Fast and Furious seems like it has the potential to become a pretty big scandal for the Obama Department of Justice; however it hasn't had much coverage. Forbes' recently wrote a great story about it, which I strongly recommend. The earliest mention of Fast and Furious is from a January briefing paper, which stated that from Sept. 2009 - Jan 2010, the straw buyers (people who legally bought guns, and then sold them to people who could not legally obtain the guns) purchased around $350,000 worth of "firearms". There are different ideas of the motives behind this operation, however the Department of Justice and ATF have stated that the purpose was to track the guns to illegal Mexican cartels.
The owners of gun stores are supposed to, under law, report any suspicious persons buying guns from their stores, however the ATF essentially told these owners to turn their backs on suspicious people so that they could track them to the cartels. Many ATF agents began to see this as a problem. In March the director of the ATF's Phoenix Division VII stated in an email to agents,
"Whether you care or not people of rank and authority at HQ are paying close attention to this case and they also believe we (Phoenix Group VII) are doing what they envisioned the Southwest Border Groups doing. It may sound cheesy, but we are ‘The Tip of the ATF spear’ when it comes to Southwest Border Firearms Trafficking. We need to resolve our issues at this meeting. I will be damned if this case is going to suffer due to petty arguing, rumors or other adolescent behavior. If you don’t think this is fun you’re in the wrong line of work — period."ATF agents' concern grew as the guns that were allowed to "walk" began turning up at crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S. with a growing frequency. The concern was justified when U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered on December 14th, by one of the guns that was allowed, by the ATF, to "walk".
This event began investigations into the ATF and the Department of Justice's knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious. The straw purchasers were arrested in mid January and the whistleblowers of the ATF began receiving more attention. Tragedy then struck again. On February 15th, 2011 ICE Agent Jaime Zapata was killed in Mexico. Since then the Department of Justice has been targeted.
Many believe that Eric Holder knew about Fast and Furious for much longer than he claims to have known, because of some contradictions he has made. When asked about how long he had known of Operation Fast and Furious in May, Holder responded by saying that he had only heard of it a few weeks before that. Recently documents were released showing that Holder received memos as early as July 2010 briefing him on the operation. For this reason 35 congressman have asked Holder to resign, and I couldn't agree more.
The other concerning case is that of Agent Jesus Diaz Jr. In October 2008 Border Patrol Agent Jesus Diaz Jr. viewed a teenage boy crossing the border with a large backpack. Diaz caught the boy and found 75 pounds of marijuana in the backpack. After putting handcuffs on the boy and lifting him off the ground, the boy appeared to try to run, so Diaz lifted the handcuffs and the boy fell to the ground. After Diaz was cleared of wrongdoing the Department of Justice stepped in and granted the drug smuggler immunity to testify against Diaz, and a U.S. visa, and Diaz was found guilty. I do not know what is legal in how you treat illegal drug smugglers; however, I believe that if what Diaz says he did is true, that should absolutely be allowed in dealing with this type of situation. I think it is absolutely astounding that not only is a border patrol agent given 2 years in prison for keeping this country safe, but that the U.S. government also granted immunity and a U.S. visa to a smuggler bringing 75 pounds of marijuana into the country.
These 2 examples prove the vendetta that the Obama DOJ, lead by Eric holder, has against Border patrol agents. Eric Holder is not good for the United States when he views the Border Patrol agents as the bad guys, and should not be allowed to serve another day as the Attorney General.
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