Justice Dept faulted in gun-trafficking operation

PETE YOST

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — The Jus­tice Department’s inter­nal watch­dog on Wednes­day faulted the agency for mis­guided strate­gies, errors in judg­ment and man­age­ment fail­ures dur­ing a bun­gled gun-trafficking probe in Ari­zona that dis­re­garded pub­lic safety and resulted in hun­dreds of weapons turn­ing up at crime scenes in the U.S. and Mexico.

A for­mer head of the department’s Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explo­sives and a deputy assis­tant attor­ney gen­eral in Justice’s crim­i­nal divi­sion in Wash­ing­ton left the depart­ment upon the report’s release — the first by retire­ment, the sec­ond by resignation.

In the 471-page report, Inspec­tor Gen­eral Michael Horowitz referred more than a dozen peo­ple for pos­si­ble depart­ment dis­ci­pli­nary action for their roles in Oper­a­tion Fast and Furi­ous and a sep­a­rate, ear­lier probe known as Wide Receiver, under­taken dur­ing the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion. A for­mer act­ing deputy attor­ney gen­eral and the head of the crim­i­nal divi­sion were crit­i­cized for actions and omis­sions related to oper­a­tions sub­se­quent to and pre­ced­ing Fast and Furious.

The report did not crit­i­cize Attor­ney Gen­eral Eric Holder, but said lower-level offi­cials should have briefed him about the inves­ti­ga­tion much earlier.

The report found no evi­dence that Holder was informed about the Fast and Furi­ous oper­a­tion before Jan. 31, 2011, or that the attor­ney gen­eral was told about the much-disputed gun-walking tac­tic employed by the ATF.

Gun-walking was an exper­i­men­tal tac­tic, barred under long-standing depart­ment pol­icy. ATF agents in Ari­zona allowed sus­pected “straw pur­chasers,” in these cases believed to be work­ing for Mex­i­can drug gangs, to leave Phoenix-area gun stores with weapons in order to track them and bring charges against gun-smuggling king­pins who long had eluded pros­e­cu­tion, but they lost track of most of the guns.

The exper­i­men­tal oper­a­tions were a response to wide­spread crit­i­cisms of the agency’s anti-smuggling efforts. Because of thin ATF staffing and weak penal­ties, the tra­di­tional strat­egy of arrest­ing sus­pected straw buy­ers as soon as pos­si­ble had failed to stop the flow of tens of thou­sands of guns to Mex­ico — more than 68,000 in the past five years.

The inspec­tor gen­eral found fault with the work of the senior ATF lead­er­ship, the ATF staff and U.S. attorney’s office in Phoenix and senior offi­cials of Justice’s crim­i­nal divi­sion in Wash­ing­ton. He also said that poor inter­nal information-gathering and draft­ing at Jus­tice and ATF caused the depart­ment to ini­tially mis­in­form Con­gress about Fast and Furi­ous, begin­ning with a Feb. 4, 2011, letter.

“The inspec­tor general’s report con­firms find­ings by Con­gress’ inves­ti­ga­tion of a near total dis­re­gard for pub­lic safety in Oper­a­tion Fast and Furi­ous,” said Rep. Dar­rell Issa, R-Calif., chair­man of the House Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Reform Com­mit­tee, which has been inves­ti­gat­ing Oper­a­tion Fast and Furi­ous since early 2011. Horowitz is to tes­tify before Issa’s panel Thursday.

Dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion Pres­i­dent Barack Obama ordered Holder to with­hold from the com­mit­tee, under exec­u­tive priv­i­lege, some doc­u­ments describ­ing how the depart­ment responded to the panel. The Republican-controlled House voted to hold Holder in con­tempt and has autho­rized a civil law­suit to make the admin­is­tra­tion turn over the doc­u­ments. Horowitz said he was not denied access to any of the documents.

Two of the 2,000 weapons thought to have been acquired by illicit buy­ers in the Fast and Furi­ous inves­ti­ga­tion were recov­ered at the scene of a shootout that claimed the life of U.S. bor­der agent Brian Terry. About 1,400 of the total have yet to be recovered.

Holder noted in a state­ment that the report con­firmed his asser­tions that the flawed strate­gies were dri­ven by field agents with­out his knowl­edge or approval and that depart­ment did not set out to mis­in­form Congress.

He said the report’s dis­ci­pli­nary rec­om­men­da­tions are being pur­sued and “we now have two men in cus­tody and we will con­tinue to aggres­sively pur­sue the remain­ing fugi­tives to ensure jus­tice for Agent Terry, his fam­ily and his fel­low law enforce­ment agents.”

Fast and Furi­ous has pro­duced charges against 20 gun traf­fick­ers, 14 of whom have pleaded guilty so far.

One of those crit­i­cized in the report, for­mer ATF act­ing direc­tor Ken­neth Mel­son, who headed that agency dur­ing the Fast and Furi­ous inves­ti­ga­tion, retired upon release of the report.

“Mel­son made too many assump­tions about the case,” the report stated. “Mel­son should have asked basic ques­tions about the inves­ti­ga­tion, includ­ing how pub­lic safety was being protected.”

Mel­son responded in a writ­ten state­ment: “While I firmly dis­agree with many of the spec­u­la­tive assump­tions, con­clu­sions and char­ac­ter­i­za­tions in the inspec­tor general’s report, as the act­ing direc­tor of the agency I was ulti­mately respon­si­ble for the actions of each employee.”

Another of those crit­i­cized, Jus­tice Depart­ment career attor­ney Jason Wein­stein, resigned. Wein­stein was a deputy assis­tant attor­ney gen­eral in Justice’s crim­i­nal divi­sion in Washington.

“Wein­stein was the most senior per­son in the depart­ment in April and May 2010 who was in a posi­tion to iden­tify the sim­i­lar­ity between the inap­pro­pri­ate tac­tics used in Oper­a­tions Wide Receiver and Fast and Furi­ous,” the report said. ATF agents in Ari­zona con­ducted Wide Receiver in 2006 and 2007 and began Fast and Furi­ous in Octo­ber 2009.

Weinstein’s lawyer, Michael Bromwich, called the report’s crit­i­cism “pro­foundly wrong” and “deeply flawed.”

The report said that a cover memo reviewed by Wein­stein for a wire­tap appli­ca­tion in Fast and Furi­ous “clearly sug­gests” that ATF agents had allowed a known illicit gun pur­chaser to con­tinue his ille­gal activ­i­ties for a gun-trafficking ring sell­ing weapons to a Mex­i­can drug cartel.

Weinstein’s review of the cover memo should have caused him to ques­tion oper­a­tional details of Fast and Furi­ous, the report stated.

In response, Weinstein’s lawyer said that before review­ing any Fast and Furi­ous wire­taps, Wein­stein had been assured by ATF Deputy Assis­tant Direc­tor William McMa­hon that guns were being aggres­sively interdicted.

Among oth­ers the report sin­gled out for crit­i­cism were for­mer act­ing Deputy Attor­ney Gen­eral Gary Grindler; Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­eral Lanny Breuer, who heads the crim­i­nal divi­sion; Ari­zona U.S. Attor­ney Den­nis Burke; and Holder’s own for­mer deputy chief of staff, Monty Wilkinson.

The report said:

• Wilkin­son should have promptly informed Holder of the fact that two guns found at the scene of Terry’s slay­ing were among the 2,000 illic­itly acquired weapons in Oper­a­tion Fast and Furious.

• Grindler relied on the FBI to inves­ti­gate the Terry killing. That reliance was mis­placed, given that the bureau did not have the respon­si­bil­ity to deter­mine whether errors in ATF’s inves­ti­ga­tion led to the weapons end­ing up at the mur­der scene.

• Breuer should have promptly informed Deputy Attor­ney Gen­eral James Cole or Holder about the gun-walking prob­lems in the ear­lier gun probe, Oper­a­tion Wide Receiver.

The inspec­tor gen­eral said he found no evi­dence that for­mer Attor­ney Gen­eral Michael Mukasey, who took office late in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion after Wide Receiver was ended, was ever informed that it used gun-walking.

Once alle­ga­tions of gun-walking sur­faced, the Jus­tice Depart­ment waited 10 months before with­draw­ing an incor­rect let­ter to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grass­ley in early 2011 deny­ing that gun-walking had taken place. Grass­ley is the rank­ing Repub­li­can on the Sen­ate Judi­ciary Committee.

A May 2011 Jus­tice Depart­ment let­ter to Grass­ley said that “it remains our under­stand­ing that ATF’s Oper­a­tion Fast and Furi­ous did not know­ingly per­mit straw buy­ers to take guns into Mexico.”

The inspec­tor gen­eral said that by May, senior depart­ment offi­cials knew or should have known that ATF had in many instances allowed straw pur­chasers to buy firearms know­ing that some­one else would trans­port them to Mex­ico. The report also found that the depart­ment should not have pro­vided tes­ti­mony in June 2011 before Issa’s com­mit­tee that cre­ated ambi­gu­ity over whether the depart­ment was still defend­ing its Feb. 4 and May 2 letters.

Speak­ing to reporters at ATF head­quar­ters, act­ing direc­tor B. Todd Jones said the agency is already imple­ment­ing some of the report’s rec­om­men­da­tions and there are no gun-walking oper­a­tions going on.

“We are recal­i­brat­ing how we do busi­ness at ATF,” Jones said. “Every­one in the cur­rent crew knows that that is not an accept­able inves­tiga­tive tech­nique unless I know about it, and I don’t know about any.”

Posted by AP News on Sep 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.