It was tragedy enough that Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in a shootout Dec. 14 while patrolling a desert canyon known as a hotbed for bandits who preyed on undocumented immigrants a few miles north of Arizona’s border with Mexico. What followed in the months afterward should disgust anyone who honors Terry’s service and the price he paid.
It has since been widely reported that officials at the U.S. Justice Department and its Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gave evasive or deceptive answers to questions about the source of high-powered weapons found at the scene of Terry’s killing. Officials at Justice also told ATF supervisors that they did not have to respond to congressional requests for information about the incident and they told a key U.S. senator, Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that they would not release investigative documents to him. ATF officials discussed steps that would keep congressional investigators at bay. And Justice and ATF officials reportedly even congratulated each other in emails over their apparent success in sending Grassley a “watered down” version of what was found in the Arizona canyon.
It is now known that among the guns at that deadly scene were two AK-47 semi-automatic weapons that came from a failed ATF sting operation dubbed Fast and Furious.
Launched in November 2009, the operation’s goal was noble – to target the big fish involved in gun trafficking for Mexican drug cartels by tracing weapons sold in the United States as they made their way across the border to cartel operatives....
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