Reportar MensajeNapolitano perjured herself to Congress in Fast & Furious testimony
U.S. agents shot to death in Mexico by narcos with american guns provided by Obama's administration
AGENTES FEDERALES ASESINADOS EN MEXICO CON
ARMAS SUMINISTRADAS A LOS NARCOS POR OBAMA
In her explosive new book Fast and Furious, Katie Pavlich makes the case that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano not only failed to stop an operation that led to the death of one of her own, Border Agent Brian A. Terry, but she may have also lied to Congress in sworn testimony at a hearing held to find out what really happened.
Inside sources told Pavlich that Napolitano’s testimony was in direct contradiction to emails she exchanged, and reports and briefing she received, according to an exclusive preview of the book by Human Events.
Pavlich’s book Fast and Furious is due to be released Monday, April 16. It is published by Regnery Publishing, owned by Eagle Publishing, which also owns Human Events.
Most of the focus in the Fast and Furious scandal has been on attorney Gen. Eric Holder, because his Department of Justice ran the program through its Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, still referenced to as ATF, its old initials from before it was tasked with explosives.
But while Holder's people waved the questionable gun purchasers through the checkout line, Napolitano was in charge of the Mexican border those guns crossed. Pavlich's book is particularly revealing, especially considering the lengths the Obama administration has gone to keep anyone from knowing anything about Fast & Furious and other gun-running operations.
These operations involved multiple federal agencies facilitating illegal gun purchases, by co-opting the normal checks at gun stores in the Southwest, and then ignoring the guns as they were taken into Mexico.
In Mexico, the guns were picked up at hundreds of gun sites. Letting the guns slip away is a called “gun walking,” because the guns were allowed to walk. In her September testimony to a Senate committee, Napolitano told senators she knew nothing about Fast & Furious until after Terry was killed in a gunfight on the night of Dec. 14, 2010 with an AK-47 purchased at one of the gun stores that was one of the key retailers where federal agents actively let guns walk.
In October, she told Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) at a hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee she never spoke to the Dennis Burke about Fast & Furious. Burke, who was the U.S. Attorney for the Arizona Department, was her chief of staff when she was the governor of Arizona and a close friend.
In the same month, the Napolitano told Rep. Jason E. Chaffetz (R-Utah) at a hearing held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that she never spoke to Holder about Fast & Furious.
Homeland Security insiders paint a different picture, Pavlich reports. Members of Congress questioning the secretary seem to know it, too. One source said to the author, “When she says that [she] and Attorney General Eric Holder have not discussed it, that is a lie. That's why they keep asking her those questions in the Judicial, Oversight, Homeland Security Committee hearings. They've asked her that same questions twice and she’s lied twice.”
How did she know? The source said, “There are five emails linking her to Holder. They go back two days after it happened—the first email was two days after Brian was killed.” In the emails, Holder and Napolitano discuss Terry's murder, the source said to Pavlich. The source concedes that Holder may have “kept her in the dark” about all of the details of the gun walking, but her office approved letting the guns walk into Mexico and one of the agencies under her command, Customs and Border Protection, allowed guns through.
Another source from the ATF confirmed to Pavlich that Napolitano was briefed regularly by an agent from another of her agencies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. “There was an ICE agent assigned specifically to be the co-case agent of Fast & Furious. He had to [file] an ICE report that either mirrored or referenced every ATF report that was done,” the ATF source said. Beyond reports, there were inter-agency jealousies that had to be settled in Washington, he said.
The source said to Pavlich there were constant battles between ICE and ATF agents over who would get credit for different seizures or other issues. “I know phone calls were made to both headquarters to try and settle those disputes.” It was Terry's death that brought Operation Fast and Furious to an abrupt end. But now, more than 16 months later, no one has been charged with crimes associated with either the gun walking programs or the cover-up. Pavlich makes a strong case that when people are finally charged with crimes, Napolitano will have to answer for her perjury to Congress.
“Let me tell you something about Janet,” another source said to the author. “Janet will be lucky not to go to prison.”
KUHNER: Obama’s Watergate Officials cover up culpability for gun smuggling and murder.
The Washington Times
Thursday, December 15, 2011
A year ago this week, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. He died protecting his country from brutal Mexican gangsters. Two AK-47 assault rifles were found at his death site. We now know the horrifying truth: Agent Terry was killed by weapons that were part of an illegal Obama administration operation to smuggle arms to the dangerous drug cartels. He was a victim of his own government. This is not only a major scandal; it is a high crime that potentially reaches all the way to the White House, implicating senior officials. It is President Obama's Watergate.
Operation Fast and Furious was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and overseen by the Justice Department. It started under the leadership of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Fast and Furious enabled straw gun purchases from licensed dealers in Arizona, in which more than 2,000 weapons were smuggled to Mexican drug kingpins. ATF claims it was seeking to track the weapons as part of a larger crackdown on the growing violence in the Southwest. Instead, ATF effectively has armed murderous gangs. About 300 Mexicans have been killed by Fast and Furious weapons. More than 1,400 guns remain lost. Agent Terry likely will not be the last U.S. casualty.
AGENTES FEDERALES ASESINADOS EN MEXICO CON
ARMAS SUMINISTRADAS A LOS NARCOS POR OBAMA
Mr. Holder insists he was unaware of what took place until after media reports of the scandal appeared in early 2011. This is false. Such a vast operation only could have occurred with the full knowledge and consent of senior administration officials. Massive gun-running and smuggling is not carried out by low-level ATF bureaucrats unless there is authorization from the top. There is a systematic cover-up.
Congressional Republicans, however, are beginning to shed light on the scandal. Led by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Darrell Issa of California, a congressional probe is exposing the Justice Department's rampant criminality and deliberate stonewalling.
Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, who heads the department's criminal division, helped craft a February letter to Congress that denied ATF had ever walked guns into Mexico. Yet, under pressure from congressional investigators, the department later admitted that Mr. Breuer knew about ATF gun-smuggling as far back as April 2010. In other words, Mr. Breuer has been misleading Congress. He should resign - or be fired.
Instead, Mr. Holder tenaciously insists that Mr. Breuer will keep his job. He needs to keep his friends close and potential witnesses even closer. Another example is former acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson. Internal documents show Mr. Melson directly oversaw Fast and Furious, including monitoring numerous straw purchases of AK-47s. He has admitted to congressional investigators that he, along with high-ranking ATF leaders, reassigned every "manager involved in Fast and Furious" after the scandal surfaced on Capitol Hill and in the press. Mr. Melson said he was ordered by senior Justice officials to be silent regarding the reassignments. Hence, ATF managers who possess intimate and damaging information - especially on the role of the Justice Department - essentially have been promoted to cushy bureaucratic jobs. Their silence has been bought, their complicity swept under the rug. Mr. Melson has been transferred to Justice's main office, where he serves as a "senior adviser" on forensic science in the department's Office of Legal Policy. Rather than being punished, Mr. Melson has been rewarded for his incompetence and criminal negligence.
Mr. Holder and his aides have given misleading, false and contradictory testimony on Capitol Hill. Perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power - these are high crimes and misdemeanors. Mr. Holder should be impeached. Like most liberals, he is playing the victim card, claiming Mr. Issa is a modern-day Joseph McCarthy conducting a judicial witch hunt. Regardless of this petty smear, Mr. Holder must be held responsible and accountable - not only for the botched operation, but for his flagrant attempts to deflect blame from the administration.
Mr. Holder is a shameless careerist and a ruthless Beltway operative. For years, his out-of-control Justice Department has violated the fundamental principle of our democracy, the rule of law. He has refused to prosecute members of the New Black Panthers for blatant voter intimidation that took place in the 2008 election. Career Justice lawyers have confessed publicly that Mr. Holder will not pursue cases in which the perpetrators are black and the victims white. States such as Arizona and Alabama are being sued for simply attempting to enforce federal immigration laws. Mr. Holder also opposes voter identification cards, thereby enabling fraud and vote-stealing at the ballot box. What else can we expect from one who, during the Clinton administration, helped pardon notorious tax cheat Marc Rich and Puerto Rican terrorists?
Mr. Holder clearly knew about Fast and Furious and did nothing to stop it. This is because the administration wanted to use the excuse of increased violence on the border and weapons-smuggling into Mexico to justify tighter gun-control legislation. Mr. Holder is fighting ferociously to prevent important internal Justice documents from falling into the hands of congressional investigators. If the full nature of his involvement is discovered, the Obama presidency will be in peril.
Fast and Furious is even worse than Watergate for one simple reason: No one died because of President Nixon's political dirty tricks and abuse of government power. But Brian Terry is dead; and there are still 1,500 missing guns threatening still more lives.
What did Mr. Obama know? Massive gun-smuggling by the U.S. government into a foreign country does not happen without the explicit knowledge and approval of leading administration officials. It's too big, too risky and too costly. Mr. Holder may not be protecting just himself and his cronies. Is he protecting the president?
Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute.
Darrell Issa: Fast and Furious Far From Over
By Katie Pavlich 4/14/2012
ST. LOUIS- Entering the Edward Jones arena to an applauding audience at the NRA Annual Convention in downtown St. Louis Friday, Congressman Darrell Issa made it clear his congressional investigation into the Operation Fast and Furious scandal isn’t going away until the Obama Justice Department comes clean. “The investigation of Operation Fast and Furious will not end until the full truth is exposed to every American,” Issa said, adding senior officials at the Department of Justice will be held accountable for the lethal program, including Attorney General Eric Holder. “Eric Holder’s contempt for Congress and his failure to comply will not go unanswered, and you can count on me,” Issa said as a woman yelled, “Thank you!” It is not news that the Obama Justice Department has, and continues to, stonewall Issa’s House Oversight Committee in their constitutional quest for DOJ documents and information.
“They have been disingenuous in their answers, they have in fact ignored exactly what this president promised not to ignore,” Issa said. “He promised we would have the most open and transparent government everywhere.” Many on the Left have tried to brush the scandal off as unimportant, not significant and a waste of time to discuss. Members in Congress have called Issa’s motives “politicized,” but the facts tell a different story. During a conference call with bloggers last September, Issa said he planned to wrap up his investigation by the end of 2011, but because of continued stonewalling and hostile behavior from the Obama Administration, we still don’t have answers and the investigation is ongoing. Issa attempted to end the investigation months ago, before the political season started. “Many will say this is a witch hunt, I will tell you, Brian Terry’s family has told me just the opposite,” Issa said. “They cannot believe a family dedicated to law enforcement cannot get answers from its own country.” Issa also touched on the motivations behind Operation Fast and Furious and how liberal Democrats in Congress have reacted to revelations in the scandal. “Fast and Furious can be seen as nothing else but a needless attack on our right to keep and bear arms,“ Issa said. “When the facts began to come out about Fast and Furious, no surprise, Democrats in Washington, immediately seized on the opportunity to talk about the need for additional gun control laws.” For months, I have been stressing the importance of understanding Operation Fast and Furious was not a “botched” program or an accident. Instead, DOJ officials made calculated decisions to allow some of the most ruthless criminals in the world to help themselves to American guns, while throwing law abiding gun dealers under the bus. “Understand that federally licensed gun dealers warned ATF about wrong doers, expressed their concerns and were forced to sell anyway," Issa said. “Emails made it clear that Fast and Furious was an organized program from the start to walk guns into the hands of drug cartels in Mexico." Issa promised to get to the bottom of Fast and Furious in the coming few weeks, but made it clear setting a timeline wasn’t going to stop him from getting the truth. “I will not quit until both families [Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata] get the answers they deserve.”
Major Fast and Furious Player Who Misled Congress Jumping DOJ Ship
By Katie Pavlich
4/25/2012
Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, Obama's Department of Justice point man for communications, or in other words, chief obfuscator about Operation Fast and Furious, is jumping ship. Weich has accepted a pposition as dean of the University of Baltimore School of Law. University officials have confirmed Weich will start his new pposition in July.
"During this time of considerable transition in legal education and the legal profession, it's important to have leadership with integrity and vision," said Robert Bogomolny, the university's president. "Ron Weich embodies those qualities. I look forward to working with him, and I know our students, faculty, staff and alumni will be energized by his arrival." As for Weich, "I'm aware of the history and it doesn't concern me," he said. "I'm confident that in partnership with others, we'll make sure the law school has the resources it needs to be effective."
As a reminder, Weich is the man who signed and delivered a letter to Senator Charles Grassley on February 4, 2011 about Fast and Furious that was so misleading and full of falsehoods, that it was eventually withdrawn eight months later. The letter stated:
At the outset, the allegation described in your January 27 letter-that ATF "sanctioned" or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico-is false. ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico......
I also want to assure you that ATF has made no attempt to retaliate against any of its agents regarding this matter. We recognize the importance of protecting employees from retaliation relating to their disclosers of waste, fraud and abuse. ATF employees receive annual training on their rights under the Whistleblower protection Act, and those with knowledge of waste, fruad or abuse are encouraged to communicate directly with the Department's Office of the Inspector General.
Both of these assertions are lies, or in Eric Holder's words are "inaccurate."
Not only did the ATF knowingly allow 2500 AK-47 sstyle and .50 caliber rifles to walk into the hands of dangerous Mexican drug cartels, ATF whistleblowers were mandated to do so, and then were retaliated against for speaking out against the program. Operation Fast and Furious has resulted in the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and at least 300 Mexican citizens.
AGENTES FEDERALES ASESINADOS EN MEXICO CON
ARMAS SUMINISTRADAS A LOS NARCOS POR OBAMA
“Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals, this was the plan. It was so mandated.” –Special Agent John Dodson ATF Phoenix Field Division, June 15, 2012.
So, now Weich, the guy who issued a letter in an attempt to mislead Congress about the Obama Justice Department's fatal Operation Fast and Furious, is going to head one of our law schools. Great news, since every law student should have a dean willing to submit false information to Congress.
