House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, sent a letter to President Obama Tuesday urging him to appoint a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Eric Holder lied to Congress about “Operation Fast and Furious.” That’s the program in which federal law enforcement officials allowed gun runners for Mexican drug cartels to buy firearms in the United States. The idea was the weapons would later be found at Mexican crime scenes, thus implicating cartel members. Unfortunately, the weapons have also been used in crimes here in the United States, including the slaying last December of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, who was shot and killed near Rio Rico, Ariz. Panicky Justice Department officials canceled the program soon thereafter. From the beginning, Holder and other Obama political appointees within the Justice Department have tried to minimize the scandal, first asserting that only the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives knew about the program, then claiming that only ATF headquarters knew, and, finally, insisting that some people at Justice only knew the general outlines of the program.

Determining who knew what, and when, has been an essential part of the investigation conducted by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee from the beginning.