By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
The controversial ATF program “Operation Fast and Furious” continues to generate plenty controversy.
The latest: CBS News reports that Congressional investigators say the U.S. Attorney’s office in Arizona tried covering up a link between Fast and Furious and the murder in Arizona of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.
Two assault rifles from the operation were found at the scene of Terry’s murder. The FBI was unable to make a determination whether the weapons were used in the murder.
The operation encouraged Arizona gun dealers to sell to straw purchasers, all with the hopes of the tracing the assault weapons to the Mexican cartels. The problems was that ATF lost track of many of the weapons, some which ended up at crime scenes on both sides of the border.
CBS reports that a letter by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Ia.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif) to Arizona’s Acting U.S. Attorney Ann Birmingham Scheel said Assistant U.S Attorney Emory Hurley, learned almost immediately that guns allowed onto the street in his case, had been recovered at Terry’s murder.
“(I)n the hours after Agent Terry’s death,” says the letter from Grassley and Issa, Hurley apparently “contemplated the connection between the two cases and sought to prevent the connection from being disclosed.” The Justice Department recently transferred Hurley out of the criminal division into the civil division, CBS reported.
Read Congressional Letter to Acting U.S. Atty. in Az.
