Gunrunner: It must have been Eric Holder

    Last week Pajamas Media ran a story entitled “Gunwalker: It Must Have Been Eric Holder” which I had intended to write about before I left on my brief vacation but didn’t get to. In this article Bob Owens lays out four reasons why this was not an operation conducted by some mid level federal agent, but rather must have been authorized by Eric Holder with the cooperation of other high level Obama appointees.

1. Federal law enforcement agents don’t let guns “walk.” A gun that is allowed to flow into criminal hands is a gun that could end up killing a fellow cop or citizen. As a result, all prior known operations under the long-running and successful Gunrunner program ended when a straw purchaser was allowed to make the purchase, and then arrested on the spot or shortly thereafter. Throughout the process of these stings, the suspects were under constant surveillance whenever they had firearms in their possession, and officers considered it catastrophic failure if surveillance was lost.

2. Federal law enforcement agents knew that this operation would not lead to cartel kingpins. The profiling of criminal activity has become a blend of art and high science in recent decades, and when combined with the intelligence provided by informants and a history of thousands of arrests, the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and IRS agents assigned to the task force knew from the beginning that cartel leaders could not be implicated in Fast and Furious, because they simply aren’t involved. Obtaining weapons for cartel gunmen is a problem for the lower to middle ranks of a cartel’s hierarchy, no different than acquiring vehicles or safehouses. The most commonly used cartel weapons are viewed by the organizations as consumable commodities to be bought, used, and discarded. Do CEOs, company presidents, and vice presidents, or even middle managers go out shopping for paper clips and pens?

3. Federal law enforcement agents knew from the outset that they could never arrest their targets, who were outside of their jurisdiction. Jurisdictional battles between federal, state, and local agencies are legendary, and sensitivity to jurisdictional issues is something every law enforcement agent learns, often with frustration. Knowing for a fact that the individuals running cartel gun acquisition would be based in Mexico, and staying in Mexico, agents would have realized from the mission planning phase — well before operational implementation — that effecting arrests of the operation’s stated targets was nearly impossible.

4. Middle managers in government would never dare to try such a dangerous, high-risk operation without express orders from above. All agencies — public or private — are saddled with bureaucracy, internal politics, and institutional inertia, which forms a powerful and pervasive cultural force that significantly inhibits change. Changes that threaten the equilibrium of agencies are viewed as a threat, and the more radical the proposed change, the more resistance there is to block it from occurring. Resistance to change occurs even when change is thought to be strongly beneficial.From the ground up and at the very beginning, Fast and Furious was a radical and dangerous proposal that would threaten the very existence of the ATF.

  Recently Bob Owens was interviewed by NRA News about his article and there were a few interesting tidbits in the interview;  including his belief that Bill Newell’s admission that he shared information about Fast and Furious with someone in the Obama White House was a warning shot fired over the bow at the Obama regime, warning them not to make him the fall guy or he would tell the country everything that he knows about the deadly operation, and also that Bill Newell was supposed to be a special envoy to Mexico until Mexico threatened to arrest him, and everyone else connected to Fast and Furious if they crossed the border.

  The article is a must read, and I have also included the video to the interview Bob Owens conducted with NRA News below.