megimoo
09-02-2011, 04:28 PM
The Gun Walker investigative team of Rep. Darrell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley announced yesterday that their probe into this almost unbelievable scandal will be growing wider. ......They’ve got evidence of a cover-up at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to pursue, as reported by CBS News – which deserves kudos for being the mainstream news organized most determined to get to the bottom of this story:
Congressional investigators tell CBS News there's evidence the U.S. Attorney's office in Arizona sought to cover up a link between their controversial gunwalking operation known as "Fast and Furious" and the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
Terry was murdered in Arizona near the US border last December. Two assault rifles ATF had allegedly allowed onto the street without interdiction were found at the scene.
But the US Attorney's office working both the Terry murder and the "Fast and Furious" operation did not immediately disclose the two had any link. Two Republicans investigating the scandal, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) say there's evidence that officials at ATF and the US Attorney's office sought to hide the connection.
In a letter, Grassley and Issa say the lead prosecutor on Fast and Furious, Assistant US Attorney Emory Hurley, learned almost immediately that guns allowed onto the street in his case, had been recovered at Terry's murder. "(I)n the hours after Agent Terry's death," says the letter from Grassley and Issa, Hurley apparently "contemplated the connection between the two cases and sought to prevent the connection from being disclosed." The Justice Department recently transferred Hurley out of the criminal division into the civil division.
That’s not all Hurley did, according to the letter from Issa and Grassley:
Witnesses have reported that AUSA Hurley may have stifled ATF agents’ attempts to interdict weapons on numerous occasions. Many ATF agents working on Operation Fast and Furious were under the impression that even some of the most basic law enforcement techniques typically used to interdict weapons required the explicit approval of your office, specifically from AUSA Hurley. It is our understanding that this approval was withheld on numerous occasions. It is unclear why all the available tools, such as civil forfeitures and seizure warrants, were not used in this case to prevent illegally purchased guns from being trafficked to Mexican drug cartels and other criminals. We have further been informed that AUSA Hurley improperly instructed ATF agents that they needed to meet unnecessarily strict evidentiary standards merely in order to temporarily detain or speak with suspects.
Issa and Grassley describe U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke’s refusal to grant crime victim status to the family of slain Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, in the trial of Gun Walker straw buyer Jaime Avila, as “disquieting.” Such status would be granted to people like the Terry family as a matter of routine in any other case… but in this particular case, it would constitute the official admission of a crime that would suck in a lot of alphabet-soup federal agencies.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=45940
Congressional investigators tell CBS News there's evidence the U.S. Attorney's office in Arizona sought to cover up a link between their controversial gunwalking operation known as "Fast and Furious" and the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
Terry was murdered in Arizona near the US border last December. Two assault rifles ATF had allegedly allowed onto the street without interdiction were found at the scene.
But the US Attorney's office working both the Terry murder and the "Fast and Furious" operation did not immediately disclose the two had any link. Two Republicans investigating the scandal, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) say there's evidence that officials at ATF and the US Attorney's office sought to hide the connection.
In a letter, Grassley and Issa say the lead prosecutor on Fast and Furious, Assistant US Attorney Emory Hurley, learned almost immediately that guns allowed onto the street in his case, had been recovered at Terry's murder. "(I)n the hours after Agent Terry's death," says the letter from Grassley and Issa, Hurley apparently "contemplated the connection between the two cases and sought to prevent the connection from being disclosed." The Justice Department recently transferred Hurley out of the criminal division into the civil division.
That’s not all Hurley did, according to the letter from Issa and Grassley:
Witnesses have reported that AUSA Hurley may have stifled ATF agents’ attempts to interdict weapons on numerous occasions. Many ATF agents working on Operation Fast and Furious were under the impression that even some of the most basic law enforcement techniques typically used to interdict weapons required the explicit approval of your office, specifically from AUSA Hurley. It is our understanding that this approval was withheld on numerous occasions. It is unclear why all the available tools, such as civil forfeitures and seizure warrants, were not used in this case to prevent illegally purchased guns from being trafficked to Mexican drug cartels and other criminals. We have further been informed that AUSA Hurley improperly instructed ATF agents that they needed to meet unnecessarily strict evidentiary standards merely in order to temporarily detain or speak with suspects.
Issa and Grassley describe U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke’s refusal to grant crime victim status to the family of slain Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, in the trial of Gun Walker straw buyer Jaime Avila, as “disquieting.” Such status would be granted to people like the Terry family as a matter of routine in any other case… but in this particular case, it would constitute the official admission of a crime that would suck in a lot of alphabet-soup federal agencies.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=45940