In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov. 8th, Attorney General Eric Holder continued to claim he knew nothing about guns being walked into Mexico until after the fact, and that he knew nothing about operation Fast and Furious until earlier this year. With little worry that he had given a completely different answer to the House Oversight Committee on May 3rd, a non-repentant Holder told the Senators:

I first learned about the tactics and the phrase “Operation Fast and Furious” at the beginning of this year — I think when it became a matter of all of this public controversy. In my testimony before the House Committee, I did say “a few weeks.” I probably could have said “a couple of months.” I don’t think that what I said in terms of using the term “a few weeks” was inaccurate, based on what happened.

Come on Mr. Holder, this is getting ridiculous.

What makes it worse is that neither timeline is honest: In other words, he neither found out about it a few weeks ago or earlier this year. Rather, he was briefed on Fast and Furious in mid-summer 2010 and three months later was sent memos which dealt with specifically with gun walking into Mexico.

And who can forget Holder’s own speech in Mexico on April 2, 2009, wherein he boasted of operation Gunrunner:

Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels.  My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion.  DHS is making similar commitments, as Secretary Napolitano will detail. (emphasis mine)

By the way, what does the name “Gunrunner” signify if not the intention to run (or walk) guns?

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From 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.”

“Our overarching goal consistently has been to say we’ve got a responsibility not only to stop drugs from flowing north, we’ve also got a responsibility to make sure we are not helping to either arm or finance these drug cartels in Mexico,” Obama said in the interview with ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper that will air on “Nightline.”

“It’s very upsetting to me to think that somebody showed such bad judgment that they would allow something like that to happen,” he said. “And we will find out who and what happened in this situation and make sure it gets corrected.” (more…)

In a move that should outrage every freedom-loving American, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has decided that the way to correct the utter failure (and criminality) of Operation “Fast and Furious” is to punish gun store owners.

That’s right: in response to the growing public outcry over the hundreds upon hundreds of guns which illegally crossed the border into Mexico with the ATF’s blessing, the DOJ is requiring gun stores in Arizona, California, Texas and New Mexico to report individual purchases of multiple rifles of greater than .22 caliber to the ATF.  To quality for special reporting, the rifles also have to have a detachable magazine and be semi-automatic. (In other words, they are similar to many of the 2500 guns the ATF allowed “straw purchasers” to buy during Operation “Gunrunner.”)

Upon instituting this new rule late Monday night, July 11, Deputy Attorney General James Cole released a letter explaining that the new reporting mandate is due to the fact that such weapons “are highly sought after by dangerous drug trafficking organizations and frequently recovered at violent crime scenes near the Southwest Border.”

Cole added: “This new reporting measure…will improve the ability of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to detect and disrupt the illegal weapons trafficking networks responsible for diverting firearms from lawful commerce to criminals and criminal organizations.”

The hypocrisy here is palpable, and it is as repugnant to the rational mind as the DOJ-approved smuggling of weapons across the border was to begin with.

Where’s the apology for Border Agent Brian Terry’s death?

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News about Operation “Fast and Furious” is now ubiquitous. Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson’s Fourth of July testimony to Senator Charles Grassley and Representative Darrell Issa blew the cover off what appears to be one of the biggest political cover-ups in the last 50 years.

In the middle of it is Attorney General Eric Holder, who now feigns a blissful ignorance about the whole mess: having nothing to say about its beginnings as Operation “Gunrunner” or its latest incarnation as “Fast and Furious.”

For those who might not know, Operation “Gunrunner” was the plan to sell guns to “straw purchasers” with suspected ties to the Mexican cartel. Apparently, ATF was then banking on those purchasers to walk the guns across the border into Mexico. Operation “Fast and Furious” was the plan to follow those guns until they were in cartel hands and then make apprehensions. (For the record, I concur with those who believe this was all an attempt to flood the border with weapons in order to create a degree of chaos sufficient to convince us of the supposed-need for more gun control in America.)

Anyway, the problem with Holder’s feigned ignorance is that he gave a speech in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 2, 2009, in which he boasted about Operation “Gunrunner” and told Mexican authorities of everything he was doing to insure its success.

Holder told the audience:

Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels.  My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion. (Italics mine)

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