On June 30, 2009 in New Mexico, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) held a national summit on violent crime and gun trafficking. At that summit were some of the most powerful officials within the Obama Administration--including Deputy Attorney-General David Ogden, Assistant Attorney-General Lanny Breuer, ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson, and Assistant Secretary John Morton of ICE.
Also present at the summit were a few lesser-known figures that later became central to the explosive ATF-DOJ Gun Smuggling Scandal known as 'Project Gunwalker'--such as Phoenix ATF Field Division Special Agent in Charge, Bill Newell.
But why was this summit held? What was its significance? And why was it held a mere 5 months into the Obama Presidency?
In a breaking report at Sipsy Street Irregulars, blogger/citizen journalist Mike Vanderboegh--who first broke the story on Project Gunwalker in December of 2010--relates explosive information that moves the scandal ever closer to Eric Holder and Barack Obama and further confirms the charge that the entire Gunwalker fiasco was conceived as a vehicle by which to call for massive new gun control laws in the U.S.
Vanderboegh sets the stage for the new revelations by recounting a conversation he had with a government insider who became a valuable source of information on Gunwalker:
"Things like this happen because of meetings. People sit in meetings and they decide what they want to happen. And then they take decisions, make policy and implement that policy to achieve those ends." He added, "That's why State is so nervous. They signed off on this. In a meeting."
Gunrunner, I pointed out to him, predated the Obama administration. "Yes, but 'walking guns' didn't." I told him it seemed to me that given the dates on the documents that the meetings crafting this policy must have taken place sometime in mid-2009. "And who took power in January, 2009?" he replied.
He continued, summing up this way. The gun issue was known to be radioactive. Every time the Democrats embraced it they got killed at the polls the next election cycle. What was needed, in Rahm Emanuel's parlance, was a good crisis to exploit, something to change the paradigm. The gun confiscationists had always danced in the blood (my term, not his) of every mass shooting and gotten nowhere, to their chagrin and frustration. What was needed was a game changer. Something that fit the meme of "we've got to tighten up on American gunowners, gun stores and gun shows because they are feeding the slaughter." Mexico was perfect. The ATF controlled the reporting of the statistics, the headlines were lurid and if the rest of us gunnies knew that you don't get automatic weapons, hand grenades and RPGs from gun shows and gun stores, most of the American people were too ignorant of the issue to care about the distinction. But the fact was, as the IG report and other sources concluded, the amount of weapons from those legitimate American sources did not meet the allegation. More importantly the statistics didn't meet the policy need. So, how to "fix" that? Project Gunwalker. If there weren't enough semi-auto "assault rifles" in Mexico, the ATF could fix that. And the murders would follow, justifying the policy change of cracking down on "assault rifles," gun shows and the like.
"So," I said, "you're saying that this was a deliberate attempt by policymakers at the highest levels of the Obama administration to subvert the Second Amendment and further diminish the free exercise of firearm rights of honest citizens?"
"You got it. Sucks, huh?" He laughed bitterly.
I thought of Zed in "Men in Black."
He added, "Of course the meeting transcripts won't reflect the truth so plainly, but then neither did the Wannsee Conference. These bastards always talk in riddles about what they're really after. Watch what they do, not what they say."
With that information in mind, it is clear that the illegal Gunwalker scheme was concocted in a series of high level meetings. The main players were smart enough not to tip their hand. They knew not to use certain words and phrases that could later come back and directly implicate them in crimes. Thus, coded language was utilized--a vernacular that spoke of certain activities in a round-about fashion, non-specific to an onlooker but very clear to insiders within the ATF and DOJ who knew precisely what was being proposed.
Further, Vanderboegh reports that in 2009 the Office of the Inspector-General began looking into what was known prior to 2009 as 'Project Gunrunner'--a sting operation launched in 2003 aimed at catching Mexican criminals engaged in drug and human trafficking in the United States. That investigation began in May of 2009, and the ATF was well aware that careers were on the line as stinging information concerning the failures of that operation were to be made public.
In order to 'get out in front' of a potentially damaging report by the Inspector-General, the moguls of the Department of Justice and the ATF decided to publicize a shift in strategy regarding the sting operation. The project would now focus on the supposed 'source' of the firearms going into the Mexico--gun stores at or near the southern border and those allegedly making illegal purchases of those firearms.
Thus, during the June 30 summit in New Mexico in 2009, Assistant Attorney-General Lanny Beuer made this startling revelation:
As many of you know, a little over two months ago, the Attorney General stood on Mexican soil with his law enforcement counterparts from the Mexican government. At that time, the Attorney General announced a firm commitment by the U.S. government to work with Mexico to attack the plague of gun trafficking and related violence that has infected the U.S./Mexico border and regions deep in Mexico itself.
Since the Attorney General's visit to Cuernavaca, the Justice Department, under the leadership of the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, has taken a number of positive steps to address the southwest border issues, including increasing the resources that are focused on the southwest border and, specifically, firearms trafficking.
In this one statement alone, made publicly at the 2009 summit, Breuer fingers the person responsible for the shift in policy and focus--U.S. Attorney-General Eric Holder, who had been to Mexico a mere 2 months earlier.
And that is when a perfectly legal, albeit flawed, sting operation called 'Project Gunrunner' became an illegal scheme focusing on American citizens and gun store owners called 'Project Gunwalker.'
Vanderboegh provides a deeply informative, intricately detailed report of these facts. The wise will read it all and think through the implications.
More information to follow....
Be sure to catch my blog at The Liberty Sphere.
Visit my ministry site at Martin Christian Ministries.
Subscribe by clicking the links at the top of the page, or below, and you will receive free notifications of new articles plus a free newsletter.
Comments