Here is The March 3, 2011 “in depth” story from The Center for Public Integrity website. There is a lot to read here. The number of guns smuggled at latest count was 1998... there will be more, you can bet.
ATF Let Hundreds of U.S. Weapons Fall into Hands of Suspected Mexican Gunrunners Whistleblower Says Agents Strongly Objected to Risky Strategy
By John Solomon and David Heath and Gordon Witkin | March 03, 2011
Hoping to score a major prosecution of Mexican drug lords, federal prosecutors and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives permitted hundreds of guns to be purchased and retained by suspected straw buyers with the expectation they might cross the border and even be used in crimes while the case was being built, according to documents and interviews.
Breaking News:
ATF Announces
Immediate Review of
Gun-Running Operation
Related Documents
Click here to read documents and interviews
related to the investigation. Redactions were
made by the Senate Judiciary Committee to
protect the identities of confidential informants,
undercover agents and cooperating gun stores.
The decision — part of a Phoenix-based operation code named “Fast and Furious” — was met by strong objections from some front-line agents who feared they were allowing weapons like AK-47s to “walk” into the hands of drug lords and gun runners, internal agency memos show. Indeed, scores of the weapons came back quickly traced to criminal activity.
One of those front-line agents who objected, John Dodson, 39, told the Center for Public Integrity that these guns “are going to be turning up in crimes on both sides of the border for decades.” Dodson said in an interview that “with the number of guns we let walk, we’ll never know how many people were killed, raped, robbed … there is nothing we can do to round up those guns. They are gone.”
Dodson has taken his misgivings to the Senate Judiciary Committee as a whistleblower after his concerns were dismissed by his supervisors and initially ignored by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
Sen. Charles Grassley, the panel’s top Republican — who is spearheading a probe of ATF’s actions – said “it’s time to step back” and examine the policy. Two of the guns involved in the sting operation turned up at the scene of a fatal shooting of a U.S. agent.
The Justice Department said today that Attorney General Eric Holder has asked the department’s acting inspector general to evaluate the concerns about ATF’s investigative tactics.Click here to read the rest of this in depth investigative report from The Center for Public IntegrityJTCoyoté
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, but
we have this consolation with us, that the harder
the conflict the more glorious the triumph."
~Thomas Paine
