For the last month, there have been hints that on a day in October, some top level folks from lots of alphabet soup letters had met. And several days later, the word went down to Phoenix, AZ..... and thus began Project Gunwalker. An email confirms "Gunwalker" was known throughout the Justice Department -- but there were other gov't agencies there. Bob Owens reports:
Bob Owens has the tenacity of the best old-time reporters. The MSM can ignore this all they want, Mr. Owens will get to the bottom of it.
An email cited in Senator Charles Grassley's testimony in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Operation Fast and Furious indicates that knowledge of the program was spread across the highest levels of the Justice Department. This lends even greater suspicion to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's claim that he knew nothing about the program until well after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed.
The October 27, 2009 email from ATF Phoenix Field Division Special Agent in Charge (SAC) William Newell regarded a Southwest Border Strategy Group meeting that focused on Fast and Furious. It contained a laundry list of high ranking Justice Department officials that attended the meeting, including:
- Assistant Attorney General (Criminal Division) Lanny Breuer
- Kenneth Melson, Acting Director, ATF
- William Hoover, Acting Deputy Director, ATF
- Michele Leonhart, Administrator, DEA
- Robert Mueller, Director FBI
- Four other Justice Department directors
or their representatives came from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), Bureau of Prisons (BOP), U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), and the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA). The chair of the Attorney Generals Advisory Committee (AGAC) also attended the session.
While it has been known since the beginning of the investigation that the ATF, DOJ, DHS, and the IRS were heavily involved in Gunwalker, the Newell email confirms that every major agency within the Department of Justice was briefed on Gunwalker, including the AGAC, which has the formally ordered functions of giving U.S attorneys a voice in department policies and advising the attorney general.
Mexican government officials are infuriated by the scandal, and unlike the New York Times and Washington Post that seek to minimize it, they want justice.
Senator Rene Arce is chairman of Mexico's Commission for National Security, a congressional panel similar to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He told Fox News that the American officials that authorized Gunwalker should face felony charges in the United States, and then be extradited to Mexico to stand trial there.
Rumors that Dept of State was brought into the "Circle of Walkers," because of the treaty of exporting guns to foreign countries (had to have State's approval).
And going for the brass ring, Holder has testified, "I know nothin'" |