I'm Right Again dot com              July 24, 2013

UPDATE OF AN OLDIE BUT GOODIE: FAST AND FURIOUS.

The only thing fast and furious about the program alleged to have begun in order to trace carloads of weapons and ammunition to drug cartel bosses in Mexico, is the cover up.

So, how long has it been since it was revealed that a gun and ammunition collected near Rio Rico, Arizona, were found to have been supplied during "Operation Fast and Furious" to the accused killer of Border Protection Agent Brian Terry?  He died on December 14, 2010.

Keep in mind that Eric Holder was sworn in as U.S. Attorney General on February 3, 2009. 

Prior to that, he was Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno.  So, the gun-walk planned by Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operatives took place within agencies under his aegis; during his watch.  The least he can do, is to claim occasional chronic mental blackouts.

First off, gun-walking was supposed to be a forbidden practice in the USJD.

Ever since December of 2010, little factoids have been leaking out of more than one agency under the US Justice umbrella.  I'm going to suggest that some of them came from disenchanted employees not on the top rung of the ladder.

 Recapitulation: The scheme was devised supposedly in order that illegal guns and ammo could be traced to cartel kingpins.  The mechanism of how this would help suppress the emergence of several vicious cartels now fighting for supremacy on both sides of the US-Mexico border, remains to be hidden under an incomprehensible veil.

I have spent a lot of time devising various scenarios and have yet to understand how this could work.

For a year and a half, I've struggled with the why and how of "Fast & Furious" and nothing adds up.  Would the guns have GPS devices hidden in them?  Maybe sting buys would be set up and our guys would insist upon delivering the goods only to the kingpin.  Then, when he or she showed up for the buy, they would play "Gotcha."

 All of my life, I have rejected conspiracy theories, but I had to ask myself: Was the goal of Operation Fast and Furious devised to help the vicious cartel gangs kill each other off?  If so, they are succeeding to a degree beyond all imagining - with what has already been supplied them by the U.S.A.  I keep getting different sets of numbers when I Google competent sources.  I can't nail down a number of just how many guns was sold the bad guys.  Mexico is claiming thousands. 

 I regret knowing that there has been collateral damage.  Can we continue to write off innocent lives caught in the crossfire and call it "collateral damage."

Why doesn't U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder stop playing avoidance games and lay it all out.  We deserve to know the truth.  If it was done through sheer stupidity, sharpen the blade on the guillotine, that's all.  If it's Holder's mistake, or whomever's, let them put their neck on the block.   It's the only decent thing and sensible thing to do. 

It has been claimed that for some indefensible reason, all of several agencies under Justice did not inform each other of their various activities, informants and targets.  How embarrassing!

When our Firearms folks tried to arrest a known Mexican criminal, they found he was a protected informant of at least one other US Federal law-enforcement agency.  Do we distrust encrypted communications, people?  

Hey, officers, why not meet your opposite numbers from other agencies on a public park bench and pat each other down! (Enter any appropriate expletive here)

Mr. Holder did not confess this travesty immediately, but only when pressed by certain Members of Congress.  Despite his assertions that all possible questions have been asked and answered, not one person I know of can fit the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together.

 Holder is lawyering, and it is so apparent, so unbecoming.  Each rotten little morsel of information is being slowly, excruciatingly extracted, like an impacted molar.  (How's that for an analogy?)

Why is Holder being so defensive?  Who if anyone is he trying to protect - that is, other than himself?

What we need is a comprehensive compendium of all of the avoided disclosures of facts and firings, if any, and for what reason, in chronological order.  If some estubido badge-carrier was not fired, then why weren't she/he fired?

Why have we been barred from knowing the reason that former U.S. Attorney for Arizona, Dennis Burke resigned in August of 2011?  Last year, it became widely known that he was pressing colleagues to deny that that our Justice Department knowingly allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico.  There could be any number of reasons, all unanswered, for his reticence now - but if it's not a matter of national security, lets get it all out, in public.

Beyond that, what are the specific reasons for reassignment of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives National Director Kenneth Melson?  Why was Arizona's top agent for ATF & E. transferred?  We need to hear the reasons and we need testimony from these individuals.  Moving them around like chess pieces could smack unfairly of the problems with which the Catholic Church has had to contend, or of an attempt to keep them quiet.   Or not.  We just don't know but a tiny piece of the story.

This calls for a grand jury.  I have learned that a jury, or cross section of any group of Americans is very discerning.  They get it right by an impressive margin - and they do it without a lot of prompting.  

Loyalty is important, but it's not more important than the truth.  As Conan Doyle had fictional detective Sherlock Holmes say: "The truth will out."

-Phil Richardson, Observer and Storyteller. 

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