Following last week’s bipartisan vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for withholding details about the Fast and Furious scandal, more revelations keep coming, well, fast and furious. Senator Chuck Grassley recently released a memo that shows that details of the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal were discussed at the highest levels of the Bureau of Alchohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and possibly forwarded to the Department of Justice (DOJ). The memo was written just prior to the DOJ misinforming congressional investigators about details of the scandal:
Grassley asserted that DOJ should have been “abundantly aware” of allegations of gun-walking before it sent an “erroneous letter” to Congress on Feb. 4, and that this “raises more questions about DOJ’s claim that faulty information from Department components inadvertently led to the false letter.”
This comes on the heels of House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa dropping a bombshell into the congressional record, where he revealed wiretap applications that contained substantial information about the controversial tactics being employed in the Fast and Furious investigation that let thousands of guns disappear and fall into the hands of Mexican criminal gangs:
Holder and [Rep. Elijah] Cummings have both maintained that the wiretap applications did not contain such details and that the applications were reviewed narrowly for probable cause, not for whether any investigatory tactics contained followed Justice Department policy.
The wiretap applications were signed by senior DOJ officials in the department’s criminal division, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco and another official who is now deceased.
Then there’s the revelation that the ATF planned to retaliate against the whistleblowers who brought the scandal to light:
Grassley and Issa said that in early 2011, right around the time Grassley first made public the whistleblowers’ allegations about Fast and Furious, Scot Thomasson – then the chief of the ATF’s Public Affairs Division – said, according to an eyewitness account: “We need to get whatever dirt we can on these guys [the whistleblowers] and take them down.”
Thomasson also allegedly said that: “All these whistleblowers have axes to grind. ATF needs to f—k these guys.”
But wait, there’s more — what about the fact that ATF essentially ordered its agents not to tell the truth about the death of Brian A. Terry, the Border Patrol agent who was killed with a weapon lost in the Fast and Furious operation?:
For instance, a couple of expected questions include: “Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry was shot and killed after he and his team encountered several suspects near Rio Rico, Ariz. At least four suspects are in custody while one is still being pursued. Was a gun trafficked in this case used in the murder?” and “We understand that a firearm bought in connection with this ATF investigation was used to murder Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry. Can you please comment on this information?”
ATF officials were encouraged to not respond to those questions.
Instead, ATF agents were told to give canned responses stressing the importance of the botched operation.
Now all of this has come to light since just the end of last week. Meanwhile, there were two other notable stories about Fast and Furious. One is a lengthy report from Fortune claiming that the entire scandal is much ado about nothing. I’d say more about this in depth report except that my old colleague Robert VerBruggen has done a pretty thorough job pointing out the many obvious holes in the Fortune piece — see here and here. The other reason why there’s no need to say much is that a discerning reader will quickly see that the piece is a one-sided whitewash and the piece’s sources clearly have it out for one of key Fast and Furious whistleblowers who is accused of doing things such as wearing flip-flops to the office. Forgive me if I don’t think that’s nearly as damning as the political cover-up surrounding the death of Border Patrol agent. (It’s also rather telling in light of the subsequent revelations that the ATF was pretty clearly out to target the Fast and Furious whistleblowers.)
Then we also learned a great deal about Eric Holder yesterday. It seems the DOJ head is feeling a tad besieged following being held in contempt of Congress, so he decided, in true D.C. fashion, that the best thing to do is call up the Washington Post and whine about it. I encourage you to read “Eric Holder says Republicans have made him a ‘proxy’ to attack President Obama” to truly appreciate how self-pitying he really is. (Never mind that as the nation’s second highest ranking law enforcement officer, Holder is literally a “proxy” for Obama, but I guess the buck stops somewhere short of the Oval Office in this administration.) If I were one of the congressional investigators trying to get to the bottom of the Fast and Furious scandal, I would take pathetic spin of the Fortune piece and Holder’s defensive posture as confirmation that they need to keep pressing as hard as they can. And if the last week is any indication, it certainly appears Congress has no intention of letting up on Eric Holder and those responsible for the ATF’s lethal and irresponsible operation.
