Project Gunwalker

[Kennedy 0]

Developing story. Scary implications. Unclear sources. Initially covered by controversial but generally reliable bloggers. Serious scandal potential.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Project+gunwalker
http://m.examiner.com/exSeattle/pm_76139/contentdetail.htm;jsessionid=3E103CA9C8CE915D468F7DE75ACA52F2?contentguid=2nj0t5nz
http://m.examiner.com/exDesMoines/pm_67394/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=6FUE6z4n

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[1969912 0]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/02/02/senator-calls-atf-allegations-agency-allowing-guns-mexico/

"Once we got to the point where twenty/something's needed a place on the corner that changed the oil in their cars we were doomed . . ."
-NickDG

[mnealtx 0]

Gonna be ugly, if true.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[popsjumper 2]

Mike,
On the face of it, I don't see a problem here given:

1. That truly, they did it for tracing purposes. The drug scenario was mentioned and we all condone that.

2. The the process actually leads to some real intelligence as to the gunrunners' logistical distribution system.

3. That the intelligence is truly used to destroy that system and, hopefully, prevent new systems from popping up.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[mnealtx 0]

*IF* all three of your points are proven true, I provisionally agree...and will be VERY pleasantly surprised if it happens.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[Gravitymaster 0]

Quote

Gonna be ugly, if true.

Going to get ugly for Grassely. What a freakin moron. This is a really good strategy for combating the flow of guns into Mexico and he makes it publicly known what ATF is doing. This is as idiotic as when Geraldo Rivera exposed where US Troops were in Iraq. Grassely could have simply called ATF and found out what they were doing without exposing them.

[popsjumper 2]

Quote

*...and will be VERY pleasantly surprised if it happens.

...and there's the catch

yes, me too, very surprised.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[popsjumper 2]

So, I take it that you don't agree with Danny Assange and Wikileaks, eh?

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[Gravitymaster 0]

I believe there's a time to STFU. This was an undercover operation that was designed to expose the illegal sale of firearms to Mexican Drug Cartels. It might have saved a lot of lives in Mexico. Covert operations are necessary and Grassely ought to be at least reprimanded for exposing it. Idiot!!

[Kennedy 0]

Quote

Quote

Gonna be ugly, if true.

Going to get ugly for Grassely. What a freakin moron. This is a really good strategy for combating the flow of guns into Mexico and he makes it publicly known what ATF is doing. This is as idiotic as when Geraldo Rivera exposed where US Troops were in Iraq. Grassely could have simply called ATF and found out what they were doing without exposing them.

Do you think there's a difference between controlled delivery of drugs and allowing rifles to be smuggled into Mexico?

Also, it's important to remember that rifles being smuggled south is not a significant concern. I hope you haven't fallen for the patently false stats about how 90% of crime guns in Mexico come from the USA. However, when you hear that BATFE approved gun purchases that a dealer foun suspicious and wouldn't have made, and one of those guns is used to kill a Border Patrol officer, things don't look good for bureaucrats in BATFE.

Finally, before you throw Grassely under the bus, you should consider that he says he did try to get answers from BATFE, and he was stonewalled, so he took itinto the light, where he's still getting stonewalled, BATFE is circling the wagons and retaliating against a whistleblower.

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[rushmc 23]

Have you seen this?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/02/23/eveningnews/main20035609.shtml?tag=cbsnewsTwoColUpperPromoArea

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Gunrunning scandal uncovered at the ATF

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[DaVinci 0]

My issue is they KNEW this guy was not buying 500 AK's for "personal use".

They KNEW they would head into MX.

They used these numbers as part of their "river of guns".... Well, if you had LET the shops stop it, then it would not have happened. You can't use numbers you CREATED.

[DanG 1]

Anybody read the Washington Post article on this issue? I haven't read it yet, so no comment. Here's a link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/12/AR2010121202663.html

- Dan G

[JohnRich 4]

Quote

Anybody read the Washington Post article on this issue? I haven't read it yet, so no comment. Here's a link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/12/AR2010121202663.html

Typical media anti-gun spin. For example, they try to make Bill Carter sound like he's knowingly selling guns to Mexican drug runners. Not so. He just happens to own four gun stores in Houston, the 4th largest city in America, in a pro-gun state. If they looked at the number of "mexican crime guns" as a percentage of guns sold, his would probably be very low. But just because of his high volume, a number of them end up on the "crime gun" list. This is how politicians and the ATF try to shut down legitimate businesses, who have complied with all the laws regarding gun sales.

For example, let's take two gun dealers. Dealer A has 10 guns that have turned up as crime guns, and Dealer B, likewise, has 2 such guns. Which one is the "evil" gun dealer? Well, most people would say "Dealer A", based upon those raw numbers alone. But they have no right to make such a judgment, because they don't have enough facts yet.

Let's say that 1% of guns sold end up in Mexico for illegal use. If Dealer A sold 1,000 guns a month, and 10 end up in crime, then he's just average. If Dealer B sold 100 guns a month, and 2 ended up in crime, then he has a 2% crime gun rate - twice that of Dealer A. So it may be that Dealer B is more problematic than Dealer A, even though his raw numbers are fewer.

It also has a lot to do with location. Gun stores near the border are more likely to be the shopping point for gun runners, using false identification papers. If the dealer follows the law, does the background checks, etc. and everything is legit, it's not his fault if the guns end up in the hands of criminals.

[Kennedy 0]

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GOA Calls for House Investigation into “Project Gunrunner” as Sen. Reid Drags his Feet
(February 23, 2011)

“Two months after the shooting death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office remain silent. But family members, and others, are speaking out.”
-- William Lajeunesse, “America’s Third War: Agent Brian Terry, A Policy of Silence?,” Fox News (February 22, 2011) at www.foxnews.com/us/2011/02/22/agent-brian-terry-policy-silence/

Summary

According to recent press reports -- such as Fox News -- the ATF has enabled gun smuggling by telling gun dealers in the southwest to sell weapons to known straw purchasers (people who buy guns for others). Even worse, one of those guns became the murder weapon in a tragic case where a Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, was gunned down on December 14th, 2010.

This ATF operation is called Project Gunrunner and its purpose was to monitor illicit gun sales in the southwest in order to track down the smuggling rings delivering guns to the drug cartels.

But, now, it’s beginning to look like the biggest arms supplier is the ATF itself for having allowed more than 3000 weapons to be smuggled under its Gunrunner program.

While Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) has demanded answers from the ATF, he has been blown off -- not only by agency superiors, but by officials as high up as Attorney General Eric Holder.

Given the fact that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is likely to drag his feet in order to protect Attorney General Eric Holder, we believe that hearings should begin in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Thus, Gun Owners of America is now calling for both the Judiciary Committee and the Committee on Oversight and Reform in the U.S. House of Representatives to initiate hearings into Project Gunrunner -- and presents the following information to help in their investigations.


History

“The gun used to kill Agent Brian Terry has been sourced, not to Mexico, but to a gun store in Phoenix that was actually part -- and cooperating -- with a federal investigation into arms trafficking. However, US agents did not stop the sale or the transfer of that gun to the cartels that killed Terry.”
-- William Lajeunesse, Fox News broadcast (February 22, 2011)

Around 11:00 pm on the night of December 14, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot and mortally wounded near Peck Canyon, Rio Rico, north of Nogales in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, approximately 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexican border. Agent Terry, aged 40, a Marine Corps veteran and a “cop’s cop,” died shortly afterward. Four suspects were taken into custody, including one who was shot and transported to the hospital.

Two months after the murder, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix announced that three of the four, Jesus Soria-Ruiz, Jose Angel-Camacho, and Francisco Rosario Camacho-Alameda would be deported to Mexico after pleading guilty to charges of illegal entry. As of this writing (February 23, 2011), they have been released for deportation.

Despite being arrested at the scene, it was announced that no evidence tied the three to the shooting of Agent Terry. This is amazing. Should not these illegal aliens be kept in custody as witnesses? At best, they are material witnesses … at worst, they are perpetrators who assisted in the murder of Agent Terry.

To date no one has been charged with the murder and the FBI has been uncharacteristically tight-lipped about the investigation, except to assure that Terry was not killed by friendly fire from fellow agents. (It is the opinion of many -- not only those here at GOA, but also the whistleblowers -- that because these Mexican citizens have potential knowledge as material witnesses in the case, they should not be deported and, instead, should be kept in protective custody until they can be made available to independent Congressional investigators.)

Two semi-automatic Kalashnikov-pattern rifles were found at the scene. When traced, it was discovered that these had been purchased from an American gun shop which had been cooperating with agents of the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (commonly referred to as the ATF) in an investigation of gun smuggling known as Project Gunrunner. It was also learned that these weapons had been traced by the ATF at least once before, and that the agency had extensive knowledge of the person who bought them.

Almost immediately, rumors began to circulate within the agency that the Phoenix office of ATF had botched the oversight and execution of Project Gunrunner, and that the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was an unintended but foreseeable consequence of poor planning, sloppy field craft and even sloppier management. Such a tragedy, it was said, had even been predicted by some agents beforehand.

Worse, both street agents and responsible supervisors within the agency had tried to prevent such an outcome and were overruled by higher management. In the case of one, Darren Gil, the ATF attaché in Mexico City who went over the head of Phoenix Special Agent in Charge, William Newell, to ATF headquarters, such fidelity to duty was a career-ending act. Gil was forced into early retirement on December 31, 2010, two and a half weeks after the murder of Brian Terry.

Gil was removed, at least in part, because he insisted that pursuant to treaty and established protocol, the Mexican government should be notified of the operation. It was not. The decision to remove Darren Gil and keep the Mexican government in the dark was approved, it is said, at least at the highest levels of the Justice Department.

There are now five separate but connected accusations leveled by current or former employees of the ATF against ATF and DOJ officials in what has been dubbed the “Project Gunwalker“ Scandal:

First, that they intentionally allowed perhaps as many as 3,000 firearms to "walk" across the U.S. border into Mexico with the purpose of boosting the statistics of seized firearms with American commercial provenance from Mexican crime scenes.

Second, that they instructed U.S. gun dealers to proceed with questionable and illegal sales of firearms to suspected gunrunners.

Third, that they intentionally withheld information about U.S.-sanctioned gun smuggling from the Mexican government.

Fourth, that one of the rifles ATF allowed to be smuggled into Mexico was involved in the death of CBP Agent Brian Terry. (See the link to Grassley’s February 9 letter in the footnotes below.)

Fifth, that high-level managers of ATF and DOJ are now, in tandem with the FBI, involved in covering up ATF and DOJ culpability in items One through Four, by various means including the unlawful threatening of current-serving ATF agents with personal knowledge of the case.

Eventually, these charges came to the attention of U.S. Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Chuck Grassley of Iowa through the new media which learned of the existence of potential whistleblowers from its own sources within ATF. The Senators then got in touch with the whistleblowers, so that they could be afforded some protection from the threats of their managers and so that the truth of the circumstances of the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry could be discovered.

The story is starting to get out. As stated on February 22 by William Lajeunesse of Fox News: “The slug that killed Terry came from an AK-47 dropped at the scene. The weapon was traced to a Phoenix gun store, which had reported the sale to ATF's ‘Project Gunrunner.’”

At present, many other revelations are expected.
snip

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[Kennedy 0]

Oh this one was too good to pass up.

And it even comes from wikileaks.

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WikiLeaks exposes true origins of Mexican cartels' weaponry (Hint: It's not due to the "mythical" gun show loophole)

The idea that we'd ever find WikiLeaks information relevant to the protection of United States citizens' gun rights wasn't anywhere on our radar when the NSSF's Larry Keane tipped us off to some disturbing information gleaned from leaked State Department documents.***

According to State Department cables, the Mexican drug cartels are getting their weaponry from an international operation, with the cartels getting military weapons through various government channels. Some of those weapons did, in fact, come from the United States, but they weren't the result of the "gun show loophole" straw-man purchases or any of the other individual criminal acts anti-gun groups would have you believe.

Large quantities of those US weapons -everything from rifles to machine guns, grenade launchers, explosives and ammunition, came from purchases by the government of Mexico from the United States. As the underpaid, undermanned and undermined soldiers of the Mexican army skipped out on the military to put their training to work for the cartels, they took their issued-arms with them.

Others come from weapon buys from guerilla groups in South and Central America that are then smuggled into the country.

No specific numbers on how many of those guns "recovered in Mexico and traced back to the United States" were, in fact, military purchases, but the State Department cables indicate a portion of the fewer than 12 percent of the traceable weapons actually came from the United States in gun shop/individual type purchases. Remember, that's not 12 percent of the tens of thousands of weapons recovered - it's only 12 percent of the weapons recovered that were traceable. It's nowhere near the 12 percent figure that has been misquoted and used as evidence of the United State's "horrific" problem of illegal gun sales.

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[Kennedy 0]

Well, it's officially a national story. CBS News "broke" the story after an "investigation" that seems to involve reading other people's blogs and articlces.

Agent: I was ordered to let U.S. guns into Mexico
ATF agent says "Fast and Furious" program let guns "walk" into hands of Mexican drug cartels with aim of tracking and breaking a big case

Documents point to ATF "gun running" since 2008
Undercover ATF photo shows display of high-powered weapons put out for suspected Mexican drug cartel gun buyers


DHS Chief Napolitano says she was not aware of agency's link to ATF "gun running"

And here's the best part:
Press Sec Carney: No comment on GunWalker
And he wouldn't even say if Obama was "aware" of the situation.

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*