Grassley: New docs prove Admin knew about gun walking

New documents obtained from the Justice Department Thursday prove that the administration knew that guns had been walked as part of Operation Wide Receiver, Senator Charles Grassley said in a press release, and then he reiterated his call for Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer to resign.

The documents include e-mails and copies of letters sent to Grassley by Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, including a Feb. 4, 2011 letter that insisted that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had never “sanctioned or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico…” That letter has been “withdrawn” because facts uncovered over the past 11 months clearly show that guns were walked, and the ATF let it happen.

“The documents dumped today by the Justice Department prove that this administration knew that guns were walked in Operation Wide Receiver, yet did nothing about it even as it was happening again in Fast and Furious. I’ve said all along that walking guns is wrong, period. I don’t care who did it. We know that Lanny Breuer knew about guns being walked in Operation Wide Receiver, which is why he needs to do the right thing, hold himself accountable and resign.”—Sen. Charles Grassley

Some of those documents are familiar as they have been previously discussed by this column, but together they suggest that Justice Department officials, including Breuer, knew far more about Fast and Furious than they had previously indicated.

Some of the e-mails suggest that those officials understood that revealing details of the operation would embarrass the ATF.

In one poorly punctuated message dated April 12, 2010 from Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason M. Weinstein to two colleagues, Kevin Carwile and James Trusty, he wrote:

Been thinking more about "Wide Receiver I." ATF HO should/will be embarrassed that they let this many guns walk Im stunned based on what weve had to do to make sure not even single operable weapon walked in UC operations Ive been involved in planning and there will be press about that In addition this diary that casts aspersions on one of the agents is challenge for the case but also something that is likely to embarrass ATF publicly For those reasons think we need to make sure we go over these issues with our front office and with Billy Hoover before we charge the case Of course we should still go forward but we owe it to ATF HQ to preview these issues before anything gets filed.

Im not suggesting we need to send the memo further up the chain it would take you or me really long time to convert what Laura wrote into something we could send to Lanny but we should schedule time to brief Lanny and Mythili on the case next week end of the week bc he testifies on Wed and is jammed up before then and then to brief Billy after that

Nine days later, on April 19, Carwile and Trusty exchanged messages. First, Carwile asked Trusty how his meeting with Breuer went. Here is Trusty’s reply:

Went fine. You know how he is. Wants us to meet with Ken and Billy at some point so they know the bad stuff that could come out. I’m going to come in late tomorrow – probably near noon – work from home in the am and then work til around 6.

Then, on April 30, Weinstein sent an e-mail to Breuer at 7:03 p.m. that noted:

As you’ll recall from Jim’s briefing, ATF let a bunch of guns walk in effort to get upstream conspirators but only got straws, and didn’t recover many guns. Some were recovered in MX after being used in crimes. Billy, Jim, Laura, Alisa and I all think the best way to announce the case without highlighting the negative part of the story and risking embarrassing ATF is as part of Deliverance.

This column reported earlier Thursday that there has been some activity at ATF involving Hoover and two other ATF officials, Mark Chait and William McMahon. All three were involved in the Fast and Furious chain of events. There is some speculation that action is imminent so that it occurs prior to the scheduled Feb. 2 hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at which Attorney General Eric Holder is scheduled to testify about Fast and Furious.

Sources close to the investigation suggest also that the Obama administration wants this controversy to disappear before the presidential campaign shifts into high gear. That is not likely to happen, however, since Fast and Furious has already become a campaign issue.

There are also questions arising about the lack of attention being paid to this by mainstream press, outside of CBS and Fox News, and an occasional story in the Los Angeles Times.

One observer told this column late Thursday: “You know, if this had happened while John Ashcroft was the attorney general, every press briefing, every opportunity to catch him for a question; the Justice Department press corps would be all over this.”

But Ashcroft, a conservative Republican is not the attorney general. Liberal Democrat Eric Holder fills that post now, and his approach, say various sources, seems arrogant, as though he — and the administration — are going to “skate” around this, and they know it.

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