03/27/2011
The slow-motion scandal of the the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms smuggling guns to Mexico is rising ever higher. Some dim bulb in the ATF thought it would be brilliant idea to ship high-power weapons to Mexican gangsters in order to ”track” them. Now President Obama is swearing he didn’t know nuttin! To Univision, no less…
Obama: I didn’t know about U.S. Government gun-smuggling operation into Mexico, Daily Mail, March 26, 2011
President Barack Obama has denied any knowledge of a controversial US gun smuggling operation claiming he did not tell Mexico as he did not know about it.
The President told a Univision radio programme that Mexican president Felipe Calderon was not informed of “Operation Fast and Furious’ because he had no idea it was going on.
The operation allowed traffickers to bring weapons to illegally cross the southwestern border so they could be tracked.
The President’s busy schedule of bracketing college basketball may have precluded his being informed of ATF’s hare-brained scheme, but some high-level apparatchik knew, possibly Attorney General Eric Holder (who now says that Gunwalking is wrong). Whoever signed off on the bonehead plan to send US guns south to Mexican organized crime should be sacked ASAP. (The gunwalking scandal was the ”final straw” leading to the resignation of the Mexican ambassador Carlos Pascual earlier this month.)
Revelations over the last weeks have not improved Obama’s relationship with Mexico City. El Presidente Calderon is miffed, and who can blame him? Nobody likes it when the neighbors cause extra troubles.
CBS interviewed an ATF official about who knew about the gunwalking scheme and when (ATF gunwalking: Who knew, and how high up?, March 25, 2011)
In an exclusive interview with CBS News, the lead ATF official in Mexico at the time Darren Gil says somebody in the Justice Department did know about the case. Gil says his supervisor at ATF’s Washington D.C. headquarters told him point-blank the operation was approved even higher than ATF Director Kenneth Melson.
All the players are pointing elsewhere, saying “I’m innocent.” What’s needed is a Congressional hearing where everyone is under oath. Not that a hearing would guarantee the truth, but reporters can only go so far.
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