Written by Jack Kelly
Friday, 08 July 2011
Did a secret meeting on the Fourth of July break the biggest scandal since Watergate so far open the "mainstream" media can ignore it no longer?
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) deliberately permitted the transfer of more than 2,000 firearms to Mexican drug cartels, four ATF whistleblowers told a House committee June 15.
The guns have been linked to the deaths of 150 Mexican soldiers and policemen, and at least one
The Washington Post was outraged... at Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, for bringing the scandal to light.
"A chief Republican critic of a controversial
No sources were named, but it is apparent they were Justice Department officials. What they told the Post reporters conflicted with earlier claims by DOJ officials nobody in
But in a meeting on the Fourth with Rep. Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA, Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson confirmed what the whistleblowers said, and then some. Mr. Melson's testimony is why the "Fast and Furious" scandal may be Mr. Obama's Watergate.
Senior Justice Department officials were aware of the gunwalking operation, code named "Fast and Furious," Mr. Melson said. The FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) also were involved, he said.
Among the
ATF wanted to comply with Mr. Issa's subpoenas for documents, but "Justice Department officials directed them not to respond and took full control of replying to briefing and document requests from Congress," Mr. Melson told the GOP lawmakers, they said in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder Tuesday (7/5).
By monitoring "straw purchasers" instead of arresting them, Justice hoped to build cases against Mexican drug lords, its spokesmen say. But surveillance stopped at the border, and there was no coordination with Mexican authorities, so the likelihood of successful prosecutions was infinitesimally small.
If this really was the purpose of "Fast and Furious," it's hard to quarrel with Rep. Issa's description of it as "felony stupid." There is a more logical -- and more sinister -- explanation.
"More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in
That isn't true. Of 100,000 guns recovered by Mexican authorities, only 18,000 came from the
Though Mr. Obama's false claim was debunked right away, administration officials kept making it. Could "Fast and Furious" have been an effort to make it appear to be true?
His supervisor was "just delighted about" Gunwalker guns showing up at Mexican crime scenes, ATF Agent John Dodson testified.
The president told the head of an anti-gun group March 30 gun control was very much on his agenda, but he had to work it "under the radar."
Thanks to Mr. Melson, there's more evidence now of a coverup by high level officials than there was until near the very end of the Watergate scandal. But most in the news media remain incurious. Mr. Melson's revelations didn't make the network broadcast of the evening news, or the front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post.
This contrasts vividly with the media feeding frenzy Post reporters led in 2007 when then Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez fired eight
The guns Justice let "walk" across the border have caused at least 150 deaths, which seems worse than what Mr. Gonzalez did. But to many in the news media a scandal is only a scandal if the attorney general is a Republican.
Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the
