TPM
There is no evidence that Attorney General Eric Holder and
high-ranking officials at the Justice Department knew that guns were
allowed to “walk” during an ATF operation known as Fast and Furious, according to a report released on Wednesday afternoon by the department’s internal watchdog.
Following a 19-month investigation, the Inspector General found
that the decision not to take action against low-level “straw
purchasers” was made by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives (ATF) and the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s office. Their decision,
according to the report, “was primarily the result of tactical and
strategic decisions by the agents and prosecutors, rather than because
of any legal limitation on their ability to do so.” Dennis Burke, the
head of the U.S. Attorney’s office at the time, resigned from his position in August 2011.
The IG report is considered to be the most comprehensive and least
partisan account of the scandal available to date. Unlike investigators
with Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight Committee, DOJ investigators
had access to criminal investigation files.
Fast and Furious was the Arizona component of a broader effort to
combat gun trafficking known as Project Gunrunner, which had previously come under fire
from the Inspector General for failing to net “higher-level
traffickers, smugglers, and the ultimate recipients of the trafficked
guns.” Instead of going after the straw purchasers during Fast and
Furious, ATF investigators allegedly made an effort to find the kingpins
of the operation and deal a bigger blow to the trafficking network. But
in doing so, agents lost track of many of the weapons, allowing them to
flow into the hands of criminals on both sides of the border. One of
the weapons connected to the investigation was found at the scene of
Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder in December 2010.
The National Rifle Association and a number of Republican members of Congress have floated a bizzarre and far-fetched conspiracy theory
that the Obama administration purposefully allowed weapons to “walk” to
Mexico in an effort to boost the number of U.S. weapons found in the
country and increase political support for gun control. Not
surprisingly, the Inspector General found no evidence that ATF’s Phoenix
office initiated Fast and Furious to obtain legislation requiring gun
dealers to report bulk rifle sales, as they already do with handguns.
The report also found high-ranking DOJ officials did not purposefully
provide false information in a Feb. 4, 2011 letter to Congress that
responded to questions about the operation. The report found that Burke
as well as then-Acting ATF Director Ken Melson and ATF Deputy Director
Billy Hoover provided the information the officials relied on and
“failed to exercise appropriate oversight of the investigation, and to
some extent were themselves receiving incorrect or incomplete
information from their subordinates about it.”
While the House of Representatives voted in June to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress
for purportedly failing to turn over documents subpoenaed by the
Oversight Committee, the report finds that DOJ “appropriately refused to
make any substantive comments about the investigation in light of the
additional information it had learned and its referral of the matter to
the OIG in February.” President Obama’s White House declared the
documents sought by the Committee — which were generated after Congress
began asking questions about the ATF operation in February 2011 — were protected by executive privilege.
Fast and Furious IG Report
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