Saturday, December 03, 2011

And, connected with the previous Holder post,

even NPR is getting in on Gunwalker now(here's the direct NPR link).
Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole sent nearly 1,400 pages of emails and other documents to Capitol Hill late Friday afternoon that lay bare the raw and sometimes cringe-worthy process by which the letter was drafted. The materials contain clues into how misleading information about the botched gun trafficking operation made it into a Feb. 4, 2011 letter to Congress that department leaders have since acknowledged was false. . .

Here are a few of the new disclosures contained in the documents:

— The basis for the inaccurate statements in the letter appears to have originated among people in the U.S. Attorney's office in Arizona and among ATF officials earlier this year, according to the new letter to Congress. Notes taken by a Justice Department legislative affairs person who helped prepare a response to Congress include statements that found their way into the faulty Feb. 4 letter, including: "ATF doesn't let guns walk" and "we always try to interdict weapons purchased illegally." Also at the meeting were the ATF's top congressional liaison and a high level deputy named Billy Hoover. At other times, the U.S. Attorney's office in Arizona passed along inaccurate information about the length of the gun trafficking operation and the timing of when guns were purchased.
...
...Weinstein, who had served as a highly regarded prosecutor in Baltimore and New York for a decade before taking a political appointment at the Justice Department, already had come under scrutiny from Republican lawmakers. They say he had approved the use of wiretaps in the Obama administration's Fast and Furious operation and he should have dug deeper. The department has acknowledged that the operation sent as many as 2,000 weapons into Mexico but failed to follow them. Many of those guns later ended up at crime scenes on both sides of the border, including near the body of slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

Justice officials say Weinstein relied on the ATF and the U.S. Attorney's Office in drafting the letter.
(anybody else see a "It's Newell & Co. at fault, don't blame US!" theme?)
...
Former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, who resigned in August as the gun trafficking scandal intensified, repeatedly urged Justice officials in Washington to "push back" against "categorical falsehoods" coming from whistleblowers inside the ATF and from members of Congress. Burke also had some choice words for Sen. Grassley's staff, which he said were "acting as willing stooges for the Gun Lobby" and "lobbing this reckless despicable accusation" about ATF. In another message, he tells a colleague that the congressional accusations are "among the lowest acts I have ever seen in politics." Burke may have been relying on aides in his office, who more closely supervised the day to day activities of the ATF in the gun trafficking operation.

"Dennis Burke is a standup guy. He provided what he believed to be accurate information to the Department of Justice, as he always does," said Chuck Rosenberg, an attorney for Burke
.(Ok, we have the Evil Gun Lobby controlling things plus "Blame the aides! They didn't get him all the information!!" I wonder if that's also going to be the excuse somehow for Burke attacking a whistleblower?)
...
And, of course,
“Weinstein has expressed to me that, in hindsight, he wishes he had not relied on those assertions and that, because he did rely so heavily on them, he viewed, incorrectly, the misguided tactics used in Operation Wide Receiver — which resulted in the ATF losing control of guns that then crossed the border into Mexico — as having no relation to the allegations that were being made about Operation Fast and Furious,” Breuer said today in a written statement to Congressional investigators.
"BUSH STARTED IT!!!"
Reading some of this, some of these clowns(Weinstein, possibly) weren't aware of all of the crap; but most of them damn sure were; they KNEW, and they lied, and they're still lying and breaking other laws.

If you can go to Sipsey, he's got links interspersed with the post that cover other media reports and blog posts on this mess overall and some of the people involved.

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