By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Darren Gil, the former attache for ATF in Mexico City, apologized Tuesday to his Mexican counterparts for Operation Fast and Furious, the ATF program that encouraged gun dealers to sell to straw purchasers, with the hopes of tracing the guns to Mexican cartels. ATF lost track of many of the guns,…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com ATF earlier this year tried to play down the fact that guns from its highly problematic Operation Fast and Furious program surfaced at the scene of the slaying of Arizona Border Patrol agent Brian Terry last December, the Los Angeles Times reported. The paper reported that the top ATF supervisors in…
By The Los Angeles Times Editorial Page The Obama administration took a concrete step toward curbing the flow of semiautomatic weapons to Mexico last week when it adopted a new regulation mandating the reporting of multiple sales of long guns to federal authorities. Under the regulation, some 8,500 licensed gun shops in Arizona, California, New…
Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Two outspoken politicians are accusing the Justice Department of giving potential witnesses in a Congressional investigation into a controversial ATF program access to information to tailor their responses “to what they think the Committees already know.” The Justice Department on Tuesday afternoon said there was an explanation for what happened. Rep. Darrell…
By Josh Gerstein Politico WASHINGTON — The unfolding scandal over a gunrunning investigation allegedly botched by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives could do what years of criticism of the long-beleaguered agency never quite accomplished — result in its demise. That, at least, is the view of some former ATF employees and advocates…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The war of words is heating up between the Justice Department and key Republican Congressional members over the controversial ATF program known as Operation Fast and Furious. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) this week renewed accusations that the Justice Department is stonewalling a Congressional inquiry into the controversial gun program Operation Fast…
By Allan Lengel tickletheiwre.com Ken Melson, acting head of ATF, apparently was singing to Congressional investigators over the 4th of July weekend — and apparently not the Star Spangled Banner. Fox News reported that Melson told Congressional investigators that the Justice Department was interfering with the Congressional probe into the controversial program Operation Fast and…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Last October in Orlando, at the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the heads of the ATF field offices gathered for a SAC meeting. It was there where it was announced that William Newell, head of the Phoenix office, would become the ATF’s attache to Mexico. Newell, an up and comer…
