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Owner59 -> Gun-walking....republican version of fast & furious... (10/14/2011 5:51:41 PM)
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Hmmmmmmm........hmmmmmm......hmmmmmm......
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/14/fast-and-furious-bush-administration_n_1011305.html
A second Bush administration gun-trafficking investigation has surfaced using the same controversial tactic for which congressional Republicans have been criticizing the Obama administration.
The tactic, called "gun walking," is already under investigation by the Justice Department's inspector general and by congressional Republicans, who have criticized the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama for letting it happen in an operation called "Fast and Furious".
Emails obtained by The Associated Press show how in a 2007 investigation in Phoenix, agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – depending on Mexican authorities to follow up – let guns "walk" across the border in an effort to identify higher-ups in gun networks. Justice Department policy has long required that illicit arms shipments be intercepted whenever possible.
The 2007 probe operated out of the same ATF office that more recently ran the flawed Operation Fast and Furious. Both probes resulted in weapons disappearing across the border into Mexico, according to the emails. The 2007 probe was relatively small – involving over 200 weapons, just a dozen of which ended up in Mexico as a result of gun-walking. Fast and Furious involved over 2,000 weapons, some 1,400 of which have not been recovered and an unknown number of which wound up in Mexico.
Earlier this month, it was disclosed that the gun-walking tactic didn't begin under Obama, but was also used in 2006 under his predecessor, George W. Bush. The probe, Operation Wide Receiver, was carried out by ATF's Tucson, Ariz., office and resulted in hundreds of guns being transferred to suspected arms traffickers.
The older gun-walking cases now coming to light from the Bush administration illustrate how ATF – particularly its Phoenix field division, encompassing Tucson, Ariz., as well as Phoenix – has struggled for years to counter criticism that its normal seize-and-arrest tactics never caught any trafficking kingpins and were little more than a minor irritant that didn't keep U.S. guns out of the hands of Mexican gangs.
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