News about Operation “Fast and Furious” is now ubiquitous. Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson’s Fourth of July testimony to Senator Charles Grassley and Representative Darrell Issa blew the cover off what appears to be one of the biggest political cover-ups in the last 50 years.
In the middle of it is Attorney General Eric Holder, who now feigns a blissful ignorance about the whole mess: having nothing to say about its beginnings as Operation “Gunrunner” or its latest incarnation as “Fast and Furious.”
For those who might not know, Operation “Gunrunner” was the plan to sell guns to “straw purchasers” with suspected ties to the Mexican cartel. Apparently, ATF was then banking on those purchasers to walk the guns across the border into Mexico. Operation “Fast and Furious” was the plan to follow those guns until they were in cartel hands and then make apprehensions. (For the record, I concur with those who believe this was all an attempt to flood the border with weapons in order to create a degree of chaos sufficient to convince us of the supposed-need for more gun control in America.)
Anyway, the problem with Holder’s feigned ignorance is that he gave a speech in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 2, 2009, in which he boasted about Operation “Gunrunner” and told Mexican authorities of everything he was doing to insure its success.
Holder told the audience:
Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels. My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion. (Italics mine)
But once the whole thing got crazy, and “Fast and Furious” left Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry dead, Holder and others in the Justice Department went from boasting about such projects to pressuring people like Acting ATF Director Melson to keep their mouths shut.
Melson is on record saying that “Justice Department officials sought to limit and control his communications with Congress.” Moreover, when he saw the storm clouds rising and attempted to reassign “every major official involved” in Operation “Fast and Furious,” Melson said “Justice Department officials directed him and other ATF officials to not communicate to Congress the reasoning behind the reassignments.”
Folks, I’m not great at math, but I’ve got simple math mastered. And figuring out what’s going on here doesn’t seem much harder than 2 +2.
Just think about it: Holder was as proud as he could be over Operation “Gunrunner” until the fiasco fell apart and over a thousand guns flooded into Mexico unaccounted for. (It seems we find them now when they’re recovered from crime scenes, along with the body of the victims killed by those using the weapons.)
One of Representative Issa’s staffers is on record saying: “[The Operation] ‘Gunrunner’ investigation points much higher than [the] ATF director.”
Does that mean it points toward Holder or Holder’s office?
Does 3 + 3 equal 6?
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