ATF found U.S. weapons in Mexico after losing them

[shann0]

Thanks to Hellary signing the United Nations Small Arms Treaty last year, I'm sure well be hearing about this incessantly. They really need us to give up our 2nd ammendment rights so that when they decide to crack down we won't have any means to defend ourselves.

'Fast and Furious' sparks new gun control debates

ATF recovered U.S. weapons in Mexico after losing track of them

By DAN FREEDMAN
HOUSTON CHRONICLE

June 30, 2011, 5:53AM

WASHINGTON — The tainted "Operation Fast and Furious" has dealt the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms its worst blow since the agency's botched 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco that left four ATF agents dead.

With federal agents testifying against their commanders, members of Congress calling for the top man's ouster and accusations that ATF is fudging its gun smuggling numbers, the political fallout itself has become fast and furious.

The operation, conducted jointly with agents from ATF, FBI, DEA and other agencies was aimed at reaching beyond the low-level "straw purchasers" of weapons and building a complex case against Mexican traffickers and their weapons brokers.

Firearms reach cartels

But the weapons purchased in gun stores in and around Phoenix, as many as 2,500, got away from ATF surveillance and eventually reached the cartels in Mexico. Two of them were recovered in December at the site in Southern Arizona where smugglers killed Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

At his news conference Wednesday, President Barack Obama said letting guns go to Mexico "would not be an appropriate step by the ATF, and we've got to find out how that happened. ... As soon as the investigation is completed, appropriate actions will be taken."

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, have been demanding answers from Department of Justice officials.

ATF defenders, some of them retired agents, say the problem of guns from U.S. sources winding up in Mexico is a border-wide phenomenon, and Fast and Furious is just an operation gone wrong in a sea of other cases that ended in convictions.

"The problem of guns from the U.S. ending up in Mexico goes well beyond Fast and Furious, and it was there well before Fast and Furious got started," said Michael Bouchard, the ATF's assistant director for field operations from 2004 until his retirement in 2007.

The operation yielded an indictment in January that named 20 defendants, all low-level purchasers. The indictment identified purchases of 681 guns, including 589 AK-47s.

The political uproar is just the latest battle line in the long war over gun rights versus gun control. Issa and Grassley are widely considered folk heroes to gun-rights advocates who fear liberal Democrats using U.S. guns in Mexico as fodder for more firearms restrictions.

"We've been involved in this issue ever since various folks - the president of Mexico (Felipe Calderon) and President Obama - accused firearms dealers operating legally under the Second Amendment of being the source of violence in Mexico,“ said Andrew Arulanandam, spokesman for the National Rifle Association. "They're the ones advocating more gun control as a means of addressing the problem across the border."

Today, Democrats are sponsoring a forum focused on stopping the weapons flow through gun law "improvements."

Senators Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., issued a report earlier this month, "Halting U.S. Firearms Trafficking to Mexico" that called for reinstatement of the assault weapons ban and an ATF-proposed requirement that firearms dealers report multiple purchases of assault-type weapons to the agency. They based the report on ATF data claiming 20,504 of 29,284 guns recovered in Mexico in 2009 and 2010 and submitted for tracing were U.S. sourced firearms.

That's 70 percent of the total 29,284 guns traced those years.

Ongoing investigations

According to ATF, 1,573 defendants faced charges related to firearms trafficking from 2006 to 2010 under Project Gunrunner, the ATF's five-year effort to combat weapons trafficking to Mexico. The agency has 4,600 on-going Gunrunner investigations in border jurisdictions, an ATF spokesman said.

Gun rights advocates who say ATF data is suspect point out that officials last year said 90 percent of guns traced from Mexico originated in the U.S., then downgraded it to 70 percent this year. Grassley wrote to ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson challenging the 70 percent calculation.

"Unfortunately, this information paints a grossly inaccurate picture of the situation," he said, citing ATF figures he has showing only a quarter of weapons were traceable to the U.S.

A Hearst Newspapers survey last month of 44 gun prosecutions in Texas, Arizona, California, Nevada, Oklahoma and New Mexico pinpointed a total of 1,600 U.S.-purchased guns by brand name that were recovered in Mexico or intercepted en route.


Read more: www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/7633343.html#ixzz1Qn23TtyK

[shann0]

If this doesn't prove we live in a fascist police state, nothing will...


www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-atf-guns-20110816,0,7676977.story

ATF promotes supervisors in controversial gun operation

By Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau

August 16, 2011
Reporting from Washington— The ATF has promoted three key supervisors of a controversial sting operation that allowed firearms to be illegally trafficked across the U.S. border into Mexico.

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

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

Documents: Fast and Furious paper trail
documents.latimes.com/fast-and-furious/

McMahon and Newell have acknowledged making serious mistakes in the program, which was dubbed Operation Fast and Furious.

"I share responsibility for mistakes that were made," McMahon testified to a House committee three weeks ago. "The advantage of hindsight, the benefit of a thorough review of the case, clearly points me to things that I would have done differently."

Three Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokesmen did not return phone calls Monday asking about the promotions. But several agents said they found the timing of the promotions surprising, given the turmoil at the agency over the failed program.

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

Kenneth E. Melson, the ATF's acting director, said in an agency-wide confidential email announcing the promotion that McMahon was among ATF employees being rewarded because of "the skills and abilities they have demonstrated throughout their careers."

Newell was the special agent in charge of the field office for Arizona and New Mexico, where Fast and Furious was conducted. On Aug. 1, the ATF announced he would become special assistant to the assistant director of the agency's Office of Management in Washington.

Voth was an on-the-ground team supervisor for the operation, and last month he was moved to Washington to become branch chief for the ATF's tobacco division.

The program ran from November 2009 to January 2011, with the aim of identifying Mexican drug cartel leaders by allowing illegal purchases of firearms and then tracking those weapons. Nearly 200 were recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, and in December two semiautomatics were found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's slaying in Arizona.

No cartel leaders were arrested.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, are reviewing the operation.

Steve Martin, an ATF deputy assistant director, said he urged McMahon as far back as January 2010 to end the operation, and was met with silence. "I asked Mr. McMahon, I said, what's your plan?" Martin told the House committee. "Hearing none, I don't know if they had one."

Newell spent a decade on the border. As Operation Fast and Furious was unraveling, he insisted that his agents never allowed guns to "walk."

The statement angered many agents. "Literally, my mouth fell open," said Agent Larry Alt, who worked under Newell. "I am not being figurative about this. I couldn't believe it."

Newell has since acknowledged that "frequent risk assessments would be prudent" for operations like Fast and Furious. He also said the slaying of Terry "is one I will mourn for the rest of my life."

Voth supervised the crew of ATF agents under the operation. As they questioned the wisdom of allowing illegal purchases, he countered that because the weapons were turning up at Mexico crime scenes, cartel leaders had to be involved. He told his crew members they were "watching the right people."

His agents did not buy it.

"Whenever we would get a trace report back," said Agent John Dodson, Voth "was jovial, if not giddy, just delighted about that: Hey, 20 of our guns were recovered with 350 pounds of dope in Mexico last night. … To them it proved the nexus to the drug cartels. It validated that were really working a cartel case here."