A DRUG-WAR PLAN GOES AWRY

Frustrated ATF Agents Testify That Their Bureau's 'Operation Fast And
Furious' Let Weapons Get Into The Hands Of Mexican Drug Cartels.

One of the frightening things about the U.S. government's war on drugs
is that it is being waged by federal bureaucracies. The legend of
Elliot Ness notwithstanding, this implies that it is not only fraught
with ineptitude but that before it is all over, there are going to be
a lot of avoidable deaths.

Witness "Operation Fast and Furious," a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms plan that allegedly facilitated the flow of high-powered
weapons into Mexico in the hope that it might lead to the take-down of
a major cartel. It did not. But it may have fueled a spike in the
murder rate and led to the death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian
Terry.

ATF agents are trained to tail buyers of multiple high-powered weapons
and find out what they do with them. Fast and Furious broke with this
practice, according to a 51-page joint staff report released Wednesday
by Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R.,
Iowa). It cites ATF agents who testified that the plan was to let the
buyers disappear, to later recover the weapons at crime scenes, and
then to use the serial numbers to identify where they came from. This
was supposed to lead to the arrest of not only the Arizona "straw"
buyer who had made the purchase for the capos, but to the bust of the
big players in drug-trafficking organizations.

The ATF told me that it "can not comment on any of the allegations
brought by the Issa-Grassley oversight committee" due to an ongoing
investigation, and the Department of Justice did not return a request
for comment. But as described in the report, the idea had two major
flaws. First, it assumed that it didn't matter who got murdered with
those weapons before they were recovered. Second, it was built on the
theory that the operation could haul in the big fish. According to the
report, the feds were wrong on both counts.

For the local gun merchants who cooperated with the feds and for some
of the ATF agents in Arizona, the plan was dubious from the start. An
estimated 2,000 of these guns disappeared over the 14-month period of
Fast and Furious, and the agents who testified said that this
contradicted everything they had learned about never letting a gun
"walk"-that is, be taken by a suspicious purchaser without following
him and finding out where it went.

One agent described his frustration: "Every day being out here
watching a guy go into the same gun store buying another 15 or 20
AK-47s or variants or . . . five or tenDraco pistols or FN Five-seveNs
. . . guys that don't have a job, and he is walking in here spending
$27,000 for three Barrett .50 calibers . . . and you are sitting there
every day and you can't do anything." Agents say that their concerns,
expressed to supervisors, were rebuffed. There was even a threat of
dismissal if they didn't get with the program.

At the same time, violence was spiking in Mexico. In an email dated
April 2, 2010, the group's supervisor reported that in the month of
March "our subjects" had purchased 359 firearms and that 958 people
were killed in Mexico in drug violence. It was the bloodiest month
since 2005 and included 11 policemen in the state of Sinaloa. As
another agent interviewed for the staff report said: "We were all sick
to death when we realized . . . what was going on or when we saw what
was going on by the trends. We were all just, yes, we were all
distraught."

Well, not all. The agents interviewed say supervisors viewed the
bloodshed with chilling indifference-or worse. As the report
summarizes, "An increase of crimes and deaths in Mexico caused an
increase in the recovery of weapons at crime scenes. When these
weapons traced back through the Suspect Gun Database to weapons that
were walked under Fast and Furious, supervisors in Phoenix were giddy
at the success of their operation."

Agents say that the loss of life and worries that the guns might
eventually be used on U.S. personnel were not addressed because
supervisors thought their plan was working. The "sentiment" from
higher-ups, according to one agent's testimony, was "if you are going
to make an omelet, you need to scramble some eggs." It was only when
Agent Terry was murdered and two AK-47s that had "walked" were found
at the scene, that the operation came under scrutiny. The ATF
subsequently arrested a number of straw purchasers but none of those
arrests involved "key players of a criminal syndicate," according to
the report. For the record, an ATF official in the report says that
the bureau never let guns "walk."

By any measure the 40-year-old war on drugs has been a failure. One
unintended consequence is the financing that the sale of prohibited
substances provides to gangsters who then buy guns. That's bad enough.
But when the ATF puts making the big cartel bust above human life,
it's a new low.