Officials Under Fire In Hunt For 'Fast And Furious' Blame

By Adrianna McGinley

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism questioned federal officials today about Operation “Fast and Furious,” and what measures should be enacted to prevent guns from “walking” into the hands of criminals in the future.

The program was carried out last year by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and involved allowing guns to be obtained in the U.S. by straw-purchasers who then sold them across the southern border to members of dangerous drug cartels. ATF agents were supposed to track the weapons to find out where they ended up, but several hundred went missing.

The mishaps of “Fast and Furious” were eventually exposed by a whistleblower at ATF after it was discovered that one of the guns that was allowed to “walk” into Mexico was used to kill a Border Patrol agent in Arizona last December.

At today’s hearing, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) hounded Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General of the DOJ Criminal Division, about Breuer’s self proclaimed “mistake” of not informing top officials of the connection between Fast and Furious and the 2006-07 gun-walking operation Wide Receiver, which was commissioned under the Bush administration.

“I regret the fact that in April of 2010 I did not [inform Attorney General Holder or Deputy Attorney General Cole],” Breuer said. “At the time I thought that dealing with the leadership of ATF was sufficient and reasonable.”

He criticized the fact that ATF “failed” to stop weapons that they had “both the ability to interdict and the legal authority to interdict.”

Grassley, who serves as the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, has co-led Congress’ investigation into the program along with House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) criticized the “hunt for blame” surrounding Fast and Furious and called for a focus on the root problem: domestic gun laws that allow “anybody [to] walk in and buy anything”.

“I’ve been here 18 years, I’ve watched the BATF get beaten up at every turn of the road and candidly, it’s just not right,” Feinstein said. “We have more guns in this country than we have people and somebody’s got to come to the realization that when these guns go to the wrong places scores of deaths result.”

Breuer said that of the approximately 94,000 weapons recovered in the last five years in Mexico, 64,000 of them have been traced to the U.S. He added that the number one tool to stop gun trafficking would be the authority to forfeit the weapons of dealers who knowingly sell to criminals.

“It is clear that we need more tools to get those people who are buying the guns and illegally transporting them to Mexico,” Breuer said. “We cannot permit the guns to go knowingly and we cannot permit the guns to go unknowingly. We need to stop the flow.”

Breuer emphasized that few law-abiding citizens are looking to buy semi-automatic weapons, and the lack of a requirement to notify ATF when such weapons are bought is a large part of the problem.

“Information is the tool we need to challenge and defeat organized crime. We are not even permitted to have ATF receive reports about multiple sales of long-guns, of any kind of semi-automatic weapon or the like.”

Other officials from the Departments of Justice (DOJ), Homeland Security (DHS) and Treasury also appeared before the subcommittee.