance by U.S. law enforcement—and then allowed the smugglers to get away with the weapons, in some cases delivering them, as the government expected, to Mexican drug cartels. Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were specifically ordered not to stop the purchases, not to intercept the smugglers after they made the purchases, and not to retrieve the weapons.
The purpose of the operation was to let the Justice Department trace the movement of the guns and uncover the full structure of the gun-smuggling operations.
However, on Dec. 14, 2010, two rifles sold to one of the smugglers that the Justice Department had allowed to buy guns turned up at the scene of the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
Within 24 hours of Terry’s murder, according to an internal ATF email released by Issa, the FBI had definitively traced the rifles found at the murder scene back to Operation Fast and Furious and had so notified ATF.
Six weeks later, on Jan. 27, 2011, Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Charles Grassley (R.-Iowa) wrote a letter to ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson asking him to explain Operation Fast and Furious in light of the weapons found at the scene of Terry’s murder. Five days after that, on Feb. 1, 2011, the story of Operation Fast and Furious broke in the press—with multiple reports referencing Grassley’s letter to Melson. By Feb. 3, 2011, the operation, its link to the murder of Border Patrol Agent Terry, and Grassley’s inquiry to the ATF about it, had been reported in USA Today, The Arizona Republic, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Associated Press.
Yet, three full months after these public news reports, at a May 3 Judiciary Committee hearing, Attorney General Holder, under questioning by Issa, testified that he had “probably” only learned about Operation Fast and Furious in “the last few weeks.”
“We believe that he was aware of it much earlier than he said in his testimony and questioning before the Judiciary Committee,” Issa told CNSNews.com in an interview.
“Are we confident that Eric Holder knew it much earlier? No,” said Issa. “Did he know it earlier than he testified? Absolutely.”
At the May 3 Judiciary Committee hearing, Issa asked Holder: “When did you first know about the program officially, I believe, called Fast and Furious? To the best of your knowledge, what date?”
Holder responded: “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.”
To watch Issa question Holder at the May 3 Judiciary Committee hearing click the video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHkaRU9EoVM&feature=player_embedded
The Merriam Webster online dictionary defines “few” as “a small number of units” and “week” as “any of a series of 7-day cycles used in various calendars.” By contrast, Merriam Webster defines a “month” as “approximately 4 weeks or 30 days.”
While Holder told the Judiciary Committee he had “probably” heard about Fast and Furious” a “few weeks” before May 3, readers of the Washington Post heard about it a few months before that, on Feb. 2, when the Post ran a page-4 story that referred to “Fast and Furious” three times by name in describing how guns sold to a smuggler during the operation ended up at the scene of Border Agent Brian Terry’s murder.
“Two AK-47 assault rifles purchased by a man later arrested in a federal gunrunning investigation turned up at the scene of a fatal shooting of a Border Patrol agent in December, according to sources familiar with the investigation,” said the lead of the Feb. 2 Washington Post story.
“Whistleblowers who have contacted a U.S. senator allege that federal agents allowed guns, including the AK-47s, to be sold to suspected straw buyers who transported the weapons throughout the region and into Mexico,” reported the Post.
CNSNews.com asked Issa, “If DOJ officials have lied to Congress, would there be a possibility of perjury or contempt charges?” Issa responded, “Certainly if you lie to Congress, that’s a possibility. One of the oddities, if you lie to Congress, we’d refer to Justice for prosecution.”
The Feb. 2 Washington Post story was hardly the only piece of evidence that would have alerted people in the Justice Department to Operation Fast and Furious more than “a few weeks” prior to Attorney General Holder’s May 3 Judiciary Committee testimony.
Melson met with staff investigators of the House oversight and Senate Judiciary committees with his personal attorney present instead of Justice Department attorneys present. According to a July 5 letter from Grassley and Issa to Holder, “Acting Director Melson’s cooperation was extremely helpful to our investigation. He claimed that ATF’s senior leadership would have preferred to be more cooperative with our inquiry much earlier in the process. However, he said that Justice Department officials directed them not to respond and took full control of replying to briefing and document requests from Congress. The result is that Congress only got the parts of the story that the (Justice) Department wanted us to hear.”
Source:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/issa-says-he-doesn-t-believe-holder-s-te
II. Is this why White House funded 'guns-to-drug-lords' scheme?-Posted on WND.com-By Aaron Klein-On July 10, 2011:
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=320809
III. Video: ‘Fast And Furious’ Smoking Gun!-Posted on The Blaze-On July 11, 2011:
http://nation.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/11/flashback-video-obama-directly-linked-project-gunrunner
IV. Gun-Running Timeline: How DOJ’s ‘Operation Fast and Furious’ Unfolded!-Posted on CNSNews.com-By Fred Lucas-On July 7, 2011:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/gun-running-timeline-how-doj-s-operation
V. ATF Chief: Justice Dept. Blocking Mexico Gun Probe!-Posted on FoxNews.com-By William Lajeunesse-On July 6, 2011:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/06/justice-department-obstructing-fast-and-furious-gun-probe-atf-director-says/
VI. Whistleblower Testifies Obama Obstructed Fast and Furious Investigation!-Posted on Floyd Reports-By Ben Johnson-On July 6, 2011:
http://floydreports.com/whistleblower-testifies-obama-obstructed-fast-and-furious-investigation/
VII. DOJ 'Distorted Truth and Obstructed Our Investigation' in Guns-to-Mexico Probe, Lawmakers Say!-Posted on CNSNews.com-By Susan Jones-On July 6, 2011:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/justice-dept-may-have-obstructed-our-inv
VIII. Furious: The Obama Regime Gave 2,000 Guns to Mexican Drug Lords!-Posted on Conservative Byte-On July 8, 2011:
http://conservativebyte.com/2011/07/furious-the-obama-regime-gave-2000-guns-to-mexican-drug-lords/
IX. “Fast And Furious”: BATFE Director Starts Talking, While Washington Post Keeps Spinning!-Posted on NRA-ILA-On July 8, 2011:
http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Federal/Read.aspx?id=6983
X. Obama Administration Not Enforcing Gun Laws, Rep. Issa Says!-Posted on CNSNews.com-By Susan Jones-On July 8, 2011:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-administration-not-enforcing-gun-l
XI. Obama Expected to Boost ‘Gun Safety’ by Executive Order!-Posted on CNSNews.com-By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press-On July 8, 2011:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-expected-boost-gun-safety-executiv
XII. The Future of Obama’s Stealth Gun Control!-Posted on Pajamas Media-By Mike McDaniel-On July 6, 2011:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-future-of-obamas-stealth-gun-control/
Note: My following blog posts contain numerous articles and/or blog posts and videos that relate to this disturbing issue-You Decide:
Did ATF provide weapons to Mexican drug cartels that were subsequently used to kill one of our own?
http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/did-atf-provide-weapons-to-mexican-drug-cartels-that-were-subsequently-used-to-kill-one-of-our-own/
What is the true intent of the UN Small Arms Treaty?
http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/what-is-the-true-intent-of-the-un-small-arms-treaty/
Is it important to understand the Marxist assault on the foundations of our system?
http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/is-it-important-to-understand-the-marxist-assault-on-the-foundations-of-our-system/
Note: If you have a problem viewing any of the listed blog posts please copy web site and paste it on your browser. Be aware that some of the articles and/or blog posts or videos listed within the contents of the above blog post(s) may have been removed by this administration because they may have considered them to be too controversial. Sure seems like any subject matter that may shed some negative light on this administration is being censored-What happened to free speech?-You Decide.
“Food For Thought”
God Bless the U.S.A.!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q65KZIqay4E&feature=related
Semper Fi!
Jake
