How high up does ‘Project Gunrunner’ go? (Who knew what and when?)
Dave Workman
The Project Gunrunner scandal took another step up the government food chain with last night’s disclosure in a
CBS News interview with a former senior official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that the operation was approved by someone in the Department of Justice “even higher than ATF Director Kenneth Melson.”
The question “Who knew what, and when” became part of the national lexicon during the Watergate investigation a generation ago. Now it may become part of the fabric of the Gunrunner probe.
In this morning’s
Seattle PI.com, columnist Joel Connelly complained about the gun traffic to Mexico, and how efforts to stop the flood have been impeded by the “gun lobby.” Gun rights activists suggest he is directing his anger at the wrong people. Instead of railing about the gun lobby, perhaps he should be asking the ATF about all of those guns the agency allowed to cross the border, they contend.
Or, as drug cartels murder thousands in Mexico, nervous Southwest states might be lobbying the feds for measures to obstruct cartels' large-scale gun purchases in the United States.—Joel Connelly, Seattle PI.com
Former ATF senior agent Darren Gil, who was the agency’s top gun in Mexico, went public with serious allegations that he and other ATF officials were denied access to agency computer files related to the Gunrunner project and its Operation Fast and Furious, based in the ATF’s Phoenix office.
Gil told CBS that part of his job as the attaché to Mexico would have been to approve any operation involving Mexico and he did not approve Project Gunrunner or Fast and Furious. But who did?
In an exclusive interview with CBS News, the lead ATF official in Mexico at the time Darren Gil says somebody in the Justice Department did know about the case. Gil says his supervisor at ATF's Washington D.C. headquarters told him point-blank the operation was approved even higher than ATF Director Kenneth Melson.
"Is the director aware of this," Gil asked the supervisor. Gil says his supervisor answered "Yes, the director's aware of it. Not only is the director aware of it, D.O.J.'s aware of it... Department of Justice was aware of it."—CBS News’ Sharyl Atkisson
This morning on the
Glenn Beck radio program, National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre suggested that the Gunrunner operation may be far more than a sting gone horribly bad. He said the same thing in an interview Thursday with this column, asserting that this is beginning to look like a deliberate effort to flood Mexico with American guns.
Referring to the Obama administration, LaPierre told this column that “they kept blaming the Second Amendment…for actions of Mexican drug cartels, and it sure looks like they did it to lay the groundwork for more gun control.”
“Someone set out to turn it into a river of guns over the objection of rank and file law enforcement,” LaPierre said.
An ATF source said that morale in the agency is at its lowest point in memory over the Gunrunner scandal. Now, the source said, ATF employees are wondering just how high the scandal will reach.
President Obama told a reporter for Mexico’s Univision that he had no prior knowledge of the operation, and neither did Attorney General Eric Holder. This column wrote about that interview
here.
But Congressman Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has asked ATF’s Melson for a lot of documents and communications relating to Gunrunner and Fast and Furious, and from the content of his letter, he knows exactly what he is looking for.
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