Only in Washington, D.C., are juicy promotions given to senior career government executives at the center of a dangerously harebrained, officially sanctioned gun-sales scheme that, so far, has led to the slaying of one U.S. Border Patrol agent and played lethal roles in at least 11 other violent crime scenes in two states. The scheme — officially dubbed Operation Fast and Furious inside the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — allowed U.S. gun dealers over a 14-month period beginning in November 2009 to sell more than 2,000 firearms, including semiautomatic assault rifles, to buyers known to be linked to Mexican drug cartels. The idea was the weapons would show up at crime scenes in Mexico, thus enabling Mexican and U.S. officials to link drug kingpins to specific criminal acts. Instead, the weapons are showing up here in the United States where horrendous crimes have been committed. Not one Mexican drug cartelist has been arrested as a result of Operation Fast and Furious.

The most prominent of the three officials just promoted is William G. McMahon, who was elevated from ATF’s deputy director of operations to deputy assistant director of the ATF’s Office of Professional Responsibility and Security Operations. That just happens to be the ATF division that investigates misconduct by employees and other problems. In recent testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee headed by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., McMahon, who championed Fast and Furious inside ATF, admitted that “the advantage of hindsight, the benefit of a thorough review of the case, clearly points me to things that I would have done differently.” Also promoted was William Newel, the special agent in charge of ATF’s office for Arizona and New Mexico. Newel was promoted to special assistant to the assistant director of the agency’s Office of Management in Washington. The third promotion went to David Voth, formerly the program’s on-the-ground team supervisor, who is now branch chief for the ATF’s tobacco division here.