Thursday, February 03, 2011

Mike Vanderboegh’s Gunwalker Letter to Mexican Consul General

about Project Gunwalker; read it. I'm going to borrow two sections: first, from one of the shops involved,
"Let me tell you something about Carter's Country. They have been co-operating with ATF from the get go," says attorney Dick Deguerin who represents Carter's Country owner, Bill Carter.

Deguerin says the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms asked Carter's Country to complete transactions, even when sales people strongly suspected the weapons were headed to Mexican drug gangs.

"They were told to go through with what they considered to be questionable sales. They were told to go through with sales of three or more assault rifles at the same time or five or more 9 millimeter guns at the same time or a young Hispanic male paying in cash. It's all profiling, but they went through with it," said Deguerin.



The second, which ought to have the Mexican government screaming bloody murder(if they weren't already),
You should know that one ATF employee, Darren Gil, the ATF attache in Mexico City, tried to do the right thing. Though he was kept out of the "intelligence loop" by Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix, Arizona office, William D. "Bill" Newell, my understanding from other ATF agents who have now been contacted by Senator Grassley's office, is that Mr. Gil, when he learned by informal communication channels that this was happening, clashed with SAC Newell over whether your government should be notified. Newell insisted that there would be no notification of the appropriate Mexican authorities. Mr. Gil, I am told, did not take the word of a mere SAC when such an action involved possible violations of treaty and formal understandings between our two governments, contacted his superiors in Washington, D.C. In a meeting that I am told included the Deputy Attorney General, Deputy Director Melson of ATF and various subordinates, it was decided to keep the government of Mexico in the dark. Mr. Gil, in return for his honest attempt to prevent an effusion of blood as well as an international incident, was forced into retirement and did so on 31 December of last year. Here, in words of an experienced ATF street agent, is what I was told on 17 December 2010:
"Darren Gil, former attache to Mexico is an honest and honorable guy. He was forcefully removed from Mexico without warning in November in large part because he wouldn't sit silent on these matters. He will tell the truth if asked by competent authority. He retired Dec 31 because of all this."
And who is replacing Gil? Why, Newell, who was right in the middle of the mess, of course. Which, with information about what happened coming out, is either arrogance of a really amazing level, or some of that stupid Ebenezar spoke of.

And, just to add to the pressure, the family of BPA Terry is looking to sue the feds over their actions. You just know that there are a bunch of people with knowledge of the ins & outs of the BATFE project having stress-induced cases of the runs at the idea of being subpoenaed in this mess, by Congress or by the lawyers for the family. Not to mention the people at Justice(most misnamed in the case of these bastards) who were/are directly involved.

1 comment:

GunsXchange said...

That's sad that this had to happen to Brian Terry, and it is disgusting how much of a sloppy job government agencies are running things.