Fast and Furious: Justice Department report faults 14 officials

Borderland Beat

Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr.

WASHINGTON -- Nearly two years after a U.S. Border Patrol agent was shot and killed in southern Arizona, the Department of Justice's Inspector General will issue its report into the ATF’s Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation, which allowed illegal firearms to circulate among criminals on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The report, scheduled to be released at 2 p.m., was called for by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. after mounting criticism that the Department of Justice and federal ATF agents in Phoenix and supervisors in Washington ran the Fast and Furious operation for more than a year without appropriate supervision.

The program was not shut down until two months after Agent Brian Terry was killed in December 2010. At that point, whistle blowers went public with assertions that ATF had hoped to track firearms to Mexican cartel leaders but instead lost about 2,000 weapons. Some were recovered at violent crime scenes in Mexico and in the hands of illegal gun-smugglers in this country.

Agent Brian Terry

The report -- the first independent review of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and its Fast Furious operation – sets the stage for Holder and the Obama administration to decide whether individual agents and supervisors should be punished, and on a larger scale how best to restore confidence in the long-troubled ATF.

Also likely to be disclosed is how deeply Justice Department officials were involved in overseeing Fast and Furious, especially since several top officials approved wiretap applications for the program.

Terry was killed by Mexican bandits in a confrontation south of Tucson, and two fast and Furious weapons were later recovered at the scene of his death.

President Calderon's emphatic statement made from  guns 

WASHINGTON -- Fourteen federal law enforcement officials -- from field agents in Arizona to top managers in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Justice Department in Washington -- created a "significant danger to public safety" under Operation Fast and Furious, an investigative report found.

Those officials still employed were referred for possible job discipline for carrying out the gun-trafficking operation that saturated the Southwest border with more than 2,000 illegally purchased firearms.

Less than an hour after the findings were announced Wednesday by the Justice Department inspector general's office, two of the individuals -- Kenneth Melson, the former head of the ATF, and Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Jacob Weinstein -- announced they were stepping down.

DOCUMENT: Read the full report

The 18-month investigation, the only independent review of Fast and Furious, concluded that Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. had no prior knowledge of operation, a position he has long held despite intense criticism from Republican lawmakers who earlier voted him in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over some Justice Department documents regarding Fast and Furious.

The inspector general's office also determined that ATF agents and federal prosecutors had enough evidence to arrest and charge Jaime Avila, a Phoenix gun smuggler, months before U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in December 2010. Two of the Fast and Furious weapons Avila illegally purchased were recovered at the scene of that slaying.

Fast and Furious -- in which officials permitted illegal gun purchases hoping they could track the weapons to top Mexican drug cartel leaders -- was a "risky strategy," implemented by ATF and the U.S. attorney's office without adequate regard for the risk it posed to "public safety in the United States and Mexico," said Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz.

Holder said the job performance of the officials criticized in the report would be reviewed with the "consideration of potential personnel actions." He declined to elaborate, citing privacy restrictions.

FULL COVERAGE: Fast and Furious

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