From Reuters:
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Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday expressed regret over a botched operation meant to track guns smuggled to Mexican drug cartels and said his department misinformed Congress about it.
Republican Senator Chuck Grassley slammed Holder and the Justice Department for inaccurately telling lawmakers in a February letter that the agency did everything possible to try to stop weapons bought illegally from being sent to Mexico.
“In the nine months since then, mounting evidence has put the lie to that claim,” Grassley said to Holder at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “Documents contradicting the department’s denials came to light.”
Grassley said the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Lanny Breuer, who is a close Holder friend, failed to correct the record for months even though he knew it was inaccurate to say the agency had done everything it could.
Holder told the panel that “Operation Fast and Furious,” which was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and federal prosecutors in Arizona, was “flawed in its concept and flawed in its execution.”
The operation was meant to track guns as they made their way to senior members of the violent Mexican drug cartels after being bought by a so-called straw buyer. However, ATF agents rarely pursued the weapons after they were bought.
As a result, hundreds of guns are now missing, although some have been found at crime scenes on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The scandal erupted after two guns from the operation were found at the scene after a U.S. Border Patrol agent was shot dead by illegal immigrants.
It was not clear whether the weapons were responsible for the agent’s death but it has since prompted an internal Justice Department investigation and one by Congress.
Read the rest of the story here.
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