The controversy over Operation Fast and Furious, a botched investigation into an Arizona gun-trafficking network, has led to a shakeup in the U.S. Justice Department.
The Obama administration has reassigned Kenneth E. Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to a lower-level position as a senior advisor in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy. In addition, the U.S. Attorney in Phoenix, Dennis K. Burke, has resigned.
As the Los Angeles Times reports, Operation Fast and Furious was launched under Melson’s leadership. In the investigation, ATF agents watched — and in some cases recorded on video — illegal gun sales and then used surveillance teams and electronic eavesdropping to follow the guns and learn how the weapons were moved. The goal was to arrest cartel leaders overseeing gun smuggling on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico.
The pursuit of the guns and cartel leaders soon hit a dead end and the ATF lost track of many of the weapons. Some later turned up at crime scenes in Mexico, and two were recovered at an Arizona site where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed. That prompted a continuing Congressional investigation into the operation.
As the Center for Public Integrity reports, 200 of the nearly 2,000 firearms bought by suspects during the 15-month operation were later recovered at crime scenes.
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“Botched?” In what way was Operation Fast and Furious botched?
It was designed from the outset to provide federal law enforcement security to straw purchasers of firearms, assuring that neither the purchasers nor the smugglers stood any chance of being arrested by federal, state, or local authorities. There was never a mechanism to arrest the alleged targets of the operation, which were in Mexico and out of our jurisdiction.
Fast and Furious was only “botched” in that the scheme to arm the Sinaloa cartel by our DOJ, DHS, and White House was eventually ratted out by one of the participants when the plot led to the death of a fellow federal agent.
Fast and Furious did precisely what Obama wanted it to, which was to put American guns in the hands of Mexican criminals in order to justify more gun control in the United States.