The latest
congressional report
on Operation Fast and Furious found that the
gunwalking-program-turned-scandal was the result of a “deliberate
strategy created at the highest levels of the Justice Department aimed
at identifying the leaders of a major gun trafficking ring.”
The report is the second installment in a three-part series from
Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Sen. Chuck Grassley and House
oversight committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa.
That “deliberate strategy,” congressional investigators argue, sprang
from “a series of speeches about combating violence along the Southwest
border” that Attorney General Eric Holder delivered shortly after
taking office.
“Although [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives]
ATF did not officially open the Fast and Furious investigation until the
fall of 2009, the groundwork for the strategy that would guide the
operation began shortly after new leadership took control of the
Department of Justice nine months earlier,” the report reads. “On
February 25, 2009, just one month after Attorney General Eric Holder
took office, he gave a speech noting the danger of the Mexican drug
cartels, focusing on the Sinaloa cartel in particular.”
On Feb. 25, 2009, Holder said the drug cartels “are lucrative, they
are violent, and they are operated with stunning planning and precision”
and, under his leadership, he promised “these cartels will be
destroyed.”
A little more than a month later, on April 2, 2009 in Cuernavaca,
Mexico, congressional investigators say Holder “gave further insight
into the department’s new strategy for combating these dangerous
cartels.”
“He spoke about the development of a prosecution and enforcement
strategy with respect to firearms trafficking, noting that the
‘administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the
cartels,’” the report reads. “In particular, the attorney general said
that the Justice Department was committed to adding ‘100 new ATF
personnel to the Southwest Border’ and that Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) would add ‘16 new positions on the border.’ Most
importantly, the attorney general noted that there must be ‘an attack in
depth, on both sides of the border, that focuses on the leadership and
assets of the cartel.’”
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