Government Gunrunners

By Chuck Baldwin

09/01/2011

Not that the national media notices much, but the federal government under President Barack Obama has been supplying guns to Mexican drug gangs for quite a spell. With only a few print media bothering to cover the story, Obama’s Justice Department has been discovered secretly supplying firearms to Mexican drug lords using taxpayer “stimulus” monies. If that wasn’t bad enough, guns supplied to these Mexican miscreants by federal agents were used to kill at least one US Border Patrol agent. After the death of the BP agent, California Congressman Darrell Issa launched an investigation into the matter and uncovered what most anyone would correctly describe as a vast government conspiracy to supply firearms to Mexican drug cartels. As a result of Issa’s congressional investigations, numerous heads at the ATF have lost their jobs–or more correctly–have been “reassigned.”

Two days ago, the Washington Post reported,

“The ATF head has been reassigned amid an investigation into a controversial U.S. gun-trafficking operation, part of a broader shake-up at the Justice Department in which the U.S. attorney in Phoenix also stepped down, officials said Tuesday.

“Kenneth E. Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, will become a senior adviser on forensic science in the department’s Office of Legal Policy. He will be replaced as acting director at ATF by B. Todd Jones, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, the department said in a statement.”

The Post report went on to say, “In a sign of the continuing fallout, Dennis Burke, the U.S. attorney in Phoenix who worked closely with ATF and provided legal guidance for “Fast and Furious,” [codename for the ATF gunrunning operation] has resigned, the department said Tuesday. He is being replaced on an acting basis by his deputy, Ann Scheel.

“An assistant U.S. Attorney in Phoenix, Emory Hurley, who helped oversee “Fast and Furious,” is being transferred out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s criminal division and into the civil division. That means he will not be involved in criminal cases.

“The multiple moves amounted to an extraordinary shake-up for a Justice Department that has been under fire for the gun-trafficking probe, which critics consider ATF’s biggest debacle since the deadly 1993 confrontation in Waco, Tex. ATF is part of Justice.”

The Washington Post has since revised this report. See it here.

Back in July, World Net Daily ran a story featuring Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America in which he warned the American people of the ATF’s horrific scheme by saying, “Ten million dollars, and one of the ways they were spending it was a paid FBI informant who was a drug dealer they had flipped. So he was buying lots of guns with that stimulus money.”

Pratt went on to say, “We can say there’s one thing that was stimulated by the stimulus bill and that was the Mexican undertaker business. Mexican authorities say that 150 people were murdered using these guns.”

World Net Daily also reported,

“Firearms law analyst and writer David Codrea believes that even if there is evidence to prove that known criminals used taxpayer money to get guns to take to Mexico, nothing is likely to be done with the evidence.

“‘If left to Holder’s Justice Department, nothing, because it shows this had to be top-level DoJ-authorized,’ Codrea explained.

“Reports say other federal agencies have also been drawn into the operation. The DEA, FBI and upper-level DOJ officers, including the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix, have been named.”

WND goes on to state, “Pratt also believes that some of the guns were purchased by the Mexican cartels directly from federal agents.

“‘One of the founders of the cartel, one of the top 14 directors if you will, a guy whose nickname is El Mamito, has said that he was buying guns directly from the federal government,’ Pratt explained.”

And one more quote from the WND report: “Pratt said he believes for the guns to go across at a designated location, there had to be coordination between several federal law enforcement agencies.

“‘There had to be some kind of a deal with the Border Patrol … .We know that in the ’09 meeting that set up Fast and Furious, those four or five agencies were all part of the deal,’ Pratt said.”

See the report here.

What makes the ATF’s criminal gunrunning conspiracy even worse (if that’s possible) is the fact that, much like his superiors Obama and Holder, Melson has a career-long reputation for wanting to curtail the right of law-abiding US citizens to keep and bear arms. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in the weird world of Obama/Holder/Melson, law-abiding US citizens cannot be trusted to keep and bear arms, but US tax dollars and federal police agencies are used to provide firearms to Mexican drug gangs. Then, when Mexican drug gangs using firearms supplied by the US Justice Department murder one of their own Border Patrol agents, the only retribution that follows is for underlings to be “reassigned.”

Seriously folks, have you ever known of any federal agent being brought to justice for even the most egregious violations of life and liberty? Where was the first federal agent brought to justice for the murders of over 80 mostly old men, women, and children outside Waco, Texas? Was agent Lon Horiuchi brought to justice for murdering Vicki Weaver? That monster shot Vicki in the face with a high-powered, scoped rifle as she stood in her kitchen holding her little baby. Not only was this creep not punished, he was later promoted and continues to work in law enforcement today. (Horiuchi was charged with manslaughter in Idaho State court, but US District Judge Edward Lodge dismissed the case. In justifying his horrific ruling, Lodge said that the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution “grants immunity to federal officers acting in the scope of their employment.” Way to go judge! Heil Hitler!) Oh! And by the way, Horiuchi was a federal sharpshooter at Waco, too.

So, one more time, criminals inside the US federal government have been found out! I hope Congressman Issa will not be content to let the matter die with the reassignments of a few underlings. The American people have been enduring criminality, bloodshed, and death perpetrated by rogue elements inside the federal government for far, far too long! It is time now for true justice to come to the US Justice Department!

Dr. Chuck Baldwin left the Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida to move to Montana in 2010. He hosts a weekly radio show. His website is here.

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