Dogman
28th July 2011, 02:43 PM
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/07/27/us/GUNS/GUNS-articleLarge.jpg
Witnesses, including Special Agent William Newell, second from right, were sworn in Tuesday before speaking to a House committee hearing investigating Operation Fast and Furious.
By CHARLIE SAVAGE (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/charlie_savage/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: July 26, 2011
WASHINGTON — A federal agent who helped supervise the gun-trafficking investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious told Congress on Tuesday that he had made mistakes during the effort to dismantle a network that was funneling assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/mexico/drug_trafficking/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier).
In his first public appearance to talk about the operation, William Newell, the former special agent in charge of the Phoenix field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (http://www.atf.gov/), said he should have more frequently reassessed the risk associated with monitoring — rather than intervening with — particular people who continued to acquire weapons that ended up with the cartels. The most prolific of these “straw” buyers bought more than 600 of the 2,000 weapons linked to the ring.
But Mr. Newell defended the broader strategy of seeking to identify the people running the network, rather than merely arresting the low-level buyers recruited to go into gun stores. He argued that it was so easy to replace straw buyers that intervening too quickly would have no meaningful impact on the flood of American guns into Mexico (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/mexico/index.html?inline=nyt-geo).
“The whole plan was to take out the whole organization, but I realize in retrospect that there were times when I should have conducted more risk assessments,” Mr. Newell said, during nearly six hours of testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs, alongside William McMahon, another A.T.F. supervisor, and several bureau agents based in Mexico.
Operation Fast and Furious ran from late 2009 to early 2011, and is part of a still-open larger investigation into the gun-trafficking ring. The operation’s tactic of not quickly seizing guns and arresting straw buyers in the hope that they would lead investigators to higher-ups in the ring prompted controversy within the firearms bureau.
Those concerns erupted after guns linked to Fast and Furious straw buyers (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/us/26guns.html) were found at the scene where a Border Patrol agent was killed in December 2010.
“You had the same people buying weapons repeatedly, leading to the same cartel, and you didn’t quit because you hadn’t made your case and so continued selling until had you had a dead federal agent and a scandal,” Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican who is chairman of the committee, told Mr. Newell.
The current and former A.T.F. agents based in Mexico on Tuesday also sharply criticized the operation and said they had been kept in the dark about its tactics, which they said ran counter to the bureau’s traditional training and procedures.
While members of both parties criticized the tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious, a partisan divide opened over the direction of the Congressional investigation into it. Republicans sought to tie the operation to Obama administration political appointees, but Democrats released excerpts from staff interviews of officials who said that there had been no briefings of high-level A.T.F. or Justice Department officials about the tactics used in the Phoenix operation.
Previous reports and letters released by Mr. Issa and Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, have quoted other excerpts from the interviews of those officials — including the acting director of the firearms bureau, Kenneth Melson — but made no mention of the sections that undermined the notion that top Justice Department officials sanctioned or knew about the tactics.
“The committee’s report promotes unsubstantiated theories by selectively releasing excerpts of transcripts while ignoring testimony and other information,” said Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman, noting that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. had ordered an inspector general investigation into the operation.
Mr. Issa did not address Democratic accusations that his reports have been misleadingly selective, but he and other Republicans sparred extensively with Democrats about another dispute: whether their close look at gun trafficking along the Southwest border had demonstrated a need for tighter gun control laws and greater support for the bureau despite opposition by gun rights lobbyists.
“Congress’s hands are hardly clean on this subject,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia.
Noting that the Senate had refused to confirm a permanent director for the bureau for more than six years, Mr. Connolly added: “We have done everything in our power in Congress to try to defang the A.T.F. to make sure that it’s toothless. We’ve done everything we can to fight your budget and reduce it so that you don’t have the resources to do the job.”
The hearing ended with a tart exchange between Mr. Issa and Eleanor Holmes Norton, the nonvoting Democratic delegate from the District of Columbia, whom Mr. Issa accused of being “radically against the Second Amendment.”
Ms. Norton brought up a bill that would create a federal statute against illegal firearms trafficking; proponents say such a statute would give A.T.F. agents more leverage to persuade straw buyers to take the risk of providing information about higher-level criminals. She asked Mr. Issa if he would co-sponsor the legislation.
“No, ma’am,” Mr. Issa replied.
“Enough said,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/us/politics/27guns.html?_r=4
Witnesses, including Special Agent William Newell, second from right, were sworn in Tuesday before speaking to a House committee hearing investigating Operation Fast and Furious.
By CHARLIE SAVAGE (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/charlie_savage/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: July 26, 2011
WASHINGTON — A federal agent who helped supervise the gun-trafficking investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious told Congress on Tuesday that he had made mistakes during the effort to dismantle a network that was funneling assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/mexico/drug_trafficking/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier).
In his first public appearance to talk about the operation, William Newell, the former special agent in charge of the Phoenix field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (http://www.atf.gov/), said he should have more frequently reassessed the risk associated with monitoring — rather than intervening with — particular people who continued to acquire weapons that ended up with the cartels. The most prolific of these “straw” buyers bought more than 600 of the 2,000 weapons linked to the ring.
But Mr. Newell defended the broader strategy of seeking to identify the people running the network, rather than merely arresting the low-level buyers recruited to go into gun stores. He argued that it was so easy to replace straw buyers that intervening too quickly would have no meaningful impact on the flood of American guns into Mexico (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/mexico/index.html?inline=nyt-geo).
“The whole plan was to take out the whole organization, but I realize in retrospect that there were times when I should have conducted more risk assessments,” Mr. Newell said, during nearly six hours of testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs, alongside William McMahon, another A.T.F. supervisor, and several bureau agents based in Mexico.
Operation Fast and Furious ran from late 2009 to early 2011, and is part of a still-open larger investigation into the gun-trafficking ring. The operation’s tactic of not quickly seizing guns and arresting straw buyers in the hope that they would lead investigators to higher-ups in the ring prompted controversy within the firearms bureau.
Those concerns erupted after guns linked to Fast and Furious straw buyers (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/us/26guns.html) were found at the scene where a Border Patrol agent was killed in December 2010.
“You had the same people buying weapons repeatedly, leading to the same cartel, and you didn’t quit because you hadn’t made your case and so continued selling until had you had a dead federal agent and a scandal,” Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican who is chairman of the committee, told Mr. Newell.
The current and former A.T.F. agents based in Mexico on Tuesday also sharply criticized the operation and said they had been kept in the dark about its tactics, which they said ran counter to the bureau’s traditional training and procedures.
While members of both parties criticized the tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious, a partisan divide opened over the direction of the Congressional investigation into it. Republicans sought to tie the operation to Obama administration political appointees, but Democrats released excerpts from staff interviews of officials who said that there had been no briefings of high-level A.T.F. or Justice Department officials about the tactics used in the Phoenix operation.
Previous reports and letters released by Mr. Issa and Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, have quoted other excerpts from the interviews of those officials — including the acting director of the firearms bureau, Kenneth Melson — but made no mention of the sections that undermined the notion that top Justice Department officials sanctioned or knew about the tactics.
“The committee’s report promotes unsubstantiated theories by selectively releasing excerpts of transcripts while ignoring testimony and other information,” said Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman, noting that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. had ordered an inspector general investigation into the operation.
Mr. Issa did not address Democratic accusations that his reports have been misleadingly selective, but he and other Republicans sparred extensively with Democrats about another dispute: whether their close look at gun trafficking along the Southwest border had demonstrated a need for tighter gun control laws and greater support for the bureau despite opposition by gun rights lobbyists.
“Congress’s hands are hardly clean on this subject,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia.
Noting that the Senate had refused to confirm a permanent director for the bureau for more than six years, Mr. Connolly added: “We have done everything in our power in Congress to try to defang the A.T.F. to make sure that it’s toothless. We’ve done everything we can to fight your budget and reduce it so that you don’t have the resources to do the job.”
The hearing ended with a tart exchange between Mr. Issa and Eleanor Holmes Norton, the nonvoting Democratic delegate from the District of Columbia, whom Mr. Issa accused of being “radically against the Second Amendment.”
Ms. Norton brought up a bill that would create a federal statute against illegal firearms trafficking; proponents say such a statute would give A.T.F. agents more leverage to persuade straw buyers to take the risk of providing information about higher-level criminals. She asked Mr. Issa if he would co-sponsor the legislation.
“No, ma’am,” Mr. Issa replied.
“Enough said,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/us/politics/27guns.html?_r=4