False denials the Justice Department sent to Congress about the Fast and Furious gunrunning investigation came from top officials at the U.S. Attorney?s Office in Arizona and at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, documents released Friday by the Obama administration show.
The 1,364 pages of documents and emails turned over to Congressional investigators detail the Justice Department?s robust internal deliberations leading up to a February 4, 2011 letter in which the department assured the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, that claims a whistleblower was making about the Fast and Furious investigation were false.
Continue Reading?ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that were purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico,? the February letter from Justice Department legislative affairs chief Ron Weich to Grassley said. The letter also asserted that an ?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.?
The second denial related to startling, emerging claims that weapons ATF lost control of in the Fast and Furious operation wound up at the scene of the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, in Arizona last December.
Terry?s death has fueled much of the public controversy over and Congressional interest in Fast and Furious, which investigators say allowed as many as 1200 weapons to make their way from the U.S. across the border to Mexican drug cartels.
The operation, which Attorney General Eric Holder has called ?flawed in concept, as well as in execution,? has prompted investigations by three Congressional committees and has led to calls from more than 50 Republican members of Congress for Holder?s resignation. The Friday afternoon document dump came in advance of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing next Thursday where Holder is expected to face extensive and intense questioning.
Holder has contended that the operation violated Justice Department policy, but that he was unaware until the controversy erupted earlier this year that Fast and Furious had used the controversial technique of ?gunwalking.?
?The tactic of allowing guns to ?walk,? as was permitted in Operation Fast and Furious, is completely unacceptable,? Holder said in a letter last month expressing his sorrow to Terry?s family.
Top Justice Department officials, including Holder, have acknowledged in Congressional testimony in recent months that the February letter was wrong in some respects. In a letter to Congress on Friday, Deputy Attorney General James Cole formally withdrew the February response and sought to explain the misstatements ? to a degree.
?Facts have come to light during the course of this investigation that indicate the February 4 letter contains inaccuracies,? Cole wrote. ?Department personnel?relied on information provided by supervisors from the components in the best position to know the relevant facts: ATF and the U.S. Attorney?s Office in Arizona?Information provided by those supervisors was inaccurate. We understand that, in transcribed interviews with congressional investigators, the supervisors have said that they did not know at the time the letter was drafted that information they provided was inaccurate.?
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