By Jeffrey T. Kuhner
-The Washington Times
Thursday, December 15, 2011
A year ago this week, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry
was murdered. He died protecting his country from brutal
Mexican gangsters. Two AK-47 assault rifles were found at
his death site. We now know the horrifying truth: Agent Terry
was killed by weapons that were part of an illegal Obama
administration operation to smuggle arms to the dangerous
drug cartels. He was a victim of his own government. This is
not only a major scandal; it is a high crime that potentially
reaches all the way to the White House, implicating senior
officials. It is President Obama's Watergate.
Operation Fast and Furious was run by the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and
overseen by the Justice Department. It started under the
leadership of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Fast and
Furious enabled straw gun purchases from licensed dealers in
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Arizona, in which more than 2,000 weapons were smuggled
to Mexican drug kingpins. ATF claims it was seeking to track
the weapons as part of a larger crackdown on the growing
violence in the Southwest. Instead, ATF effectively has armed
murderous gangs. About 300 Mexicans have been killed by
Fast and Furious weapons. More than 1,400 guns remain lost.
Agent Terry likely will not be the last U.S. casualty.
Mr. Holder insists he was unaware of what took place until
after media reports of the scandal appeared in early 2011.
This is false. Such a vast operation only could have occurred
with the full knowledge and consent of senior administration
officials. Massive gun-running and smuggling is not carried
out by low-level ATF bureaucrats unless there is
authorization from the top. There is a systematic cover-up.
Congressional Republicans, however, are beginning to shed
light on the scandal. Led by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and
Rep. Darrell Issa of California, a congressional probe is
exposing the Justice Department's rampant criminality and
deliberate stonewalling. Assistant Attorney General Lanny A.
Breuer, who heads the department's criminal division, helped
craft a February letter to Congress that denied ATF had ever
walked guns into Mexico. Yet, under pressure from
congressional investigators, the department later admitted
that Mr. Breuer knew about ATF gun-smuggling as far back
as April 2010. In other words, Mr. Breuer has been
misleading Congress. He should resign - or be fired.
Instead, Mr. Holder tenaciously insists that Mr. Breuer will
keep his job. He needs to keep his friends close and potential
witnesses even closer. Another example is former acting ATF
Director Kenneth Melson. Internal documents show Mr.
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Melson directly oversaw Fast and Furious, including
monitoring numerous straw purchases of AK-47s. He has
admitted to congressional investigators that he, along with
high-ranking ATF leaders, reassigned every "manager
involved in Fast and Furious" after the scandal surfaced on
Capitol Hill and in the press. Mr. Melson said he was ordered
by senior Justice officials to be silent regarding the
reassignments. Hence, ATF managers who possess intimate
and damaging information - especially on the role of the
Justice Department - essentially have been promoted to cushy
bureaucratic jobs. Their silence has been bought, their
complicity swept under the rug. Mr. Melson has been
transferred to Justice's main office, where he serves as a
"senior adviser" on forensic science in the department's
Office of Legal Policy. Rather than being punished, Mr.
Melson has been rewarded for his incompetence and criminal
negligence.
Mr. Holder and his aides have given misleading, false and
contradictory testimony on Capitol Hill. Perjury, obstruction
of justice and abuse of power - these are high crimes and
misdemeanors. Mr. Holder should be impeached. Like most
liberals, he is playing the victim card, claiming Mr. Issa is a
modern-day Joseph McCarthy conducting a judicial witch
hunt. Regardless of this petty smear, Mr. Holder must be held
responsible and accountable - not only for the botched
operation, but for his flagrant attempts to deflect blame from
the administration.
Mr. Holder is a shameless careerist and a ruthless Beltway
operative. For years, his out-of-control Justice Department
has violated the fundamental principle of our democracy, the
rule of law. He has refused to prosecute members of the New
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Black Panthers for blatant voter intimidation that took place
in the 2008 election. Career Justice lawyers have confessed
publicly that Mr. Holder will not pursue cases in which the
perpetrators are black and the victims white. States such as
Arizona and Alabama are being sued for simply attempting to
enforce federal immigration laws. Mr. Holder also opposes
voter identification cards, thereby enabling fraud and
vote-stealing at the ballot box. What else can we expect from
one who, during the Clinton administration, helped pardon
notorious tax cheat Marc Rich and Puerto Rican terrorists?
Mr. Holder clearly knew about Fast and Furious and did
nothing to stop it. This is because the administration wanted
to use the excuse of increased violence on the border and
weapons-smuggling into Mexico to justify tighter gun-control
legislation. Mr. Holder is fighting ferociously to prevent
important internal Justice documents from falling into the
hands of congressional investigators. If the full nature of his
involvement is discovered, the Obama presidency will be in
peril.
Fast and Furious is even worse than Watergate for one simple
reason: No one died because of President Nixon's political
dirty tricks and abuse of government power. But Brian Terry
is dead; and there are still 1,500 missing guns threatening still
more lives.
What did Mr. Obama know? Massive gun-smuggling by the
U.S. government into a foreign country does not happen
without the explicit knowledge and approval of leading
administration officials. It's too big, too risky and too costly.
Mr. Holder may not be protecting just himself and his
cronies. Is he protecting the president?
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Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and
president of the Edmund Burke Institute.
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