I will admit I do not know a lot about Fast and Furious...

[kentuck]

...except that it was a movie.

But from the little bit of information I have gleaned, I am to assume it was a program to put assault weapons into the hands of illegals and drug dealers across the border in Mexico? It was run by the ATF or the CIA or both?

But, it backfired. An American agent was killed by one of these weapons. It was kept hush-hush.

Then Eric Holder and this Administration stopped the program, which was started under the Bush Administration around 2007.

Now, the Republicans, led by Darrell Issa, want all the documents pertaining to this program and the killing of the agent. The President has declared "executive privilege" and is withholding the documents.

Eric Holder, the Attorney General, has been declared in contempt of Congress by the oversight committee led by Darrell Issa.

What other information am I missing on this story??

[lame54]

1. Here is an excellent timeline...

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2011/11/12/20111112atf-gun-probe-operation-fast-and-furious-fall.html

[Enrique]

6. i agree, that is excellent

thank you

[kentuck]

7. Thanks...

That's a lot of new information to assimilate.

[Lurks Often]

14. Here is another link

from the LA Times who have been reporting on this for several years now:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/atf-fast-furious-sg,0,3828090.storygallery

[kentuck]

19. Thank you for those links...

I found this story rather interesting:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-atf-director-20110907,0,5716697.story

[krispos42]

10. Thanks for that

The issue has been very confusing.

What is not clear, however, is when F&F started (under Bush, under Obama) and whether it was created and executed by the Arizona branch of the ATF and kept secret, or created by Washington and executed by Arizona ATF.


I'll note that there are still lots of Bush-era people in government, and if we can believe the theory that the Obama Administration deliberately botched F&F so he could come down hard on guns in his hypothetical second term (with a hypothetical, pro-gun-control Congress to sent him laws to sign), then we can also believe the theory that Obama-hating Bushies in the ATF's upper echelons deliberately fucked up F&F to discredit Obama in an election year.

[RevStPatrick]

2. I don't know too much about it either.

Or about the Sandusky thing.

Every once in a while, a scandal comes along that I decide I'm just not going to care too much about. These two are the latest ones that I have chosen to pretty much ignore.
I certainly have gotten the broad strokes through osmosis, but I don't know or care about all the details.

[mzmolly]

13. You don't care about a child predator like Sandusky?

One who abused vulnerable boys, and was sheltered by Penn State?

I don't care about Fast and Furious, much myself. But I do care about those who prey on children, being brought to justice.

[RevStPatrick]

15. I don't care about the details.

I don't need to seek out news about the Sandusky story, I get more than enough of the broad strokes.
There have always been and will always be scumbag predator fuckwits, and this one will or will not be brought to justice without me seeking out each twist to the story.

And apparently, he's been found guilty of 45 of 48 charges against him.
I know this without looking for it...

[mzmolly]

16. Gotcha.

I'm glad I misunderstood.

[1StrongBlackMan]

3. Only, that ...

Last edited Sat Jun 23, 2012, 12:00 PM - Edit history (2)

There are two Black guys that are Democrats involved.

[Hoyt]

4. A key point in this BS.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. That's pretty much all I know as well.

Other than the Repukes wanting to shut Holder down so he can't investigate voter infringement in Florida and other places.

[Enrique]

8. the media has been doing a terrible job on this story

I have had a very hard time figuring it out. Rachel maddow had a good segment the other day, and the news story in post #1 in this thread is excellent. They make a good point about how almost everything we hear about the story is spin.

It is not true that Fast and Furious began during Bush. Similar programs occurred during Bush, but Fast and Furious began in 2010.

[krispos42]

11. Not necessarily in 2010

From the Arizona Republic article:

"But as Fast and Furious progressed in 2009-10, obvious and crucial flaws emerged: Hundreds of high-powered rifles vanished into Mexico because investigators had no way to follow the guns -- or to develop criminal cases against those who wound up with them".

If it was started in 2009, then the plan could have been hatched, detailed, and developed in 2008. It's possible that the plan started in 2009 under authorization from Gonzo issued a year earlier... or that senior ATF agents simply carried on existing policy into the Obama administration. Or that Bush-era senior agents carried on autonomously.

[kentuck]

12. It sounds like it started as Operation Wide Receiver...

...and morphed or was expanded into the Fast and Furious program under this Administration. It was a continuation of the same policy with the same people, it seems to me.

[JDPriestly]

24. Bush's administration called the program Wide Receiver.

The Justice Department released documents Thursday on the Bush-era Wide Receiver gun-walking operation that suggest the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was aware that guns were likely flowing into Mexico but allowed it to continue in the hopes of penetrating deeply into U.S.-Mexico gun trafficking networks.

. . . .
An August 2006 briefing memo on Wide Receiver, which was conducted from 2006 to 2007, shows that “there is currently sufficient documentation to conclude” a criminal case from the investigation.

. . .

By the end of 2006, the targets of the investigation had purchased 181 firearms. Hundreds of firearms were sold to the targets of the investigation before it ended in 2007.

No charges were filed against the targets of the investigation until 2009, during the Obama administration. Six individuals have since been convicted of offenses related to the Wide Receiver operation.

. . . .
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=9238A6D1-5C30-4720-A047-F2E5ACE0E7D4

[handmade34]

9. some info

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/the-real-scandal-of-fast-and-furious/258844/

Stephen Colbert's take on it
http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/wed-june-20-2012-daniel-klaidman

[onehandle]

17. Issa is a hero of gun culturists.

Some of them here have praised him.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

18. Signifigant factual issues exists over a point that you touched upon. +e-mails have been discovered

You mentioned
"Then Eric Holder and this Administration stopped the program, which was started under the Bush Administration around 2007."

1. Either (a) there was one program called "Fast and Furious" or (b) there were two programs, one called "Wide Receiver" and the second called "Fast and Furious."

2. The "Wide Receiver" program was begun under the Bush Administration. Either (a) the "Wide Receiver" program was discontinued by the Bush Administration in 2007 when the Bush Administration learned that the Radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips were being removed by the recipients of the firearms or (b) the "Wide Receiver" program was not discontinued by the Bush Administration but was renamed "Fast and Furious" and discontinued by the Obama Administration immediately after or shortly after Holder became aware of it.

3. A signifigant amount of time passed between the exchange of emails in the Obama Administration referring to "Fast and Furious" and the time when "Fast and Furious" was discontinued. Either (a) the words "Fast and Furious" in the emails do not refer to the "Fast and Furious" program and do not establish that the Department of Justice was aware of the "Fast and Furious" program at the earlier time or (b) the words do refer to the "Fast and Furious" program and the Department of Justice under Holder's leadership allowed additional guns to be transferred to the drug cartel while having knowledge that such guns were being transferred.

4. The Committee seeking documents from the DOJ has the authority to provide oversight of the DOJ. Either (a) the non-produced subpoenaed documents have tendency to clairfy whether the DOJ in the Obama Administration had knowledge of the "Fast and Furious" program long before it was discontinued (and before certain people were killed with guns supplied by the ATF) or (b) the documents need not be produced because the Committee is on a fishing expedition for no legitimate purpose and the non-produced documents are protected by executive privilege.

There are those who demand that we suspend our criticial thinking skills because a majority on the Committee are Republicans and Holder is a Democrat.

[kentuck]

20. I think that is an important point...

..if it was just a continuation of the Bush program or an entirely new operation?

[AnotherMcIntosh]

21. Same here.

Incidentally, I appreciate your effort to encourage a thoughtful discussion.

[kentuck]

22. Thanks Apple...

[rudycantfail]

23. All know is

that shit like this needs to be exposed and sorted out in its entirety regardless of party in charge. Thanks for attempting to have this discussion.

[Iggy]

25. The PROBLEM Is:

if the program was started up again (don't care what the name was) under
Obama-- knowing it was a massive failure under bush-- then it's a massive
fail for Obama as well.

Underlying ALL of it is the "war on drugs" is an expensive, huge failure. Obama is
a fail on this as well, because he's not interested in changing the status quo.

The RFID devices removed by the drug runners: of course. Once again our "brilliant" law
enforcement people are readily outsmarted by criminals.. who probably don't even have
a high school diploma, let alone all of the "special" training our people get.

[sad sally]

26. Lost in this story are the 50,000+ people who have been killed in the last six years during the

the drug war in Mexico. Is it a coincidence that it was 2006 when the US started selling high-powered arms to drug cartels that the killings started to increase? The idea that we arm both the Mexican military and the Mexican drug cartels is nothing new in our history, but damn, Mexico is our neighbor - was this really the only solution to stopping illegal drugs from entering the US?

Maybe legalizing drugs should be tried since this gun running program is a failure? Oh yeah, forgot...that will never happen - not as long as there are billions of untaxed dollars that our patriotic banks can launder for the rich drug lords.