Scandal: A former ATF special agent tells Congress a National Security Council staffer was informed about Operation Fast and Furious before guns allowed into Mexico wound up at the murder scene of a U.S. agent.
The latest evidence that both the White House and attorney general knew and approved of Project Gunrunner and its deadly offshoot, Operation Fast and Furious, came this week in the testimony of William Newell, ATF special agent in charge of the Phoenix office, before Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
That the “stench of cover-up,” as Fox News analyst Brit Hume described the administration’s handling of the matter, may reach even into the Oval Office itself was evidenced by Newell’s testimony that he communicated with Kevin O’Reilly, a staffer on President Obama’s National Security Council, about Operation Fast and Furious in September 2010.
O’Reilly was national security director for North America tasked with monitoring the activities of Mexican drug cartels. We are asked to believe he inquired about a program that was providing the cartels with guns but kept what he found out to himself.
That date, by the way, is three months before weapons permitted to “walk” into Mexico were found at the scene in Arizona were U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. Newell said O’Reilly had inquired about the status of Project Gunrunner to brief administration officials before a trip to Mexico.
Newell sent O’Reilly the requested information with the caveat, “You didn’t get this from me.”
Why was a National Security Council staffer asking about an operation that no one in the upper echelons of the administration was supposed to be aware of? We find it hard to believe it was for O’Reilly’s personal amusement. Why would Newell request that he not be acknowledged as the source?
July 27th:
On what basis could O’Reilly be excused from testifying?
Obama is playing quite a stupid and dangerous game when he stonewalls.
Even a complicit media pack has individuals who break from it and report the truth enough to ruin him.
Holder doesn’t take a leak without Obama’s ok…. so, I fully believe they BOTH knew. Now, will we see them CONVICTED?? Um…. stay tuned, but it could prove a LONG time to “stand by”….
Our unbiased media is doing everything it can to ignore the story and protect the dems/obama.
This should be persued with the same zeal as Watergate was. That cover up, as you know, resulted in Nixons resignation and imprisonment for John Mitchell, his Attorney General among others. Too bad the MSM is in the pocket of the Democrats and will be aiding and abetting.
Holder, the brainless fart, and the ATF…garbage… talk about Watergate..Every thing this administration does eclipses Watergate. This fool should have been impeached a long time ago,,,Smile America..the debt ceiling deal broke any future your children and grandchildren would have ever had.