Well, here’s CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson again, being all unreasonable by reporting that the ATF let thousands of grenades cross the border into Mexico at roughly the same time the Mexican drug cartels were using grenades to blow up a casino and kill dozens of people. But hey, it’s not as if they could have stopped Jean Baptiste Kingery, right? Er …
CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, who has reported on this story from the beginning, said on “The Early Show” that the investigation into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)’s so-called “Fast and Furious” operation branches out to a case involving grenades. Sources tell her a suspect was left to traffic and manufacture them for Mexican drug cartels.
Police say Jean Baptiste Kingery, a U.S. citizen, was a veritable grenade machine. He’s accused of smuggling parts for as many as 2,000 grenades into Mexico for killer drug cartels — sometimes under the direct watch of U.S. law enforcement.
Law enforcement sources say Kingery could have been prosecuted in the U.S. twice for violating export control laws, but that, each time, prosecutors in Arizona refused to make a case.
CBS describes this as a “new twist,” but that’s not completely true. The grenade trade first came to light in July, although in a different context. A former CIA agent said that the Obama administration sold weapons directly to the Zetas cartel, including grenades and other military weaponry. The implication seemed to be that the State Department was playing on the side of the Zetas while the ATF and DoJ’s programs ended up benefiting the Sinaloa cartel, which would be about as inept and incoherent a strategy for stabilizing Mexico as anyone could imagine.
In this case, though, the ATF also allowed thousands of grenades to cross the border rather than stop the man trafficking them, even as grenades became the weapon of choice for the cartels. Why?
Next thing we’ll find out is that Holder forgot to mention the F 16s he let slip through his little fingers.
I’d love to get in on A-10 walker or RPG walker. Is there a sign up sheet somewhere? 😉