THINGS WERE DONE AS 'THE PRESIDENT HAS DIRECTED US'

It sure looks like the Obama administration is trying to cover up a gun control scheme that backfired with deadly consequences.

HOLDER LIED, AGENTS DIED?
Editorial

Investor’s Business Daily
July 26, 2011

SCANDAL: As hearings reveal the attorney general to be either a charlatan or a boob, word comes of possible FBI complicity in letting guns "walk" into Mexico, ordered by an administration pushing gun control.

If there was any doubt that Project Gunrunner and its offshoot, Operation Fast and Furious, had little to do with stopping gun-trafficking into Mexico and a lot to do with creating an atmosphere for more gun control, it ended with the revelation by Fox News that two convicted felons were allowed to buy and move more than 300 guns into Mexico, something the FBI should have caught but didn't.

Under current federal law, people with felony convictions are not permitted to buy weapons, and those with felony arrests are typically flagged while the FBI conducts a thorough background check through its National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

According to court records reviewed by Fox News, two of the 20 defendants indicted in the Fast and Furious investigation — and, yes, there have been indictments — have felony convictions. Jacob Wayne Chambers and Sean Christopher Stewart obtained more than 360 weapons despite criminal records that should have prevented them from buying even one gun.

When asked about the breakdown, Stephen Fischer, a spokesman for the NICS System, said the FBI had no comment. We are not surprised. Since day one, you could here crickets chirp every time the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or the Department of Justice was asked about an operation that got two U.S. agents killed.

We suspect the FBI was ordered to look the other way just as ATF agents were told to every time they had a chance to interdict weapons going to Mexico, allegedly the whole purpose of the operation. That order could only have come from Attorney General Eric Holder.

"Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals — this was the plan," ATF agent John Dodson testified before Rep. Darrell Issa's House Government Oversight Committee. "It was so mandated." Agent Olindo James Casa said that "on several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms."

One ATF agent who talked to Fox News said that NICS officials called the ATF in Phoenix whenever their suspects tried to buy a gun. Instead of stopping the transactions, the green light was usually given to allow the transaction to proceed it.

Both President Obama and Attorney General Holder have disavowed any knowledge of the ATF's actions, though we have documented how Holder boasted of the program to Mexican officials and a deputy attorney general said things were done as "the president has directed us."

Rep. Issa is certain that the Fast and Furious operation was known by most top officials at the Justice Department and that Holder either knew and misled Congress or was so out of the loop he was guilty of incompetent mismanagement. Issa's not sure which is worse: "He knew and he's lied to Congress, or he didn't know, and he's so detached that he wasn't doing his job."

Border Patrol Agent Agent Brian Terry and Immigration Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata were killed in separate incidents where weapons allowed to "walk" into Mexico were recovered. "Brian Terry's loss was preventable," says Issa. So was Jaime Zapata's.

Now the FBI may have been coerced into being an accessory. "It is unconscionable and goes beyond just being a terribly ill-conceived investigation to bordering, if not crossing, into criminal activity," says Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., a former federal prosecutor and member of Issa's committee.

The lies, the intimidation of witnesses, the administration denials — all are part of a cover-up strongly reminiscent of Watergate except for one thing: Nobody died at Watergate.