Have you heard about Operation Fast and Furious? How about Project Gunrunner? Both are little intrigues thought up by BATFE's Phoenix office. It seems those bright boys decided to get the goods on a whole Mexican drug cartel all by themselves. So their bright little scheme was to have honest gun dealers sell rifles like semi-auto AK variants to straw purchasers and then wait until those guns show up at crime scenes. Oh yeah...those crimes scenes they were hoping for would be in Mexico. Then they could prosecute the bad guys.
They have had a fair amount of success. Let's see: So far two US Border Patrol agents are dead, killed with Fast and Furious guns. 2500 or so guns have been sold and maybe 1200 have gone to Mexico. No one knows how many Mexicans have been killed.
Now, you should understand that professional ATF field agents NEVER let the bad guys get away with guns...they always arrest people as soon as the straw buy is completed. But the ATF masters in this operation insisted that arrests were not to be made. And just for giggles, no one told the Mexicans about this plan.
Who authorized this? No higher-ups in ATF are talking. Total stonewall. Except for 3 field agents who testified at Darrel Issa's Congressional Oversight Committee meetings this week. And they pulled no punches. '
Oversight Committee Report by Issa and Grassley: http://www.latimes.com/media/acrobat/2011-06/62372429.pdf
I found the hearings fascinating to listen to. You might like them too. CSPAN has nice videos here:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/search-results.php?keywords=fast+and+furious
and here:
http://cspan.org/Events/Fast-and-Furious-a-Catastrophic-Disaster/10737422274-2/
The testimony by the cousin of slain agent Brian Terry is a tearjerker.
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