Archive for the 'Obama Administration' Category

There are many failures in this administration’s foreign policy, but one glaring failure seems to capture all of the incompetence and lack of vision in a single snapshot.

That Pakistan’s behavior has been duplicitous for years is well known.  That the Haqqani network of fighters is killing U.S. Soldiers is equally well known.  They are noted as the most dangerous network of Islamic insurgents in the region.  In fact, the Haqqani group had a relationship of patronage with al Qaeda before AQ became big.  They have more than just a regional focus, and have had fighters in other parts of the world.  AQ learned their military skills mainly from the Haqqani group.  That Pakistan’s ISI is fond of the counterbalance in Afghanistan that they feel Haqqani provides them against Indian influence is well known.

But what is so stark about this example is the obscene display of an administration fighting with itself, but only in whispers.  No one wants to be seen publicly disputing what Admiral Mullen said, because they know he telling the truth.  No one wants to look into the eyes of the families who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan and tell them that the country which harbors those who did it is our ally.  So they do it in whispers.

The “anonymous sources” who tried to walk back Mullen’s comments are cowards.  But they exemplify an administration whose foreign policy is in absolute crisis.  They don’t know how to hold Pakistan accountable.  They have put little forethought into lines of logistics other than Khyber and Chaman from the port city of Karachi – so they are beholden to the Pakistanis (and this which is heavily dependent on Russia doesn’t count compared to this).  They have no long term vision for true alliances in the region where India would be a much better friend than Pakistan.

Make no mistake about it.  Mullen and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are trying to fight a war.  The Obama administration just undercut the Chairman in a campaign of whispers by cowards.  It is obscene in the superlative, and a sure sign of utter failure.

From CBS News:

CBS News has obtained secretly recorded conversations that raise questions as to whether some evidence is being withheld in the murder of a Border Patrol agent.

The tapes were recorded approximately mid-March 2011 by the primary gun dealer cooperating with ATF in its “Fast and Furious” operation: Andre Howard, owner of Lone Wolf Trading Company in Glendale, Arizona. He’s talking with the lead case ATF case agent Hope MacAllister …

The tapes have been turned over to Congressional investigators and the Inspector General …

The conversations refer to a third weapon recovered at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry …

Court records have previously only mentioned two weapons: Romanian WASR “AK-47 type” assault rifles. Both were allegedly sold to suspects who were under ATF’s watch as part of Fast and Furious.

The third weapon found at the scene of Brian Terry’s death is an SKS.  But that a third weapon was found is not the main point here.  The transcript follows (CBS has the audio).

Agent: Well there was two.

Dealer: There’s three weapons.

Agent: There’s three weapons.

Dealer: I know that.

Agent: And yes, there’s serial numbers for all three.

Dealer: That’s correct.

Agent: Two of them came from this store.

Dealer: I understand that.

Agent: There’s an SKS that I don’t think came from…. Dallas or Texas or something like that.

Dealer: I know. talking about the AK’s

Agent: The two AK’s came from this store.

Dealer: I know that.

Agent: Ok.

Dealer: I did the Goddamned trace

Agent: Third weapon is the SKS has nothing to do with it.

Dealer: That didn’t come from me.

The main point is that heretofore, the ATF only reported two weapons at the scene of Terry’s death.  This recording is evidence that not only were there three weapons, the ATF knew it and sought to cover it up.  As they say, why cover it up unless there is something wrong?

Do you recall our having discussed the issue of Jeremy M. Hill having shot the grizzly bear on his property defending his family, only subsequently to be charged with a crime by genius federal prosecutor Wendy Olson?  Well, there are developments in this case.

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday dropped a misdemeanor charge filed against a northern Idaho man accused of illegally shooting and killing a male grizzly bear at his home in May, U.S. Attorney Wendy Olson said.

Jeremy Hill, 33, pleaded not guilty last month to unlawfully taking a federally protected species. His case has generated public and political backlash against federal officials.

As part of a deal, Hill agreed his actions violated a regulation of the Endangered Species Act against removing nuisance bears and paid a $1,000 fine. The act classifies the grizzly bear as a threatened species in the lower 48 states, and the animals are protected by federal law.

Hill claimed he was protecting his children when three bears walked on to his property near Porthill, near the Canadian border, on May 8.

Olson said investigators were unable to determine the location of Hill’s children at the time the bears were first seen in Hill’s yard near the pig pen. But by the time Hill fired his final shot, he was aware that his wife and children were inside their home, Olson said.

“The United States Attorney’s Office well understands Mr. Hill is a concerned husband and father who wants to protect his family,” Olson said in a press release.

[ … ]

Olson said anyone who sees a grizzly near their home or campsite should immediately contact wildlife officials, who will take steps to remove the animal.

“These regulations are designed to ensure citizen safety and protect the grizzly bear,” Olson said.

So consider.  This case warranted “investigators” to ascertain where the children were when the shots were taken.  Mr. Hill ultimately had to agree to a crime in defending his family and be fined by the federal government.

In addition to the things I said earlier concerning the God-given right of Mr. Hill to defend his family, let me add (as I had to in the comments section to my original post) that this right was a proactive one.  To have waited until later to either shoot the bear or contact wildlife officials would have been the height of irresponsibility.  The bear wouldn’t be there later, and the worst possible situation would obtain, i.e., Mr. Hill would have helped the bear to learn the behavior of coming onto or in the proximity of his property unmolested.  That learned behavior would have caused mortal danger to his family.

Ms. Olson is not only a juvenile, she is a liar.  The purpose of the regulation is not for the safety of people.  Guns provide safety to people.  The purpose is the protection of bears.  And she no more believes what she said concerning understanding the need Mr. Hill had to protect his family than she does that justice has been done.  She is only dropping the case because of the attention this has gotten.  Otherwise, she would have had her day in court defending bears.  Ms. Olson also isn’t willing to live where Mr. Hill does, but she is willing to criticize Mr. Hill’s choices.  Proud day for Ms. Olson.  Proud day.

This is simply a disgusting, sophomoric display of the sad state of affairs of the regulatory bureaucracy.  Instead of sending investigators to determine where Mr. Hill’s children were (it’s none of their business), they should be working on identifying and targeting members of MS-13.  In other words, they should get a real job, along with Ms. Olson.  Defend people instead of bears.

In what could masquerade as a sad Orwellian novel if it weren’t true, an Idaho man defended his family from a potential grizzly bear attack, and is now in court defending his freedom.

A man charged with unlawfully shooting and killing a grizzly bear had so many supporters at his arraignment Tuesday in federal court that the judge had to move the hearing to a larger courtroom.

Even there, every seat was taken as his family, friends and neighbors, young and old, squeezed in.

Jeremy M. Hill, 33, pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court to killing the animal with a rifle on his 20-acre property near Porthill, Idaho, at the Canadian border. He lives five miles from the closest grizzly bear recovery zone.

The grizzly bear is classified as a threatened species in the lower 48 states, according to the Endangered Species Act, and protected by federal law. Hill’s charge is a misdemeanor.

Magistrate Judge Candy Dale set trial, at least for now, for Oct. 4.

Hill has declined comment. His lawyer, Marc Lyons of Coeur d’Alene, said he plans to defend Hill on the basis of self-defense and protection of family.

Following the hearing, his father, Mike Hill, of Athol, said, “This whole thing is a waste of taxpayer money.”

He said his son was concerned for the safety of his children playing outside when a mother grizzly and two cubs wandered onto his property on May 8.

Jeremy Hill has six kids, ranging in age from 14 years old to 10 months old. At least five were home when the grizzly was killed, Mike Hill said.

The bears had gone after some pigs in a pen that the kids had been raising, Mike Hill said.

He said his son shot one of the bears, then called authorities to notify them of the kill. The other two bears ran off.

He said his son could have just buried the animal and not said anything to law enforcement. He said his son is being penalized for coming forward.

State Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, attended the hearing in full support of Jeremy Hill.

“The charges are simply unjust,” she said following the hearing. “Hopefully common sense will prevail. It’s clearly an issue of protecting the family.”

She predicted that punishing someone who reported killing a grizzly will damage government efforts to protect the animals.

She said nearly $20,000 was raised by community members for Hill’s defense.

Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho was asked about the case while appearing in Sandpoint on Tuesday.

While Labrador said he needed to be careful in dealing with the prosecutorial side of things, he did have this to say:

“Clearly, we have a problem with the ESA when situations like this happen.” He later added, “We’re doing everything we can to make sure this man is treated fairly.”

Based on a subsequent report, it isn’t clear whether it was Jeremy Hill or one of his sons who killed the bear, or if it was the mother or a cub.  It doesn’t matter.  There is a lot of local support for Jeremy, and in fact, Idaho Governor Butch Otter is appealing to Obama to look into the facts of the case.

It’s ridiculous that it has gotten this far.  The fact of the matter is that regardless of whether the federal government comes to its senses now or soon, some federal prosecutor (U.S. Attorney Wendy Olson?) made the sophomoric decision to carry this case forward.  How embarrassing this decision must be for this attorney.

It is said that exception makes bad law.  Perhaps.  But failure to address the exception makes for bad justice.  Jeremy isn’t a poacher hunting bear in this area.  He is a father and husband, defending his children and wife.  It hurts progressives to hear it, but man is made in God’s image.  Animals are not.  The only evil that could possibly have happened that day would have been if Jeremy had failed to defend his family.

When the framework for righteousness is found in the myriad rules and regulations that pass through the Federal Register every day as lawyers promulgate an increasingly burdensome bureaucracy on a hapless American public, America has lost its way, and has forgotten what true righteousness is all about.  The justification for regulations has become deonotological, needing no foundation outside themselves, and the means has become the end without regard for consequences or affect.  And it is all without heart or soul.

From The LA Times:

The ATF has promoted three key supervisors of a controversial sting operation that allowed firearms to be illegally trafficked across the U.S. border into Mexico.

All three have been heavily criticized for pushing the program forward even as it became apparent that it was out of control. At least 2,000 guns were lost and many turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and two at the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.

The three supervisors have been given new management positions at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. They are William G. McMahon, who was the ATF’s deputy director of operations in the West, where the illegal trafficking program was focused, and William D. Newell and David Voth, both field supervisors who oversaw the program out of the agency’s Phoenix office.

[ … ]

McMahon was promoted Sunday to deputy assistant director of the ATF’s Office of Professional Responsibility and Security Operations — the division that investigates misconduct by employees and other problems.

 Something about foxes and henhouses comes to mind.  Criminals, every one of them.  So this is the order of things.  Shill for the administration, violate the Arms Export Control Act, and then get promoted by the Obama administration.

Robert Farago has a hard hitting report at The Washington Times.

Why did the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) let criminals buy firearms, smuggle them across the Mexican border and deliver them into the hands of vicious drug cartels? The ATF claims it launched its now-disgraced Operation Fast and Furious in 2009 to catch the “big fish.” Fast and Furious was designed to stem the “Iron River” flowing from American gun stores into the cartels’ arsenals. The bureau says it allowed gun smuggling so it could track the firearms and arrest the cartel members downstream. Not true.

During the course of Operation Fast and Furious, about 2,000 weapons moved from U.S. gun stores to Mexican drug cartels – exactly as intended.

In congressional testimony, William Newell, former ATF special agent in charge of the Phoenix Field Division, testified that the Internal Revenue Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were “full partners” in Operation Fast and Furious. Mr. Newell’s list left out the most important player: the CIA. According to a CIA insider, the agency had a strong hand in creating, orchestrating and exploiting Operation Fast and Furious.

The CIA’s motive is clear enough: The U.S. government is afraid the Los Zetas drug cartel will mount a successful coup d’etat against the government of Felipe Calderon.

Founded by ex-Mexican special forces, the Zetas already control huge swaths of Mexican territory. They have the organization, arms and money needed to take over the entire country.

Former CIA pilot Robert Plumlee and former CIA operative and DEA Director Phil Jordan recently said the brutally efficient Mexican drug cartel has stockpiled thousands of weapons to disrupt and influence Mexico’s national elections in 2012. There’s a very real chance the Zetas cartel could subvert the political process completely, as it has throughout the regions it controls.

In an effort to prevent a Los Zetas takeover, Uncle Sam has gotten into bed with the rival Sinaloa cartel, which has close ties to the Mexican military. Recent court filings by former Sinaloa cartel member Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, currently in U.S. custody, reveal that the United States allowed the Sinaloas to fly a 747 cargo plane packed with cocaine into American airspace – unmolested.

The CIA made sure the trade wasn’t one-way. It persuaded the ATF to create Operation Fast and Furious – a “no strings attached” variation of the agency’s previous firearms sting. By design, the ATF operation armed the Mexican government’s preferred cartel on the street level near the American border, where the Zetas are most active.

Operation Fast and Furious may not have been the only way the CIA helped put lethal weapons into the hands of the Sinaloa cartel and its allies, but it certainly was an effective strategy. If drug thugs hadn’t murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry with an ATF- provided weapon, who knows how many thousands more guns would have crossed the U.S. border?

If Robert’s report is accurate, the list of culpability runs from the ATF to the DEA to the FBI and … now … to the CIA as perhaps the ringmaster.  One very astute commenter to one article I wrote about the Mexican cartels adopting military tactics has pressed down on me for details in my recommendation to utilize the U.S. military in response to cartel violence (as he should – I have some of the best readers on the web, and they help keep me honest).  Would I use combat outposts, would I use ex-infantry and role them into the border patrol, would I use invasive techniques, and so on.  I have been struggling mightily to craft a cogent and coherent response, while also keeping in the back of my mind that there are stipulations: Tennessee v. Garner for the use of force, the Posse Comitatus Act, the sovereignty of neighboring nations to consider, the Arms Export Control Act, etc., etc.

It seems that the CIA (and someone higher in the administration?) doesn’t care about the law as much as I do.  We’ve decided to take sides in the Mexican cartel war as a means to keep the current Mexican administration in power.  And this possibly runs to the top of the CIA, and recently confirmed defense secretary Leon Panetta.  This is just a horrible, horrible commentary on the curent U.S. administration and the lengths to which they are willing to go to skirt the law.

UPDATE #1: Agent Terry’s family has been denied crime victim status in Gun Walker case.

Coffey and others wonder if Burke has a conflict. It was his office that led Operation Fast and Furious. The operation, while executed by agents for the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was managed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley. Hurley drafted the response to the family’s motion. It was signed by Burke.

Congressional investigators are expected to subpoena both to appear before the House Government and Oversight Committee next month to answer questions about the flawed operation that put some 2,000 weapons in the hands of the Sinaloa cartel.

LaJeunesse goes on to speculate that Avila might have cut a deal with prosecutors that would keep him out of jail, a development that would go over especially poorly if Terry’s family was seated in the courtroom, armed with official crime victim status.  The family may also be considering a wrongful death suit against the federal government, which would involve Burke.  Victim status would pump a lot of energy into that case.

Note again.  His own family has been denied crime victim status.  With this threshold, who could have ever met the criteria, whatever it is, for crime victim?

Little more than one week ago, Admiral Mullen said the following concerning Iran’s aid to Shi’ite fighters in Iraq.

“Iran is very directly supporting extremist Shiite groups which are killing our troops,” said Adm. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “There is no question they are shipping high-tech weapons in there…that are killing our people. And the forensics prove that.”

Around the same time, Major General John Toolan, the top Marine in Afghanistan, observed that the Marines in RC South are dealing with Iranian (and Iranian-trained) snipers.  Now comes a report directly from the Treasury Department.

Shiite-dominated Iran is allowing Al Qaeda, a predominately Sunni group, to funnel funds and operatives through its territory, the Treasury Department said Thursday.

In announcing sanctions on six alleged Al Qaeda operatives, a Treasury official said the terrorist group had entered into a “secret deal” with Iran, despite their differences.

Treasury sanctioned Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil, whom it described as a prominent Iran-based Al Qaeda facilitator, and five other members of an alleged Al Qaeda network that spans the Middle East and South Asia.

Thursday’s announcement marked the second time Treasury has drawn a link between Tehran and Al Qaeda. In 2009, Treasury sanctioned an alleged Al Qaeda associate, Mustafa Hamid, whom officials said acted as an interlocutor to the group and Tehran. At the time, Treasury sanctioned three other alleged Al Qaeda operatives, including Osama Bin Laden’s son, Sa’ad bin Laden, who had been detained in Iran.

Thursday’s sanctions, however, asserted a deeper connection. Treasury said Iranian authorities have permitted Khalil to operate within the country’s borders since 2005. He moves money and terrorist recruits from the Middle East into Iran, and then on to Pakistan, Treasury said.

Two alleged Al Qaeda members in Qatar, Salim Hasan Khalifa Rashid al-Kuwari, Abdallah Ghanim Mafuz Muslim al-Khawar, were sanctioned for allegedly providing financial and logistical support to the terrorist group through operatives in Iran.

“By exposing Iran’s secret deal with Al Qaeda allowing it to funnel funds and operatives through its territory, we are illuminating yet another aspect of Iran’s unmatched support for terrorism,” David Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.

 Note the strong wording: “Iran’s unmatched support for terrorism.”  True enough, but this shocks no one.  It simply highlights what the top generals are willing to say, regardless of what the official policy is for Iran.

And speaking of “official policy,” is there any?  Jennifer Rubin sees none.

I spoke to Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies yesterday about the state of the administration’s Iran policy. He was blunt:

I’d start with asking these questions:
1. Apart from sanctions, is anything else happening? What is the comprehensive strategy?
2. Who is driving Iran policy at the interagency level? Dennis Ross, Gary Samore, David Cohen, Bob Einhorn, Michele Flournoy, Tom Donilon, anyone else?

His conclusion on the first item is that nothing is happening, and we have no comprehensive approach. On the second, he says, “No one.”

It wouldn’t matter.  With the likes of Michele Flournoy and Tom Donilon advising Obama (and his willingness to listen and heed their counsel), even if there was an Iran policy, there wouldn’t be.  Sadly, it looks as if many of my predictions are coming to pass.

From The LA Times:

The Justice Department is trying to protect its political appointees from the Fast and Furious scandal by concealing an internal “smoking gun” report and other documents that acknowledge the role top officials played in the program that allowed firearms to flow illegally into Mexico, according to the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Kenneth E. Melson, the ATF’s acting director, also told congressional investigators this month that the affidavits prepared to obtain wiretaps used in the ill-fated operation were inconsistent with Justice Department officials’ public statements about the program. Justice Department officials advised him not to raise his concerns with Congress about “institutional problems” with the Fast and Furious operation, Melson said.

“It was very frustrating to all of us,” Melson told congressional investigators in a private meeting over the Fourth of July holiday, “and it appears thoroughly to us that the department is really trying to figure out a way to push the information away from their political appointees at the department.”

Not only was the department slow to react, Melson said, but Justice Department officials indicated they did not want him to cooperate with Congress.

A transcript of his comments was released Monday by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Melson said he wasn’t attempting to shield his agency from its share of the blame. He acknowledged an instance in which his agents failed to intercept high-powered weapons when they could have.

“The deputy attorney general’s office wasn’t very happy with us” at the ATF, Melson said, “because they thought this was an admission that there were mistakes made. Well, there were some mistakes made.”

No one is surprised by this information.  As I’ve said before, it isn’t in the DNA of this administration to be forthcoming or accountable in its actions.  It appears that Melson made the decision to “turn state’s evidence,” so to speak.  But I do disagree with one thing.  He admitted to “mistakes.”  The trafficking of weapons in violation of the National Firearms Act and Export Control Act isn’t a “mistake.”  It’s an illegality.

The combination of illegalities and coverups by the administration is why we need a special prosecutor.

UPDATE #1: Media Matters accuses the LA Times of misfiring on this story.  But it appears that perhaps Media Matters is the one who misfired.  Government Accountability Project reports thusly:

Operation Fast and Furious (F&F) – a program run by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that allowed thousands of lethal weapons to cross the Mexican border – was apparently no secret among high-level political authorities at the Department of Justice (DOJ). Among those in the know? Newly-confirmed Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

Prior:

Interpreting and Analyzing Project Gunrunner

Congressman Bilirakis Questions Holder On Tampa ATF Office Gunwalker Allegations

Gunrunner Comment of the Day

Tampa ATF Officer Gunrunner Coverup

Project Gunrunner Category

Media Matters excoriates those who traffic in confusion over Project Gunrunner.

This is starting to get pathetic.

Right-wing media outlets keep dishing out new “evidence” for why senior Justice Department leaders must have known about Fast and Furious, a failed operation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). All they keep proving is that those officials knew about Project Gunrunner, the high-profile effort begun under President Bush of which Fast and Furious was one small part.

They’ve already used this conflation to baselessly claim that the stimulus included funds for Fast and Furious (the funds were earmarked for Project Gunrunner and were not distributed to the ATF office that handled Fast and Furious) and that a 2009 Holder speech proves that he was aware of the program (the speech references only Gunrunner and was given before Fast and Furious was initiated).

In their latest effort, these outlets are pointing to a two-minute clip of a speech that then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden gave on March 29, 2009. In the speech, Ogden said:

DOJ’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is increasing its efforts by adding 37 new employees in three new offices, using $10 million in Recovery Act funds and redeploying 100 personnel to the Southwest border in the next 45 days to fortify its Project Gunrunner, which is aimed at disrupting arms trafficking between the United States and Mexico.

ATF is doubling its presence in Mexico itself, from five to nine personnel working with the Mexicans, specifically to facilitate gun-tracing activity, which targets the illegal weapons and their sources in the United States.

Let’s go over this again: Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious are not the same thing, and Fast and Furious wasn’t reportedly begun until six months after Ogden gave this speech.

Nonetheless, in an editorial comparing Fast and Furious to Watergate, Investor’s Business Daily claims that the Ogden video “may rival the tape that turned a ‘third-rate burglary’ into a presidential resignation.” IBD also claims that both the Ogden clip and Holder’s speech show the speaker “taking credit” for both Project Gunrunner and Fast and Furious. They provide text from both speeches in which the speaker references the former and not the latter, because they are lying (and embarrassingly bad at it).

Meanwhile, Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com cites this clip to claim that Ogden left DOJ in late 2009 because he “wanted to reduce his chances of becoming the ‘fall guy’ for the Obama Administration after news of this doomed-from-the-start gun-running operation became public.”

Analysis & Commentary

David Codrea and Bob Owens have both had this in their sights.  David does legitimate reporting as well as analysis and commentary, while I mostly focus on analysis and commentary.  So at times I speculate or infer, usually based on a string of evidence or reports (some published, some maybe not).  But regardless of however much we might like the reporting at Big Government, or Salem News, when they link up video or cite documents demonstrating that so-and-so was aware of Project Gunrunner, and flatly assert that he or she is admitting complicity in the smuggling of weapons to the cartels, it is both sloppy and not necessarily correct (note that I said not necessarily, and I’ll return to this later).  It isn’t necessarily correct, not yet, and not exactly.

We know that Project Gunrunner began in Texas in 2005, and was designed primarily during the Bush administration to include the training of the Mexican authorities in the use of eTrace to track weapons.  It involved a handful of ATF field agents, but until late in the Bush administration it wasn’t heavily resourced or funded.  The Merida Initiative changed that.  There were a number of problems with this initiative, but at the moment, I’m just relaying the facts.

The stimulus of 2009 sent more money in the direction of Project Gunrunner.  When the Obama administration took office, there was increased attention on Project Gunrunner, and most astute readers are aware of Operation Fast and Furious which focused on the Southern border and which was run primarily out of the Phoenix office of the ATF.  Fewer people are aware that there was a similar companion operation (called Operation Castaway) in which weapons were released to MS-13 in Honduras, run primarily out of the Tampa office of the ATF.

More recently, there is e-mail evidence indicating that the ATF was searching for anecdotal support for a demand letter on long gun sales in July of 2010.  And only a few days ago David Codrea published a letter he received concerning the illegality of the trafficking of weapons, a point I have made (albeit not as clearly) before.

“[it] isn’t okay for the ATF to violate the National Firearms Act or the Arms Export Control Act if I must live within its stipulations.”

There is indeed illegality involved for knowledgeable individuals (the executive branch of the government cannot willingly violate laws legitimately enacted by Congress any more than can I).  So there is a lot at stake to protect information and identities.  It will be some time before everything is uncovered in this scandal.

But if there is sloppiness in some conservative commentary concerning the conflation of Project Gunrunner and Fast and Furious (or Castaway), and even if Media Matters got this one at least partially right, there is another perspective.

There is a lot of dissimilarity between Project Gunrunner during the Bush and Obama administrations.  Project Gunrunner was small during the Bush years, and doesn’t appear to have included any illegal trafficking of weapons.  The Obama administration oversaw a significant expansion of the program, with strategic studies, Office of Inspector General recommendations for more expansion, the training of corrupt Mexican police, involvement of the FBI and DEA, etc.

We know all of these things based on irrefutable evidence.  We can assess, or speculate, that there is cohesion of intent and knowledge of the operations up the chain of command within the administration.  In other words, we can speculate that weapons trafficking was a subset of Project Gunrunner, as it morphed during the Obama administration into something much larger and organized than it was in the Bush years.  Another way of saying it is that equating Project Gunrunner during the Bush and Obama years is inaccurate.  Same words, different meaning.

We can speculate that since Mr. Obama is a statist, or Fabian Socialist in his thinking, his slip concerning bitterly clinging to guns and religion wasn’t really a slip.  It was a glimpse into his soul, the very core of his being.  I tend towards this interpretation, and thus I have no problem surmising that the chain of evidence plus what I know about Mr. Obama and his administration points towards complicity and prior knowledge within his administration.  Mr. Obama is no friend to firearms.

But it’s important that this be stated as surmising at the moment.  There is much investigative work to be done, and hunting for evidence from amongst this administration will be like pulling teeth.  Finding the truth will be hard.  Commentators are best advised to do better research before conflating phrases and terms, and get busy researching and digging.  Personally, I believe that Project Gunrunner isn’t the same thing it once was.  As I said before, same words, different meaning.  But I’m unwilling at the moment to flatly assert much more than what I have said thus far.

David Codrea is reporting that Congressman Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) wrote a letter today to Attorney General Eric Holder and Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Kenneth Melson, expressing deep concerns over the allegations of release of guns to MS-13 from the Tampa ATF office.

“These reports,” Bilirakis writes, “raise troubling questions about the motives, intentions, and competency of the ATF and DOJ.”

“In recent days,” he notes, “it has come to light that the ATF and DOJ may have participated in the act of ‘gun walking’ beyond the acts conducted within the scope of “Operation Fast and Furious’…and that similar programs included the possible trafficking of arms to dangerous criminal gangs in Honduras with the knowledge of the ATF’s Tampa Field Division.”

The complete list of questions is as follows:

1. Can you confirm whether or not the ATF Tampa Field Division and/or the Department of Justice’s Middle District of Florida participated in a “gun walking” scheme that allowed weapons to be trafficked to Honduras?

2. If so, does the ATF or the DOJ have knowledge of any of these firearms ending up in the possession of the notorious MS-13 gang?

3. How many guns have been allowed to pass into Honduras and how many have since been accounted for?

4. Were trafficked weapons subject to any special monitoring processes once they left the United States?

5. Has “Operation Castaway” been terminated? If not, does the DOJ or ATF plan to terminate this program or urge its termination?

6. Has the DOJ or the ATF established any criteria or guidance pertaining to what is admissible for future operations aimed at preventing firearms from being obtained and used by dangerous foreign criminal organizations in crimes similar to the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry?

David Codrea enters a detailed discussion about whether this facet of the scandal is subdivided into “Operation Castaway.”  I think that this is unimportant, and the important thing to follow is David’s reporting on the events and people.  Don’t miss what’s happening here.  It has been said that “Fast and Furious” was separate from Project Gunrunner (or at least, a subset of it).  “Operation Castaway” is supposed to be another subset of Project Gunrunner.  These details will all come to light in the coming days if Congress probes deeply enough, but the important thing now is that their own reporting claims that there is coherence and consistency of effort, a common strategy, and approval of the project – taken as a whole – from the very top levels of the administration.  The subdivided operation at the field offices under which each illegality falls is not currently important.

The scandal deepens and widens, and the depth and extent of the illegalities is only beginning to emerge.  Perhaps Congressman Bilirakis can get to the ATF before they shred all of the pertinent documents.

Prior: Project Gunrunner category