ATF preparing answers to Congress following ‘Gillett revelation’

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is preparing its response to a congressional subpoena for documents related to Project Gunrunner, and questions from the office of the Inspector General, and sources confirm that Phoenix Special Agent In Charge (SAC) William Newell is in Washington, D.C. this week, involved in that effort.

Now that a major whistleblower has come forward in the investigation, ATF better not hold anything back.

Newell’s name has been prominent in various reports about the Gunrunner project and its off-shoot, Operation Fast and Furious. It was the Phoenix office that ran Fast and Furious, and is at the center of the Gunrunner controversy. Senator Charles Grassley and Congressman Darrell Issa both have Gunrunner investigations underway, and Issa hit the ATF with a subpoena when requested documents were not forthcoming.

But there is another development in the investigation. The meeting that did not happen this week – the previously reported “Project Gunrunner” gathering that was supposed to have been held yesterday and Tuesday involving special agents in charge (SAC) from field offices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – may still be held next week, according to CleanUpATF.org.

And Assistant SAC-turned-whistleblower George Gillett, who had previously been identified in a Grassley letter to ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson as having confronted one of the original Gunrunner whistleblowers with accusations of misconduct, is now apparently on leave. This column discussed Grassley's letter of last Friday, which included the Gillett revelation here and here. Thomas Brandon from the ATF’s Detroit office will reportedly now temporarily command the Phoenix office.

That all of this has happened in the wake of Grassley’s disclosure that Gillett has been cooperating with the investigation and has an attorney leaves observers wondering if there isn’t a new “Fast and Furious” operation now in progress, and that ATF is furiously trying to clean up a mess that CleanUpATF.org (CUATF) has dubbed “One of the most serious scandals in federal law enforcement history.”

Sources say the fact that Gillett has come forward has rattled cages in Washington, because, according to blogger John Richardson, Gillett was a key player in Fast and Furious and he knows where investigators need to look. Richardson is brutally candid about the impact of Gillett as a whistleblower:

Gillett, as ASAC of the Phoenix Field Division, has been deeply involved in Operation Fast and Furious from the start. If anyone had access to all the secrets, it would be Gillett who reportedly had the day-to-day oversigtht of Operation Fast and Furious in Arizona.

To emphasize the importance of Gillett becoming a whistleblower, let me put it in terms of the Watergate scandal. Gillett coming forward is the equivalent of a H. R. Haldeman, a John Ehrlichman, or a John Mitchell going to Sen. Sam Ervin's Senate Watergate Committee and rolling over on President Richard Nixon. All three of those men went to prison rather than divulge what they knew.—John Richardson, Only Guns and Money blog

One regular on the CUATF forum who identifies himself as “Doc Holiday,” said the Gunrunner meeting of all SACs will apparently be held next week. Sources familiar with the situation confirmed that possibility to this column. Here’s what “Doc Holiday” wrote:

"Word is they are still going to bring all the SACs into HQ next week instead of this week. Whats $50,000 compared to the 1.1 Billion we have to spend."

In the midst of this, Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan stated in a letter to the editor of the Dallas Morning News that Mexican drug cartels should not be referred to as “terrorist” groups, unless we want to identify American gun dealers as having provided material support to terrorists. Here is part of what he had to say:

If you label these organizations as terrorist, you will have to start calling drug consumers in the

U.S. "financiers of terrorist organizations" and gun dealers "providers of material support to terrorists."— Arturo Sarukhan, Ambassador of Mexico to the U.S., Washington, D.C.

This remark helps perpetuate what the Gunrunner investigation is showing to be a myth: that American gun dealers are supplying Mexican drug thugs with guns. The facts in this case demonstrate otherwise, that gun dealers in border states were encouraged to sell guns to known or suspected gunrunners, despite their concerns about letting hundreds, if not thousands of guns “walk” out of their doors and into the illicit gun pipeline to Mexico.

A columnist with the newspaper takes Sarukhan down a peg for his remarks.

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