By Jaime Ortega.
Official Report: The Fast and The Furious
On October 31, 2009, special agents working in the Phoenix office of theBureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) received information from a local gun store about the recent purchases of multiple AK-47 style rifles by four individuals. Agents began investigating the purchases and soon came to believe that the men were so-called “straw purchasers”involved in a large-scale gun trafficking organization responsible for buying guns for transport to violent Mexican drug trafficking organizations. This investigation was later named “Operation Fast and Furious.”
By the time ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona (U.S. Attorney’s Office) publicly announced the indictment in the case on January 25, 2011, agents had identified more than 40 subjects believed to be\connected to a trafficking conspiracy responsible for purchasing over 2,000 firearms for approximately $1.5 million in cash. The vast majority of the firearms purchased by Operation Fast and Furious subjects were AK-47 style rifles and FN Herstal 5.7 caliber pistols. During the course of the investigation, ATF agents seized only about 100 of the firearms purchased, the result of a strategy jointly pursued by ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office that deferred taking overt enforcement action against the individual straw purchasers while seeking to build a case against the leaders of the organization.
Numerous firearms bought by straw purchasers were later recovered by law enforcement officials at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States. One such recovery occurred in connection with the tragic shooting death of a federal law enforcement agent, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent Brian Terry. On January 16, 2010, one of the straw purchasers, Jaime Avila,purchased three AK-47 style rifles from a Phoenix-area gun store.
ATF agents learned about that purchase 3 days later and, consistent with the investigative strategy in the case, made no effort to locate Avila or seize the rifles although ATF had identified Avila as a suspect in November 2009. Two of the three rifles purchased by Avila on January 16 were recovered 11 months later at the scene of the murder of Agent Terry, who was shot and killed on December 14, 2010, as he tried to arrest persons believed to be illegally entering the United States.
The day after and in response to Agent Terry’s murder, ATF agents arrested Avila. Several weeks later, on January 19, 2011, the U.S. Attorney’s Office indicted 20 Operation Fast and Furious straw purchasers and gun traffickers. As of August 1, 2012, 14 defendants, including Avila, have entered guilty pleasto one or more counts of the indictment. Although the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was assigned to investigate the murder of Agent Terry, the senior leadership of ATF and the Department of Justice (Department or DOJ) took little action in the immediate aftermath of Agent Terry’s death to learn more about an ATF investigation that involved the trafficking of approximately 2,000 weapons over many months,and how guns purchased by a previously-identified subject of that investigation ended up being recovered at the scene of Agent Terry’s murder.
Shortly after Agent Terry’s death, stories began appearing on the Internet alleging that ATF had allowed firearms to “walk” to Mexico, and that one of those firearms may have been linked to the death of a federal law enforcement officer. The flaws in Operation Fast and Furious became widely publicized as aresult of the willingness of a few ATF agents to publicly report what they knew about it, and the conduct of the investigation became the subject of a Congressional inquiry. On January 27, 2011, Senator Charles E. Grassley wrote to ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson that the Senate Judiciary Committee had received allegations that ATF had “sanctioned the sale of hundreds of assault weapons to suspected straw purchasers,” who then transported the firearms throughout the southwest border area and into Mexico.
On February 4, 2011, the Department responded in writing by denying the allegations and asserting that “ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.” However, after examining how Operation Fast and Furious and other ATF firearms trafficking investigations were conducted, the Department withdrew the February 4 letter on December 2, 2011, because it contained inaccuracies.
Also on January 27, 2011, Senator Grassley’s staff brought the allegations of one ATF agent to the attention of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). We interviewed the agent and began a preliminary inquiry into the matter. On February 28, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder requested the OIG to conduct a review of Operation Fast and Furious, and we agreed to conduct the review. This report describes the results of the OIG’s review. During the course of our review we received information about other ATF firearms trafficking investigations that raised questions about how those 3 investigations were conducted. This report describes one of them, Operation Wide Receiver.
We plan to issue a separate report on at least one other ATF investigation that involves an individual suspected of transporting grenade components into Mexico, converting them into live grenades, and then supplying them to drug cartels. The OIG also is completing its investigation of an allegation that one or more Department employees provided to a member of the media a copy of a May 2010 undercover operation proposal drafted by one of the ATF agents who publicly testified about his concerns with the conduct of Operation Fast and Furious. Additionally, we are reviewing allegations that two ATF agents who publicly testified about their concerns regarding Operation Fast and Furious were reassigned to positions within ATF that could have subjected them to retaliation.
We also will continue to review information that has been provided to us to determine whether other reports are warranted on additional topics related to Operation Fast and Furious, such as information sharing among ATF, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the FBI regarding key figures in parallel investigations. I. Methodology of the Investigation The OIG’s review focused on ATF’s handling of Operations Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious. In addition, the OIG reviewed the Department’s knowledge about those cases, as well as the Department’s statements to Congress about them.
To review these issues, the OIG conducted interviews with more than 130 persons currently or previously employed by the Department, ATF, the DEA, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). We interviewed many of these witnesses on multiple occasions. We interviewed several senior officials in the Department, including Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Deputy Attorney General James Cole, Assistant Attorneys General Lanny A. Breuer and Ronald Weich, Chief of Staff and Counsel to the Attorney General and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler, and three of the five current or former Deputy Assistant Attorneys General (DAAG) who authorized the wiretap applications in Operations Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious.
2 In addition, we interviewed former U.S. Attorneys for the District of Arizona Dennis K. Burke and Paul Charlton, former Criminal Chiefs Patrick…..
For more on this report http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/2012/s1209.pdf
