Wired
Days before Attorney General Eric Holder is once again hauled before Congress to testify for Operation Fast and Furious, a new report sheds light on whether high-ranking officials knew, or have been honest about, one of the biggest failures in Justice Department history: a disastrous plan by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to allow gunrunners to “walk” firearms into the hands of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.
These questions are crucial because Fast and Furious has not only become a huge political issue, it also determines who will take responsibility for allowing thousands of guns to move unimpeded into a war zone south of the U.S.-Mexico border. The gunwalking operation — an attempt to build cases by not stopping but monitoring the flow of U.S. straw-purchased weapons to Mexico’s cartels — eventually saw the ATF lose track of more than 2,000 guns, many in the hands of cartel hitmen.
Hundreds of weapons recovered at crime scenes in Mexico were later traced to Fast and Furious, including AK-47 variant rifles discovered at the scene of a Dec. 14, 2010, shootout between border bandits and a Border Patrol BORTAC tactical unit in Arizona. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in the fight.
But Fast and Furious wasn’t the first operation to run guns. The report, released by House Democrats, describes the plot as “the latest in a series of fatally flawed operations run by ATF agents in Phoenix and the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s Office,” beginning with the 2006-2007′s Operation Wide Receiver. In the beginning, Phoenix-based ATF agents “went forward with plans to observe or facilitate hundreds of suspected straw firearm purchases,” according to the report. Faced with the risk of losing track of the guns, Wide Receiver was shuttered.
In two cases, named the “The Hernandez Case” and “The Medrano Case,” the ATF watched groups of conspirators cross into Mexico carrying straw-purchased guns. In “Medrano,” smugglers snuck more than 100 firearms into Mexico while under observation by the ATF.
Fast and Furious was much bigger, with greater potential rewards — and risks — for field agents, involving “a sizable network the operation of straw puchasers [the ATF] believed were trafficking military-grade assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels.” But then the operation went badly wrong. Guns disappeared, or appeared after gunfights with the Mexican military or in stash houses. Then agent Terry was shot.
Days before Attorney General Eric Holder is once again hauled before Congress to testify for Operation Fast and Furious, a new report sheds light on whether high-ranking officials knew, or have been honest about, one of the biggest failures in Justice Department history: a disastrous plan by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to allow gunrunners to “walk” firearms into the hands of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.
These questions are crucial because Fast and Furious has not only become a huge political issue, it also determines who will take responsibility for allowing thousands of guns to move unimpeded into a war zone south of the U.S.-Mexico border. The gunwalking operation — an attempt to build cases by not stopping but monitoring the flow of U.S. straw-purchased weapons to Mexico’s cartels — eventually saw the ATF lose track of more than 2,000 guns, many in the hands of cartel hitmen.
Hundreds of weapons recovered at crime scenes in Mexico were later traced to Fast and Furious, including AK-47 variant rifles discovered at the scene of a Dec. 14, 2010, shootout between border bandits and a Border Patrol BORTAC tactical unit in Arizona. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in the fight.
But Fast and Furious wasn’t the first operation to run guns. The report, released by House Democrats, describes the plot as “the latest in a series of fatally flawed operations run by ATF agents in Phoenix and the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s Office,” beginning with the 2006-2007′s Operation Wide Receiver. In the beginning, Phoenix-based ATF agents “went forward with plans to observe or facilitate hundreds of suspected straw firearm purchases,” according to the report. Faced with the risk of losing track of the guns, Wide Receiver was shuttered.
In two cases, named the “The Hernandez Case” and “The Medrano Case,” the ATF watched groups of conspirators cross into Mexico carrying straw-purchased guns. In “Medrano,” smugglers snuck more than 100 firearms into Mexico while under observation by the ATF.
Fast and Furious was much bigger, with greater potential rewards — and risks — for field agents, involving “a sizable network the operation of straw puchasers [the ATF] believed were trafficking military-grade assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels.” But then the operation went badly wrong. Guns disappeared, or appeared after gunfights with the Mexican military or in stash houses. Then agent Terry was shot.
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