The May 24 letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), ranking member on the panel, quotes from and describes in detail a secret wiretap application that has become a point of debate in the GOP’s “Fast and Furious” gun-walking probe.
The wiretap applications are under court seal, and releasing such information to the public would ordinarily be illegal. But Issa appears to be protected by the Speech or Debate Clause in the Constitution, which offers immunity for Congressional speech, especially on a chamber’s floor.
According to the letter, the wiretap applications contained a startling amount of detail about the operation, which would have tipped off anyone who read them closely about what tactics were being used.
Holder and Cummings have both maintained that the wiretap applications did not contain such details and that the applications were reviewed narrowly for probable cause, not for whether any investigatory tactics contained followed Justice Department policy.
The wiretap applications were signed by senior DOJ officials in the department’s criminal division, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco and another official who is now deceased.
In Fast and Furious, agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed assault guns bought by “straw purchasers” to “walk,” which meant ending surveillance on weapons suspected to be en route to Mexican drug cartels.
The tactic, which was intended to allow agents to track criminal networks by finding the guns at crime scenes, was condemned after two guns that were part of the operation were found at U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s murder scene.
Straw purchasers are individuals who buy guns on behalf of criminals, obscuring who is buying the weapons.
While Issa has since said he has obtained a number of wiretap applications, the letter only refers to one, from March 15, 2010. The full application is not included in what Issa entered into the Congressional Record, and names are obscured in Issa’s letter.
In the application, ATF agents included transcripts from a wiretap intercept from a previous Drug Enforcement Administration investigation that demonstrated the suspects were part of a gun-smuggling ring.
“The wiretap affidavit details that agents were well aware that large sums of money were being used to purchase a large number of firearms, many of which were flowing across the border,” the letter says.
The application included details such as how many guns specific suspects had purchased via straw purchasers and how many of those guns had been recovered in Mexico.
It also described how ATF officials watched guns bought by suspected straw purchasers but then ended their surveillance without interdicting the guns.
In at least one instance, the guns were recovered at a police stop at the U.S.-Mexico border the next day.
The application included financial details for four suspected straw purchasers showing they had purchased $373,000 worth of guns in cash but reported almost no income for the previous year, the letter says.
“Although ATF was aware of these facts, no one was arrested, and ATF failed to even approach the straw purchasers. Upon learning these details through its review of this wiretap affidavit, senior Justice Department officials had a duty to stop this operation. Further, failure to do so was a violation of Justice Department policy,” the letter says.
Roll Call’s site has crashed under the weight of the links from Drudge, Lucinanne, FA and elsewhere.
Sounds like Cummings is the one being protected.
He was the first to break out the secrets.
Issa followed.
Cummings just cut off his nose to spite his face.
If he’d had a lick of sense leaking this would have been the LAST thing he’d have wanted to do.
It opened the door, so to speak.
@Nan G: Well said, I think what is going on here is a stall game to get past the election. I believe 0-bama and Holder are hiding the fact that they knew what was going on.
I watche on TV as Cummins promised the Terry family (paraphrasing) that he would do everything possible to find out why their son was dead and who was responsible for allowing the guns that killed Brian Terry to be walked.
But then yesterday, Cummins, along with the rest of the CBC, showed that they are more interested in the color of Holder’s skin and not the content of Holder’s character. What was even more disgusting yesterday was for Silvester Reyes, who was a Border Patrol agent for many years, to refuse to vote in favor of contempt of Eric Holder, and who, after having attended Brian Terry’s funeral (as a former BP) walk out on the vote with his black comrades. Reyes is obviously not concerned with the death of Hispanic Jaime Zapata or the 300+ Mexican nationals that have died due to Holder’s Department of Injustice.
@Common Sense:
What makes you think that a POTUS, who is so into micromanagement that he makes the decisions on his “kill” list, would know about the actions (or inactions) of his good, long term friend, Eric Holder?
This is all smoke and mirrors to get Obama, and consequently the Holder scandal, past the first week of November. And for those like Pelosi to claim that the American people don’t care about F & F, shows just how detached from reality they are.
Hardly. Issa is a total a-hole. He’s using cover of the Speech or Debate Clause to selectively leak information from sealed documents, knowing that more responsible people than himself won’t release additional information that would compromise ongoing investigations and possibly jeopardize the safety of law enforcement officials and potential witnesses.
This follows the pattern that’s been typical of Issa’s entire investigation, in which he has selectively picked witnesses and bits of testimony to work his way up toward the Obama administration, while totally disregarding what people with the most inside information about the Fast and Furious operation are saying.
The last two paragraphs of the article:
@Greg: Greg, is this all you got?? A demoncrat staffer quote?? Geeez what an idiot kool aid drinker you are. The stall game is to get past the election and Issa is doing his job.
Issa is doing his job, alright. His job as a political tool.
The best thing about this whole sad affair is that the GOP is revealing exactly what it has become during the run-up to an election, rather than after being elected.
@Greg: You are half correct and for you that’s a 100% improvement. There is a political tool involved and that would be Holder. Any chance Issa will lose his next election cycle?? News flash idiot, he will win in a landslide and I will vote for him in my district in Southern California. Yep, California.
@Greg:
No, the best thing about this whole thing is that it is showing just how corrupt the Obama administration is. Nevermind that Valerie Jarrett, et al, should be sharing a jail cell with Tony Rezko. Rahm Emanuel was smart. He got out when he could. Don’t think he doesn’t know where the bodies are buried.
How do you excuse the blatant disrespect for the Terry family shown by the Dems when they walked out yesterday?
This may turn out to be the longest perp walk in US history. Will they line up according to height or level of complicity in murder?
@Greg:
Here is a link to the information that Issa introduced into the Congressional Record today.
Kindly cite the sections “that would compromise ongoing investigations and possibly jeopardize the safety of law enforcement officials and potential witnesses.”
Here’s something else to nibble on:
Does anybody have a functional link to these new, never-before-public documents? I’m afraid I’ll need to to see them for myself before accepting Issa’s assertion that they show anything of the sort. My guess is that they’re just more random dots in Darrell Issa’s conspiracy theory.
Issa and company seem determined to elevate the phrase “worse than useless” to an entirely new level.
Holder and Obama have already elevated the phrase “worse than useless” beyond the imagination.
@Greg:
Perhaps these are what you’re looking for.
As I see it, the problem for Holder et al is that they trotted themselves up to Capitol Hill, took oaths, and testified without considering or realizing what information Issa and Grassley et al may have already had or been able to gain future access to.
Seems to me that Mr. Issa sandbagged these folks more than just a little…feeding them line bit by bit…and then, finally, in a dramatic move on the House floor, Mr. Issa leaned back on the rod and set the hook.
Mr. Issa laid out the perfect trap. Just like any good lawyer, he knew the answers before he ever asked the questions.
Holder et al all had the opportunity to come clean early on. They had the opportunity to produce the documentation and answer the questions. Yet, they all chose not to.
Now, Issa and Grassley et al are gonna just reel ’em one right after the other.
@Aye:
I keep getting a 404: Nothing Found page.
Here’s the direct link:
http://www.grassley.senate.gov/about/upload/2012-06-29-CEG-DEI-to-DOJ-OIG-Thomasson-whistleblower-retaliation.pdf
For some reason, when I do the hyper link thing, it won’t work.
Thanks. That link worked.
I was actually wondering about the two documents that Matthew Boyle was referring to in this paragraph:
@Greg:
From my reading, Boyle wasn’t referring to two documents.
The documents I linked for you earlier support the point that Issa and Grassley were making. The coverup within ATF began weeks before the questions arrived on their doorstep.
@retire05:
Reyes doesn’t care because leftist are leftist first and everything else is secondary, including the lives of hundreds of people.
This seems to be heading toward Holder being hit with perjury charges. If that is where this is indeed going, don’t be surprised if he doesn’t make it until the end of next month. Perjury charges are the point of no return. The politics as usual defense goes away and the focus shifts to Obama. It will become in the best interests of Obama to get Holder out of there as far away from the election as possible in order to minimize the damage.