Project Gun-walker and the ATF

[twoguns]

I can think of a few questions to ask those ATF goons.

http://www.examiner.com/article/atf-...can-gun-traces

Dave Workman
Seattle Gun Rights Examiner

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will hold a “roundtable discussion” this Thursday in Washington, D.C. that may be aimed at justifying the multiple sales reporting requirement that grew out of the Operation Fast and Furious scandal last year.

According to the notice from ATF:

WASHINGTON - The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will hold a roundtable discussion Thursday, April 26, to discuss firearms trace data from the Government of Mexico.

The trace information discussed will cover firearms recovered by law enforcement and military officials at crime scenes in Mexico for calendar years 2007-2011 and submitted to ATF for tracing. This information will be available to the public on the ATF website following the roundtable. ATF will not discuss any other firearms recoveries in Mexico which have not been submitted for tracing or any investigations.

ATF will also release trace information for firearms recovered in Canada and the Caribbean and submitted to ATF for tracing between calendar years 2007 and 2011.

WHO: ATF Special Agent John Hageman

WHAT: Release of Government of Mexico Firearms Trace Data

WHERE: ATF Headquarters

99 New York Avenue, NE

Washington, DC 20226

WHEN: April 26, 2012

TIME: 2:30 p.m.

NOTE: Media representatives should plan to arrive at the ATF Visitors Center by 2 p.m. in order to have sufficient time to clear through security. Please do not bring cameras or any recording devices for broadcast or publication purposes.This is a pen-and-pad only media event. All foreign media must contact the ATF Public Affairs Division at (202) 648-8500, at least 24 hours in advance if they plan to attend the event.

All media must present media credentials and U.S. government-issued photo identification at the ATF Visitors Center. Please call the ATF Public Affairs Division at (202) 648-8500, if you have questions

More information about ATF and its programs is available at www.atf.gov.

The agency has been under fire for more than a year because of Fast and Furious. The fact that cameras and recording devices will not be allowed may raise a few eyebrows, since two of the leading news agencies on the Fast and Furious probe have been CBS News and Fox News. An ATF spokesperson called to advise that this is not a "true media event" but is designed to provide details on how the agency got the numbers.

ATF launched the operation in 2009, ostensibly as an effort to track the movement of illicit guns from the United States to Mexico. However, during early hearings before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chaired by Congressman Darrell Issa, ATF whistleblowers stressed that they would have never allowed guns to “walk” as part of an investigation, as happened in Fast and Furious.

E-mails obtained by congressional investigators suggest that recovered guns became fodder in the ATF’s effort to require gun dealers in four southwest states to report multiple long gun sales. The firearms industry opposed that measure, and gun rights activists have assailed it as an attack on gun rights.

Revelation of that e-mail exchange has convinced many people that Fast and Furious was far more than jut an investigation into illicit gun trafficking. Many people believe that the operation was designed to pump up the numbers of recovered U.S.-origin firearms at Mexican crime scenes to justify the Obama administration's early-expressed desire to renew the ban on so-called "assault weapons" that expired in 2004, and provide "proof" about allegations that the majority of guns found at those crime scenes came from this country.

E-mails from this column to the offices of Rep. Issa and Senator Charles Grassley did not immediately garner responses.

PLEASE FORWARD the link to this column and share with all of your chat lists and forums

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Dave Workman, Seattle Gun Rights Examiner

Dave Workman is an author, senior editor at TheGunMag.com, communications director for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, award-winning outdoor writer, former member of the NRA Board of Directors and recognized expert on Washington State gun laws.


Continue reading on Examiner.com ATF will hold ‘roundtable discussion’ about Mexican gun traces - Seattle gun rights | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/article/atf-...#ixzz1t5NqiGUA

[twoguns]

Rewarding wrong-doers seems to be the standard.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012...up-law-school/

Justice official leaving for law school post after criticism over 'Fast and Furious' claim

By Mike Levine

Published April 25, 2012

FoxNews.com

December 8, 2011: Attorney General Eric Holder, right, looks at a phone with Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs Ronald Weich, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP)

The top Justice Department official who signed a letter erroneously telling lawmakers investigating "Operation Fast and Furious" that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives never allowed guns to be sold to cartel members will be leaving the department to head up a law school.

Ronald Weich, the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, will become the new dean of the University of Baltimore's school of law in July.

"During this time of considerable transition in legal education and the legal profession, it is important to have leadership with integrity and vision," University of Baltimore President Robert Bogomolny said in a statement issued Wednesday. "Ron Weich embodies those qualities. I look forward to working with him, and I know our students, faculty, staff and alumni will be energized by his arrival."

News of Weich's pending departure comes nearly a month after he suggested Republicans on Capitol Hill were leaking sensitive information and five months after the Justice Department formally withdrew a Feb. 4, 2011, letter sent to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who was demanding answers from the ATF and Attorney General Eric Holder over allegations the agency had let suspected drug-smugglers buy hundreds of assault weapons.

"At the outset, the allegation ... that ATF 'sanctioned' or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico -- is false," Weich wrote Grassley at the time. "ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico."

Since then, a congressional investigation into "Fast and Furious" led by Grassley and House Oversight and Government Report Committee Chairman Darrel Issa, R-Calif., has helped reveal those claims as false.

In March, Weich sent a letter to Grassley and Issa noting that reporters were calling the Justice Department to ask about private documents relating to “an active criminal investigation,” including the case against one of the main targets of “Fast and Furious.”

“While we do not know who provided these letters to reporters, we are deeply disturbed that sensitive law enforcement information contained in them has now entered the public domain,” Weich wrote. “Since we know that you share our desire to bring dangerous arms traffickers to justice, we ask that you preserve the confidentiality of sensitive law enforcement information that may come into your possession.”

Launched in Arizona in late 2009, "Fast and Furious" planned to follow gun purchasers in hopes that suspects would lead them to the heads of Mexican cartels. But high-powered weapons tied to the investigation, whose targets purchased nearly 2,000 weapons over several months, ended up at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States, including the December 2010 murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry

In recent months, the Justice Department disclosed several ATF operations similar to "Fast and Furious" conducted under the previous administration. And the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, Lanny Breuer, has acknowledged he learned of one of those "gunwalking" investigations, "Operation Wide Receiver," in April 2010 but never said anything to Holder.

The Feb. 4, 2011, letter signed by Weich -- and drafted in coordination with others in the department -- was formally withdrawn in December 2011.

Testifying before a House panel earlier this year, Holder said he did not believe the Justice Department intended to mislead Congress, noting his department has taken a "rare" move and made "wholesale deliberative material available" to lawmakers to help explain the genesis of "the inaccuracies that were contained in that letter."

"These documents show that department officials relied on information provided by supervisors from the relevant components in the best position to know the facts," Holder told lawmakers. "In subsequent interviews with congressional investigators, these supervisors stated that they did not know at the time that the information that they provided was inaccurate."

Weich himself testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform committee in June 2011. He mostly testified about the Justice Department's efforts to comply with congressional subpoenas, but he was also asked about the Feb. 4, 2011, letter.

"Every time the Justice Department sends a letter to Congress, it is true to the best of our knowledge at the time that we send it," he said. Still, he insisted again that ATF "doesn't sanction or approve of the transfer of weapons to Mexico."

It's unclear exactly when Weich would step down from the Justice Department. An email seeking comment from a Justice Department spokeswoman was not immediately returned.

Weich was confirmed by the Senate as assistant attorney general for legislative affairs in April 2009. He "heads the Office that represents the Department of Justice on all legislative and oversight matters before Congress," according to the Justice Department's website.

He previously served as Chief Counsel to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and as counsel to former Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Arlen Specter, R-Penn., according to the Justice Department. Prior to that, he worked in private practice.

He is a native New Yorker, and a graduate of Columbia University and the Yale Law School.

The University of Baltimore School of Law is the sixth largest public law school in the country, with more than 1,100 students at its midtown campus, according to a press release from the school.

It was recently ranked among the top "Best Value" law schools by PreLaw magazine, the school said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012...#ixzz1t91nnxPq

[twoguns]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_16...in;contentBody

ATF's mysterious grenade smuggler case: new photos, documents turned over to Congress

By
Sharyl Attkisson

New evidence photos recently turned over to Congress show a stash of grenade parts, fuse assemblies and more than 2,000 rounds of ammunition.

Evidence photos just turned over to Congress under subpoena show a frightening stash of grenade parts, fuse assemblies and more than 2,000 rounds of ammunition. It was all hidden in a spare tire of an SUV crossing from the US to Mexico in 2010. The accused smuggler, an alleged drug cartel arms dealer named Jean Baptise Kingery, was questioned by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) but released.

Documents handed over to Congress by the Justice Department shed new light on missteps in the grenades case, and how ATF tracked the suspect for years.

ATF started watching Kingery in "2004 related to AK47 purchases," according to an internal email, "it is believed that he is trafficking them to Mexico." A full five years later in late 2009, ATF also learned Kingery was dealing in grenades: he'd ordered 120 grenade bodies on the Internet.

Grenades are weapons of choice for Mexico's killer drug cartels. An attack on a casino in Mexico last year killed 53 people.

Documents show ATF secretly intercepted the grenade bodies Kingery had ordered, marked them, and delivered them to him on Jan. 26, 2010. Their plan was to follow Kingery to his weapons factory in Mexico, with help from Mexican authorities Immigration and Customs (ICE).

Jean Baptise Kingery
(Credit: AP)

ATF realized they might lose track of Kingery and the grenade parts in Mexico. But their emails show little attention to those who could be killed. Instead, officials expressed concerned with tying the grenades to Kingery after they reached Mexico. "Even in a post blast, as long as the safety lever is recovered we will be able to identify these tagged grenades," says one email.

An official now investigating ATF and the Justice Department for their actions in the Kingery case tells CBS News: "All the usual safeguards of law enforcement were thrown out. They were more worried about making a big case than they were about the public safety."

The plan to allow Kingery to traffic grenade parts into a foreign country and track him to his factory drew strong internal objections.

"That's not possible," wrote a lead ATF official in Mexico. "We are forbidden from doing that type of activity. If ICE is telling you they can do that, they are full of [expletive]..."

ATF officials in Mexico worried that once Kingery and the grenades crossed the border, they would disappear. And that's exactly what happened. Though ATF agents say they'd given all the specifics to Mexican military and police, the Mexicans failed to stop Kingery once he crossed into Mexico.

Four months later, Kingery surfaced again in the U.S. This time, the Border Patrol caught him trying to smuggle the new stash of grenade hulls shown in the photos. ATF questioned him but, once again, he was let go. Nobody has stepped forward to explain why Kingery was released after this incident. He allegedly continued to supply the Mexican drug cartels for another year and a half.

Evidence photos turned over to Congress

Kingery might still be on the street if Mexican authorities hadn't arrested him last August after raiding his stash house and factory. Police say they found enough parts to build 1,000 grenades. They also say Kingery confessed to teaching cartels how to make grenades, as well as helping them convert semi-automatic weapons to fully-automatic.

The Justice Department Inspector General is investigating the Kingery case along with ATF's Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to "walk" into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in a failed attempt to take down a major cartel.

There are some similarities between the Kingery grenade case and Fast and Furious. The chief suspect in Fast and Furious, Manuel Celis-Acosta was stopped by law enforcement three times but released -- while allegedly trafficking firearms for cartels. It wasn't until weapons linked to him turned up at the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry that ATF finally charged Acosta.

The Kingery case and Fast and Furious were both supervised out of ATF's Phoenix office by Special Agent in Charge Bill Newell. It was Newell who wrote an email and delivered the bad news about Kingery to Washington DC headquarters: Mexican officials "lost Kingery" even though "they had plenty of notice and descriptive info."

The Justice Department and ATF had no immediate comment.

Sharyl Attkisson

Sharyl Attkisson is a CBS News investigative correspondent based in Washington. All of her stories, videos and blogs are available here.

[twoguns]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...8.story?page=1

From a Mexican kingpin to an FBI informant
After agents arrest a drug cartel chieftain named Jesus Audel Miramontes-Varela, he becomes one of the bureau's most valuable sources of information, according to confidential interview reports.

By Richard A. Serrano, Los Angeles Times

April 21, 2012, 8:12 p.m.
WASHINGTON — Police and federal agents pulled the car over in a suburb north of Denver. An FBI agent showed his badge. The driver appeared not startled at all. "My friend," he said, "I have been waiting for you."

And with that, Jesus Audel Miramontes-Varela stepped out of his white 2002 BMW X5 and into the arms of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Over the next several days at his ranch in Colorado and an FBI safe house in Albuquerque, the Mexican cartel chieftain — who had reputedly fed one of his victims to lions in Mexico — was transformed into one of the FBI's top informants on the Southwest border.

Around a dining room table in August 2010, an FBI camera whirring above, the 34-year-old Miramontes-Varela confessed his leadership in the Juarez cartel, according to 75 pages of confidential FBI interview reports obtained by The Times/Tribune Washington Bureau.

He told about marijuana and cocaine routes to California, New York and the Great Lakes. He described the shooting deaths of 30 people at a horse track in Mexico, and a hidden mass grave with 20 bodies, including two U.S. residents.

He told them about his African lions, which he had acquired as circus cubs. The story about feeding one of his enemies to them was false, he claimed, but he said he had seen plenty of "violence and suffering." He told agents he was desperate to trade his knowledge for government protection. He wanted a new life for himself and his wife and three daughters.

A week later Miramontes-Varela pleaded guilty in federal court in New Mexico to a minor felony as an illegal immigrant in possession of a firearm. Then he disappeared, almost certainly into the federal witness protection program.

FBI officials in Arizona and Washington declined to comment about Miramontes-Varela, citing bureau policy against discussing informants. But the documents tell plenty.

During the interview sessions, Miramontes-Varela "provided significant information about drug trafficking activity," the documents said, leading to several successful unnamed law enforcement operations in the U.S. and Mexico.

***
After Miramontes-Varela was stopped in Brighton, Colo., agents took him back to his ranch. They advised him and his wife, Mari, that he was "the subject of an FBI investigation for his involvement in drug trafficking, firearms trafficking, money laundering and the interstate transportation of stolen property."

In Spanish, they read him his Miranda rights. He called an attorney; they spoke quietly in Spanish. Miramontes-Varela hung up and turned to the agents. "Yes," he said. "He told me to do as much as I can for you."

Miramontes-Varela signed the Miranda waiver and looked up at the agents. He asked, "Where do you want to start?"

First, they said, any guns?

Miramontes-Varela mentioned a black 9-millimeter semiautomatic Glock pistol he said he bought after being shot at in El Paso. The agents asked to see it. "Yes, yes, no problem," he said. He walked to a floor safe in a far corner of the living room, unlocked it and handed the weapon over.

Agents drove the couple to the FBI safe house in Albuquerque. Inside, they pointed to two cameras. One was in the master bedroom, where Miramontes-Varela and his wife would stay. Agents showed that that it was unplugged and that they had covered it with a white plastic bag. "Very nice," Miramontes-Varela said.

Miramontes-Varela talked to them around the dining room table. That is where the other camera was. It stayed on.

***
His story poured out. He was born the third of 10 children in Terrero, Mexico, and grew up in Namiquipa, northern Mexico. He married when he was 18, his bride 15. They sneaked though Nogales, Ariz., coming to the U.S., he said, "to make money."

They settled in Denver. Miramontes-Varela installed drywall. But in the late 1990s a brother, Yovany, lost an arm in a tractor mishap, and Miramontes-Varela returned home. He grew apples and traded in cattle.

In early 2002, he said, the Juarez cartel came to Namiquipa. Pedro Sanchez, known as El Tigre, controlled things. He offered Miramontes-Varela a job collecting a monthly $35,000 "tax" from marijuana growers.

Every 15 days, growers carted 20 tons to a local warehouse. It was shipped north through El Paso, the proceeds funneled back to the cartel and the growers.

One day the military arrived and gunfire ensued. "The mayor and town treasurer were killed," Miramontes-Varela said. Later, El Tigre was arrested.

In 2008, Miramontes-Varela said, he fled with his family to El Paso. When he failed to return, the cartel burned his ranch and stole his cattle, all 120 cows. He was done with the violence, he said.

***
That part, according to the FBI, was not true. Miramontes-Varela shuffled between ranches in New Mexico and Colorado, they said, often in an armored car with bodyguards, and set up his own drug- and gun-smuggling operation.

When a courier was arrested with 18 kilos of cocaine, Miramontes-Varela offered the man's family the choice of one of his 16 homes in Mexico, including his "big house," according to telephone wiretaps outlined in the documents.

In March 2010, the FBI listed him as head of the "Miramontes-Varela Drug Trafficking Organization," tied to the Juarez, Sinaloa and Los Zetas cartels. From two confidential sources and two wiretaps, agents learned that his organization had stolen tractors in the U.S. and driven them to Mexico as payment for lost loads. One debt alone reached $670,000. They learned that one of Miramontes-Varela's bosses in Mexico, "Temoc," was tortured and killed by the Sinaloans.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also wanted him arrested. It had tracked $250,000 in illegal gun purchases to Miramontes-Varela and his brother through its ill-fated Fast and Furious gun-smuggling surveillance operation in Arizona.

FBI agents rigged a 24-hour pole camera outside his ranch near Santa Teresa, N.M. But Miramontes-Varela figured it out. Five of his men in two vehicles followed a surveillance agent for 90 minutes, then slashed his tire.

More ominously, the FBI learned Miramontes-Varela and his organization had bribed U.S. officials in El Paso and New Mexico. They decided it was time to bring him in.

On Aug. 18, 2010, they followed him from his Colorado farm. He briefly visited a Walgreens, then the State Patrol pulled him over. The time was 11:20 a.m. They had him.

***
In the safe house dining room, agents brought out maps, and Miramontes-Varela sketched in smuggling routes. He said weapons were easily acquired in this country, including .50-caliber rifles. "Good for long-range sniper fire," he said.

He filled in the cartel hierarchies too. One chieftain had arm and shoulder scars from bullet wounds. At the horse track murders, the chieftain wore a mask. Some switched sides; others died when loads went missing.

And he told them about that mass grave in Palomas, Mexico. Authorities dug up 20 decaying corpses. Miramontes-Varela, the FBI's new informant, was right.

richard.serrano@latimes.com

[Valorius]

Trayvon Martin.

Trayvon Martin.

There is no gunrunning scandal.

Watch the news and scream justice for Trayvon.

Let us hypnotize you with made up bullshit as we keep you divided and at each other's throats.

This is not the scandal you are looking for.

Move along.

Move along.

[twoguns]

Trayvon Martin.

Trayvon Martin.

There is no gunrunning scandal.

Watch the news and scream justice for Trayvon.

Let us hypnotize you with made up bullshit as we keep you divided and at each other's throats.

This is not the scandal you are looking for.

Move along.

Move along.

Exactly correct! Divide and conquer is an age old tactic.

Sensationalized reporting of select news stories is part of a calculation to keep us all distracted from the real evil perpetrated by the criminal element in government.

[Ten*K]

T.G., you've done a commendable job keeping up the information flow. I almost wish I could go back to the blissful ignorance I had as a child. Between Fast & Murderous, Injustice Everywhere, and the deliberate slide to Marxism, it takes more and more effort to take a relaxing breath.

With a child on the way and a clear sense of patriotism, I now feel that fear so many have felt throughout human history: fight or submit. Fight and be ruined or killed... Submit and be brought to ruin and enslavement.

Well, if a man is to be damned, best to be damned for something he did, rather than something he failed to do. This is, at present, a war of information. We must stay single minded of purpose. Just know that we are (and have been for some time) declared enemies of the present powers that be... And it was they that declared all of us the enemy.

[twoguns]

Thanks for the kind comment. I can only say that I have done nothing more than share the information I have read. Sadly, the damn media is part of the problem and this is how we remain isolated and ignorant as a nation.

I have no doubt that I have made some .gov shit list. The way I look at it is that I have certainly passed the halfway mark in my life and I may as well raise hell about that which displeases me.

My Children are now adults and the greatest sense of achievement I have is to know I raised them to think for themselves and to always question the motivations of the state.

No one lives forever so we all may as well get involved in the fight to resist tyranny. Out of respect to those who came before us and permitted the "great experiment" to go forward and for our progeny so that they may one day have a chance to restore it.

Keep pushing and by any means RESIST!

[Cookster]

ok twoguns, what's the inside scoop in this story?. . .

Issa, Chaffetz confirm contempt plans for Holder over Fast and Furious

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012...t-and-furious/

Article Content:

House GOP leaders said Friday they are pursuing a plan to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and the Justice Department in contempt for “stonewalling” them over information regarding the administration’s failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking program.

GOP Rep. Darrell Issa confirmed to Fox News that House Speaker John Boehner gave him and others on his House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform the authority to drafted a contempt of Congress resolution.

“We have a few other options (but) to a great extent we’ve been stonewalled by the Justice Department,” said Issa, R-Calif.

The news of the document and the extended meeting in Boehner’s office was reported first by The Los Angeles Times.

“We have issued a subpoena,” Utah GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a member of the oversight committee, said earlier on Fox News. “We have bent over backwards to be patient and take time. (Holder) is leading us down a path where we have no other choice.”

The resolution, if approved by the GOP-led House, could force Holder to release thousands of pages of documents related to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ program.

Holder and other Justice Department officials say they are cooperating with Congress’ investigators.

The Fast and Furious program was run by the ATF’s Phoenix office from 2009 until early 2011. It allowed illegal gun purchases with the expectation of tracking the weapons to Mexican drug cartel leaders. However, hundreds of guns disappeared, with some eventually turning up at crime scenes in Mexico.

"The Justice Department has not fully cooperated with the investigation into gunwalking that occurred in Operation Fast and Furious.The House Oversight Committee continues to make necessary preparations to hold Attorney General Holder in contempt if the Justice Department refuses to change course and stop blocking access to critical documents," a House Oversight Committee spokesperson said. "While the committee continues to move toward consideration of contempt, it is important to note that the next step in the process of contempt must be made by the Oversight committee Reports, based on anonymous sources, that decisions for consideration of contempt on the House floor have already been made are inaccurate.”

Issa said investigator still want to know the names of those worked in the program.

Two were found where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot to death south of Tucson in December 2010.

A number of illegal straw purchasers have been indicted, and two others are charged in Terry's slaying, according to the Times.

Article END

[Ten*K]

I'll take this one.

You see, even in a case with such blatantly treasonous behavior by known individuals that directly resulted in the murders of hundreds to possibly thousands of people, Washington DC power elites won't so much as twitch a muscle unless it brings about a political advantage. We could have video of Holder delivering the guns personally while snacking on a baby fetus taco, but until it provides the maximum political leverage for dozens of other completely unrelated ends, Lady Justice will be blind, bound, gagged, and stuffed in a trunk in the basement.

Clear enough? And yes, it really is that simple.