Editorial Boards Call for Fast & Furious Accountability
June 22, 2012 | The Register-Guard
Holder’s default position should be one of openness. Accusations of a cover-up won’t disappear until he can show there’s nothing to hide.
June 22, 2012 | Virginian-Pilot
All of that warrants an investigation. The White House’s resistance, and its claim of executive privilege, makes the need for one more urgent.
June 22, 2012 | Post and Courier
But regardless of when presidents should and should not invoke executive privilege, attorneys general should be sure that they’re telling the truth — especially when answering questions from Congress.
June 22, 2012 | The Detroit News
The Justice Department owes Congress and the country more than the stonewalling that has marked its behavior.
June 22, 2012 | Chico-Enterprise Record
The administration can avoid a full House vote on the contempt charge by turning over the requested documents, and it should. The gamesmanship must end.
June 22, 2012 | Saint Louis Post-Dispatch
The operation was botched from the get-go. Except for Agent Terry, no one has paid much of a price for it. Mr. Holder's Justice Department has not been fully forthcoming.
June 22, 2012 | Chicago Tribune
The public and courts have no way to be sure if the government is acting out of a well-founded need to protect sensitive sources and conversations or an avid desire, particularly in an election year, to conceal its own wrongdoing.
June 21, 2012 | Denver Post
The administration can avoid a full House vote on the contempt charge by turning over the requested documents, and it should. The gamesmanship must end.
June 21, 2012 | The Washington Post
Absent very strong countervailing considerations — stronger than some of those the administration has asserted in this case — Congress is generally entitled to disclosure.
June 21, 2012 | North County Times
An overreaching claim of near-imperial legal immunity is very much the wrong answer to what are legitimate questions of how a U.S. agent and many innocent civilians in our neighboring nation came to be killed by guns the American government shipped to drug lords.
June 21, 2012 | Long Island Newsday
Whether Issa's probe is politically motivated or not, the administration will find it tough to convince the public of its openness without coughing up some more documents.
June 21, 2012 | NY Daily News
The doctrine of executive privilege must be reserved for preventing congressional intrusions into exercises of presidential power, not for shielding the paper trail of what should be far more routine government actions.
June 20, 2012 | Investor's Business Daily
Fast and Furious has become worse than Watergate. No one died at Watergate. Just what is in those documents that Obama and Holder so desperately want to hide? Brian Terry's family and the American people deserve answers.
June 20, 2012 | Washington Examiner
It is difficult to see how Obama's preference for secrecy in this case will result in any benefit to the public. It is equally difficult to see how he can square this executive privilege claim with his lofty promises of transparency.
June 20, 2012 | L.A. Times
That suggests that some of the documents could be released without intruding on deliberations directly involving Obama. If that's the case, the administration and the committee should continue to explore a possible compromise, notwithstanding election-year politics.
June 20, 2012 | Bloomberg
All that matters in the end is for the public -- and the family of Brian Terry -- to know as much as possible about what went wrong with Operation Fast and Furious.
June 20, 2012 | The Washington Times
Mr. Issa may yet obtain other material directly contradicting Mr. Holder’s sworn testimony or revealing White House involvement. It remains to be seen whether this investigation will produce a smoking gun.
June 20, 2012 | Wall Street Journal
The American people can reach their own conclusions about Mr. Holder's credibility. His serial privilege claims make him—and now the President who is coming to his rescue—very hard to believe.
Articles
January 31, 2011 | Associated Press
A U.S. senator is examining a claim that two guns sold in purchases sanctioned by federal firearms agents were later used in a December shootout that left a Border Patrol agent dead near the Arizona-Mexico border.
February 23, 2011 | CBS News
Keeping American weapons from getting into the hands of Mexican gangs is the goal of a program called "Project Gunrunner." But critics say it's doing exactly the opposite. CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports on what she found.
March 3, 2011 | CBS News
Federal agent John Dodson says what he was asked to do was beyond belief. He was intentionally letting guns go to Mexico? "Yes ma'am," Dodson told CBS News. "The agency was."
March 6, 2011 | CBS News
ATF sources tell CBS News that Mexican officials were intentionally kept in the dark for fear that they would jeopardize the controversial program. The strategy drew fierce criticism from federal agents ordered to employ it, including John Dodson. Dodson told CBS News that that letting guns "walk" endangered too many lives.
March 10, 2011 | CBS News
Prior to this week, the position of the Justice Department was that ATF has never knowingly allowed guns to get into the hands of suspected gunrunners. However, Attorney General Eric Holder no longer appears to be denying the allegations, which have been made by a dozen veteran ATF agents.
March 17, 2011 | TPM Muckraker
Darrell Issa (R-CA) lobbed criticism at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Wednesday night and revealed he is investigating allegations that the agency intentionally let more than 1,700 guns be illegally trafficked to Mexico.
March 20, 2011 | CBS News
The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual, has resigned under pressure. In recent weeks, Mexico's President Felipe Calderon has said in public he doesn't trust Pascual (seen at left). Several sources close to diplomatic circles inside Mexico tell CBS News that from Mexico's viewpoint, the ATF "gunwalking" scandal was the final straw in a series of controversies.
March 21, 2011 | CBS News
South of El Paso, Texas, on Mexico's side of the border, lies Juarez - the most dangerous city in the world. CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports ATF Special Agent Rene Jaquez has been stationed there for the past year, trying to keep U.S. guns from being trafficked into Mexico.
April 1, 2011 | TPM Muckraker
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) wants answers about Project Gunrunner — a controversial initiative targeting illegal gun trafficking on the Mexico border — and he wants them now.
April 14, 2011 | CBS News
Damning, newly-obtained emails show that a key gun shop owner made explicit concerns in writing last year in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' "gunwalking" scandal.
April 29, 2011 | TPM Muckraker
“The Obama Administration has been stonewalling congressional inquiries into the deadly ‘Project Gunrunner’ and ‘Operation Fast and Furious’ debacles since day one,” an Issa spokeswoman told TPM in a statement.
May 4, 2011 | Wall Street Journal
Critics say the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lost track of guns it was supposed to be monitoring, letting the weapons pass into the hands of Mexican cartels and perhaps be used in violence against U.S. officials.
May 4, 2011 | CBS News
One document indicates a Holder Asst. Attorney General, Lanny Breuer, authorized a wiretap in the controversial gun trafficking case headquartered in Phoenix. In that case, called "Fast and Furious," multiple sources say ATF allowed thousands of guns to hit the streets, destined for Mexican drug cartels.
May 6, 2011 | CBS News
Nearly five months after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down near the Arizona-Mexico border, today a federal judge unsealed 14 count indictment charging Manuel Osorio-Arellanes and at least two others with Terry's murder. At today's arraignment, Osorio-Arellanes pleaded not guilty.
June 9, 2011 | Wall Street Journal
An arsenal found in Mexico included at least five assault rifles that U.S. authorities trace to a federal operation gone badly awry, according to government documents.
June 13, 2011 | Univision
Senator Chuck Grassley talked to Jorge Ramos about the controversial operation 'Fast and Furious', through which hundreds of weapons were smuggled to Mexico from the US while de US government spied on the cartels.
June 14, 2011 | NY Times
In a report issued Tuesday by two powerful Republicans in Congress, the Justice Department was accused of conducting an operation that allowed nearly 1,000 guns to flow illegally into Mexico, including two that were eventually found at the scene of the murder of an American Border Patrol agent.
June 16, 2011 | Wall Street Journal
Lawmakers released documents showing that senior federal officials were closely involved in a troubled gun-enforcement operation that came to light after the death of a U.S. border agent in a shootout in December.
June 21, 2011 | The Daily Show
The ATF plan to prevent American guns from being used in Mexican gun violence is to provide Mexican gangs with American guns.
June 23, 2011 | LA Times
A congressional investigation into a controversial federal gun-running surveillance operation is moving to Mexico this week amid new reports that two AK-47s sold in Arizona during the operation were found at the scene of a shootout with the suspected killers of a well-known Mexican attorney.
July 7, 2011
The embattled head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has told congressional investigators that some Mexican drug cartel figures targeted by his agency in a gun-trafficking investigation were paid informants for the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration.
July 25, 2011 | Washington Post
They came from all over the country, agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, brought here in a bold new effort to shut down the flow of U.S. guns to Mexican drug cartels. It was called Operation Fast and Furious, after a popular movie about street car racing.
July 26, 2011 | Wall Street Journal
Federal agents running an Arizona gun-trafficking investigation can't account for more than 1,000 firearms bought by suspected smugglers, a new congressional report said.
July 26, 2011 | TPM Muckraker
Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and Justice Department officials didn’t properly inform ATF employees stationed in Mexico about the technique of letting suspected straw purchasers put guns into the supply line so they could determine how the guns ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels, according to the Republican report.
August 11, 2011 | LA Times
Just a few months into Operation Fast and Furious, an agency official called for a strategy to shut down the program aimed at following guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
August 17, 2011 | LA Times
Firearms from the ATF's Operation Fast and Furious weapons trafficking investigation turned up at the scenes of at least 11 violent crimes in the U.S., as well as at a Border Patrol agent's slaying in southern Arizona last year, the Justice Department has acknowledged to Congress.
August 30, 2011 | Washington Post
Justice Department officials announced Tuesday that they had reassigned the ATF director and that the U.S. attorney in Phoenix had stepped down, a major shake-up in response to the controversy over a Phoenix-based U.S. gun-trafficking operation.
August 30, 2011 | TPM Muckraker
The acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms And Explosives (ATF) and the U.S. Attorney for Arizona have resigned their posts in the wake of a scandal involving a program aimed at stopping gun trafficking on the Mexican border. ATF Director Ken Melson and U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke announced their resignations on Tuesday.
September 2, 2011 | CBS News
CBS News has obtained a series of emails that show the White House had more information on ATF's controversial Fast and Furious operation than previously disclosed. But administration officials insists nobody at the White House knew specifically that ATF was allowing guns to "walk" into the hands of suspected gun traffickers for Mexican drug cartels.
September 7, 2011 | USA Today
Federal prosecutors in Arizona have been stripped of three major criminal cases, including the murder last year of a Border Patrol agent, in the wake of ongoing investigations into the office's role in a controversial weapons-trafficking operation that allowed hundreds of guns to fall into the hands of drug cartel associates in Mexico and criminals in the U.S.
September 8, 2011 | LA Times
In the second violent crime in this country connected with the ATF’s failed Fast and Furious program, two Arizona undercover police officers were allegedly assaulted last year when they attempted to stop two men in a stolen vehicle with two of the program's weapons in a confrontation south of Phoenix.
September 11, 2011 | LA Times
In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard's Lone Wolf gun store. They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door.
September 13, 2011 | CBS News
Weapons linked to ATF's controversial "Fast and Furious" operation have been tied to at least eight violent crimes in Mexico including three murders, four kidnappings and an attempted homicide.
September 19, 2011 | LA Times
Top Mexican officials say the U.S. kept them in the dark. One official was stunned to learn that the cartel hit men who killed her brother had assault rifles from Fast and Furious in their arsenal.
September 29, 2011 | LA Times
A cache of assault weapons lost in the ATF's gun-trafficking surveillance operation in Phoenix turned up in El Paso, where it was being stored for shipment to Mexico, according to new internal agency emails and federal court records.
October 13, 2011 | CNN
Congressional investigators issued a subpoena Wednesday for communications from several top Justice Department officials -- including Attorney General Eric Holder -- relating to the discredited "Fast and Furious" federal gunrunning operation.
October 18, 2011 | ABC News
As the Justice Department investigates how U.S. guns were allowed to flow illicitly into Mexico under the watchful eyes of federal agents, President Obama said today in an exclusive interview with ABC News that “people who have screwed up will be held accountable.”
December 2, 2011 | Fox News
While federal officials publicly denounced a lone whistleblower and told Congress the Obama administration had done everything it could to stop guns from going to Mexico, administration officials had signs that Fast and Furious investigators were losing track of weapons, a new memo obtained exclusively by Fox News suggests.
December 16, 2011 | NPR
A year after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed by a weapon lost in a failed gunwalking operation, his family is calling on the U.S. government to hold those responsible accountable.
December 18, 2011 | Univision
One of the new faces of the Republican Party and vocal critic of Barack Obama discusses the Fast and Furious investigation. Note: Interview is in Spanish.
December 20, 2011 | Univision
A leading Republican lawmaker investigating the botched ”Fast and Furious” gun-walking operation this weekend issued an ultimatum to Attorney General Eric Holder: Clean up the mess or lose your job.
January 20, 2012 | Fox News
The chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona is refusing to testify before Congress regarding Operation Fast and Furious, the federal gun-running scandal that sent U.S. weapons to Mexico.
January 21, 2012 | The Economist
The battle over Operation Fast and Furious has only become more serious since then. There are more troubling questions about how much senior officials in the Justice Department, up to and including Eric Holder, the attorney-general, knew about the operation, and when. Last February the department issued a letter denying the allegations that the ATF had allowed gunwalking. In March Barack Obama told Univision that neither he nor Mr Holder had authorised the operation. Six weeks later, in May, Mr Holder told the House Judiciary Committee that he had “probably” first heard of Operation Fast and Furious “over the past few weeks”.
January 28, 2012 | Associated Press
Newly released Justice Department emails sent to Capitol Hill for a congressional inquiry into a gun-smuggling operation indicate that the head of the department's criminal division suggested letting some illicit "straw" weapons buyers in the U.S. transport their guns across the border into Mexico where they could be arrested.
February 2, 2012 | ABC News
Attorney General Eric Holder takes the hot seat today in what is expected to a contentious hearing over the botched ATF gun running operation “Fast and Furious” before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
February 2, 2012 | Fox News
Top Department of Justice officials had extensive knowledge of and involvement in Operation Fast and Furious, claims a new report released Thursday, hours before Attorney General Eric Holder's scheduled testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
February 3, 2012 | CNN
Brian Terry's life serves as inspiration to those who knew him. His death, a thorn in the side of the federal government. Terry, a 40-year-old federal agent, was killed December 14, 2010, after he confronted suspected drug bandits near the Arizona-Mexico border. Two weapons found near the scene of the killing were traced to a federal operation known as Fast and Furious.
February 9, 2012 | Arizona Republic
Mexican cartel suspects targeted in the troubled gun-trafficking probe known as Operation Fast and Furious were actually working as FBI informants at the time, according to a congressional memo that describes the case's mission as a "failure."
March 19, 2012 | LA Times
Federal agents stopped the main target of the ill-fated Operation Fast and Furious in May 2010. After they questioned him, he disappeared back into Mexico, and the program went on to spiral out of control.
March 22, 2012 | LA Times
Manuel Celis-Acosta, the chief suspect in the ATF’s "Fast and Furious" investigation who was caught but released at the U.S.-Mexico border in May 2010, was also stopped and released two months earlier while in possession of a Colt .38-caliber pistol purchased illegally under the gun-tracking operation.