Operation Fast and Furious: What's Going On?

[Lord MJ]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/20/politics/ ... index.html

Obama asserts executive privilege on Fast and Furious documents
By Tom Cohen, CNN
updated 10:23 AM EDT, Wed June 20, 2012
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

NEW: The move comes as a House committee was set to vote on a contempt measure
NEW: The start of the committee hearing is delayed
Attorney Gen. Holder says the panel chairman, Rep. Issa, is playing political games
At issue are documents Issa seeks on the botched Fast and Furious gun-running sting

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama has asserted executive privilege over documents sought by a House committee investigating the botched Fast and Furious gun-running sting, according to a letter to the panel Wednesday from Deputy Attorney Gen. James Cole.

The move means the Department of Justice can withhold the documents from the House Oversight Committee, which was scheduled to consider a contempt measure Wednesday against Holder.

"I write now to inform you that the president has asserted executive privilege over the relevant post-February 4, 2011, documents," Cole wrote in a letter to committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California.

"We regret that we have arrived at this point, after the many steps we have taken to address the committee's concerns and to accommodate the committee's legitimate oversight interests regarding Operation Fast and Furious," Cole continued. "Although we are deeply disappointed that the committee appears intent on proceeding with a contempt vote, the department remains willing to work with the Committee to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution of the outstanding issues."

Wednesday's development further heightened the drama of a high-profile showdown between Issa and Holder over the committee's demand for the Department of Justice to turn over more documents about the Fast and Furious program.

The hearing by Issa's panel to consider the contempt measure had yet to begin 15 minutes after its scheduled start, following the release of Cole's letter to the committee.

Issa and Holder met Tuesday evening in what was billed as a final effort to resolve their differences. However, the meeting amounted to little more than a reiteration of the positions the two staked out in an exchange of letters the previous week, and Issa said afterward the committee would proceed with its contempt vote if Holder failed to turn over the documents in question.

Holder told reporters that he offered to provide the documents on the condition that Issa gave his assurance that doing so would satisfy two committee subpoenas and resolve the dispute.
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Front Lines: Holder in contempt?

"They rejected what I thought was an extraordinary offer on our part.," Holder said. Asked about whether Issa was open to resolving the issue before the committee meets Wednesday, Holder said: "I think we actually are involved more in political gamesmanship" instead of a sincere effort to get the requested documents.

In particular, Issa's committee wants documents that show why the Department of Justice decided to withdraw as inaccurate a February 2011 letter sent to Congress that said top officials had only recently learned about Fast and Furious.

In a letter to Issa after the Tuesday meeting, Cole reiterated Holder's position that the documents would show Holder had nothing to hide about his role in Fast and Furious.

Cole noted that the lone point of dispute was whether the February 4,2011 letter was part of a broader effort to obstruct a congressional investigation.

"The answer to that question is an emphatic 'no' and we have offered the Committee the opportunity to satisfy itself that that is so," Cole wrote.

Holder floats 'Fast and Furious' deal with Congress

A committee statement issued before Tuesday's meeting said it was a chance for Holder to meet the panel's demands for additional documents, which would allow for a postponement.

"Currently, (the Department of Justice) has not delivered or shown the committee any of the documents it has said it is prepared to produce," the statement continued. "It is not clear if they will actually produce these documents to the committee before the Wednesday vote to facilitate a postponement."

Holder, however, said he made an unprecedented offer of documents and a briefing to the committee, which so far has turned him down.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the committee who also attended the meeting, said Holder was trying to end a protracted standoff with the Republican-led panel.

"He sees this as a never-ending process," Cummings said in describing Holder's concerns about the continuing requests for more documentation.

Another person in the room, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vermont, said afterward that he supported Holder and appreciated "that he is going the extra mile to resolve this."

However, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who also participated in the meeting, said Holder was seeking to get cleared before he actually turned over any of the requested information.

Holder rejects resignation call at heated Senate hearing

"The attorney general wants to trade a briefing and the promise of delivering some small, unspecified set of documents tomorrow for a free pass today," Grassley said afterward. "He wants to turn over only what he wants to turn over and not give us any information about what he's not turning over. That's unacceptable. I'm not going to buy a pig in a poke."

While such disputes have long been part of the interaction between Congress and the government, the public showdown between Holder and Issa -- coming in the politically charged atmosphere of an election year -- raised the stakes on an already volatile issue.

Issa has accused the attorney general of stonewalling an investigation into Fast and Furious and how the Justice Department provided Congress with erroneous information about it. The department says it already has handed over more than 7,000 pages of records to House investigators, and that the remaining material Issa wants could jeopardize criminal prosecutions.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives launched Operation Fast and Furious out of Arizona to track weapon purchases by Mexican drug cartels. However, it lost track of more than 1,000 firearms that the agency had allowed straw buyers to carry across the border, and two of the lost weapons turned up at the scene of the killing of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

Asked by a reporter about why he was pushing so hard, Issa said it was because the nation and Terry's family deserved to know as much information as possible about the program linked to Terry's death.

The back-and-forth letters exchanged between Holder and Issa before Tuesday's meeting revealed an incremental negotiation over what the committee wanted and what the Department of Justice was willing to provide.

In a late Monday letter, Issa made clear he wanted the documents ahead of time and also wanted Grassley, a leading Holder critic, to take part.

Holder agreed to a meeting but told Issa he wanted to include Cummings and Leahy. His letter Monday said the purpose of the meeting would be to reach an agreement that would avoid a "constitutional confrontation," a reference to the committee's planned vote on the contempt measure.

On the border: Guns, drugs -- and a betrayal of trust

Between this and the National Security Leaks controversy, things are not looking good for the Obama Administration. What is Holder trying to hide? Is Obama involved in the scandal in anyway? As an Obama supporter this is something I do not want to be hearing.

[SirNitram]

Oh look. Issa is continuing his crusade to find something to discredit Obama. It'd be funny if it weren't so sad.

Gunwalking operation is done by Obama administration, much like Bush administration. It fails. Vast majority of files turned over. Issa demands more, because it's a Democratic administration.

But broadly the majority of what's 'there' was unveiled last year, especially with multiple ATF agents and US Attorneys from the states on the border which were involved(KInda telling was Patrick Cunningham from Arizona, who resigned and then went full right against self-incrimination). The DOJ Inspector General and Congress investigated further, and the last measure which I can say is free of partisan impact was a report called 'Fatally Flawed: Five years of gunwalking in Arizona' released in January.

Issa's a political hack, frankly. He's chased every would-be scandal of the minute and tried to inflate it into something that would bring Obama down. He's a guy who said Obama was running one of the most corrupt administrations in the US, and when another nothing-scandal failed to gain footing, he quickly tried to explain he meant corrupt like a hard disk drive; failing and broken.

[Beowulf]

Eh, not quite like the Bush Administration. The Bush administration's version involved shoving trackers into the guns, so the guns could leave the store, and agents could find them again in a couple days. It failed because the trackers weren't installed correctly (antennas got bent, etc), as well as the batteries not lasting nearly long enough.

Fast and Furious involved the ATF telling shop owners to sell the guns to people they thought were suspicious. No trackers were installed. There was apparently no attempt to continue to follow the guns. The guns just went over the border, and disappeared, until one of them was used to shoot a Border Patrol agent.

[Thanas]

Fast and Furious involved the ATF telling shop owners to sell the guns to people they thought were suspicious. No trackers were installed. There was apparently no attempt to continue to follow the guns.

Eh...what? That sounds massively stupid.

[SirNitram]

It was incredibly stupid. Which is all the more amusing as apparently Issa beleives it's a conspiracy all the way to the top, instead of a very, very stupid ATF operation.

[Beowulf]

So if it's incredibly stupid, and they already had an example of a better way (still failed, but better), why did they do it the way they did? Why did none of the agents get punished? Why have some of them even been promoted? Why is Obama claiming Executive Privilege over the documents? Is a failed sting really a threat to national security (note, Executive Privilege is normally restricted to such, not used for upcoming criminal cases)?

[Alyrium Denryle]

So if it's incredibly stupid, and they already had an example of a better way (still failed, but better), why did they do it the way they did? Why did none of the agents get punished? Why have some of them even been promoted? Why is Obama claiming Executive Privilege over the documents? Is a failed sting really a threat to national security (note, Executive Privilege is normally restricted to such, not used for upcoming criminal cases)?

Proposition: Limit by statute executive privilege, and require that any such claim during a criminal investigation, or civil/human rights suit be vetted by a federal court with a mandate to weigh the probitive value and interests of justice against the claims of the administration.

That way, the executive branch cannot claim Exec Privilege to shield itself from its own incompetence/malfeasence like it has done in cases like this, and...when the administration captures and tortures german citizens et al.

[SirNitram]

So if it's incredibly stupid, and they already had an example of a better way (still failed, but better), why did they do it the way they did? Why did none of the agents get punished? Why have some of them even been promoted? Why is Obama claiming Executive Privilege over the documents? Is a failed sting really a threat to national security (note, Executive Privilege is normally restricted to such, not used for upcoming criminal cases)?

As for why the ATF didn't clean house: Dilbert Principle; you fail upwards, like many other situations.

As for Obama; this assumes Issa is being truthful about what he's requesting being related. Equally Holder claims they are protected under the bit where the DOJ doesn't release papers detailing current work to nail perpetraitors, however, one of these individuals has been sniffing around for a scandal, and one hasn't. Hence I tend to believe Holder is not lying about those additional papers being part of current prosecution/investigations.

As for why Obama went this far, Issa is effectively threatening to issue contempt for the DOJ doing the appropriate thing, which is holding documents which could result in evasion of suspects. It's an iffy case of legitimacy, but then again, so is hunting up through this and claiming you meant corrupt like hard drive sectors.

[Sea Skimmer]

So the house committee just voted to recommend the full house hold Holder in contempt a few minutes ago. It will now go to the full house, which is likely to vote the same way, which would then turn the case over to the Department of Justice who will let a grand jury decide to go further or not.

Eh...what? That sounds massively stupid.

Absurdly so. And they were told to allow the sales after the store owners contacted the ATF themselves to report questionable attempts to buy multiple long guns. Not just a few people buying a few guns at a time either, a couple thousand assault rifles were involved in this. Then after the guns showed up in Mexican kills, the ATF turned around and tried to force gunshops to report all such sales in the US south west by fiat, despite congress having barred it from doing so as this amounted to backdoor gun registration.

The end result is many Republicans believe the ATF deliberately allowed the guns to get to Mexico, specifically so it would finally have 'proof' that it needed greater powers to prevent such sales as little hard evidence had existed before of recently produced US firearms being used by cartels, as opposed to ones years old that could have come from anywhere. Deliberate or not, it is in fact exactly what happened and people are pissed to no end about it.

[Beowulf]

There's pictures out there with Issa holding the documents that the DoJ gave the committee. They're white papers with a giant black rectangle on them. It's permissible to redact some information to protect an ongoing investigation. It's comical to turn over reams of paper with nothing on them except black rectangle, and claim those are the pertinent documents.

Now, the funny thing about it getting turned over to the DoJ after the vote: It's run by the same guy being held in contempt by Congress.

[Sea Skimmer]

Sure, but if his underlings who would be in charge of an investigation deliberately mishandle it, then it will just turn into Holder being impeached or even Obama. Its more likely they'll just slowly release more documents.

As I recall Holder has already been caught lieing about the entire process several times, as early on he denied knowing anything at all about Fast and Furious, so he would not do well if it came to impeachment. As this point though we've gotten so close to the next election that Republicans are unlikely to want to bog everything down with an impeachment process. Its likely to all just fester and not reach the supreme court until after the election, as supreme court would need to strike strike down Obama invoking executive privilege to shield Holder to actually outright force an impeachment.

As for the picture, yeah. That document on the US nuclear stockpile plan Shep found had more information on it.

[Simon_Jester]

I find it hard to believe Obama was dumb enough to have been involved in this without having pointed out the "yeah, so what goes in this "???" between "encourage gun store owners to sell guns to Mexican drug lords" and "Profit!!!" *

Honestly, I think Obama and his administration have this tremendously counterproductive culture-of-secrecy thing going on. They won't tell you anything, they won't tell you why they won't tell you anything, and they'll keep stonewalling you until you're so annoyed you want to see someone blast them out of it, regardless of the consequences. It's almost like Obama said shortly after taking office: "We may not be able to pursue our political agenda in this climate, but by GOD can we keep a tight rein on information and stop any leaks! That's almost as good!"

Then again, I wouldn't put it past Issa to print out a black page and wave it in front of a camera... There's enough precedent from McCarthy waving his laundry list as proof of fifty-seven communists in the State Department.

*(Incidentally, I would also think it unlikely that Romney or McCain or pretty much anyone who might plausibly make it to the White House would be that dumb either)

[Sea Skimmer]

Well, Obama did come into office with announcements that he wanted to crack down on leaks of information. Course, that hasn't stopped his administration from leaking classified information itself whenever they saw a political advantage, which is a whole new world of crap they may soon be drowning under. At this point Fast and Furious is actually deflecting a lot of attention from the rather obviously intentional leaks over the Iran virus attacks that congress is also pushing to investigate. A demand for secrecy and tight control seems to me like it fits perfectly with his lawyer background. Lawyers like nothing better then precise information control.

[ChaserGrey]

Fast and Furious involved the ATF telling shop owners to sell the guns to people they thought were suspicious. No trackers were installed. There was apparently no attempt to continue to follow the guns.

Eh...what? That sounds massively stupid.

It was. Then the "walked" guns were implicated in the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent and several Mexican Federales. Mexican government was not amused.

[ChaserGrey]

Proposition: Limit by statute executive privilege, and require that any such claim during a criminal investigation, or civil/human rights suit be vetted by a federal court with a mandate to weigh the probitive value and interests of justice against the claims of the administration.

That way, the executive branch cannot claim Exec Privilege to shield itself from its own incompetence/malfeasence like it has done in cases like this, and...when the administration captures and tortures german citizens et al.

I'll drink to that. I can understand the need for a certain level of executive privilege, because the President's advisors need to be able to speak candidly without worrying that everything they say will end up in the news cycle. Having said that, in every case I remember where EP has been asserted it's because somebody in the Executive either fucked up really bad or did something flat-out wrong. Can't tell which is going on here, but I'd sure like to know.

[SirNitram]

Turns out the NRA urged the contempt vote, under the guise of a conspiracy theory.

Link PDF on NRA's 'Institute for Legislative Action' site.

It brings up the stupid theory that Fast And Furious is somehow a scheme to take away the guns. Then it gets right to the point: The contempt vote is going to be considered in the NRA's advisement of who it endorses. Presenting that to the GOP members of the committee might just have influenced them.

[Zaune]

The end result is many Republicans believe the ATF deliberately allowed the guns to get to Mexico, specifically so it would finally have 'proof' that it needed greater powers to prevent such sales as little hard evidence had existed before of recently produced US firearms being used by cartels, as opposed to ones years old that could have come from anywhere. Deliberate or not, it is in fact exactly what happened and people are pissed to no end about it.

I haven't really been following this one, but has anybody thought to investigate the possibility that the cartels have a few ATF agents on the payroll? That seems like the Occam's Razor explanation.

[hunter5]

The end result is many Republicans believe the ATF deliberately allowed the guns to get to Mexico, specifically so it would finally have 'proof' that it needed greater powers to prevent such sales as little hard evidence had existed before of recently produced US firearms being used by cartels, as opposed to ones years old that could have come from anywhere. Deliberate or not, it is in fact exactly what happened and people are pissed to no end about it.

I haven't really been following this one, but has anybody thought to investigate the possibility that the cartels have a few ATF agents on the payroll? That seems like the Occam's Razor explanation.

Even if that is true the whole program was designed from the ground up with out any way to track the guns once they were sold.

[Zaune]

Even if that is true the whole program was designed from the ground up with out any way to track the guns once they were sold.

And that refutes my hypothesis how, exactly? Seniority is hardly a barrier to corruption.

[Gaidin]

Even if that is true the whole program was designed from the ground up with out any way to track the guns once they were sold.

And that refutes my hypothesis how, exactly? Seniority is hardly a barrier to corruption.

What he's saying is that for corruption to really be a part of the operation you have to have an operation that can potentially succeed. Not an operation where you can't tail(not 'track'...'tail') the buyers once they cross the border, and the Mexican LEOs have about a 90% chance of not being able to pick up where you left off. This was a sting operation without the sting. There was nothing for a corrupted agent to do.

[hunter5]

Even if that is true the whole program was designed from the ground up with out any way to track the guns once they were sold.

And that refutes my hypothesis how, exactly? Seniority is hardly a barrier to corruption.

In addition to Gaidin's comments to purposely design a program to fail could potentially reveal the corrupt agents as corrupt which would defeat the purpose of having the agents on payroll. The only way your hypothesis makes sense is if the Cartels have Eric Holder on their payroll which is really hard to do seeing as he has to be vetted and is under very high levels of over-site. The simpler and less complicated explanation is that who ever designed this program was incompetent and Holder just approved it with out really going over the details.

[Kon_El]

Turns out the NRA urged the contempt vote, under the guise of a conspiracy theory.

Link PDF on NRA's 'Institute for Legislative Action' site.

It brings up the stupid theory that Fast And Furious is somehow a scheme to take away the guns. Then it gets right to the point: The contempt vote is going to be considered in the NRA's advisement of who it endorses. Presenting that to the GOP members of the committee might just have influenced them.

It seems to describe it as a scheme to create a scenario where the government could force gun shops to report sales. Seeing how the stated purpose of the operation doesn't make any sense, and that this is what the government tried to do. How is it a stupid theory?

[Zaune]

In addition to Gaidin's comments to purposely design a program to fail could potentially reveal the corrupt agents as corrupt which would defeat the purpose of having the agents on payroll. The only way your hypothesis makes sense is if the Cartels have Eric Holder on their payroll which is really hard to do seeing as he has to be vetted and is under very high levels of over-site. The simpler and less complicated explanation is that who ever designed this program was incompetent and Holder just approved it with out really going over the details.

It does seem a somewhat overcomplicated way of getting hold of a few hundred assault rifles when you put it like that. It still stretches the limits of what one can attribute to stupidity instead of malice though.

[Kon_El]

Turns out the NRA urged the contempt vote, under the guise of a conspiracy theory.

Link PDF on NRA's 'Institute for Legislative Action' site.

It brings up the stupid theory that Fast And Furious is somehow a scheme to take away the guns. Then it gets right to the point: The contempt vote is going to be considered in the NRA's advisement of who it endorses. Presenting that to the GOP members of the committee might just have influenced them.

It seems to describe it as a scheme to create a scenario where the government could force gun shops to report sales. Seeing how the stated purpose of the operation doesn't make any sense, and that forced sales reporting is what government tried to do afterwards. How is it a stupid theory?

Edited for clarity

[Gaidin]

It does seem a somewhat overcomplicated way of getting hold of a few hundred assault rifles when you put it like that. It still stretches the limits of what one can attribute to stupidity instead of malice though.

They were going after high level drug lords through low level weapon buyers. Not even bulk purchasers. There's a lot you can attribute to stupidity here.