Fast And Furious Whitewash: Holder Exonerated

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/092012-626507-doj-fast-and-furious-report-exonerates-holder.htm

Scandal: The report our attorney general used to justify withholding evidence of who was responsible for the administration program that led to the deaths of two U.S. agents is out. It delivers more scapegoats than answers.

The release by the Department of Justice's inspector general of a 400-page report on the administration's gun-walking operation, Fast and Furious, is no big surprise.

As Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) Committee, Fast and Furious represented a "pattern of serious failures" by various agencies.

But he let the buck stop short of where it belongs — Attorney General Eric Holder's desk.

Horowitz mysteriously chose to lump Fast and Furious, as Team Obama does, with a Bush-era program, Wide Receiver. That operation was run out of Tucson between 2006 and 2007, ending before Bush left office and before Fast and Furious began in 2009.

Both Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious were part of a bigger effort called Project Gunrunner, which began in 2006. Even so, the differences between the two are vast, starting with the fact that Wide Receiver produced no dead bodies. It was run in close cooperation with Mexican authorities, as Fast and Furious wasn't, and involved gun-tracing and not gun-walking.

The report was repeatedly invoked by Holder as a reason for withholding answers and documents on Fast and Furious from OGR Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Along with Sen. Charles Grassley, D-Iowa, Issa led the investigation of the operation that saw Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and ICE Agent Jaime Zapata murdered with guns supplied by the program. Holder, held in contempt by the House, still isn't very forthcoming.

Subscribe to the IBD Editorials Podcast The report incredibly found "no evidence ... (Holder) was informed about Operation Fast and Furious, or learned about the tactics employed by ATF in the investigation." But Holder's own statements contradict that.

So scapegoats had to be found, and the report cites 14 other department employees for potential wrongdoing and recommends Justice consider disciplinary action.

Jason Weinstein, the deputy assistant attorney general for the criminal division, is resigning after the report essentially concluded he was the one best positioned to stop Fast and Furious. That's false — Eric Holder was.

As early as Oct. 22, 2010, before agent Terry's murder, a DOJ official sent Holder a memo saying: "It's not going to be a big surprise that a bunch of U.S. guns are being used in (Mexico), so I'm not sure how much grief we get for 'guns walking.'" Holder said he didn't recall the memo.

Nor does he probably recall a speech he gave to Mexican authorities in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 2, 2009, taking credit for Gunrunner as well as Fast and Furious for himself and the Obama administration.

Holder told the audience: "Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels...(and) to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner."

It's important to note that Gunrunner and Fast and Furious both ran guns to Mexican cartels under the DOJ umbrella and the chains of command all led to Holder.

The report doesn't contain the answers the Terry and Zapata families, or the American people, were looking for. But it does show that either Holder is culpable or incompetent. And either way, he should be fired.