ATF Death Watch 106: Accounts Payable

It’s easy enough to conclude that this series isn’t a death watch per se. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (and Really Big Fires) created a “guns for goons” program to help send firearms to Mexican drug cartels. But the ATF isn’t under the gun. Sure, the Obama Administration swapped-out the ATF’s Acting Director for another Acting Director, but neither Director acted against anyone involved with Operation Fast and Furious, Operation Castaway or the Grenadewalker kerfuffle. Why would they? The ATF’s firearms and explosives enablement programs were approved at the highest levels. So who should we hold accountable for helping to arm the drug thugs that murdered of dozens of Mexicans and two U.S. federal law enforcement agents? I know! Let’s ask the President!

[ABC DOJ reporter Jake] Tapper: Just to change the subject from the economy, the “Fast and Furious” controversy. Aside from some of the more wild charges out there, this is a big scandal. The Justice Department, the ATF was moving guns and some of them were tied to crime scenes. what was your response when you first heard about it?

Obama: Well I heard about it from the news reports. This is not something we were aware of in the White House and the Attorney General it turns out wasn’t aware of either. Obviously Eric Holder has launched a full investigation of this, it is not acceptable for us to allow guns to go into Mexico. Our whole goal has been to interdict aggressively in the flow of weapons and cash flowing south into Mexico because the Mexican president, President Calderon, has done a heroic job of trying to take on these transnational drug cartels. So this investigation will be complete, people who have screwed up will be held accountable but our overarching goal consistently has been to say we’ve got a responsibility not only to stop drugs from flowing north, we’ve also got a responsibility to make sure we are not helping to either arm or finance these drug cartels in Mexico. So it’s very upsetting to me to think that somebody showed such bad judgment that they would allow something like that to happen and we will find out who and what happened in this situation and make sure it gets corrected.

So what, exactly, is President Obama waiting for?

If we are to believe the Commander-in-Chief’s assertion that he first caught wind of Operation Fast and Furious via the mainstream media—a leap of faith greater than anything Erich von Däniken asked his readers to attempt—his pressing desire to root out the people who displayed “bad judgement” in this affair makes continental drift look like something Jack Baruth would do with a Shelby Mustang.

Let’s be clear: U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered by Mexicans using two or more F&F firearms on December 15, 2010.

Spot the Prez the rest of the month. The “investigation” into the firearms (and explosives) fiasco has now gone on for ten months—the same amount of time Fast and Furious was active. Clearly, the Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) enquiry into the ATF’s gun running is a White House whitewash.

If you need more evidence that the OIG’s F&F report is—I mean will be DOA, consider the previous revelation that the DOJ’s toothless rottweiler shared evidence with the Phoenix U.S. Attorney’s office (deeply implicated in the scandal). Earlier today, The Sipsey Street Irregulars pissed all over the Administration’s “internal investigation.”

As a token of how fundamentally unserious the OIG investigation is, they have failed to interview key witnesses such as former ATF Mexico City attache Darren Gil, who was first mentioned in the these pages back in January and who since has given interviews to the media, including CBS, and testified before Congress. When I first heard this I was incredulous, but have since verified it.

If the OIG “investigation” has not talked to key witnesses such as Darren Gil, they are uninterested in actually investigating anything. The investigation is, indeed, a “total sham.”

Which leaves us where? Waiting for Representative Issa’s House Oversight Committee to kick ass and take names. It’s ironic that the man who campaigned on transparency and integrity doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about either. But pay no attention to the man telling you to pay no attention to the president behind the curtain. It’s the ATF that needs to go.

I know: the “somebody” who showed bad judgement in all of this was President Obama. Even if he’s simply responsible for hiring the guy who supervised the guys who gave the guns to goons who fought other goons that needed fighting to stop the second group of goons from taking over Mexico. But I reckon Obama’s presidency is doomed anyway. And his minions won’t be doing that shit again.

It’s the ATF that needs elimination. (It’s a shame that Presidential candidate Ron Paul didn’t add the ATF to his list of federal agencies that would be better off dead.) The Bureau has a long, ignoble history of subverting the rule of law in pursuit of shameless self-aggrandizement. They rely almost exclusively on entrapment to inflate the illusion of effectiveness. They are an unaccountable, unacceptable presence in a country that cherishes its legal system in general and the Second Amendment in specific.

If the Gunwalker scandal leaves the ATF intact, justice will not be served. While the natural human tendency is to focus on the individuals at the top who authorized this hot mess, it’s the ATF that did the dirty. Americans should demand that Congress pull the plug on the ATF ASAP, to stop enabling the organization that enables bad guys and tramples on our freedoms. Ipso facto.