he story has been percolating a while, but still not getting the attention it deserves. Why are federal agents running guns to Mexican drug cartels at war with Mexico? There is not really an easy answer.
CBS News has been ahead of the rest of the media in covering a brewing scandal within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Leaving out the partisan issues related to President Obama’s political appointees and their knowledge of the scandal, the ATF’s conduct appears reprehensible.
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Operation Gun Walker, or “Fast and Furious,” started with pure motives. Mexico is in a civil war. The government is outwitted and out-armed by drug cartels engaged in ruthless violence. The cartels are buying off police and soldiers, savagely murdering those who cannot be bought off, and engaging in a kidnapping and extortion racket to supplement their drug sales.
The ATF decided to paint a picture of the drug cartels operations in hopes of shutting down the cartels. Gun stores along the Mexican border in California and Arizona had their computers rigged by the ATF to approve gun sales. It is a routine experience for buying guns these days. You hand over your identification, fill out a form, it gets processed by a computer, and you get to buy a gun. The ATF ensured that the Mexican gun runners would have their guns approved for sale. The serial numbers would be traced as the guns were smuggled across the Mexican border. By tracing the guns, the ATF could see how the cartels operated throughout Mexico.
In just a few months, more than 200 murders in Mexico have been linked to Operation Gun Walker weapons. An American border patrol agent is dead because of one of the guns. An American family is dead because of one of the guns.
We never told the Mexican government what we were doing.
Now new data is trickling out from CBS News and other sources. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, was the first American legislator to raise a red flag on this issue. With the cooperation of Sen. Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, Grassley, in the minority in the Senate, has conducted an investigation. ATF agents have been leaking information to Grassley. Many of the ATF’s agents are as horrified as we should be.
The findings are staggering.
In March 2010, Mexican gunrunners purchased 359 guns in the Unied States. In that same month 958 people were killed in Mexico in the war — the bloodiest month since 2005.
Undercover video has turned up now. The top agent on the program is overheard telling a gun store salesman who knew of the operation that the agent had suggested to her superiors that they hire a private investigator to dig up dirt on Grassley to encourage him to shut down his investigation.
The agent refers to the murdered border patrol agent as “collateral damage.” More troubling, the Justice Department has begun an investigation of the United States Attorney’s Office in Arizona because of the program. But one part of the department seemingly does not know about the other part of the department so evidence in the ongoing investigation was sent to the United States Attorney in Arizona for review — evidence that could be used in any prosecutions of that office.
Congressman Darryl Issa has joined Grassley in the investigation. The scandal has gotten little attention yet, but that is only because there have been so many other pressing issues. We will soon be hearing much more.
Erick Erickson is a CNN contributor and radio talk show host in Atlanta.
