Obama's Enforcer by John Fund

Author:John Fund
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

FAST AND FURIOUS

Imagine if a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official let a kilo of cocaine onto the streets to try to figure out where it was going, but did not make any efforts to follow it after a drug dealer got his hands on it. When dealing with known criminals, federal law enforcement agents know they are never going to see those drugs again—and those drugs could put someone’s life in danger from an overdose or other issues that may arise.

The same concept applies to guns. If federal law enforcement agents allow guns to get into the hands of known criminals, and then don’t follow them, those weapons will probably end up being used in the commission of crimes—including murders. As such, federal law enforcement frowns upon and rarely ever lets even a smidgeon of drugs or just one gun walk, never mind a couple of thousand, which is what happened in the Fast and Furious scandal.

“Operation Fast and Furious” grew out of a mixture of inept bureaucrats and a cadre of politically motivated anti–Second Amendment Obama appointees. Assigning accountability for the scandal has been difficult, but there are signs the courts may eventually demand the release of records that will allow that to happen.

In Fast and Furious, ATF agents directed people known as “straw purchasers”—low-level illicit weapons purchasers who work for the Mexican drug cartels’ smugglers inside the United States—to buy guns at Phoenix, Arizona–area Federally Licensed Firearms dealers. Those guns were then smuggled into Mexico by cartel operatives, after agents let the weapons get into the hands of those cartel operatives by not tracking them.

The cycle of gun walking continued despite protests from street agents for more than a year after it began in late 2009, until U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered on December 15, 2010, in Peck Canyon, Arizona, by Mexican cartel operatives running a rip crew. A rip crew is a group of bandits who clear corridors in the desert for drug smugglers coming from Mexico into the United States. They are used to eliminate potential competition from other cartels trying to steal drugs en route to a U.S. destination, and from law enforcement officials who may attempt to arrest smugglers.

Two Fast and Furious guns were found at Terry’s murder scene, after they had been previously trafficked into Mexico. The revelation sparked what became one of President Obama’s first major scandals, one with deadly repercussions that continue to this day. Perhaps even more shocking is, that along with Benghazi, the targeting of conservative organizations by the IRS, and a whole consortium of other scandals that the Obama administration is responsible for, Fast and Furious remains the only one in which President Barack Obama has asserted an official executive privilege claim, to withhold documents about the Justice Department operation that were subpoenaed by the House of Representatives.

The origins of the Fast and Furious scandal date back to the George W. Bush Justice Department, which launched the “Project Gunrunner” initiative through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2006.

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