Saturday, September 22, 2012

Obama’s Univision denial that Fast and Furious started on his watch

“I think it’s important for us to understand that the Fast and Furious program was a field-initiated program begun under the previous administration. When Eric Holder found out about it, he discontinued it. We assigned a inspector general to do a thorough report that was just issued, confirming that in fact Eric Holder did not know about this, that he took prompt action and the people who did initiate this were held accountable.”
— President Obama during Univision interview, Sept. 20, 2012
President Obama on Thursday fielded some tough questions from Hispanic journalists and voters during a forum hosted by the Spanish-language television network Univision. Host Jorge Ramos asked Obama whether U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. should be fired over Fast and Furious, a so-called “gun-walking”operation that allowed firearms to be transferred to suspected arms traffickers — and two guns purchased by a suspect in the Fast and Furious operation were found at a crime scene where a Border Patrol agent was killed.
Obama said the previous administration initiated Fast and Furious and that Holder shut the program down after he found out about it. Let’s check the first part of that statement for veracity.
The Facts
White House spokesman Eric Schultz said the president’s Fast and Furious comments referred “to the flawed tactic of gun-walking, which despite Republicans efforts to politicize this issue, began under the previous administration.”
So Obama was supposedly talking about “Operation Wide Receiver,” which the Phoenix division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ran between 2006 and 2007, during the George W. Bush administration.
The ATF used that program to build a dossier against suspected traffickers, but federal authorities didn’t indict anyone until after the Justice department’s gang unit accepted the case for prosecution in September 2009 — after Obama took office.
Roughly one month after the Justice Department decided to press forward with that prosecution, the ATF’s Phoenix division launched Fast and Furious, again using gun-walking tactics. The program was similar to Wide Receiver, but it grew to involve significantly more firearms: 2,000.
The public learned about program after authorities linked two guns bought by a suspect in the Fast and Furious operation to the slaying of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. His death turned the gun-tracking program into a politically toxic matter.
Holder said he didn’t know about Fast and Furious before Terry was killed on Dec. 14, 2010 in southern Arizona. An 18-month independent investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general found no evidence to the contrary, according to a report released Wednesday.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-univision-denial-that-fast-and-furious-started-on-his-watch/2012/09/21/7726b4ba-041f-11e2-8102-ebee9c66e190_blog.html?hpid=z3

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