Republican: Heads must roll in Fast and Furious

Attor­ney Gen­eral Eric Holder, right, talks with Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­eral for the Office of Leg­isla­tive Affairs at the Depart­ment of Jus­tice Ronald Weich, left, on Capi­tol Hill in Wash­ing­ton, Thurs­day, Dec. 8, 2011, prior to Holder tes­ti­fy­ing before the House Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee hear­ing on Oper­a­tion Fast and Furi­ous. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

PETE YOST

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Repub­li­can law­mak­ers told Attor­ney Gen­eral Eric Holder on Thurs­day to fire some Jus­tice Depart­ment sub­or­di­nates over the flawed arms-trafficking inves­ti­ga­tion called Oper­a­tion Fast and Furious.

At a House Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee hear­ing, Rep. Jim Sensen­bren­ner of Wis­con­sin said impeach­ment is an option if Holder does not “clean up this mess” quickly.

Sensen­bren­ner and other Repub­li­cans hold the attor­ney gen­eral respon­si­ble for the oper­a­tion, in which fed­eral agents failed to track illic­itly pur­chased weapons that were later recov­ered in Mex­ico and the U.S., many of them at crime scenes.

“If you don’t get to the bot­tom of this,” there is only one alter­na­tive, and “it’s called impeach­ment,” said Sensen­bren­ner, with­out spec­i­fy­ing whom he had in mind.

“Why haven’t you ter­mi­nated the peo­ple involved?” asked Rep. Dar­rell Issa, R-Calif., who chairs the House Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Reform Com­mit­tee that is inves­ti­gat­ing the arms-tracking oper­a­tion. Issa pressed Holder to appear before the congressman’s com­mit­tee, and the attor­ney gen­eral said he would con­sider the request.

Issa told Holder that the Jus­tice Depart­ment has turned over 5,000 emails to the com­mit­tee about Oper­a­tion Fast and Furi­ous, but “not one of these emails is yours.” The attor­ney gen­eral said that his department’s response to the committee’s doc­u­ment requests has been “ful­some” and that the Jus­tice Depart­ment would not turn over addi­tional emails sought by Issa. The Cal­i­for­nia con­gress­man said he wants emails from March of this year between a Holder aide and Jus­tice Depart­ment crim­i­nal divi­sion head Lanny Breuer. Issa sug­gested Holder could be cited for con­tempt of Con­gress if the mate­r­ial is not provided.

The attor­ney gen­eral, the sole wit­ness at Thursday’s hear­ing, said it was inex­cus­able for the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explo­sives to use a con­tro­ver­sial tac­tic known as “gun-walking” in its effort to iden­tify and pros­e­cute major arms traf­fick­ing net­works along the South­west bor­der. Jus­tice Depart­ment pol­icy has long pro­hib­ited the tactic.

The operation’s goal was to fol­low the gun sup­ply chain from small-time gun buy­ers at a num­ber of Phoenix-area gun shops and make cases against major weapons traf­fick­ers. In the process, fed­eral agents lost track of many of the more than 2,000 guns linked to the oper­a­tion. Two of the guns pur­chased at a Phoenix gun store were recov­ered from the scene of a shoot­ing that killed bor­der agent Brian Terry on the U.S. side of the border.

The House Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee chair­man, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said the Jus­tice Depart­ment had given incon­sis­tent state­ments about what Smith called “a reck­less and dan­ger­ous law enforce­ment pro­gram.” Smith said many ques­tions remain about who autho­rized the operation.

“We do not know who the par­tic­u­lar per­son was” who decided that “this flawed oper­a­tion should be con­ducted,” Holder said.

Amid probes by Repub­li­cans in Con­gress and the Jus­tice Department’s inspec­tor gen­eral, the depart­ment already has replaced U.S. Attor­ney Den­nis Burke in Phoenix, act­ing ATF Direc­tor Ken­neth Mel­son and the lead pros­e­cu­tor in Oper­a­tion Fast and Furious.

Holder said he is pre­pared to take other steps, with addi­tional per­son­nel changes pos­si­ble. The inspec­tor general’s office at the Jus­tice Depart­ment is inves­ti­gat­ing what went wrong in Oper­a­tion Fast and Furi­ous, but “that does not lessen the respon­si­bil­ity I have as head man­ager,” he said.

Sensen­bren­ner told Holder that “I don’t want to say you have com­mit­ted a felony,” but pointed to the Jus­tice Department’s deci­sion last week with­draw­ing an inac­cu­rate let­ter last Feb­ru­ary to Sen. Chuck Grass­ley, R-Iowa, the rank­ing Repub­li­can on the Sen­ate Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee. The Feb­ru­ary let­ter said the ATF makes every effort to inter­cept weapons that have been pur­chased ille­gally — an asser­tion that was wrong in the case of Oper­a­tion Fast and Furious.

No one at the Jus­tice Depart­ment was lying, Holder said. He said depart­ment offi­cials based their con­clu­sion in the let­ter on the best infor­ma­tion they had at the time from the Phoenix offices of ATF and the U.S. attorney.

Oper­a­tion Fast and Furi­ous was “a regional oper­a­tion” and not “top to bot­tom,” said Holder. The tac­tic at issue was not a deci­sion made in Wash­ing­ton, Holder said.

In explain­ing why the let­ter con­tained inac­cu­ra­cies, Holder said “we were rushed” in respond­ing to Grassley’s inquiries. He said it would have been bet­ter to take two weeks to respond rather than the four or five days depart­ment lawyers set as their deadline.

Grass­ley, whose inquiry brought the tac­tic used in Oper­a­tion Fast and Furi­ous to light, is call­ing for Breuer’s resignation.

Breuer has said he made a mis­take in not telling Holder and the deputy attor­ney gen­eral that the gun-walking tac­tic had been used in an ear­lier ATF probe called Oper­a­tion Wide Receiver, which Breuer had known about since April 2010.

Grass­ley said that in addi­tion to not inform­ing his supe­ri­ors, Breuer gave mis­lead­ing answers when the sen­a­tor asked whether Breuer had reviewed a draft of the inac­cu­rate Jus­tice Depart­ment let­ter to Con­gress last February.

Breuer told Con­gress he can­not say for sure whether he saw a draft of the inac­cu­rate let­ter and that he has no rec­ol­lec­tion of hav­ing done so. At the time the let­ter was drafted, Breuer told one of the letter’s main drafters in an e-mail, “As usual, great work.”

Michael Chertoff, who early in the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion had the job Breuer now holds, spoke out on behalf of Breuer, whom Chertoff has known for over a dozen years.

“He’s a very able, ded­i­cated pros­e­cu­tor,” said Chertoff. “He acknowl­edged he was mis­taken in not bring­ing this issue up to the attor­ney gen­eral at an ear­lier point in time and that’s an admirable thing to do. I under­stand Sen. Grassley’s feel­ings in this and I respect his feel­ings, but it would be a loss if Lanny were to leave.” In the 1990s, Chertoff was coun­sel to Repub­li­cans on the Sen­ate White­wa­ter Com­mit­tee look­ing into the con­duct of then-President Bill Clin­ton and the first lady dur­ing the time Clin­ton was Arkansas governor.

Posted by AP News on Dec 8 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.