A White House 'Gunrunner'?

[lostinblue 1,989]

A White House 'Gunrunner'?

The Law: Operation Gunwalker, the rogue ATF operation to arm Mexico's cartels, extends now to three White House officials. A bell goes off with the one named Dan Restrepo.

Late last Friday, CBS News and the Los Angeles Times almost buried the news that Restrepo, the National Security Council's top man for Latin America, and two other officials, were in on ATF memos from the Gunwalker operation called "Fast and Furious."

That blows apart White House claims that it had no idea the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was encouraging frontmen for Mexico's cartels to buy weapons from U.S. gun dealers — to "trace" them afterward.

Some 2,000 U.S. guns were sold in Gunwalker but simply disappeared — until they turned up at massacres in Mexico and at the murder scenes of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata.

But outgoing ATF acting director Ken Melson and others who've been the fall guys in this scandal darkly hint that their orders came from the White House, and domestic critics think Gunwalker can only be explained as a White House bid to boost support for gun control. Restrepo's involvement distinctly raises both possibilities.

Restrepo is a political operative whose interests are more domestic than Latin American. As a result, he's botched every Latin American operation he's had his hand in, appeasing enemies and blaming the U.S.:

• Honduras: In 2009, Restrepo was behind a U.S. bid to swiftly declare Honduras' constitutional ouster of its president "a coup" and sanctioned the country, playing into the hands of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who had attempted to make Honduras a colony.

• Cuba: Restrepo was behind loosening sanctions on Castro's Cuba, which has emboldened the regime to act against Americans. While Castro imprisoned Alan Gross, a U.S. contractor who was distributing satellite phones to dissidents, the Obama administration said nothing.

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Subscribe through iTunes• Colombia: Its troops captured drug "kingpin of kingpins" Walid Makled, who had extensive knowledge of Venezuelan official involvement in trafficking. U.S. attorneys wanted him extradited, but Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos said President Obama never asked. When IBD asked Restrepo whether he advised Obama to ask, Restrepo defensively said he did. But that's at odds with what Santos said.

• Venezuela: Treasury Department officials complained Restrepo kept names of high-ranking Venezuelan officials with ties to drug dealers off its "Kingpin List," in a naive effort to keep pressure off Chavez.

• Now Restrepo tries to pin Mexico's drug war not on Hugo Chavez's trafficker allies, but on gun dealers from the U.S.

There's little doubt that's his line, because blaming U.S. gun dealers and calling for a U.S. assault weapon ban were his ideas from his days spent at the Center for American Progress, an Obama-linked think tank.

The U.S. "will work to inhibit the flow of weapons ... across our border," Restrepo told Mexican media.

Meanwhile, when Obama met with Mexico's President Felipe Calderon, both erroneously declared that U.S. weapons fueled Mexico's drug war — on Restrepo's advice.

Blogger Mike Vanderbroegh thinks that if Restrepo wasn't the author of Gunwalker he'd know who is and should be called to tell Congress. Either he's kept Obama in the dark about Gunwalker, or Obama should be impeached.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/584023/201109071801/A-White-House-Gunrunner-.htm

[bigdog 377]

OB will walk, LE knew about this forever, press held it back from public.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

The press has lost a lot of respect imo. They are like an arm of the government anymore. It's like something out of the Soviet Bloc circa 1972.

[slim 1,533]

I'm shocked this wasn't breaking news on every major news network.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

I'm shocked this wasn't breaking news on every major news network.

sarcasm?

Because I'm not shocked at all. This media has had its mouth around this White House's %**%# since Obama announced he was running for President in '07.

[lostinblue 1,989]

A third gun linked to "Operation Fast and Furious" was found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, new documents obtained exclusively by Fox News suggest, contradicting earlier assertions by federal agencies that police found only two weapons tied to the federal government's now infamous gun interdiction scandal.

Sources say emails support their contention that the FBI concealed evidence to protect a confidential informant. Sources close to the Terry case say the FBI informant works inside a major Mexican cartel and provided the money to obtain the weapons used to kill Terry.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/09/exclusive-third-gun-linked-to-fast-and-furious-identified-at-border-agents/#ixzz1XaKuVDtd

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Should someone be surprised?

The stunts of former Democratic gun-banning-fanatic Bill Clinton at Ruby Ridge and Waco are proof enough that Dems and anti-civil-rights people will lay down others lives to get their goal or get ammunition for their goal. Funny how Hillary shuts up about the whole "America as a source of guns for drug dealers" thing and where is Calderon now? He was pleading with our congress to do something to restrict civil rights until it was found out the government was providing the guns.

All that made news on CNN and MSNBC. Why haven't they covered this? It has been going on for months and they simply ignore that Obama's administration GAVE guns to violent people for the purpose of killing people and then having an excuse for new ways to restrict our rights. Sickos.

If you support restrictions on our civil rights, THIS is what you support.

[Pooky 3,850]

This isn't going to end with 3 people being "reassigned".

Not even close.

[lostinblue 1,989]

2nd Arizona crime scene yields guns from ATF sting

PHOENIX (AP) — Guns tied to a botched federal weapons-smuggling investigation have been recovered at a second Arizona crime scene, according to federal and state authorities.

The Arizona Republic (http://bit.ly/oB98j1) reported Saturday that two guns were found in the back of a stolen car in Maricopa last year that had rammed two Arizona Department of Public Safety vehicles.

Federal agents contacted the DPS this week and said a trace of the guns revealed they were part of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sting in 2009 that inadvertently put hundreds of weapons bought at Arizona gun stores into the hands of Mexican criminals.

The probe was known as Operation Fast and Furious.

Two guns also were recovered at a December shootout in Rio Rico, where a Border Patrol agent was fatally shot.

A congressional investigation of the program has turned up evidence that ATF lost track of many of the more than 2,000 guns linked to the operation. Attorney General Eric Holder requested the inquiry now being conducted by the Inspector General's office at the Justice Department.

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has asked the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for a hearing as soon as possible on Operation Fast and Furious.

McCain, a member of the committee, wrote in a letter that the panel must "ensure further damage from this operation does not persist."

According to an investigative report compiled for two congressional committees investigating the operation, 122 weapons have been recovered at 48 crime scenes in Mexico.

In addition, an unspecified number of weapons tied to Fast and Furious were recovered earlier this year when Mexican authorities raided a compound in Michoacan state to arrest members of La Familia cartel.

The joint report for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Senate Committee on the Judiciary also details how guns from the ATF operation were used in the kidnapping and murder of a Mexican official's brother.

It is unclear how many guns from Arizona made it to Mexico. Operation Fast and Furious was part of a multiagency federal drug-enforcement task force to trace weapon sales made to straw buyers working for Mexican cartels.

Three Phoenix ATF agents told Congress that instead of interdicting the straw buyers, they were ordered to monitor sales and track the weapons up the cartel-leadership chain.

Agents said that as many as 1,800 guns were sold and as many as two-thirds were smuggled into Mexico after they lost track of them. The goal of the operation was to use wiretaps on the straw buyers to snare high-ranking cartel members.

Arizona DPS officials said the Maricopa incident took place in March 2010 when officers with the Motor Vehicle Theft Task Force attempted to stop a truck with two Mexican citizens inside.

The driver refused to stop, and officers used their vehicles to block the road. Inside the car, officers recovered a pistol and an AK-47-type rifle.

"It was found, after the fact, that the guns were part of Operation Fast and Furious," said DPS spokesman Bart Graves, adding that the weapons had little to do with the actual incident.

___

Information from: The Arizona Republic, http://www.azcentral.com

http://news.yahoo.com/2nd-arizona-crime-scene-yields-guns-atf-sting-193514788.html