heres a better SERIOUS questionYes, of operational mismanagement and of following orders from Washington.
are the federal agents who were involved in the operation guilty of anything? Originally Posted by CJ7
By early 2010, straw buyers were picking up more than 300 guns monthly from Arizona firearms dealers, and cartels in Mexico were killing up to 1,200 people per month. Authorities said one straw buyer in Phoenix bought a total of 720 guns.
"Although my instincts made me want to intervene and interdict these weapons," Dodson testified later in a congressional hearing, "my supervisors directed me and my colleagues not to make any stop or arrest but rather to keep the straw purchaser under surveillance while allowing the guns to walk."
The plan seemed simple: Let some weapons go across the border in hopes of tracing them to drug lords.
And, at least early on, few seemed to question the strategy devised by Phoenix ATF agents.
A successful case would put big-time narcotics criminals in prison, enhance ATF's reputation and advance agents' careers. It might also put a spotlight on American gun laws that enable straw buyers to help arm the Mexican syndicates.
But as Fast and Furious progressed in 2009-10, obvious and crucial flaws emerged: Hundreds of high-powered rifles vanished into Mexico because investigators had no way to follow the guns -- or to develop criminal cases against those who wound up with them.
Within weeks, firearms began turning up at Mexican crime scenes, often next to corpses.
Some ATF agents tried to warn that people in Mexico were getting killed and that a public-relations disaster was inevitable. A few lawyers in the Justice Department also became alarmed, pressing for the flow of firearms to stop.
Their complaints were dismissed or ignored. More guns went south.
Gunrunners were not arrested.
The bloodshed in Mexico escalated.
Then, in December 2010, matters got worse: U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down in a midnight shootout with banditos near Rio Rico, and two AK-47-style rifles from Fast and Furious were found nearby.
ATF administrators and federal prosecutors kept the connection under wraps. But, within days, whistle-blower agents started leaking information.
ATF and Department of Justice officials denied that guns were allowed into Mexico. But congressional inquiries revealed that more than 2,000 guns were sold to straw buyers during the operation and about two-thirds of them apparently crossed the border.
Most of the weapons were semiautomatic rifles, but the arsenal included 34 high-powered .50-caliber guns.
