Author Topic: We the Well-armed People (gun and knife rights stuff ) Second Amendment  (Read 983204 times)

G M

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Violent Crimes Drop 12%, Reason Unknown; In Other News, Record Number of America
« Reply #700 on: September 17, 2011, 04:46:53 PM »
- All American Blogger - http://www.allamericanblogger.com -
 


Violent Crimes Drop 12%, Reason Unknown; In Other News, Record Number of Americans Carrying Concealed Weapons

Posted By Duane Lester On September 16, 2011 @ 8:01 pm In The Blog | 5 Comments


The “experts” expected an increase in violent crimes with the poor state of the economy. What they found was quite the opposite:
 

The number of violent crimes fell by a surprising 12 percent in the U.S. last year, a far bigger drop than the nation has been averaging since 2001, the Justice Department said.
 
The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported there were 3.8 million violent crimes last year, down from 4.3 million in 2009.
 
Experts aren’t sure why.
 
That really is bizarre. I wonder what could be behind the incredible decrease in violent crime…
 

Gun owners are packing heat in record numbers, fearful of stricter gun control under the Obama administration and higher crime in a sour economy.
 
Some states and counties report a surge in applications for concealed weapons permits since the November election. All states but Illinois and Wisconsin allow concealed weapons, but requirements differ.
 
Applications already have hit a record this year in Clay County, Mo., where the sheriff’s office received 888 through June, compared with 863 in all of last year, says Sheriff Bob Boydston. The office recently hired two part-time workers to deal with the rush.
 
Also, this:
 

Johnson is about to become one of the millions of Americans who are permitted to carry a concealed weapon, having completed a course with Utah Legal Heat, a company that offers concealed weapons instruction — one of many options that meets the requirement for proof of firearms training for the application process. He said he’s never been threatened directly, but he also wants the option of defending himself.
 
“I pray that I never use (a gun),” he said, “but I want to be prepared.”
 
Figures indicate that more Americans like Johnson are seeking permission to carry concealed weapons — including both firearms and knives — at all times. In Idaho alone, there are currently 71,249 valid permits. Neighboring Utah has reported 246,831 valid permits as of June 30 and has seen its number of valid permits rise 458.8 percent since 2001, when 44,173 permits were reported.
 
And, this:
 

Florida had 813,127 active permit holders as of the end of April. Since May 31, 2010 when there were 729,000 permits, there has been about a 12 percent increase in permit holders. In Texas, from December 31, 2009 to December 31, 2010, there was an increase from 402,914 to 461,724 permits, a 15 percent increase. On December 31, 2008, there were 314,574 permits, showing a 28 percent increase from 2008 to 2009.
 
Add Florida, Pennsylvania, and Washington state together and those three states account for almost 2 million permit holders by themselves.
 
There’s plenty of articles I can pull quotes from, but that all would say the same thing.  More and more Americans are carrying a concealed weapon.
 
Yet the occurrence of violent crime dropped 12%.
 
Unexpected?
 
Hardly.
 
While correlation does not equal causation, there is evidence to show the rise in guns has impacted the frequency of crime:
 

“This is just the type of thing that was predicted,” economist John R. Lott told HUMAN EVENTS. Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime (Chicago University Press), pointed to research done eight years ago by David P. Mustard and published in Chicago University’s Journal of Law and Economics.
 
“States that enact concealed-carry laws are less likely to have a felonious police death and more likely to have lower rates of felonious police deaths after the law is passed,” Mustard concluded in his 2001 journal article.
 
More guns, less crime.  In fact:
 







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prentice crawford

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How To Inspire Psycho's 101
« Reply #701 on: September 17, 2011, 08:04:41 PM »
Woof,
 The rate would drop even more if our idiot Leftwing media would stop brainwashing psycho's and putting the idea into their sick minds that AK47's and high capacity magazines must be the best way for them to kill a bunch of people and commit suicide. The psycho's in the past normally just used cheap small caliber revolvers and rifles, even though AK's and high capacity mag's were just as available and cheaper than they are now but with the education and direction of the media now they are just starting to use them in their attacks. Attention all psycho's and suicidal maniacs your next weapon of choice is to be a .50 BMG sniper rifle, that's the latest target for banning and the media is just yammering on and on about how dangerous and deadly it could be in the hands of a nutjob. Of course no one in the U.S. has been killed by one up to this point. :-P If you want someone to blame for the Gifford's shooting with the high capacity mag's or the massacre in NV with the AK then you need look no further than the news media. It's not the second amendment or citzens with carry permits or the NRA or even the weapons themselves that's driving the problem. It's the Leftwing media that is creating these monsters and giving them a world stage to act out their insanity and then they spawn and inspire copycat killers all over the world by running 24/7 coverage for weeks on end detailing how they did it and how the next one could make it worst. The blood is on their hands.
                                                       P.C.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2011, 08:25:58 PM by prentice crawford »

G M

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #702 on: September 17, 2011, 08:23:19 PM »
 "It would drop even more if our idiot Leftwing media would stop brainwashing psycho's and putting the idea into their sick minds that AK47's and high capacity magazines must be the best way for them to kill a bunch of people and commit suicide."

PC,

You assume they don't mean for that to happen. Like "Fast and Furious", it's exactly what is intended.

prentice crawford

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #703 on: September 17, 2011, 08:30:23 PM »
Woof,
 I agree, they know exactly what they're doing.
                               P.C.

G M

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Cloward-Piven: The Ultimate Goal of Gunwalker?
« Reply #704 on: September 18, 2011, 07:56:19 AM »

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/cloward-piven-the-ultimate-goal-of-gunwalker/?singlepage=true

Cloward-Piven: The Ultimate Goal of Gunwalker?

It's hard to think of a more logical reason for Gunwalker to exist.

September 17, 2011 - 12:00 am - by Bob Owens

PJMedia reader “eon” posted an insightful comment in response to my September 15 article on the Gunwalker scandal:
 

To the best of my knowledge, no previous U.S. administration has ever destabilized the government of a putatively friendly foreign power purely for domestic political gain.
 
The closest you can get would be the revolutionary movement in what is now Panama, that the U.S. nurtured to gain that area’s independence (from Nicaragua) — to facilitate building the Panama Canal. But that was a pre-existing revolutionary movement with pre-existing complaints against the Nicaraguan government that did not include stopping them from selling illegal drugs. (Editor’s note: Panama gained its independence from Colombia, not Nicaragua.)
 
The gains Obama & Co. seem to be seeking come in three flavors. Ranked in order of time-criticality from their POV, they are most likely:
 
1. Short-term: Increased illegal immigration from Mexico as people attempt to flee the increasing violence (allowing them to push the DREAM Act through, and “stacking the deck” in the next election via ACORN and SEIU);
 
2. Medium-term: Propaganda for tighter gun laws (possibly enacted by Executive Order, bypassing the Congress);
 
3. Long-term: Legalization of “recreational drugs,” helped by a “drug friendly” Mexican government, influenced by if not overtly controlled by the drug cartels.
 
I strongly suspect that (3) is the ultimate objective, with (1) and (2) being seen (at least by Obama & Co.) as “stepping-stones” to attaining it.
 
While I personally think (3) is a non-starter even as a long-term issue, investigators and pundits closely tracking Gunwalker have long suspected a larger game was afoot.
 
A high-risk plot involving major elements of the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Treasury, and State, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Border Patrol, and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CID), requiring approval from the State Department, isn’t something that comes from a mid-level bureaucrat. It is typically incited and decided by the very highest levels of appointed and elected officials.
 
As anyone with any experience in government will attest, there is massive institutional inertia against both change and risk. It is insurmountable without significant stakeholder support. In government, this means directors, secretaries, and elected officeholders.
 
An operation like Fast and Furious would have been jettisoned in the conceptual stages as inherently dangerous and assured of failure, as various veteran law enforcement officers have attested (including here at PJMedia in an article by LAPD veteran “Jack Dunphy”):
 

I can appreciate the desire to use novel law enforcement approaches in confronting the violence attendant to drug trafficking in Mexico. Someone, displaying a bit of that outside-the-box thinking, came up with the idea of allowing thousands of weapons to be bought on this side of the border with the idea that they could be tracked as they made their way through the network of cartel members and facilitators and into the hands of Mexican outlaws.
 
This was a pipe dream. To me, it is inconceivable that this operation ever made it out of the first meeting where it was discussed. It goes to show how detached police executives can be from the reality of police work as it is actually practiced. There is simply no effective way to track a gun once it leaves the store where it was purchased.
 
We’ve long suspected that what “eon” calls a “medium-term” goal — propaganda for tighter gun laws — was the ultimate goal of Gunwalker, but the plot makes significantly more sense if Gunwalker did have multiple goals, of which gun control was just one.
 
A logical speculation posted by “eon” is that the short-term goal of Gunwalker was to increase violence in Mexico. This would drive more Mexican citizens northward as illegal aliens, seeking respite from the violence in their home country. Their plight would provide the administration a way to pitch the DREAM Act as an act of kindness to political refugees and another step towards amnesty.
 
This would be a strategy straight from the Cloward-Piven playbook.
 
As James Simpson noted several months ago at American Thinker, the Cloward-Pieven strategy is always approached the same way:
 1.The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.
 2.The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.
 3.The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse.
 
Gunwalker purposefully increases social unrest (increased gun violence/destabilizing Mexico), with the possible result of overloading the U.S. public welfare system (more illegal aliens fleeing the violence in Mexico and Central America). Gunwalker’s perpetrators could then use that influx to create an insurmountable constituency of poor seeking handouts from the Democratic Party. The hope of the strategy is to force a system-wide collapse of the current system, and then to rebuild the government in a variant of the strongest socialist model they think the public will accept.
 
It sounds too devious. It appears to fit.
 
Take Operation Fast and Furious in Arizona, the two suspected operations in Texas, Operation Castaway in Tampa, and the newer allegations of “Gangwalker” in the Midwest — they make sense only in the larger context of a Cloward-Piven framework.
 
These operations could not possibly succeed at interdicting straw purchasers, smugglers, and cartel bosses. No one actually involved in law enforcement could possibly believe that such idiotic operations could work. But these operations are logical when viewed through the context of their implementation as tactical applications designed to support a Cloward-Piven strategy.
 
Operation Castaway provided weapons to destabilize Central American countries and to help keep the cartel drug supply lines from Central and South America open. The unnamed gunwalking operations in Texas provided a steady flow of U.S. firearms to southern and central Mexico. Operation Fast and Furious provided the Sinaloa cartel more than 2,020 weapons in northern Mexico along the U.S. border. And to make sure the cartel wars didn’t get too one-sided, the State Department made sure the bloodthirsty Zetas were armed with American military equipment by selling them military hardware through a transparent front company.
 
The violence in Mexico triggered by the administration’s gunwalking efforts also seems logically designed to reverse a trend that had begun of Mexicans and others originating from south of the border leaving the United States because of our current economic situation.
 
If the net flow of illegal aliens is negative, the Democratic Party’s desires are inhibited: increasing numbers of illegal aliens can create the sort of economic crisis they need to force amnesty laws, to assure a long-term Democratic majority, and to establish lock-step control over Hispanic voters as they have established over blacks.
 
Operation Fast and Furious doesn’t make sense as a anti-cartel operation, but it makes perfect tactical sense as a way of implementing Cloward-Piven, something that President Obama, Attorney General Holder, Secretary Napolitano, and Secretary Clinton have long embraced as followers of those radicals and Saul Alinsky. Gunwalker is the start of a coup d’état against the republic by the very souls entrusted to guard it.
 
Of course, this is entirely speculation at this point. It’s just damn hard to think of a more logical reason for Gunwalker to exist.

G M

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Remember all the deaths from Watergate?
« Reply #705 on: September 20, 2011, 06:46:38 PM »
**Oh, there weren't any. Hey, does this mean this is Obama's next undeclared war?

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/09/20/report-at-least-200-murders-in-mexico-now-linked-to-fast-furious-weapons/

Report: At least 200 murders in Mexico now linked to Fast & Furious weapons
 

posted at 8:42 pm on September 20, 2011 by Allahpundit

 
A conservative estimate from this morning’s conference call with Darrell Issa, via our Townhall cousin Katie Pavlich.
 

In a conference call this morning with Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa, reporters were told the Attorney General in Mexico has confirmed at least 200 murders south of the border happened as a result of Operation Fast and Furious. Eleven crimes in the United States have been linked to Operation Fast and Furious up to this point. Issa said he expects as the investigation in the operation continues, more crimes connected to Fast and Furious will come to light and be exposed. This is not surprising, considering out of 2500 weapons the Obama Justice Department allowed to “walk,” and that only 600 have been recovered, the rest are lost until they show up at violent crime scenes. The damage from Operation Fast and Furious has only started to be seen. Remember, the Mexican Government and ATF agents working in Mexico were left completely in the dark about the operation.
 
They’re discovering more every day, you know. But as I say, 200 is the conservative number. Some Mexican officials think it may go considerably higher than that.
 

Marisela Morales, Mexico’s attorney general and a longtime favorite of American law enforcement agents in Mexico, told The Times that she first learned about Fast and Furious from news reports. And to this day, she said, U.S. officials have not briefed her on the operation gone awry, nor have they apologized.
 
“At no time did we know or were we made aware that there might have been arms trafficking permitted,” Morales, Mexico’s highest-ranking law enforcement official, said in a recent interview. “In no way would we have allowed it, because it is an attack on the safety of Mexicans.”…
 
In March 2010, with a growing number of guns lost or showing up at crime scenes in Mexico, ATF officials convened an “emergency briefing” to figure out a way to shut down Fast and Furious. Instead, they decided to keep it going and continue to leave Mexico out of the loop…
 
Mexican Congressman Humberto Benitez Trevino, who heads the justice committee in the Chamber of Deputies, said the number of people killed or wounded by the weapons had probably doubled to 300 since March, when he said confidential information held by Mexican security authorities put the figure at 150. The higher number, he said, was his own estimate.
 
They kept the program a secret from Mexico initially because they feared corrupt government officials might spill the beans, but I can’t fathom why they’d continue to refuse to offer a full accounting to the Mexican AG. It makes an already hideously shady operation seem that much shadier. Is there no contrition at all for this? Three hundred people shot dead with guns that shouldn’t have been there and not so much as a briefing for the country’s top law enforcement officer? There must be some awfully important details they’re worried might come out.
 
Via CNS, here’s Issa on this morning’s call reiterating his point that there’s no good reason for Holder not to have known about this. Quote: “f Eric Holder didn’t know, it’s because he didn’t want to know or because he wasn’t doing his job.” Click the image to listen.

Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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Interesting conversation
« Reply #707 on: September 23, 2011, 07:12:20 PM »
Comments by poster on another forum:

"OK, so, according to his lawyer, Howard was actually trying to get that ATF agent to incriminate herself in those conversations. And DOJ's inspector general cannot be trusted to investigate the department she works for. What a surprise."

===============================

Quote:
Lawmakers Claim Justice Inspector Obstructed Probe Into ‘Fast and Furious’

By William Lajeunesse

Published September 21, 2011 | FoxNews.com


The inspector general of the Department of Justice undermined and obstructed a congressional investigation by releasing secret tape recordings that corroborate allegations of misconduct in "Operation Fast and Furious," according to a letter written by Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley.

The two lawmakers leading the probe into the Obama administration scandal claim Justice Inspector General Cynthia Schnedar compromised their investigators' ability to get to the truth and potentially prosecute those responsible for selling thousands of weapons to the Mexican drug cartels.

Schnedar failed to even listen to the recordings before handing them over to the actual targets of the investigation, the letter alleges.

"Each of these disclosures undermines our ability to assess the candor of witnesses in our investigation and thus obstructs it," they wrote in a letter dated Tuesday. "Moreover, your decision to immediately disclose the recordings to those you are investigating creates at least the appearance, if not more, that your inquiry is not sufficiently objective and independent.

"It appears that you did not consider the significant harm that providing these recordings to the very individuals under investigation could cause to either our inquiry or your own. You did not consult with us about the recordings even though the congressional inquiry and reactions to it are discussed at length."

The OIG argues that under discovery rules it is required to turn the tapes over to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The tapes Issa and Grassley refer to were recorded by Andre Howard, owner of the Lone Wolf Trading Co., after he suspected the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was lying to him about the guns they recruited him to sell to buyers of the Sinaloa Cartel.

On two occasions Howard taped Hope MacAllister, the lead agent in the Fast and Furious case.

Dallas lawyer Larry Gaydos, who represents the Lone Wolf Trading Co., claims Howard was trying to get MacAllister to implicate herself and the ATF in the illegal gun-running scheme.

"He became very suspicious and in his own defense would tape key conversations with Ms. MacAllister and try to get her to make admissions about the truth of the matter," said Dallas attorney Larry Gaydos. "Andre was trying to get her to admit that indeed they let guns go to Mexico."

Howard has become a key witness in the congressional investigation of the Department of Justice and its alleged cover up of Operation Fast and Furious. The Justice Department has repeatedly said it did not allow guns -- purchased under its direction and authority -- to reach Mexico.

The facts in the case suggest otherwise, but the agency continues to deny it and refuses to turn over pertinent documents to Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"Andre was acting under the direct supervision of the Department of Justice and ATF. And he thought he was making a difference and that these people were being arrested and there were going to be indictments and that there were going to be prosecutions," Gaydos told Fox News exclusively on Tuesday.

"He is appalled at the position being taken by the Department of Justice and the lack of candor and the lack of cooperation with Congress. He wants the truth to come out for the American people and the Terry Family."

Howard is not alone in his regret. Speaking in reaction to the tapes Tuesday was ATF agent and whistleblower Larry Alt, who has never spoken publicly about his opposition to the case and the retaliation he has suffered as a result of it.

"Agent Terry's death brought just a tremendous amount of, I guess, regret and sorrow, disappointment, disgust to myself, to other members of the group. I can't express enough--I've never had an opportunity to publicly express condolences to the Terry family," Alt told Fox News. "I'm almost speechless when it comes to that."

Alt stepped forward after hearing MacAllister disparage his wife and family on the tapes. He felt it was necessary to defend them, and his own reputation. A decorated soldier and police officer, an instructor at the ATF academy, Alt says he and fellow whistleblower John Dodson were transferred to dead-end jobs after standing up to Agent-in-Charge Bill Newell. The ATF in Phoenix and U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona then attempted to conceal the role they played in directing area gun dealers to sell weapons to buyers the agency knew were breaking the law.

"We were transferred from the group. We were placed in positions away from the investigation itself, denied access to the investigation," said Alt. "I would view that as a measure of control and if you want to call it a cover up, that would be an accurate statement."

Howard made the tapes in March 2011 after a meeting he and his attorneys held with federal officials. In that meeting, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley continued to insist the guns Lone Wolf sold were stopped and seized before reaching Mexico.

But ATF officials are quoted in a Washington Post article and the Spanish language daily La Opinion saying just the opposite -- blaming Lone Wolf for "selling guns to the cartels" with no mention that Howard was operating under the federal government's direction, encouragement and approval.
 


===========================
What do we make of this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec667Esbjec
« Last Edit: September 23, 2011, 07:32:11 PM by Crafty_Dog »

Crafty_Dog

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It just keeps getting worse and worse.
« Reply #708 on: September 28, 2011, 08:28:40 AM »
"New documents reveal the Department of Justice lied to Congress and show how U.S. officials bought guns with tax dollars and then made sure no one stopped their transfer to Mexican drug cartels. The funneling of thousands of American guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in the operation known as Fast and Furious was not a botched sting operation or the result of bureaucratic incompetence. It was not designed to interdict gun trafficking, but to facilitate it. We now know that it involved not just the use of straw buyers, but also agents of the federal government purchasing weapons with taxpayer money, ordering the licensed dealers to conduct the sales off the books, then calling off surveillance of the gun traffickers and refusing to interdict the transfer of the weapon or arrest the people involved. ... A two-year-old C-SPAN video shows Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, who would resign nine months later after less than a year's service, telling reporters at a Justice Department briefing of major policy initiatives to fight the Mexican drug cartels. 'The president has directed us to take action to fight these cartels,' Ogden began, 'and Attorney General Holder and I are taking several new and aggressive steps as part of the administration's comprehensive plan.' Ogden said the administration's plan, at the president's direction, included the ATF's '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,' of which Operation Fast and Furious would be a part. ... Fast and Furious should spark our pursuit of the truth, even if the trail leads to the Oval Office." --Investor's Business Daily
Will the administration succeed in its Fast & Furious goals?
Upright
"The entire [Fast & Furious] operation ended with only 20 indictments of straw purchasers -- indictments that could have happened immediately upon transfer of the weapons, stopping the flow. In fact, the straw purchasers, at issue, were known to be straw purchasers from the get-go. The indictments only took place at all because U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered using the weapons authorized for free flow by ATF and DOJ. ... So what was the real goal of the DOJ and ATF? It certainly wasn't to shut down access to arms for the cartels -- the ATF was agreeing to such access. It wasn't to stop straw purchasers -- the ATF was signing off on the straw purchasers. It wasn't to track the movements of the cartel -- there was no way to do that. It was, very simply, to establish for political reasons that American guns were being used in crimes by foreign cartels." --columnist Ben Shapiro

Crafty_Dog

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Lott
« Reply #709 on: October 02, 2011, 10:04:11 AM »
Media Silence Is Deafening About Important Gun News

By John Lott


Murder and violent crime rates were supposed to soar after the Supreme Court struck down gun control laws in Chicago and Washington, D.C.   Politicians predicted disaster. "More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence," Washington’s Mayor Adrian Fenty warned the day the court made its decision. Chicago’s Mayor Daley predicted that we would "go back to the Old West, you have a gun and I have a gun and we'll settle it in the streets . . . ."  The New York Times even editorialized this month about the Supreme Court's "unwise" decision that there is a right for people "to keep guns in the home."

But Armageddon never happened. Newly released data for Chicago shows that, as in Washington, murder and gun crime rates didn't rise after the bans were eliminated -- they plummeted. They have fallen much more than the national crime rate.

Not surprisingly, the national media have been completely silent about this news.

One can only imagine the coverage if crime rates had risen. In the first six months of this year, there were 14% fewer murders in Chicago compared to the first six months of last year – back when owning handguns was illegal. It was the largest drop in Chicago’s murder rate since the handgun ban went into effect in 1982.

Meanwhile, the other four most populous cities saw a total drop at the same time of only 6 percent.  Similarly, in the year after the 2008 "Heller" decision, the murder rate fell two-and-a-half times faster in Washington than in the rest of the country.  It also fell more than three as fast as in other cities that are close to Washington's size. And murders in Washington have continued to fall.  If you compare the first six months of this year to the first six months of 2008, the same time immediately preceding the Supreme Court's late June "Heller" decision, murders have now fallen by thirty-four percent.

Gun crimes also fell more than non-gun crimes.

Robberies with guns fell by 25%, while robberies without guns have fallen by eight percent. Assaults with guns fell by 37%, while assaults without guns fell by 12%.

Just as with right-to-carry laws, when law-abiding citizens have guns some criminals stop carrying theirs.

The benefit could have been even greater. Getting a handgun permit in Chicago and Washington is an expensive and difficult process, meaning only the relatively wealthy go through it.

Through the end of May only 2,144 people had handguns registered in Chicago. That limits the benefits from the Supreme Court decisions since it is the poor who are the most likely victims of crime and who benefit the most from being able to protect themselves.

The biggest change for Washington was the Supreme Court striking down the law making it illegal to have a loaded gun. Over 70,000 people have permits for long guns that they can now legally used to protect themselves.

Lower crime rates in Chicago and Washington, by themselves, don’t prove that gun control increases murders, even when combined with the quite familiar story of how their murder rates soared and stayed high after the gun bans were imposed.

But these aren’t isolated examples. Around the world, whenever guns are banned, murder rates rise.

Gun control advocates explained the huge increases in murder and violent crime rates Chicago and Washington by saying that those bans weren’t fair tests unless the entire country adopted a ban.

Yet, even island nations, such as Ireland and the U.K. -- with no neighbors to blame -- have seen increases in murder rates. The same horror stories about blood in the streets have surrounded the debate over concealed handguns.  Some said it was necessary to ban guns in public places. The horror stories never came true and the data is now so obvious that as of November, only one state, Illinois, will still completely ban law-abiding from carrying concealed handguns.

Forty-one states will have either permissive right-to-carry laws or no longer even require a permit.

The regulations that still exist in Chicago and Washington primarily disarm the most likely victims of crime.

Hopefully, even the poor in these areas will soon also have more of an opportunity to defend themselves, too.

John R. Lott, Jr. is a Fox News.com contributor and the author of the revised third edition of "More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 2010)."

Crafty_Dog

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DOJ considering abolishing ATF
« Reply #710 on: October 02, 2011, 10:18:16 AM »
second post of the day:

Looks like the Obama administration is willing to go far in order to get rid of the evidence - which would make sense, considering the seriousness of the crime.


Quote:
Bombshell: DOJ Considering Elimination of ATF
By Katie Pavlich
9/30/2011


Multiple sources, including sources from ATF, DOJ and Congressional offices have said there is a white paper circulating within the Department of Justice, outlining the essential elimination of ATF. According to sources, the paper outlines the firing of at least 450 ATF agents in an effort to conduct damage control as Operation Fast and Furious gets uglier and as election day 2012 gets closer. ATF agents wouldn’t be reassigned to other positions, just simply let go. Current duties of ATF, including the enforcement of explosives and gun laws, would be transferred to other agencies, possibly the FBI and the DEA. According to a congressional source, there have been rumblings about the elimination of ATF for quite sometime, but the move would require major political capital to actually happen.

“It’s a serious white paper being circulated, how far they’d get with it I don’t know,” a confidential source said.

After a town hall meeting about Operation Fast and Furious in Tucson, Ariz. on Monday, ATF Whistleblower Vince Cefalu, who has been key in exposing details about Operation Fast and Furious, confirmed the elimination of ATF has been circulating as a serious idea for sometime now and that a white paper outlining the plan does exist.

Sounds great right? Eliminating ATF? But there is more to this story. Remember, low level ATF field agents, like ATF whistleblower John Dodson, were uncomfortable conducting Operation Fast and Furious from the beginning, but were told by high level officials within ATF that if they had a problem with the operation, they could find a job elsewhere.

“Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals, this was the plan. It was so mandated,” ATF Whistleblower John Dodson said in testimony on Capitol Hill on June 15, 2011.

In fact, not only were the ATF agents forced to carry out the operation, they were told to go against what they had been taught in training.

“This operation, which in my opinion endangered the American public, was orchestrated in conjunction with Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley. [Emory Hurley is the same Assistant U.S. Attorney who previously prevented agents from using some of the common and accepted law enforcement techniques that are employed elsewhere in the United States to investigate and prosecute gun crimes.] I have read documents that indicate that his boss, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, also agreed with the direction of the case,” Special Agent Peter Forcelli said in testimony on Capitol hill on June 15, 2011.

“I recall my first days at the ATF academy, where it was drilled into us as new agents that under no circumstances would any firearms, in any investigation, leave the control of ATF. Instructors stressed that even if a weapon was lost “by accident,” the agent was still subject to termination,” former ATF Attaché to Mexico Darren D. Gil said in testimony on June 15, 2011.

ATF field agents weren’t the problem with Operation Fast and Furious, high ranking officials within ATF and the Department of Justice were and still are. DOJ would eliminate ATF only to take the heat off of the Obama Administration. By eliminating the bureau, it makes it seem like DOJ is taking Operation Fast and Furious so seriously, they decided to “clear out the corruption, clean house,” however, it would only be a distraction away from the people at the top of the investigation. In fact, evidence shows the DOJ has been stonewalling the Oversight Committee investigation into the operation to protect Obama political appointees.

“It was very frustrating to all of us, 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,” former ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson, who has since been moved to a position within DOJ, said of his frustration with the Justice Department’s response to the investigation in transcribed closed door testimony with the Oversight Committee in July 2011.

When I called the Department of Justice last week (five times) to request the white paper and receive a comment surrounding the idea of eliminating ATF, I received the following response: “Everyone is away from their desk right now.”


Up to this point, the Department of Justice has denied all allegations or involvement in Operation Fast and Furious, yet journalists and the House Oversight Committee have proved allegation after allegation to be true. For example, during a Congressional hearing in July, former ATF Special Agent in Charge William Newell, who has since been promoted to a position within the Justice Department, denied that his agency was trafficking guns to Mexico, despite overwhelming evidence and testimony from other ATF agents proving otherwise.

“At no time in our strategy was it to allow guns to be taken to Mexico,” Newell said on July 26, 2011, adding that at no time did his agency allow guns to walk.

We’ve heard this was a low level, “rogue” operation, turns out high level officials in the Justice Department, DEA, FBI, DHS, and even members of the White House national security team knew about Operation Fast and Furious.

Last week, ATF offered 400 agents buy outs to avoid budget cuts and is expecting 250-275 agents to take the offer through Voluntary Early Retirement. These buyouts come at a convenient time for the Justice Department, which can eliminate ATF, then say it’s because of budget cuts, when really, it’s to cover their tracks. 

Crafty_Dog

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #711 on: October 02, 2011, 10:20:12 AM »
third post of day:

White House sends Hill Fast & Furious docs, but withholds some

The White House sent another installment of documents to Congress on Friday detailing White House staffers' knowledge about the controversial "Operation Fast & Furious" gunrunning probe run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives.

However, the chief counsel to President Barack Obama, Kathryn Ruemmler, indicated that the White House was withholding an unspecified number of internal e-mails exchanged among three National Security Staff aides.

"These internal NSS emails are not included in the enclosed documents because the [Executive Office of the President] has significant confidentiality interests in its internal communications," Ruemmler wrote in a letter to House Oversight & Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). The letter, posted here, was obtained Friday by POLITICO.

The latest batch of 102 pages of records partially duplicated information previously sent to Congress and didn't appear to include any smoking guns showing that White House officials were aware that the operation involved allowing hundreds or thousands of guns to flow essentially unimpeded from the U.S. to Mexican drug cartels.

"As today's production makes clear, none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to let guns 'walk,'" Ruemmler wrote in response to a letter to Issa and Grassley sent to National Security Adviser Tom Donilon earlier this month.
(Sure... And we're supposed to believe that's also the case with that "unspecified number of internal e-mails" the White House chose to withhold from Congress - you know, due to "significant confidentiality interests", or something. Right.)
==========
New Fast and Furious docs released by White House



WASHINGTON - Late Friday, the White House turned over new documents in the Congressional investigation into the ATF "Fast and Furious" gunwalking scandal.

The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell - who led Fast and Furious - and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O'Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O'Reilly are long time friends.

ATF agents say that in Fast and Furious, their agency allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to be sold to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels. At least two of the guns turned up at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.

ATF Manager says he shared Fast and Furious with the White House

The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. They discuss ATF's gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O'Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office's gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as "letting guns walk."

A lawyer for the White House wrote Congressional investigators: "none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to allow guns to 'walk.'"

Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF's Newell sent the White House's O'Reilly an "arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up." The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.

In response, O'Reilly wrote on Sept. 3, 2010 "The arrow chart is really interesting - and - no surprise - implies at least that different (Drug Trafficking Organizations) in Mexico have very different and geographically distinct networks in the US for acquiring guns. Did last year's TX effort develop a similar graphic?"

The White House counsel who produced the documents stated that some records were not included because of "significant confidentiality interests."

Also included are email photographs including images of a .50 caliber rifle that Newell tells O'Reilly "was purchased in Tucson, Arizona (part of another OCDTF case)." OCDTF is a joint task force that operates under the Department of Justice and includes the US Attorneys, ATF, DEA, FBI, ICE and IRS. Fast and Furious was an OCDTF case. An administration source would not describe the Tucson OCDTF case. However, CBS News has learned that ATF's Phoenix office led an operation out of Tucson called "Wide Receiver." Sources claim ATF allowed guns to "walk" in that operation, much like Fast and Furious.

Congressional investigators for Republicans Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have asked to interview O'Reilly by September 30. But the Administration informed them that O'Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq and unavailable. (How convenient.)

One administration source says White House national security staffers were "briefed on the toplines of ongoing federal efforts, but nobody in White House knew about the investigative tactics being used in the operation, let alone any decision to let guns walk."

Crafty_Dog

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That fellow who engineered the Marc Rich pardon may need one of his own
« Reply #712 on: October 03, 2011, 10:03:04 PM »
Gunwalker: Holder Appears To Be Fast, Furious, and Finished

News documents indicate that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder more than likely perjured himself in congressional testimony about Operation Fast and Furious earlier this year.

October 3, 2011 - 7:57 pm - by Bob Owens


News documents indicate that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder more than likely perjured himself in congressional testimony about Operation Fast and Furious earlier this year.

Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News and William LaJeunesse of Fox News have been the only mainstream media reporters diligently working on the most important scandal in White House history, and it is no surprise that they concurrently released information indicating that the attorney general, who claimed in direct testimony on May 3 of this year in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he first heard about Operation Fast and Furious “over the last few weeks,” had actually been briefed on the program in a memo by the director of the National Drug Intelligence Center almost a year earlier on July 5, 2010.

A copy of the heavily redacted weekly report posted by CBS News offers direct evidence that not only was the attorney general briefed on Operation Fast and Furious, but that he was briefed on it regularly and was well aware that the program was sending thousands of weapons into the hands of the Sinaloa cartel:

From July 12 through July 16, the National Drug Intelligence Center Document and Media Exploitation Team at the Phoenix Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCTDETF) Strike Force will support the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ Phoenix Field Division with its investigation of Manuel Celis-Acosta as part of OCDETF Operation Fast and Furious. This investigation, initiated in September 2009 in conjunction with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Phoenix Police Department, involves a Phoenix-based firearms trafficking ring headed by Manual Celis-Acosta. Celis-Acosta and [redacted] straw purchasers are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels. They also have direct ties to the Sinaloa Cartel which is suspected of providing $1 million for the purchase of firearms in the greater Phoenix area.
That excerpt stated what the task force would do in the near future, while the same language was used later in the report to show what the task force had done that week:

From July 6 through July 9, the National Drug Intelligence Center Document and Media Exploitation Team at the Phoenix Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCTDETF) Strike Force will support the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ Phoenix Field Division with its investigation of Manuel Celis-Acosta as part of OCDETF Operation Fast and Furious. This investigation, initiated in September 2009 in conjunction with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Phoenix Police Department, involves a Phoenix-based firearms trafficking ring headed by Manual Celis-Acosta. Celis-Acosta and [redacted] straw purchasers are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels. They also have direct ties to the Sinaloa Cartel which is suspected of providing $1 million for the purchase of firearms in the greater Phoenix area.
Attorney General Holder’s eventual criminal defense attorney is certain to state that the attorney general is provided with dozens of reports each week, and that is within the realm of reasonable doubt that he simply overlooked or did not remember the specifics of this memo.

Prosecutors would likely cast doubt on such a claim, citing the fact that the report was named Operation Fast and Furious, that it referred to the number of guns walked by the program at that time (1,500), and that it even noted how much they thought the Sinaloa cartel had budgeted for weapons ($1 million). They will then note that this information was cited twice in each weekly report for both current and future operations.

The prosecutors will more than likely be able to state with a great degree of certainly that Holder was provided this information in x number of weekly reports spanning y number of months in a report that only cites the most important National Drug Intelligence Center cases.

It will be very interesting to see if the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has the ability or interest to imprison a sitting attorney general for contempt of Congress, which would in and of itself bring up a question of separation of powers, as it would require Congress having the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia attempting to arrest and imprison a member of the executive branch. This is more than likely a moot point, however, as Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa expressed in a conference call with new media representatives that he would call for the appointment of an independent special prosecutor, who would be given the power to pursue criminal charges that carry a much longer prison sentence than the maximum one year that Congress may impose for contempt.

Another communication acquired by Attkisson and LaJeunesse shows a series of emails between two Department of Justice officials, Jason Weinstein, deputy assistant attorney general of the Criminal Division, and Deputy Chief of the National Gang Unit James Trusty.

The two men discuss Operation Fast and Furious in conjunction with another gun-walking operation based in Tucson (OFF was in Phoenix) and a third, unnamed gun-walking operation.

Trusty wrote to Weinstein:

Looks like we’ll be able to unseal the tucson case sooner than Fast and Furious (although this may be the difference between Nov and Dec). It’s not clear how much we’re invlvoed in the main F and F case, but we have Tucson and now a new, related case with [redacted] targets. It’s not going to be any big surprise that a bunch of US guns are being used in MX, so I’m not sure how much grief we get for “gun walking.” It may be more like, “Finally, they’re going after people who sent guns down there.”
The Trusty email confirms that senior Department of Justice officials were aware of not just Operation Fast and Furious, but that Operation Fast and Furious was a gun-walking operation; Trusty used that exact phrase. The news of the Tucson operation is the second confirmation of that gun-walking operation (Operation Wide Receiver), which was first revealed in a Friday afternoon document dump by the White House.

There is scant reference to the third operation, and it is unclear if this is another Arizona-based case or one of the Texas-based gun-walking operations that was also mentioned in passing in the O’Reilly email released Friday as “last year’s TX effort.”

In the flurry of documents released in the past several days, top officials of the Department of Justice are confirmed talking about at least three and as many as four gun-walking operations, dramatically raising the probability that gun-walking was known throughout the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and State, as well as the White House.

These documents seem to convincingly argue that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder knowingly perjured himself in congressional testimony. As Holder knew, it is likely that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, whose agents were also part of the task force, received similar weekly reports from either her direct reports or U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, a close personal confidant who was her chief of staff while she was Arizona’s governor and who was appointed U.S. attorney through Napolitano’s influence. State should have been informed as they would have to waive what are clear violations of the Arms Export Control Act, but there is not any evidence yet that Secretary of State Clinton was involved in the operations.

It is starting to appear that Eric Holder might soon find himself thrown under the proverbial bus. It now seems only a matter of time before we discover who was driving a bus that seems destined for the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Crafty_Dog

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Holder and the Marc Rich pardon
« Reply #713 on: October 04, 2011, 12:45:58 PM »

Crafty_Dog

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The heat is on heh heh heh
« Reply #714 on: October 04, 2011, 12:56:52 PM »
Third post of day

EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans are calling for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Eric Holder perjured himself during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious, Fox News has learned.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, was sending a letter to President Obama on Tuesday arguing that Holder cannot investigate himself, and requesting the president instruct the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel.
The question is whether Holder committed perjury during a Judiciary Committee hearing on May 3. At the time, Holder indicated he was not familiar with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program known as Fast and Furious until about April 2011.

"I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks," Holder testified.
However, a newly discovered memo dated July 2010 shows Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation "are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels."
Other documents also indicate that Holder began receiving weekly briefings on the program from the National Drug Intelligence Center "beginning, at the latest, on July 5, 2010," Smith wrote.

"These updates mentioned, not only the name of the operation, but also specific details about guns being trafficked to Mexico," Smith wrote in the letter to Obama.

"Allegations that senior Justice Department officials may have intentionally misled members of Congress are extremely troubling and must be addressed by an independent and objective special counsel. I urge you to appoint a special counsel who will investigate these allegations as soon as possible," Smith wrote.
In response to the release of the memos, a Justice Department official said that the attorney general "has consistently said he became aware of the questionable tactics in early 2011 when ATF agents first raised them publicly, and then promptly asked the (inspector general) to investigate the matter."
The official added that in March 2011, Holder testified to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee of that development, and regularly receives hundreds of pages, none of which contained information on potential problems with Fast and Furious.

"The weekly reports (100 + pages) are provided to the office of the AG and (deputy attorney general) each week from approximately 24 offices and components. These are routine reports that provide general overviews and status updates on issues, policies, cases and investigations from offices and components across the country. None of these reports referenced the controversial tactics of that allowed guns to cross the border," the official said.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., "of all people, should be familiar with the difference between knowing about an investigation and being aware of questionable tactics employed in that investigation since documents provided to his committee show he was given a briefing that included the fast and furious operation in 2010 – a year before the controversy emerged," the official continued.

Issa told Fox News on Tuesday morning that Holder saying he didn't understand the question rather than he didn't know of the program is not a successful defense to perjury.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, added that months before Holder testified -- on Jan. 31 -- he came to Grassley's office, where Grassley gave him a letter detailing the investigation of Fast and Furious.

"If he read my letter, he knew on January 31," Grassley told Fox News. "He probably actually knew about it way back in the middle of last year or earlier.
Grassley said since he's not a lawyer he's not going to make a judgment on whether Holder committed perjury.

"But I can tell you this. They're doing everything they can, in a fast and furious way, to cover up all the evidence or stonewalling us. But here's the issue, if he didn't perjure himself and didn't know about it, the best way that they can help us, Congressman Issa and me, is to just issue all the documents that we ask for and those documents will prove one way or the other right or wrong."

FILE: Attorney General Eric Holder testifies on Capitol Hill May 3 before a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing.



http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011...r-on-fast-and/

Crafty_Dog

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IBD: Prosecute Holder!
« Reply #715 on: October 05, 2011, 08:31:29 AM »

"Somewhere, Scooter Libby must be scratching his head. He was indicted and convicted simply because his recall of when a meeting occurred differed from others. He didn't lie about a gun-running operation that led to the deaths of two American agents and at least 200 Mexicans. But Attorney General Eric Holder did, according to memos obtained by CBS News and Fox News. They show Holder lied to Congress on May 2, 2011, when he was asked about when he knew about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Fast and Furious gun-running operation. He told House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa he was 'not sure of the exact date, but I probably learned about Fast and Furious over the last few weeks.' Holder learned of the operation as early as July 2010 in a memo from the director of the National Drug Intelligence Center informing him of an operation run by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force out of the Phoenix ATF office, under which 'straw purchasers are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug cartels.' ... Holder, quite simply, has lied to Congress, although the defense now being offered is he didn't understand Issa's question, doesn't read all the memos sent to him or was otherwise out of the loop. It is perhaps the first time incompetence has been offered as a defense to possible charges of criminality. ... As Issa told radio talk show host Laura Ingraham last month: 'We have a paper trail of so many people knowing that the only way the attorney general didn't know is he made sure he didn't want to know. ... But if you don't want to know something of this sort, then you shouldn't have the job he has.' We'd go a step further. Baseball star Roger Clemens was equally vehement when he told a House committee in 2008: 'Let me be clear. I have never taken steroids or HGH.' Clemens was indicted for lying to Congress. The same should go for Eric Holder." --Investor's Business Daily

G M

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'Furious' mess has Justice in full panic
« Reply #716 on: October 06, 2011, 06:48:11 AM »
'Furious' mess has Justice in full panic
By MICHAEL A. WALSH

Last Updated: 4:52 AM, October 6, 2011

Posted: 10:22 PM, October 5, 2011

So now the Fast and Furious affair has reached Stage 2 of the classic Washington scandal: House Republicans have called for a special counsel to investigate Attorney General Eric Holder himself for possible perjury.

Justice Department documents indicate that Holder knew of the operation way back in July 2010 -- far earlier than the “in the last few weeks” that he told congressional investigators under oath last May.

Memos from Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and others to Holder clearly show the scope, if not the nature, of the disastrous project: “This investigation, initiated in September 2009 . . . involves . . . straw purchasers [who] are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug cartels.”

That’s the crux of the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ infamous “gunwalking” program, allegedly designed to track illegal gun sales to Mexican drug gangs by turning a blind eye toward, and possibly facilitating, arms sales in Arizona and elsewhere. The death toll so far is more than 200.

The heavily redacted memos don’t explicitly implicate ATF and other federal agencies in an illegal scheme, as ATF whistleblowers have alleged. But if there’s a coverup going on, why would they?

And coverup there seems to be. On top of stonewalling Rep. Darrell Issa’s House investigation of the mess, Justice has floated a series of contradictory excuses:

* There was no such program.

* Even if there weres, Holder never knew about it.

* Even if he should have known about it, he might not have read Breuer’s memos.

* Even if he read Breuer’s memos, he misunderstood the simple question: “When did you first know about the program, officially, I believe, called Fast and Furious?”


With the recent exposure of another apparent “gunwalking” operation, Wide Receiver, that may date back to the Bush administration, some are already pushing a “Bush-did-it-too” meme. If true, it shows the rot at Justice goes deeper than we thought -- but it has nothing to do with whether Holder may have committed perjury.

If Holder is so innocent, why, sources inside Justice say, are folks there engaging in a panicked orgy of finger-pointing and blame-shifting?

A trial balloon has reportedly been floated within Justice to essentially eliminate the ATF by firing 450 agents and transferring the embattled agency’s duties to the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI.

While the bulk of the national press corps is off inspecting Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s back forty for residual signs of racism, CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson and Fox’s William La Jeunesse have been doing the heavy lifting on Fast and Furious -- and getting some tough pushback from Obama officials.

On the Laura Ingraham radio show yesterday, Attkisson told of being “yelled at” by Justice flack Tracy Schmaler and being “screamed” at by White House official Eric Schultz for being “unfair.”

Said Attkisson: “They will tell you that I’m the only reporter -- as they told me -- that is not reasonable. They say The Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, The New York Times is reasonable, I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it.”

CBS has reportedly yanked Attkisson from further media appearances this week. But isn’t independent inquiry the function of a free press? Nobody thought there was a story in Watergate, either, until Woodward and Bernstein proved otherwise.

There’s still plenty of time for Justice and the other implicated agencies to come clean. But to date, all we’ve heard is dog-ate-my-briefing-book excuses and desperate attempts to change the subject.

It’s possible that Fast and Furious was a rogue, poorly conceived sub-operation of the legitimate Project Gunrunner, begun in 2005 to track and interdict illegal weapons traffic. But Holder’s track record in previous congressional testimony leaves ample cause for skepticism.

As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy pointed out yesterday at National Review Online, Holder’s current amnesia recalls his misleading testimony to Congress about another scandal, President Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich. Even though Holder helped arrange the pardon, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2001 that Rich’s name was “unfamiliar” to him.

With the 2012 elections looming, the chances of Holder’s appointing a special prosecutor to investigate himself are slim and none. The Obama administration will bury the scandal -- unless the media and public demand otherwise.

Michael Walsh’s new thriller, “Shock Warning,” is out this week on Amazon Kindle.



Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/furious_mess_has_justice_in_full_WYXAPQoFlBaBVer5Q47oi

DougMacG

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Fast and Furious, Eric Holder 'misunderstood the question'
« Reply #717 on: October 06, 2011, 08:46:29 AM »
We now know he lied about what he knew when saying he just learned about in the last few weeks a year after he was briefed.  His no.2 and no.3 were intimately involved and he wouldn't know what they were doing on the job?  Why wouldn't he be fired just for being out of the loop in his own department, if that story were true?

I can't believe the coverup is aimed at Holder instead of Obama.  Is it realistic that a cross border operation did not have the authorization from the highest levels of BOTH the American and Mexican?

What could possibly go wrong sending artillery into a neighboring civil war zone.

This is story is breaking out like a slowly dripping faucet.  A CBS reporter silenced in the face of screaming from administration officials and with pressure from the reporter's higher-ups.

Wouldn't they want to get this behind them sooner rather than later- with an election coming up next year?  They should have put what mistakes they made behind them last May instead of next November.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20115038-10391695.html
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65208_Page2.html
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cbs-news-reporter-says-white-house-screamed-swore-her-over-fast-and-furious_595011.html

G M

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10 Arizona Sheriffs
« Reply #718 on: October 08, 2011, 10:39:20 AM »
**Note: Arizona has a total of 15 counties


http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/10/arizona-sheriffs-demand-investigation-of-eric-holder-say-fast-and-furious-scandal-worse-than-watergate-video/


Arizona Sheriffs Demand Investigation of Eric Holder – Say ‘Fast and Furious’ Scandal Worse Than Watergate (Video)

Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, October 8, 2011, 7:33 AM


Ten Arizona sheriffs held a press conference yesterday in Phoenix demanding a special counsel investigation on Attorney General Eric Holder.
 The sheriffs called the operation a betrayal of state law enforcement and worse than Watergate.

DougMacG

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Dead Mexicans Killed by a Botched Obama Administration Scandal?
« Reply #719 on: October 10, 2011, 06:31:08 AM »
In spite of how well covered this scandal was on the board I have been very slow to figure out who really was trying to do what.  Still working on my theory and its disjointed components:

The Attorney General Eric Holder felt justified in lying about the year he was briefed.  He knew that he wasn't betraying his higher-ups when he chose to obstruct public and congressional oversight.  That means they already knew.  Cross border arms supplying into a neighboring country's civil was isn't something that starts at Attorney General or below.  If it was and it was unauthorized, he would be fired.

Obama STILL hasn't been briefed?  Still knows nothing?  Do you buy it?  I don't buy it.  We just can't find a reporter to ask him.  Or has someone heard a coherent explanation of policy objectives, risk assessments and controls?

Pres. Obama has no reaction whatsoever to learning that his Attorney General was lying under oath for him.  No firing, no promise to get to the bottom of it.  No call for a special prosecutor or an independent investigator.  Nothing.  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-atf-guns-20111007,0,6300714.story

Am I the last guy on earth to figure out that Obama knew about this all along?  It says to me that this operation was the brainchild his own closest political advisersl.  

The same ones that wrote his jobs plan.

Felipe Calderon's knowledge and role in it?  I don't know.

There is one reason I don't believe in conspiracies:  There aren't two people who can keep a secret.  

This was hardly a secret.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-atf-guns-20111009,0,6431788.story?track=rss

Crafty_Dog

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #720 on: October 10, 2011, 08:31:54 AM »
There is also the matter of Baraq's mysterious comment at an anti-gun event to someone that "I can't tell you about it, but we are working on something under the radar."

G M

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #721 on: October 10, 2011, 08:33:09 AM »
There is also the matter of Baraq's mysterious comment at an anti-gun event to someone that "I can't tell you about it, but we are working on something under the radar."

1. Create crisis.

2. "Never let a crisis go to waste".

3. Change!

Crafty_Dog

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #722 on: October 10, 2011, 10:29:56 PM »

prentice crawford

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #723 on: October 11, 2011, 03:18:04 PM »
Woof,
 I'm enjoying watching the rats scurry :lol: :lol:, and it will be even funnier if they get caught in a big ole fat rat trap. :lol: :lol: :lol: However, what they did, isn't the least bit funny and I'm still skeptical of there being any real justice dealt out to those involved. It's a shame too, because many of these people took the oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States and instead, used their office as a weapon to undermine the rights of U.S. citizens for idealogical reasons, endangered the lives of both American and Mexican law enforcement and private citizens and were the agents of some of their deaths. If found guilty of such crimes they should pay for it with long prison terms but most likely they'll just walk away from it. Corruption on both sides of the border is going to be our undoing.
                                                      P.C.

Crafty_Dog

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Issa to Holder
« Reply #724 on: October 12, 2011, 02:38:34 PM »


WASHINGTON, D.C. – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa today sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder responding to his letter of October 7. The text of Chairman Issa's letter to Attorney General Holder is below:

Dear Attorney General Holder:

From the beginning of the congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious, the Department of Justice has offered a roving set of ever-changing explanations to justify its involvement in this reckless and deadly program. These defenses have been aimed at undermining the investigation. From the start, the Department insisted that no wrongdoing had occurred and asked Senator Grassley and me to defer our oversight responsibilities over its concerns about our purported interference with its ongoing criminal investigations. Additionally, the Department steadfastly insisted that gunwalking did not occur.

Once documentary and testimonial evidence strongly contradicted these claims, the Department attempted to limit the fallout from Fast and Furious to the Phoenix Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). When that effort also proved unsuccessful, the Department next argued that Fast and Furious resided only within ATF itself, before eventually also assigning blame to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona. All of these efforts were designed to circle the wagons around DOJ and its political appointees.

To that end, just last month, you claimed that Fast and Furious did not reach the upper levels of the Justice Department. Documents discovered through the course of the investigation, however, have proved each and every one of these claims advanced by the Department to be untrue. It appears your latest defense has reached a new low. Incredibly, in your letter from Friday you now claim that you were unaware of Fast and Furious because your staff failed to inform you of information contained in memos that were specifically addressed to you. At best, this indicates negligence and incompetence in your duties as Attorney General. At worst, it places your credibility into serious doubt.

Following the Committee's issuance of a subpoena over six months ago, I strongly believed that the Department would fully cooperate with Congress and support this investigation with all the means at its disposal. The American people deserve no less. Unfortunately, the Department's cooperation to date has been minimal. Hundreds of pages of documents that have been produced to my Committee are duplicative, and hundreds more contain substantial redactions, rendering them virtually worthless. The Department has actively engaged in retaliation against multiple whistleblowers, and has, on numerous occasions, attempted to disseminate false and misleading information to the press in an attempt to discredit this investigation.

Your letter dated October 7 is deeply disappointing. Instead of pledging all necessary resources to assist the congressional investigation in discovering the truth behind the fundamentally flawed Operation Fast and Furious, your letter instead did little but obfuscate, shift blame, berate, and attempt to change the topic away from the Department's responsibility in the creation, implementation, and authorization of this reckless program. You claim that, after months of silence, you "must now address these issues" over Fast and Furious because of the harmful discourse of the past few days. Yet, the only major development of these past few days has been the release of multiple documents showing that you and your senior staff had been briefed, on numerous occasions, about Fast and Furious.

The Mexican Cartels

A month after you became Attorney General, you spoke of the danger of the Mexican drug cartels, and the Sinaloa cartel in particular. The cartels, you said, "are lucrative, they are violent, and they are operated with stunning planning and precision." You promised that under your leadership "these cartels will be destroyed." You vowed that the Department of Justice would "continue to work with [its] counterparts in Mexico, through information sharing, training and mutual cooperation to jointly fight these cartels, both in Mexico and the United States."

Under your leadership, however, Operation Fast and Furious has proven these promises hollow. According to one agent, Operation Fast and Furious "armed the cartel. It is disgusting." Fast and Furious simply served as a convenient means for dangerous cartels to acquire upwards of 2,000 assault-style weapons. On top of that, the Government of Mexico was not informed about Fast and Furious. In fact, DOJ and ATF officials actively engaged in hiding information about Fast and Furious from not only Mexican officials, but also U.S. law enforcement officials operating in Mexico for fear that they would inform their Mexican counterparts. This strategy is inapposite and contradicts the promises you made to the American people.

Your September 7, 2011 Statement

On September 7, 2011, you said that "[t]he notion that [Fast and Furious] reaches into the upper levels of the Justice Department is something that at this point I don't think is supported by the facts and I think once we examine it and once the facts are revealed we'll see that's not the case." Unfortunately, the facts directly contradict this statement.

Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, clearly a member of the Department's senior leadership, knew about Fast and Furious as early as March 2010. In fact, I have learned that the amount of detail shared with Breuer's top deputies about Fast and Furious is simply astounding.

For example, Manuel Celis-Acosta was the "biggest fish" of the straw purchasing ring in Phoenix. From the time the investigation started in September 2009 until March 15, 2010, Manuel Celis-Acosta acquired at least 852 firearms valued at around $500,000 through straw purchasers. Yet in 2009, Celis-Acosta reported an Arizona taxable income of only $15,475. Between September 2009 and late January 2010, 139 of these firearms were recovered, 81 in Mexico alone. Some of these firearms were recovered less than 24 hours after they were bought.

This information, and hundreds of pages worth of additional information, was included in highly detailed wiretap applications sent for authorization to Breuer's top deputies. It is my understanding, the Department applied to the United States District Court for the District of Arizona for numerous wire taps from March 2010 to July 2010. These wire tap applications were reviewed and approved by several Deputy Assistant Attorney Generals, including Kenneth A. Blanco, John C. Keeney, and Jason M. Weinstein. Breuer's top deputies approved these wiretap applications to be used against individuals associated with the known drug cartels. As I understand it, the wire tap applications contain rich detail of the reckless operational tactics being employed by your agents in Phoenix. Although Breuer and his top deputies were informed of the operational details and tactics of Fast and Furious, they did nothing to stop the program. In fact, on a trip to Mexico Breuer trumpeted Fast and Furious as a promising investigation.

Gary Grindler, the then-Deputy Attorney General and currently your Chief of Staff, received an extremely detailed briefing on Operation Fast and Furious on March 12, 2010. In this briefing, Grindler learned such minutiae as the number of times that Uriel Patino, a straw purchaser on food stamps who ultimately acquired 720 firearms, went in to a cooperating gun store and the amount of guns that he had bought. When former Acting ATF Director Ken Melson, a career federal prosecutor, learned similar information, he became sick to his stomach:

I had pulled out all Patino's -- and ROIs is, I'm sorry, report of investigation -- and you know, my stomach being in knots reading the number of times he went in and the amount of guns that he bought. Transcribed interview of Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson at 42.

At the time of his briefing in March of last year, Grindler knew that Patino had purchased 313 weapons and paid for all of them in cash. Unlike Melson, Grindler clearly saw nothing wrong with this. If Grindler had had the sense to shut this investigation down right then, he could have prevented the purchase of an additional 407 weapons by Patino alone. Instead, Grindler did nothing to stop the program.

Following this briefing, it is clear that Grindler did one of two things. Either, he alerted you to the name and operational details of Fast and Furious, in which case your May 3, 2011 testimony in front of Congress was false; or, he failed to inform you of the name and the operational details of Fast and Furious, in which case Grindler engaged in gross dereliction of his duties as Acting Deputy Attorney General. It is fair to infer from the fact that Grindler remains as your Chief of Staff that he did not engage in gross dereliction of his duties and told you about the program as far back as March of 2010.

In the summer of 2010, at the latest, you were undoubtedly informed about Fast and Furious. On at least five occasions you were told of the connection between Fast and Furious and a specific Mexican cartel – the very cartel that you had vowed to destroy. You were informed that Manuel Celis-Acosta and his straw purchasers were responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels. Yet, you did nothing to stop this program.

You failed to own up to your responsibility to safeguard the American public by hiding behind "[a]ttorneys in [your] office and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General," who you now claim did not bring this information to your attention. Holder Letter, supra note 1. As a result of your failure to act on these memos sent to you, nearly 500 additional firearms were purchased under Fast and Furious.

The facts simply do not support any claim that Fast and Furious did not reach the highest levels of the Justice Department. Actually, Fast and Furious did reach the ultimate authority in the Department – you.

Your May 3, 2011 Statement

On May 3, 2011, I asked you directly when you first knew about the operation known as Fast and Furious. You responded directly, and to the point, that you weren't "sure of the exact date, but [you] probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks." This statement, made before Congress, has proven to be patently untrue. Documents released by the Department just last week showed that you received at least seven memos about Fast and Furious starting as early as July 2010.

In your letter Friday, you blamed your staff for failing to inform you about Operation Fast and Furious when they reviewed the memos sent to you last summer. Your staff, therefore, was certainly aware of Fast and Furious over a year ago. Lanny Breuer was aware of Fast and Furious as early as March 2010, and Gary Grindler was also aware of Fast and Furious as early as March 2010. Given this frequency of high level involvement with Fast and Furious as much as a year prior to your May 3, 2011 testimony, it simply is not believable that you were not briefed on Fast and Furious until a few weeks before your testimony. At the very least, you should have known about Fast and Furious well before then. The current paper trail, which will only grow more robust as additional documents are discovered, creates the strong perception that your statement in front of Congress was less than truthful.

The February 4, 2011 Letter

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this intransigence is that the Department of Justice has been lying to Congress ever since the inquiry into Fast and Furious began. On February 4, 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote that "ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transport into Mexico." This letter, vetted by both the senior ranks of ATF as well as the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, is a flat-out lie.

As we understand it, in March 2010, top deputies to Lanny Breuer were informed that law enforcement officers intercepted calls that demonstrated that Manuel Celis-Acosta was conspiring to purchase and transport firearms for the purpose of trafficking the firearms from the United States into Mexico. Not only was ATF aware of this information, but so was the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This information was shared with the Criminal Division. All of these organizations are components of the Department of Justice, and they were all aware of the illegal purchase of firearms and their eventual transportation into Mexico.

These firearms were not interdicted. They were not stopped. Your agents allowed these firearms purchases to continue, sometimes even monitoring them in person, and within days some of these weapons were being recovered in Mexico. Despite widespread knowledge within its senior ranks that this practice was occurring, when asked on numerous occasions about the veracity of this letter, the Department has shockingly continued to stand by its false statement of February 4, 2011.

Mr. Attorney General, you have made numerous statements about Fast and Furious that have eventually been proven to be untrue. Your lack of trustworthiness while speaking about Fast and Furious has called into question your overall credibility as Attorney General. The time for deflecting blame and obstructing our investigation is over. The time has come for you to come clean to the American public about what you knew about Fast and Furious, when you knew it, and who is going to be held accountable for failing to shut down a program that has already had deadly consequences, and will likely cause more casualties for years to come.

Operation Fast and Furious was the Department's most significant gun trafficking case. It related to two of your major initiatives – destroying the Mexican cartels and reducing gun violence on both sides of the border. On your watch, it went spectacularly wrong. Whether you realize yet or not, you own Fast and Furious. It is your responsibility.

Sincerely,

Darrell Issa

Chairman

Crafty_Dog

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Baraq knew of OFF before Holder?!?; Grenades walked too?!?
« Reply #725 on: October 14, 2011, 06:50:42 PM »
1)
and knew that Holder didn't know of it?!?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nBIWSyoe6vA

==============
2)
CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, who has reported on this story from the beginning, said on "The Early Show" that the investigation into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)'s so-called "Fast and Furious" operation branches out to a case involving grenades. Sources tell her a suspect was left to traffic and manufacture them for Mexican drug cartels
Police say Jean Baptiste Kingery, a U.S. citizen, was a veritable grenade machine. He's accused of smuggling parts for as many as 2,000 grenades into Mexico for killer drug cartels -- sometimes under the direct watch of U.S. law enforcement.



Law enforcement sources say Kingery could have been prosecuted in the U.S. twice for violating export control laws, but that, each time, prosecutors in Arizona refused to make a case.


Grenades are weapons-of-choice for the cartels. An attack on Aug. 25 in a Monterrey, Mexico casino killed 53 people.
Sources tell CBS News that, in January 2010, ATF had Kingery under surveillance after he bought about 50 grenade bodies and headed to Mexico. But they say prosecutors wouldn't agree to make a case. So, as ATF agents looked on, Kingery and the grenade parts crossed the border -- and simply disappeared.



Six months later, Kingery allegedly got caught leaving the U.S. for Mexico with 114 disassembled grenades in a tire. One ATF agent told investigators he literally begged prosecutors to keep Kingery in custody this time, fearing he was supplying narco-terrorists, but was again ordered to let Kingery go.
The prosecutors -- already the target of controversy for overseeing "Fast and Furious," wouldn't comment on the grenades case. U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke recently resigned and his assistant, Emory Hurley, has been transferred. Sources say Hurley is the one who let Kingery go, saying grenade parts are "novelty items" and the case "lacked jury appeal."


Attkisson added on "The Early Show" that, in August, Mexican authorities raided Kingery's stash house and factory, finding materials for 1,000 grenades. He was charged with trafficking and allegedly admitted not only to making grenades, but also to teaching cartels how to make them, as well as helping cartel members convert semi-automatic rifles to fully-automatic. As one source put it: There's no telling how much damage Kingery did in the year-and-a-half since he was first let go. The Justice Department inspector general is now investigating this, along with "Fast and Furious."



© 2011 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/...20120395.shtml

Crafty_Dog

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Newell's pre-OFF under Bush?!?
« Reply #726 on: October 14, 2011, 06:56:27 PM »
Second post of evening.
========

ATF agent Newell (working from memory here on the name), the same guy who let OFF run, was reported on Bret Baier Report today to have shut down a 200 gun version of OFF under Bush after the guns were allowed to walk into Mexico where Mex authorities who were in on it were supposed to catch the bad guys in the act.  The Mex authorities did not do so and so the program was shut down by the same man who OK'd it under Holder-Baraq.  Furthermore, substantial correspondence shows that he was well aware of the legal, political, and moral issues.

Watch for the Dems to try to muddy the waters with this one; note the key difference is that there was supposed to be teamwork with the Mexican authorities and when it did not manifest the program was immediately shut down.

Crafty_Dog

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More on Issa's subpoenas
« Reply #727 on: October 14, 2011, 06:57:56 PM »
Third post:

In Holder Subpoena, Issa Also Probes White House Press Aide


By Jonathan Strong
Roll Call Staff
Oct. 14, 2011, 5 a.m.


House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) made headlines this week by issuing a subpoena for documents from Attorney General Eric Holder about a botched weapons investigation, but Holder is apparently not Issa’s only target.

A little-noticed provision of the subpoena targets the White House, specifically naming Eric Schultz, a communications aide who was hired in May to respond to media inquiries on oversight matters.

Issa issued the subpoena as part of his investigation into a program called Fast and Furious, which whistle-blowers have described as allowing assault weapons and military-grade sniper rifles to transfer into criminal networks.

The subpoena demands “all communications” to or from Holder and 15 other top Justice Department officials on Fast and Furious, as well as every weekly update memo to Holder on any topic over a nearly two-year period. Issa contends that Holder may have learned about the program much earlier than he has acknowledged, and the California Republican been conducting a blitz of media interviews making that point.

The subpoena also requires Holder to produce “all communications between and among Department of Justice (DOJ) employees and Executive Office of the President employees, including but not limited to Associate Communications Director Eric Schultz, referring or relating to Operation Fast and Furious or any other firearms trafficking cases.”

“We know there were communications that did go to the White House on Fast and Furious. We’ve been told that they were personal communications that just happened to occur. We wanted an official assurance on that,” Issa told Roll Call on Wednesday, jokingly referring to Schultz as “my friend.”

But a GOP source familiar with the committee’s investigation said there was more to the request.

“The question is whether the White House has been instructing the Justice Department on what [documents] to release,” the source said.

The source added that recent allegations by a CBS reporter that Schultz yelled at her over her coverage of Fast and Furious in part prompted Issa’s questions on the matter, but the source maintained that the inquiry is unrelated to Schultz’s communications with reporters.

“This investigation is focused on discussions and communications among officials and not their interactions with outside parties, including reporters,” the source said.

This source noted that “there’s nothing necessarily inappropriate about the White House playing some role” but added that the documents produced by the subpoena will provide a fuller picture of what interaction is taking place.

A lawyer close to the Obama administration said it would not be unusual for the Justice Department to keep the White House informed of how it is responding to Issa’s document demands or to give the White House a heads-up before documents involving White House personnel are sent to Congressional investigators.

But Democrats familiar with the investigation scoffed at the idea that a member of the White House communications staff is telling the Justice Department how to respond to Issa’s document demands.

Other portions of the subpoena also appear to reach beyond Holder’s involvement in the program.

For instance, the subpoena demands that the Justice Department provide all photographs of the crime scene of the slaying of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata and “surveillance tapes recorded by pole cameras inside the Lone Wolf Trading Co. store between 12:00 a.m. on October 3, 2010 and 12:00 a.m. on October 7, 2010.” Both the store and Zapata’s slaying have been linked to the Fast and Furious operation.

Oversight and Government Reform ranking member Elijah Cummings assailed Issa’s document demands. “This subpoena is a deep-sea fishing expedition and a gross abuse of the committee’s authority,” the Maryland Democrat said. “It demands tens of thousands of pages of highly sensitive law enforcement and national security materials that have never been requested before and are completely unrelated to Operation Fast and Furious. Rather than legitimate fact-gathering, this looks more like a political stunt.”

Crafty_Dog

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Comparison
« Reply #728 on: October 17, 2011, 08:01:12 PM »
One was a failed law enforcement operation. The other was a possible criminal conspiracy. (Related: Ed Driscoll asks, How would the story play in the MSM if Bush were still in power?)

There seem to be two avenues of document extraction in the ongoing Gunwalker scandal, in addition to witness testimony. One is the subpoena process being used by House and Senate committees investigating the plot. The other is selective leaking to favored media sources, which appears to be a preferred tactic of the White House. The former is official process, the latter an attempt to short-circuit the process.
Both approaches have been used in a pair of articles released via the Associated Press (via National Public Radio) and ABC News about an early Operation Gunrunner interdiction effort known as Operation Wide Receiver.
The Associated Press article presents an interesting variation of reality:
A second Bush administration gun-trafficking investigation has surfaced using the same controversial tactic for which congressional Republicans have been criticizing the Obama administration.


The tactic, called “gun walking,” is already under investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general and by congressional Republicans, who have criticized the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama for letting it happen in an operation called “Fast and Furious.” …
The 2007 probe operated out of the same ATF office that more recently ran the flawed Operation Fast and Furious. Both probes resulted in weapons disappearing across the border into Mexico, according to the emails. The 2007 probe was relatively small — involving over 200 weapons, just a dozen of which ended up in Mexico as a result of gun-walking. Fast and Furious involved over 2,000 weapons, some 1,400 of which have not been recovered and an unknown number of which wound up in Mexico.

The Associated Press article goes on to paint the picture of a serially incompetent ATF office that began acting in a dangerous manner in 2007 and which continued until ATF whistleblowers came forward after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down in December of 2010, in a variation of the “Bush did it” meme that has long been a reflexive defense mechanism of the Obama White House.


But the ABC News article paints a very different picture, using newly obtained emails between ATF supervisors running Operation Wide Receiver:
“ATF agents observed this vehicle [carrying guns] commit to the border and reach the Mexican side until it could no longer be seen,” Carroll wrote in a Sept. 28, 2007 email. “We, the ATF … did not get a response from the Mexican side until 20 minutes later, who then informed us that they did not see the vehicle cross. For the first time we are working hand in hand with the GOM [Government of Mexico] and providing them with what they want and this is what we get!”


The following day, ATF Acting Director for Field Operation William Hoover was demanding information on the strategy.
“Have we discussed the strategy with the U.S. Attorney’s Office re letting the guns walk? Do we have this approval in writing? Have we discussed and thought thru the consequences of same?” Hoover wrote to Newell and Carroll. “Are we tracking south of the border? Same re U.S. Attorney’s Office. Did we find out why they missed the hand-off of the vehicle? What are the expected outcomes?


“I do not want any firearms to go south until further notice,” Hoover wrote on Oct 5. “I expect a full briefing paper on my desk Tuesday morning from SAC Newell with every question answered.”
On Oct. 6, 2007, Newell wrote in an email, “I’m so frustrated with this whole mess I’m shutting the case down and any further attempts to do something similar. We’re done trying to pursue new and innovative initiatives – it’s not worth the hassle.”

The AP claim that the Bush-era Wide Receiver and Obama-era Fast and Furious were “using the same controversial tactic” is deceptive, verging upon being a fabrication. The differences between the botched Bush-era interdiction effort that was Wide Receiver and the blatant gun-running of Obama’s Fast and Furious are something that we’ve discussed previously, but the ABC News article provides even more details that highlight just how different the operations were.


Wide Receiver was a botched, small-scale, law enforcement gun-smuggling interdiction effort that involved local Phoenix-based ATF agents working in conjunction with Mexican law enforcement. When guns were lost — roughly 200 — irate supervisors immediately shut down the program.
Wide Receiver could hardly be any more different than Fast and Furious.
Fast and Furious used elements of at least four cabinet-level departments: Justice, State, Homeland Security, and Treasury. U.S. attorneys, the directors of the FBI and DEA, the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, and senior DOJ officials were briefed. High-level State Department approval was critical, in order to avoid breaking arms export control laws. Even the White House National Security Counsil (NSC) had direct communications about the operation.


Unlike Wide Receiver, Operation Fast and Furious excluded Mexican government officials. Instead of working in conjunction with Mexican law enforcement in order to prevent gun smuggling, the operation was designed to ensure that more than 2,000 guns would be successfully smuggled into Mexico by the drug cartels to be used in violent crimes.
The same supervisors that were appalled at the failures of Wide Receiver seemed to be giddy at the “success” of Fast and Furious when the weapons they sent over the border were found at murder scenes, or taken from the bodies and stash houses of narco-terrorists.


Operation Wide Receiver was a failed law enforcement operation that was shut down immediately when it went wrong. Operation Fast and Furious was a possible criminal conspiracy to ensure that one of the most powerful and violent criminal cartels in the world was armed not with inexpensive fully-automatic military weapons that can be had on the black market very cheaply, but with sporting semi-automatics that were American-imported or manufactured firearms costing 100%-400% more. The obvious, and only logical, explanation for such a plot was to ensure that as many American weapons as possible were showing up at Mexican crime scenes.
Perhaps one day the mainstream media will finally ask who ordered Operation Fast and Furious, who approved the plot, and why.


Until then, Congress is right to push for oversight and the presidential appointment of a special counsel to investigate the criminal conspiracy and the coverup.

Bob Owens
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/new-doc...inglepage=true

Crafty_Dog

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Hillary Clinton behind OFF?
« Reply #729 on: October 21, 2011, 07:41:49 PM »
RELIABILITY OF THIS SITE/AUTHOR IS UNKNOWN:
================================

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-national/breaking-new-evidence-show-hillary-a-mastermind-behind-gunwalker

Last week it was reported that the State Department and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were deeply involved in the scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious, or Project Gunwalker. Today, however, new evidence has surfaced indicating that not only was Hillary deeply involved in the scandal but was one of the masterminds behind it.

According to investigative citizen journalist Mike Vanderboegh, sources close to the development of the Gunwalker scheme state that early on, Hillary and her trusted associated at State, Andrew J. Shapiro, devised at least part of the framework of what would later become Operation Fast and Furious. It was Shapiro who first described the details of the proposed scheme early in 2009 just after the Obama Administration took office.

Vanderboegh relates the following:

My sources say that as Hillary's trusted subordinate, it was Shapiro who first described to the Secretary of State the details of what has become the Gunwalker Scandal.

The precise extent to which Hillary Clinton's knowledge of, and responsibility for, the Gunwalker Plot, lies within the memories of these two men, Shapiro and Steinberg, sources say.

The sources also express dismay that the Issa committee is apparently restricting itself to the Department of Justice and not venturing further afield. The House Foreign Affairs Committee, they say, needs to summon these two men and their subordinates -- especially at the Mexico Desk at State -- and question them under oath as to what Hillary Clinton knew about the origins of the Gunwalker Scandal and when she knew it.

There is one other thing those sources agree upon. The CIA, they say, knows "everything" about the "Mexican hat dance" that became the Gunwalker Scandal.

The 'Steinberg' mentioned in the quote above is Hillary Clinton's former Deputy Secretary of State, who was appointed directly by Barack Obama and was considered from the start to be an 'Obama man' whose objective was to carry out the wishes of the President in the State Department.

Hillary had said of Steinberg,

Clinton said Steinberg had been a “fixture” at meetings with the National Security Council (NSC) and frequently represented the US State Department at the White House.

That statement is key. Hillary herself stayed out of all meetings dealing with strategy concerning the euphemism the Administration used to designate Gunwalker, 'strategy meetings on Mexico and the problem of drug and gun trafficking.' Hillary's absence would give the impression that she had no connection to the scheme while making sure that her views were represented by Steinberg and Shapiro, both of whom were fully complicit with the details that developed concerning how to pad statistics on U.S. guns in Mexico.

According to sources, Hillary was obsessed with gun statistics that would prove that '90% of the firearms used by Mexican criminals come from the United States.' As previouly reported, that meme, repeated incessantly by Democratic Senators, Barack Obama, certan members of the ATF, Janet Napolitano, and Hillary Clinton was patently and blatantly false. The fact that they all knew it was false is borne out by the lengths to which each of the above named co-conspirators went to attempt to 'prove' that the 90% figure was true.

Again, Vanderboegh relates the following:

My sources say that this battle of the "statistics" was taken very seriously by all players -- the White House, State and Justice. Yet, WHY was this game of statistics so important to the players? If some weapons from the American civilian market were making it to Mexico into the hand of drug gang killers that was bad enough. What was the importance of insisting that it was 90 percent, 80 percent, or finally 70 percent? Would such statistics make any difference to the law enforcement tactics necessary to curtail them? No.

This statistics mania is similar to the focus on "body counts" in Vietnam. Yet if Vietnam body counts were supposed to be a measure of how we were winning that war, the focus on the 90 percent meme was certainly not designed to be a measure of how we were winning the war against arming the cartels, but rather by what overwhelming standard we were LOSING. Why?

Recall what the whistleblower ATF agents told us right after this scandal broke in the wake of the death of Brian Terry: "ATF source confirms ‘walking’ guns to Mexico to ‘pad’ statistics."

Thus, from the beginning the scheme was to pad statistics on U.S. guns in Mexico in order to be in a strengthened position to call for gun bans and strict gun control at a time when it was politically unpopular. Further, the scheme would involve a made-up statistic, out of thin air--90%--which then had to be proved by using civilian gun retailers along the southern border as unsuspecting pawns to walk U.S. guns into Mexico by ATF agents, straw purchasers, and others with connections to Mexican drug cartels.

And the evidence points to the fact that Hillary Clinton was one of the original Administration officials who was 'in the loop' on the scheme from the very beginning.

Crafty_Dog

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Newell frames whistleblower for arson?!?
« Reply #730 on: October 22, 2011, 06:57:04 AM »
ATF Whistleblower Backs Up Latest Allegations Against William Newell

Fast and Furious whistleblower Vince Cefalu supports allegations that ATF Special Agent in Charge Newell just framed one of his own for arson.

October 21, 2011 - 1:08 pm - by Patrick Richardson


According to a story by Townhall.com’s Katie Pavlich, credible death threats against one of the ATF agents who blew the whistle on the Operation Fast and Furious debacle were ignored by the ATF.

Further, ATF attempted to frame him for arson:

Jay Dobyns is a father, husband and 25-year highly respected and highly decorated Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms Special Agent.



Dobyns has put a number of the nations’ most violent criminals behind bars, which naturally comes with threats from those criminals and their buddies in return. After he finished his work bringing down the Hells Angels, things were no different.

Approximately a year after Operation Black Biscuit concluded beginning in 2004 through 2008, Dobyns and ATF became aware of credible and substantial violent threats against him and his family. Those threats included plans to murder him either with a bullet or by injecting him with the AIDS virus, kidnapping and torturing his then 15-year-old daughter and kidnapping his wife in order to videotape a gang rape of her. Dobyns and ATF also learned contracts were solicited between the Hells Angels, the Aryan Brotherhood and the MS-13 gang to carry out these threats.



Dobyns reported these threats to Special Agent in Charge William Newell, asking for protection for his family. The threats were based in Arizona and Dobyns lived in Arizona at the time. Newell was in charge of investigating and handling all threats made against agents working out of the ATF Phoenix Field Office. The threats were ignored. When Dobyns essentially “blew the whistle” on Newell, pointing out his failures to address violent death threats against a federal agent, he was retaliated against. Newell dismissed the threats and then covered up his blatant dismissal of those threats within the Phoenix Field Office.
This is the same William Newell who was in charge of Fast and Furious — the operation which allowed thousands of military-style weapons into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels — and who apparently lied to Congress about his involvement.

According to Pavlich, Newell was sanctioned for his failures by the Office of the Inspector General:

Additionally, in response to the ATF/FBI interview, despite all the evidence the death threats were credible, Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles Field Division John Torres, who like Newell has also been promoted into ATF headquarters, informed Dobyns through an email, “The Chief of Operations Security does not deem the emergency action is required as of this date and time.”

Later, a DOJ Inspector General report concluded that management within the ATF Phoenix office, despite having the necessary resources, did not adequately address threats made against Dobyns and found “absence of any corrective measures proposed to address the failure to conduct timely and thorough investigations into the death threats made against Dobyns.”

In addition, a U.S. Office of Special Counsel report concluded, “I note with concern the absence of any corrective measures proposed to address the failure to conduct timely and thorough investigations into the death threats made against Special Agent Dobyns. ATF does not appear to have held anyone accountable in this regard. Fully addressing the problems and failures identified in this care requires more than amending ATF policies and procedures. It requires that threats against ATF agents be taken seriously and pursued aggressively and that ATF officials at all level cooperate to ensure the timely and comprehensive investigation of threats leveled against its own agents.”
Well, Dobyns’ house was then set on fire.

And ATF has named him as a suspect:

On top of ignoring death threats, recently Dobyns’ house was set on fire at 3 a.m. with his wife, son and daughter sleeping inside in a confirmed act of arson. It is suspected members of the Hells Angels, or close associates of the gang carried out the arson in retaliation of Dobyns’ undercover work.

When Dobyns reported the incident to both ATF and Newell, he asked for an investigation into the case. Newell not only refused to investigate, calling the incident “just scorching,” but allowed his subordinates, including Gillett, to attempt to frame Dobyns, accusing him of purposely burning down his own home with his family inside, has named him as a suspect and is investigating him. Newell conspired to destroy and fabricate evidence to “prove” his case. Emails, witness testimony, phone conversations and other documentation show the ATF Phoenix Field Divisions’ intentions, led by Newell, were to frame Dobyns, yet Newell denied under oath any involvement in this activity. His subordinates Gillett and ATF Tucson Group Supervisor over Operation Wide Receiver Charles Higman, also denied any attempts to frame Dobyns under oath, despite evidence showing otherwise.
According to ATF Special Agent Vince Cefalu — who has been the target of retaliation by ATF bosses himself — this is part of a pattern of behavior by ATF upper management:

These are just deplorable actions. It’s just nauseating; the family’s been through enough.
Cefalu said the response was lackluster at best:

I was there three days after the fire, there wasn’t an ATF agent within a hundred … miles.
Cefalu was understandably incensed by the attempt to paint a decorated agent as an arsonist. Cefalu noted that had it been an FBI agent or DEA agent whose home had been burned, federal agents would have descended in droves.

Instead, he noted, the investigation was botched from the beginning. Cefalu said a neighbor saw a glow that might have been a cell phone in the backyard of Dobyns’ house, and agents tried back-channel to get the U.S. Marshals Service to ping the cellphone towers to try to find out who might have had an active phone in the area at the time of the fire — to no avail.

In addition, protocol would have made the investigation a federal matter, since it involved a federal agent who received death threats pertaining to some of his cases. That’s not what initially happened:

We [ATF] are the arson police, that’s what we do.
But instead of ATF leading the investigation, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department took the lead. Additionally, any information that Dobyns was a suspect should have been turned over to the FBI within 24 hours, as should any evidence ATF collected based on the death threats Dobyns had received. Instead, according to Cefalu, ATF waited 30 days:

Our policy is information has to be turned over to FBI within 24 hours. … ATF sat on it for a month. Nobody did nothing.
At this point, who burned down Dobyns’ house will probably never be known, according to Cefalu:

“All the physical evidence has been tainted,” he said, adding FBI never reduced interviews to writing, so there’s nothing even to go back to check against should fresh evidence or suspects be uncovered. “FBI did a lackluster job.”
According to Pavlich, this is par for the course where retaliation in the ATF is concerned:

Throughout the years it has become clear that ATF is more interested in protecting and promoting the corrupt practices of the men who have made careers profiting off of corruption, obstruction of justice and lies, like Newell, rather than rewarding field agents taking out dangerous criminals like ATF Special Agent Jay Dobyns, ATF Operation Fast and Furious Whistleblowers John Dodson, Pete Forcelli, Vince Cefalu and others for their bravery and sacrifice to fight violent crime and for exposing corruption within the agency. The bottom line is, ATF as an agency doesn’t care about recommendations or evidence of misconduct, in fact, the agency rewards screw ups on a regular basis. The Dobyns case could be counted as the most reckless case of retaliation in ATF history, yet nobody has been held accountable for it.
It’s impossible for field agents to do their jobs if they cannot trust that management has their backs. At ATF it’s clear that not only is that not the case, but that the “bosses,” as Cefalu calls them, will not only hang agents out to dry, but are apparently willing to let them be killed in retaliation for blowing the whistle on their corrupt practices.

Crafty_Dog

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The excrement just keeps piling up
« Reply #731 on: October 26, 2011, 05:08:32 PM »
Cornyn urging wider probe of 'Fast and Furious'

‘Spillover effects’ in Texas cited


Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Darrell E. Issa on Monday to expand their formal "Fast and Furious" investigation to include accusations that similar gunrunning probes took place in Texas.

Mr. Cornyn said he asked U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in August to address the "scope and details of any past or present ATF gun-walking programs" in his home state, but never got a response.

"Though their failure to respond is not direct evidence of malfeasance, the department's reluctance to address allegations of additional 'gun-walking' schemes in my state raises serious questions, and Texans deserve a full accounting of the department's role in this matter," he wrote.

Mr. Cornyn, a former Texas attorney general, said Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) "gun-walking" schemes have had significant "spillover effects" in Texas. In two separate incidents in January and April 2010, 60 rifles that were "walked" during the Fast and Furious operation were recovered from criminals in El Paso, Texas.

He said the attorney for a federal firearms licensee (FFL) in Houston has charged that his employees were ordered by ATF to conduct suspicious sales of firearms to purchasers who may have been working on behalf of Mexican drug cartels.

Last December, he said, the Justice Department convened a grand jury to investigate whether several salespersons at the Houston gun dealers were criminally liable for selling weapons to straw purchasers. The investigation, he said, was dropped only after the licensed firearms dealers revealed that the illicit sales were carried out at the behest of the ATF.

"I fear that ATF may have pressured other FFLs in Texas to conduct illegal activities, and that many of these weapons may have ended up in the hands of cartels and at the scene of multiple violent crimes in Mexico," Mr. Cornyn said.

He also asked that the investigation include a look into whether a Texas-based "gun-walking" program was responsible for the slaying of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jaime Zapata on Feb. 15, 2011, in Mexico. One of the weapons used to kill Zapata was purchased by Texas resident Otilio Osorio in October 2010 and, according to Mr. Cornyn, later trafficked to Mexico through Laredo, Texas.

Zapata was fatally shot, and his partner, Victor Avila, was wounded twice in the leg in the ambush on a major highway near the city of San Luis Potosi, about 250 miles north of Mexico City. The men, assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, were returning to their office after a meeting with other U.S. personnel in San Luis Potosi.

Neither man was armed, as Mexico does not allow U.S. law enforcement personnel to carry weapons in the country.

Mr. Osorio, 22, and his brother, Ranferi, 27, were arrested at their home on charges of possessing firearms with an obliterated serial number. Kelvin Leon Morrison, 25, also was arrested and charged in a separate complaint with making false statements in connection with the acquisition of firearms and dealing in firearms without a license. He lives next door to the Osorios.

According to court documents, a confidential ATF informant arranged a meeting in early November with people who had firearms to be transported from Dallas to Laredo. The meeting was arranged as part of an investigation of Los Zetas, a violent and ruthless Mexican drug-trafficking gang.

Mr. Cornyn said evidence uncovered by Mr. Grassley, Iowa Republican, suggests that the ATF was aware of Mr. Osorio's weapons-trafficking activities "long before that date."

"The delay in his arrest raises concerns that the ATF knowingly allowed Osorio to continue trafficking weapons through Texas as part of a broader 'gun-walking' program," he said, adding in his letter that he supported efforts by the two lawmakers "to hold the Department of Justice accountable for their involvement in the Operation Fast and Furious tragedy."

"American tax dollars should never again be spent to arm Mexican drug cartels," he said.

In the Arizona-based Fast and Furious operation, 20 "straw buyers" purchased more than 2,000 weapons between September 2009 and December 2010, many of which were walked into Mexico and turned over the Mexican drug smugglers. The weapons included AK-47 assault weapons, Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifles, FN 5.7mm semi automatic pistols and other assorted rifles, shotguns and handguns — many of which remain unaccounted for.

The straw buyers paid as much as $900,000 for the weapons, with much of the illicit cash being furnished by the drug cartels. 


Crafty_Dog

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The Clintons did this w lots of Whitewater & other corruption witnesses too
« Reply #732 on: October 27, 2011, 02:50:55 PM »
BREAKING: PJ Media Finds Gunwalker’s ‘Unreachable’ Man in the White House


The Obama admin. told Rep. Darrell Issa that Kevin O’Reilly — Gunwalker’s possible connection to Obama — was “in Iraq and unavailable.” He’s there, but available. After we called him, his phone number was deactivated.


The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is investigating to what extent the White House was aware of — or involved in — the “Fast and Furious” gunwalking scandal.

The committee recently requested to speak with former White House National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly. According to CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson, the Obama administration answered:

O’Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq and unavailable.

Through a tip, PJ Media learned that Kevin O’Reilly was unexpectedly named director of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau for Iraq (INL-Iraq). Long-time INL-Iraq employee Virginia Ramadan had been expected to get the position — many were quite surprised when she did not.

The previous occupants of the Director, INL-Iraq position — Joe Manso and Francisco Palmieri — were not considered “unreachable” to press or government access. A quick internet search reveals Palmieri, while director, attended a media event on August 23, 2010.

On October 21, PJ Media reporter Patrick Richardson called the number for Office of the Director, INL-Iraq:

1-240-553-0581, ext. 3275

Richardson reached a voicemail message confirming that it was indeed the correct number. He left a message that was not returned.

On Monday Richardson called again, and an assistant answered. Richardson asked to speak with Kevin O’Reilly, and the assistant asked who was calling. Richardson gave his name and stated he was with PJ Media.

The assistant said O’Reilly was currently on a conference call, and asked if Richardson wanted to leave a message. Richardson gave his phone number. His call was not returned.

This morning, Richardson called again. He received a prerecorded message saying “this number is not in service.”

PJ Media is aware that the number was in service as the line to the director’s office for several years prior to Richardson’s calls.

Today, PJ Media is forwarding this information over to Darrell Issa, along with some suggested questions to ask of the Obama administration:

– Why were we told Kevin O’Reilly was “unavailable” if he was employed in a position that has always been open to media, and indeed was easily reached by PJ Media?

– Why did Kevin O’Reilly suddenly get sent to Iraq for the Director, INL-Iraq position when another employee was widely considered the most-qualified person for the job?

– Now that we know he is in the Director, INL-Iraq position and not in a position ever considered “unreachable,” when will you be sending him to Washington to testify?

The committee’s interest in Kevin O’Reilly stems from documents the White House released last month on September 30 – a late afternoon “Friday document dump.” From Sharyl Attkisson’s reporting on the documents:

The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell — who led Fast and Furious — and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O’Reilly are long time friends.

The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. They discuss ATF’s gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O’Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office’s gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as “letting guns walk.”

A lawyer for the White House wrote Congressional investigators: “none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to allow guns to ‘walk.’”

Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF’s Newell sent the White House’s O’Reilly an “arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up.” The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.

In response, O’Reilly wrote on Sept. 3, 2010 “The arrow chart is really interesting — and — no surprise — implies at least that different (Drug Trafficking Organizations) in Mexico have very different and geographically distinct networks in the US for acquiring guns. Did last year’s TX effort develop a similar graphic?”

The White House counsel who produced the documents stated that some records were not included because of “significant confidentiality interests.”

Also included are email photographs including images of a .50 caliber rifle (left) that Newell tells O’Reilly “was purchased in Tucson, Arizona (part of another OCDTF case).” OCDTF is a joint task force that operates under the Department of Justice and includes the US Attorneys, ATF, DEA, FBI, ICE and IRS. Fast and Furious was an OCDTF case.

An administration source would not describe the Tucson OCDTF case. However, CBS News has learned that ATF’s Phoenix office led an operation out of Tucson called “Wide Receiver.” Sources claim ATF allowed guns to “walk” in that operation, much like Fast and Furious.

Congressional investigators for Republicans Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have asked to interview O’Reilly by September 30. But the Administration informed them that O’Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq and unavailable.

prentice crawford

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #733 on: October 28, 2011, 07:03:13 PM »
Woof,
 I appreciate the sentiment but wrong is wrong and this guy is wrong.

 www.news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/ad-gun-training-bars-muslims-obama-voters-153954962.html

                                  P.C.

G M

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #734 on: October 28, 2011, 07:19:43 PM »
Woof,
 I appreciate the sentiment but wrong is wrong and this guy is wrong.

 www.news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/ad-gun-training-bars-muslims-obama-voters-153954962.html

                                  P.C.


PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. -- Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers had ties to Florida, and at one point, 12 of them lived in Palm Beach County.
 They visited Palm Beach County pharmacies, took flying lessons at local airports, and even learned self defense in South Florida gyms.
 Three of the hijackers lived in the Delray Raquet Club.
Pharmicist Greg Chatterton came face to face with the mastermind, Mohammed Atta, when he went to Huber's Pharmacy in Delray looking for something to treat his hands.
 The terrorist who piloted the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania learned martial arts at a Dania Beach fitness club.
 Said US 1 Fitness owner Bert Rodriguez, "He wasn't interested in boxing or kick boxing, he just wanted to learn street defense -- how to ward off attackers or control someone."
Read more: http://www.wpbf.com/news/9823300/detail.html

prentice crawford

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Wrong is still wrong.
« Reply #735 on: October 29, 2011, 05:23:21 AM »
Woof,
 Like I said, I appreciate the sentiment but by law and under his permit to teach the conceal carry class he can not discriminate any more than a employer or a State or Federal agency can. He didn't say he would refuse to train terrorist's, he said Muslim's and that's religious discrimination. If he was a private citizen teaching a self defense class in firearms or hand to hand then he would have the discretion of choosing who he taught. He is licensed by the State and the only way he can deny someone training is if he knew them to be terrorist's and not all Muslims are terrorist. As for Obama and his voters, they have the same rights to keep and bear arms as all other Americans and until they are successful in doing away with the Constitution and Bill of Rights, they too have the right under Texas State law to go through training and get a permit and once again he is licensed by the State and under State law he cannot refuse to teach them unless they are convicted felons. Maybe in the future they will be but they aren't yet, so innocent until proved guilty is what we operate under and thank God for it, because if that wasn't the case we would be Iran already and there would be nothing to defend or fight for. :wink: There is always the possibility that someone he trains could use their training to harm others but that is the chance we take in trusting our fellow citizens not to abuse their rights. The alternative is that we trust no one with a firearm and that is exactly what Obama and the Left has in mind. We need to be very careful of dangerous ideology, regardless of who's head it is in. He said a true Muslim can't be an American. Who is he to decide that? Who else would he put on that list for religious or political reasons; true Catholics, true Jews, or maybe Libertarians? Wrong is wrong.
                                    P.C.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2011, 06:30:31 AM by prentice crawford »

G M

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #736 on: October 29, 2011, 07:09:32 AM »
Is that guy the only trainer in Texas? I'm guessing not.

Is there a good test for parsing out jihadists from other muslims?

prentice crawford

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #737 on: October 29, 2011, 07:33:51 AM »
Woof,
 He could be the only one or there could be a million and it still would not make a difference under the terms of his license to teach the class. If he personally objects to that then he should not be teaching as a public service and go private. It's the same test for all of us, you're a citizen of good standing until you actually break a law. Anyone, could become a killer for whatever reason, including terrorism. There is no way in a free society to be absolutely safe from any form of violence, that is why it's necessary for citizens to be armed in the first place. Not only can they protect themselves, collectively they protect the society at large; that's the militia mentioned in the second amendment as being necessary. On the other hand there is no way in a police state to be absolutely safe from any form of violence either; the difference there being the unarmed citizens don't even have the means to protect themselves let alone the society at large.
                      P.C.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2011, 07:36:47 AM by prentice crawford »

G M

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #738 on: October 29, 2011, 07:39:34 AM »
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the trainer in question a private business teaching a class for profit?

prentice crawford

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #739 on: October 29, 2011, 07:49:47 AM »
Woof,
 He does not work for the State, but in order to teach a certified course that delivers a State permit to carry concealed weapons you must be licenced by the State to teach that course. As part of that licence you are required by the State to follow the license agreement, which includes non discrimination for any reason. If anyone that's qualified under the law to have a conceal carry permit comes to your class you are required to teach them or your license can be revoked by the State. Which is what will happen in this case the first time he refuses to teach someone on the grounds he stated. Being Obama (other than the fact he lives out of State), voting for him, or being Muslim does not disqualify anyone from having the permit so he is obligated to teach them in his class.
                          P.C.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2011, 07:55:18 AM by prentice crawford »

G M

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #740 on: October 29, 2011, 07:53:32 AM »
Is there a difference in this case between what is legal and what is moral?

Crafty_Dog

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #741 on: October 29, 2011, 08:21:16 AM »
As the conversation between the two of you continues, I note that this statement is not true:

"If he was a private citizen teaching a self defense class in firearms or hand to hand then he would have the discretion of choosing who (sic) he taught."

Perhaps it should be otherwise, but my understanding is that any an all businesses are required by law to not discriminate on the basis of blah blah under penalty of law.

prentice crawford

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #742 on: October 29, 2011, 08:24:53 AM »
Woof,
 There is an issue of separation of church and state and legal/moral differences. The State cannot discriminate against any religion or differentiate between religions favoring one over the other when it comes to providing their permit. Period. The guy wanting to teach the class has to have a State issued license to teach, so that participants in his class can received their State issued permit. This is a State program that he is voluntarily involving himself with. If he objects to the license agreement on any grounds, for any reasons, moral or otherwise, then he is free to leave the program. What he wants, is to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to teach under the program but only to people he deems qualified. That would be similar to letting individual DMV clerks decide who they give a drivers licence to; maybe just Muslims. The State can't allow that to happen in anything that they are involved in, including this conceal carry permit program. The guy has a choice, leave the program or abide by the State regulations.
                       P.C.

prentice crawford

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #743 on: October 29, 2011, 08:32:51 AM »
As the conversation between the two of you continues, I note that this statement is not true:

"If he was a private citizen teaching a self defense class in firearms or hand to hand then he would have the discretion of choosing who (sic) he taught."

Perhaps it should be otherwise, but my understanding is that any an all businesses are required by law to not discriminate on the basis of blah blah under penalty of law.
Woof,
 By, their discretion, I meant they are not controlled by the States discression as to what qualifies someone to be taught and individuals can refuse service to anyone, just not on those grounds of religion and so on, so they have the discretion to refuse on other grounds. NO SHIRT NO SHOES NO SERVICE.

            P.C.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2011, 10:17:03 AM by prentice crawford »

G M

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #744 on: October 29, 2011, 08:36:09 AM »
A nationally known firearms trainer was offered a large sum of money to privately train "students" at a white supremacist enclave. He declined. Was that wrong?

prentice crawford

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #745 on: October 29, 2011, 08:44:00 AM »
Woof,
 I'm not sure what that has to do with the price of eggs here. A white supremacist group, ain't the State or a religion or even a race. They are a group and can be turned down for any reason, including moral reasons.
                                            P.C.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2011, 08:47:03 AM by prentice crawford »

G M

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #746 on: October 29, 2011, 09:00:16 AM »
Did you not use the phrase "wrong is wrong" in addressing this topic? Some white supremacists have a deviant, racist version of christianity they follow (Think Obama's church), others follow pagan nordic beliefs, some are atheist. Is refusing to teach white supremacists racial/political/religious discrimination? Is it morally right or wrong, aside from the legal question?


prentice crawford

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #747 on: October 29, 2011, 09:49:24 AM »
Woof,
 I don't know what the reasons were for this guy to turn down their money, but as far as I know this wasn't a State program that he was involved in or licensed by so he was using his own discretion. The individual group members may be of some faith or another but that does not make the group a recognized religion and while it's not illegal to be a racist, it does not mean that everyone is obligated to do business with them. However, if they showed up at the other guy's class in Texas he would have to teach them and they would qualify for the permit so long as they were not felons or been in a mental institution.
                                   P.C.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2011, 10:20:02 AM by prentice crawford »

G M

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #748 on: October 29, 2011, 10:44:26 AM »
"but that does not make the group a recognized religion"

What's the legal standard for a "recognized religion" vs. an "unrecognized religion"?

"However, if they showed up at the other guy's class in Texas he would have to teach them and they would qualify for the permit so long as they were not felons or been in a mental institution."

Legally, that may be the case, however is that morally correct? If someone showed up at a firearms class I was teaching wearing Neo-nazi gear or a New Black Panther Party uniform, I'd refund their money and eject them from the class. Is that right or wrong from a moral perspective?

prentice crawford

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Re: We the Well-armed People (Gun rights stuff )
« Reply #749 on: October 29, 2011, 11:28:13 AM »
Woof,
 Morally, there is a higher principle involved here and it's called equal protection under the law. If the guy feels he is betraying his individual moral beliefs, then he should leave the program. Others might look at it from a different perspective and without compromising their own morals, see these people as being immoral, but despite their presence at the class see others that are moral, and to keep the classes from becoming nothing but gun classes for the immoral, being taught by the immoral; instead see the greater good of staying and teaching.
                     P.C.