ATF’s “Operation Fast & Furious” Backfires

U.S.-Mexico border violence continues to plague the Unites States. This time, it is a failed program by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) called “Operation Fast and Furious” (OFF) that has everyone ‘up in arms.’ The reckless ATF program backfired, allowing thousands of weapons to get into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

The OFF program let some of the straw purchasers (those who buy guns for someone who can’t do so legally) walk off with semiautomatic weapons, enabling the U.S. government to move away from targeting small buyers and instead bring down entire arms trafficking networks when the guns were traced. Unfortunately, the weapons too often turned up again only after they had been used in subsequent crimes, including murders.


Back on 14 December 2010, Brain Terry [40], a former Marine who at the time was a member of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s special response team, was waiting with three other agents in a remote canyon north of Nogales, Ariz., when a frenzied shoot out ensued between them and a band of illegal immigrants that were trying to cross the border. One of the suspects was injured during the shoot out and taken into custody, while three others were later apprehended. Agent Terry, however, was not so lucky; he was shot and killed during the deadly gunfight.

When two guns linked to Operation Fast and Furious were found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Terry’s December slaying in Arizona, OFF finally made headlines, and the ATF came under “heavy fire” from critics of the program. Mexican officials say at least 150 Mexicans have been shot by guns obtained through the "Fast and Furious" program, and the Mexican government was obviously not privy to the existence of this operation until now.

The scrutiny only grew when statistics were released showing how disastrous the program actually had become. Over 2,000 guns—including AK-47s and .50-caliber rifles, and more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition—were allowed to “walk” into the possession of Mexican narco-terrorist groups. The ATF admits that nearly 800 of these guns were used in crimes on both sides of the border, endangering American and Mexican lives alike.

OFF was a new addition to the ATF’s now-defunct “Project Gunrunner” program, which authorized several U.S. gun stores located near the Mexican border to sell thousands of semi-automatic firearms to suspected and known straw-purchasers. To make matters worse, Terry and his federal U.S. Border Patrol colleagues were using beanbag rounds in the shootout, fighting against illegals who were using semiautomatic weapons that the ATF had “walked” across the border.

Now the only question is how far up the chain of command the decision-making went. President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have both asserted that they did not authorize the program. So who did? Up to this point senior ATF officials have taken the brunt of the culpability, but lawmakers are looking at the Justice Department, which heads the ATF.

At a House Oversight Committee hearing last week—which was requested by the chairman of the U.S. House of Representative’s Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) and two other Republican congressmen—ATF agents told lawmakers that instead of arresting the small-time buyers, they were instructed to stand by and watch to see where the guns went in an effort to build a case against bigger arms dealers.


As Representative Issa called his hearing into session last week, congressional staffers handed out e-mails showing that the ATF’s acting director, Kenneth Melson (pic above), and acting deputy director, Bill Hoover, were both involved in overseeing “Operation Fast and Furious.” One e-mail from George T. Gillett, the assistant special agent in charge of the ATF’s Phoenix office, to David Voth, an ATF supervisor, on March 10, 2010—about nine months before the story broke — includes this sentence: “Not sure if you know, but Mr. Nelson and Mr. Hoover are being briefed weekly on this investigation.”

Special agents John Dodson, Olindo “Lee” Casa, and Peter Forcelli all told Issa’s congressional committee that their superiors ordered them to allow suspects to walk away with dangerous weapons, “often over their strenuous objections.” The agents testified that the strategy was never very likely to work, because serial numbers were the only means by which they could track the guns. GPS technology was unavailable. Forcelli called the techniques “delusional,” estimating that guns wound up in Mexico twice as often as the United States, and Casa said he had never heard of letting guns walk before he worked in the ATF's Phoenix office.

Forcelli, an ATF Supervisory Agent, told Greta Van Susteren (of FOX News), “This is a failure in leadership at all levels within ATF, and whoever was briefed at the top; this should have been roped in much sooner than it was… The attorney general of the United States oversees all of the Department of Justice, and ATF is a branch. What he knows about this case, obviously, I can't speak to that.”

“The department’s leadership allowed the ATF to implement this flawed strategy, fully aware of what was taking place on the ground,” Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) concluded in their report. “This hapless plan allowed the guns in question to disappear out of the agency's view. As a result, this chain of events inevitably placed the guns in the hands of violent criminals.”


However, complicating things even further, the Washington Post reported that Rep. Issa (pic above) was given highly specific information about OFF at an April 2010 classified briefing and did not express any opposition. Issa called the OFF program “felony-stupid bad judgment,” and has repeatedly called for top Justice Department officials to be held accountable for the OFF program. Yet, one source familiar with the session said, “All of the things [Issa] has been screaming about, he was briefed on.” Frederick R. Hill, a spokesman for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which Issa chairs, acknowledged on Tuesday that an ATF briefing on “weapons smuggling by criminal cartels” took place in April 2010 but declined to specify what Issa or his staff were told.

So, the bottom line is that we are left with a dead border patrol agent, a failed government program that has put thousands of weapons into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, and failed leadership at all levels—with no one stepping up and taking the blame for recklessly endangering American, as well as Mexican, lives.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Melson may be ousted this week in connection with the Operation Fast and Furious controversy.

Mexican Drug War: US/Mexican Border Violence (part 2)

The nearly 2,000-mile-long border separating the United States and Mexico is one of the most frequently crossed and one of the most economically significant international borders in the world. With drug-related violence along the Mexico/U.S. border continually on the rise; however, lawmakers have been struggling to find the answers for what has been, and is increasingly, a full-scale epidemic. This month three US senators—Dianne Feinstein, Charles Schumer, and Sheldon Whitehouse—released a report entitled "Halting U.S. Firearms Trafficking to Mexico” (June 2011). The report was submitted to the US Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, and details ways to improve efforts to curb firearms trafficking from the United States to Mexico.

Based on updated ATF tracing data, the report states that of the 29,284 firearms seized and successfully traced in Mexico in 2009 and 2010, 20,504 (or 70%) came from a US source (i.e. gun shops, gun shows, or private sales). 69 percent of those firearms were purchased in either one of three US states: California, Arizona, or Texas.

The three senators noted that under federal law, background checks are not required for sales by unlicensed sellers at U.S. gun shows. They also noted that military-style weapons are readily available for civilian purchase in the US: “Many of these are imported from former Eastern bloc countries and then can be bought by straw purchasers and transported to Mexico…In addition, some importers bring rifle parts into the United States and reassemble them into military-style firearms using a small number of domestically manufactured components.”


Although this number seems daunting, it is down from a 2009 ATF report that stated “over 90 percent of the firearms seized in Mexico and traced over the last 3 years have come from the United States” (ATF, pg. 20, 2009). Still, there is no real way of knowing precisely how many rifles, handguns, grenades, and RPGs are in Mexico right now and being used by the Narco-traffickers, because these weapons have not been seized. Meanwhile, pro-gun groups, like the NRA and conservative media outlets, criticized the government statistics, claiming that they were exaggerated to support an agenda for restricting firearms ownership and stepping all over the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

In the report, the three senators made several recommendations, in the form of stricter gun-control regulations, to help with the problem. One of their recommendations—More rigorous background checks—however, won't accomplish much because these gangs are wise to US law, and purchasers select those with clean records to do the purchasing.

Most of their suggestions involve increasing gun law restrictions:

1. Reinstating the assault weapons ban
2. Requiring all gun sellers at shows to run background checks
3. Requiring the reporting of multiple long guns
4. Banning the use of semi-automatic rifles for “non-sporting purposes”
5. Quick ratification of CIFTA
6. Expanded eTrace access for the Mexican federal police

As if the problem was not bad enough, this month it was reported by CNN that corruption is running rampant not only by the Mexican authorities aiding the drug-traffickers, but also US border agents. According to Charles Edwards, the acting inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, American border agents have been protecting and escorting traffickers as well as allowing contraband and unauthorized immigrants through inspection lanes. Edwards mentioned the Los Zetas drug gang, citing them as one of the leaders “involved increasingly in systematic corruption.”

At least 127 US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employees have been arrested or indicted for acts of corruption since October 2004, according to the Department of Homeland Security Commissioner, Alan Bersin. Responding to the reason for this problem, Bersin said that the rapid hiring spree pursued by CBP has come at the cost of hiring less qualified agents.


In March 2009, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered her opinion of the role the US plays in the violent narco-trade in Mexico: “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians.”

In a press release earlier this month, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)—coordinated through the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) program—announced that a large Mexican drug trafficking organization operating in metro Atlanta has now been dismantled after an indictment and a series of federal arrests; the indictment and arrests were the result of a three year investigation, code-named “Operation G-60.” Yet, despite this month’s recent press release from the DEA, 2010 has been deadliest year so far, with 15,273 drug-related murders—up 60% from last year’s number of deaths, 9,616.


Murders in Mexico’s drug wars have been detailed in a huge new release of crime data by the Mexican government. The Mexican government has released a database it says covers all murders presumed to have a link to the country's drug wars in which at least seven different cartels are fighting each other. The database is the most detailed official picture of the drug wars yet made public, showing the geographical distribution of the violence down to the municipal level. While no region has escaped, the killing is seen as particularly intense in northern and Pacific coastal states. Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from Texas, has been the most violent city since 2008 despite also have the heaviest federal presence.

There seems to be no simple solution to this problem. The drug cartels make so much money that combating them appears almost impossible. These cartels have expanded so much that they have broken down into many more cartels; each of them trying to maintain business and constantly fighting with each other. Even the big industrial city of Monterrey, which was dubbed the safest metropolitan zone for numerous years at the start of the millennium, has now been overtaken by drug-cartel violence; with gun fights near schools and near parks, civilian life (even in Monterrey) is no longer civil.


Yet, those like Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, continue to downplay the severity of this situation. At a port of entry in El Paso called the Bridge of the Americas, Napolitano asserted recently that, “Violence along the Mexican border is merely a mistaken “perception” because the area is better now than it ever has been thanks to the Obama Administration’s commitment to ‘fostering a secure and prosperous’ region.” Napolitano also proclaimed, “Unfortunately, misinformation about safety is negatively impacting border communities by driving visitors away and hurting local businesses, Napolitano says.”

Nonetheless, Napolitano’s recent description of a U.S.-Mexico border that’s “as secure as it has ever been” appear to be in direct opposition to a Pentagon assessment. According to officials at Judicial Watch, a public-interest group that investigates public corruption and fraud, U.S. Defense Department officials believe the border is actually a gateway for Mexican criminal organizations that have infiltrated the entire country and joined forces with terrorist groups. For months the nation’s Napolitano has repeatedly insisted that everything is safe and secure on the southwest border, even as violence escalates and overwhelmed federal agents are increasingly attacked by heavily armed drug smugglers.

Back in April 2011, a top Pentagon official contradicts Napolitano’s fairytale assessment, pointing out that Mexican criminal organizations extend well beyond the southwest border to cities across the country, including big ones like Atlanta, Chicago and Detroit, according to Judicial Watch. This official was apparently correct, as seen by this month’s DEA press release, detailing their dismantling of a large Mexican drug trafficking organization operating in metro Atlanta. Even Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) acknowledged the problem: “The U.S. is still not doing enough to safeguard its border with Mexico,” McCain told reporters in March 2011. “The violence level at the border is incredibly high, and we haven’t kept up with that,” McCain added.


In May 2010, President Obama authorized the deployment of up to an additional 1,200 National Guard troops to the Southwest border to provide support for surveillance, reconnaissance and narcotics enforcement to augment U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Customs and Immigration (ICE) authorities already in place. Those deployments began in Aug. 2010. Obama also requested $600 million in supplemental funds for enhanced border protection and law enforcement activities.

“Over the past year and a half, this administration has pursued a new border security strategy with an unprecedented sense of urgency, making historic investments in personnel, technology and infrastructure,” Napolitano said in a statement released on 19 July 2010. “These troops will provide direct support to federal law enforcement officers and agents working in high-risk areas to disrupt criminal organizations seeking to move people and goods illegally across the Southwest border,” she stated further in the statement. Napolitano also announced in July 2010 that more than $47 million in fiscal year 2010 Operation Stonegraden grants for the Southwest border states to support law enforcement personnel, overtime, and related costs. Nearly 80 percent of the funding will go to Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, up from 59 percent in 2008.

READ PART 1

READ PART 3 (Fast & Furious)