Tuesday, March 08, 2011

More than one Gunwalker?

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allegedly let gun runners walk off with weapons - thousands of them - to see if they'd end up in the hands of the cartels. The Justice Department and ATF have denied it ever happened.

Special Agent John Dodson works in ATF's Phoenix office and has blown the whistle on the controversial strategy, known as letting guns "walk."

Dodson believes there are other ATF operations going on that have done the same thing.

Multiple sources now tell CBS News the questionable tactics were used in more than one operation, and date back as far as 2008 in the Tucson area. One case was called "Wide Receiver."

Sources tell CBS News licensed gun dealers often wanted no part of selling to suspicious characters who could be supplying the cartels.

But, sources say, ATF enlisted the gun dealers as paid Confidential Informants and encouraged them to sell even more.

"ATF has asked me to assist in an official investigation," reads one agreement.
My, my, my, isn't this interesting? We have DOJ and BATFE flat lying about having done this(which never really goes over well with politicians asking questions, especially when people are dead) and now this.

And, along with the other idiocies listed here(why the hell would you send people to work in a country and not be sure to find/train people in the language? Unless you didn't care if they did or didn't want them to actually succeed...), we have this:
The brazen daylight shooting has raised new worries about Mexico's longstanding ban on U.S. agents carrying weapons in most circumstances.

"Ever since Jaime Zapata was killed, the game has changed. They're killing federal agents now," one agent said. "If we got $20 million tomorrow to fully staff every office in Mexico, guys would say, 'We're not going. You won't protect us. The Mexican government won't protect us, and the U.S. government won't let me protect myself.' "
I wonder if Obama even considered that his 'No armed US agents in Mexico' policy might cause this particular problem?

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