An angry Senator Chuck Grassley said today in a statement that Attorney General Eric Holder is continuing to stonewall congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious.
Holder's latest tactic is to deny Department of Justice clearances to 11 of the 12 witnesses Grassley and House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa have requested be made available to the committee for testimony.
“We have requested 12 Justice Department witnesses be made available for transcribed interviews,” Grassley said in a Thursday Senate Judiciary Committee executive business meeting. “Despite the department’s promises of good faith cooperation, only one witness has been provided so far — former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke. The department has refused to schedule interviews with any of the other 11 witnesses. That’s not the good faith cooperation I was promised, and it is unacceptable.”
One thing Grassley and Issa are particularly interested in finding out is who was behind a February 4th letter the Department of Justice sent to Congress, which made false claims that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ( ATF) did not freely allow guns to be trafficked into Mexico.
Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, Holder’s deputy and the head of the DOJ Criminal Division, admitted last week to the committee that the DOJ’s claims that the ATF did not allow guns to walk across the border were a pack of lies.
“It also appears from those documents that Mr. Breuer’s deputy, Jason Weinstein, knew about ATF walking guns in both operations,” Grassley said on Thursday. “Anyone who knew about gunwalking in any case, also knew that the department’s initial letter to me was false. The attorney general said the letter was based on the best information available at the time. But senior officials at headquarters, like Breuer and Weinstein, knew better.”
Ouch.
It's Special Prosecutor time,I think. Scooter Libbey was railroaded on far less evidence. And nothing he was accused of doing killed anyone.
Hate to sound like a broken record here but I'm going to reiterate what I've said here and elsewhere many times since this story first broke. It is vitally important that we conduct a fair and honest into this to find out what happened and that we get to the bottom of this and take appropiate actions. Essentially to borrow an old expression "let the chips fall where they may."
ReplyDeleteMexico is going to want some answers into all of this. After all many of their poeple were killed in this operation. If we don't do this investigation properly, they can and likely will go to the ICC or other international bodies to seek justice and some type of retribution.
America CANNOT and WILL NOT get a fair trial at something like the ICC. It is vitally important that we avoid such a situation. The damage to our image would likely be incalcuable. As long as other nations hate us, its going to be very hard for us to convince others to help us in areas where we need assistance. This type of situation will make things even harder.
The top priority here should be to avoid this. The best way to do this is to conduct a fair investigation and make the findings known to Mexico and any other affected parties. (While the Western Europeans think it their God given right to meddle in America's affairs and to squeal like stuck pigs in rage when America reciprocates, they are not affected by this and, as such, it is not their concern. They don't need the first hand reports.)