The ATF (Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms) undercover operation known as “Fast and Furious” (OFF) has taken a new turn. Recently released White House documents show extensive communication between a White House National Security staffer, Kevin O’Reilly and ATF Special Agent William Newell who helped lead that operation.
Contrary to what the Obama administration has consistently maintained, the emails clearly demonstrate that the White House and the ATF Phoenix had direct communications regarding the sale and transport of guns across the U.S. Mexico border.
Currently, investigators believe that thousands of weapons found their way into the hands of suspected traffickers under this program. At least two weapons traced to the program were found on the murder scene of a border patrol agent in December 2010. Additional crimes have also been connected with weapons linked to ATF.
However, Senator Grassley and Representative Darrell Issa have questioned whether the program served as a means for the administration to advance furthering gun control in the U.S., an item high on the priority list of both President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.
We now know that OFF enabled law abiding gun shop owners, with the assistance of ATF agents, to allow guns to fall into the hands of Mexican nationals and then in turn to drug cartels. Then, the government had the temerity to blame the very same gun shops for illegal gun trafficking. Now, those shops are being punished through new Justice Department gun control measures.
The June issue of Townhall Magazine reported: “As an Illinois state senator, Obama endorsed and spoke in support of an outright ban on ownership of all handguns and favored the licensing and registering of gun owners. Before his run for public office in 1996, Obama filled out a questionnaire expressing his support for a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.”
If OFF were merely a botched attempt at law enforcement, why was a supervisor of the operation, David Voth, "jovial, if not, not giddy but just delighted about" marked guns showing up at crime scenes in Mexico, as career ATF Firearms and Explosives agent John Dodson told Issa's House Oversight Committee?
Perhaps because all was going as planned until it was learned that two of the AK-47s recovered at the scene of the fatal shooting of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in December were bought in ATF's Operation Fast and Furious. That wasn't supposed to happen.
"Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals — this was the plan," Dodson testified. "It was so mandated."
ATF agent Olindo James Casa said, "On several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms."
That seems odd if the purpose was to catch gun traffickers and their drug-lord bosses. It makes sense, however, if the real purpose was to perpetuate the administration's gun-control agenda.
Unwilling to guarantee a secure southern border, and as part of a campaign to reinstate an expired assault weapons ban, the administration has placed most of the blame for Mexico's gun violence at our doorstep. Both governments continue to maintain that 90% of weapons confiscated by Mexican authorities originate in the U.S.
Fox News has reported that, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico sent about 11,000 guns to the U.S. for tracing in 2007-08, out of about 35,000 confiscated. Of that 11,000, only 6,000 were successfully traced. And of that number, 5,114, or 90%, were found to have originated in the U.S. That’s where both governments got the 90 percent figure. However, weapons that originated in foreign countries are not sent to the U.S. for tracing. Neither are weapons of Mexican army deserters or those stolen from armories.
Bill McMahon, ATF deputy assistant director, testified that of 100,000 weapons recovered by Mexican authorities, only 18,000 were made, sold or imported from the U.S. And of those 18,000, just 7,900 came from sales by licensed gun dealers. That's 8%, not 90%.
All of this is the stuff of a conspiracy theory that most of us would dismiss as so much rumor. Disturbingly, we have documentation that proves otherwise. Fast and Furious may have been the name the administration chose for this operation as a means of further curtailing our Second Amendment rights in a fast and furious manner. We the People must remain vigilant. For without the Second Amendment, the other nine could never stand.
