Congressional sources who are investigating the scandal at the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives say that they now have evidence showing that the FBI may be more deeply involved than the ATF in the gun smuggling scandal. The scandal, known as 'Operation Fast and Furious,' or 'Project Gunwalker,' centers on illegal activity perpetrated by federal government agents in smuggling guns to Mexico and Honduras in order to pad statistics that would supposedly 'prove' that U.S. guns are arming the drug cartels.
Many believe that the only reason the government would undertake such a sordid scheme would be to justify the call for massive new gun control in the United States. Such a charge appears to be 100% correct as the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress prepare to unfold a comprehensive new plan for gun bans and tightening the rules for firearms registration and background checks, along with strict reporting requirements for gun stores.
However, as the story has developed it has become clear that the scandal implicates multiple agencies within the federal government in addition to the ATF and its oversight agency, the DOJ. The Los Angeles Times published a story this morning that quotes Congressional sources as saying that at least 6 drug cartel members may have served as FBI paid informants in the Mexican gun smuggling scheme:
Congressional investigators probing the controversial "Fast and Furious" anti-gun-trafficking operation on the border with Mexico believe at least six Mexican drug cartel figures involved in gun smuggling also were paid FBI informants, officials said Saturday.
The investigators have asked the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration for details about the alleged informants, as well as why agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which ran the Fast and Furious operation, were not told about them.
The development raises further doubts about the now-shuttered program, which was created in November 2009 in an effort to track guns across the border and unravel the cartels' gun smuggling networks. The gun tracing largely failed, however, and hundreds of weapons purchased in U.S. shops later were found at crime scenes in Mexico.
The scandal has angered Mexican officials and some members of Congress.
U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, R-California, and Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa have written a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller III asking why taxpayer funds were used to pay Mexican drug cartel members who have murdered thousands of Mexicans along the border, engaged in drug and human trafficking in the United States, and terrorized U.S. citizens in towns and private lands along the southern border.
In addition, the FBI and the DEA did not tell the ATF about the paid informants, meaning that as drug cartels members were being paid by one U.S. law enforcement agency, they were being targeted by another.
The FBI's involvement in the illegal operation represents a dangerous and troubling turn of events, according to Mike Vanderboegh, one of the 2 reporters who first broke the story of the gun smuggling scandal back in December.
Vanderboegh maintains that the FBI has withheld information about the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was allegedly shot with a gun smuggled into Mexico by U.S. officials, and that the agency allowed 3 members of a drug gang who were detained under suspicion in Terry's murder to go free and return to Mexico.
But the bottom line in Vanderboegh's view rests in this statement:
In the end, I think we will find that in terms of overall knowledge and culpability, the FBI had more responsibility for the Gunwalker Scandal than the ATF. And, don't forget, both agencies were dancing to a White House fiddled tune.
Thus, the depth and breadth to which the gun smuggling scandal has spread could only be accomplished with the approval not only of Eric Holder but several agency heads and even Barack Obama himself.
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