It would be laughable - if it wasn't such a deadly serious matter - to watch these government legal beagles twist and squirm about in a trap of their own making, as they attempt to back away from their own written words in which they outright lied about the Justice Department's direct involvement in supplying Mexican drug cartels with hundreds of illegally purchased firearms.
In their admission this week that a letter to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) last February contained false information about Operation Fast and Furious, officials of Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department take quibbling almost to an art form. The length and degree to which they have attempted to obfuscate and twist the fact that they outright lied to Congress establishes a Gold Standard in quibbling:
Justice Department Reveals Origins of False Gun Letter To Grassley
Tactic A: "I Cannot Say for Sure"
Emails show Lanny Breuer, the assistant attorney general for the department’s criminal division, received versions of the letter on four occasions via email. Breuer forwarded the emails to a personal account but told Congressional investigators in a written statement today he “cannot say for sure” whether he viewed the drafts.
Breuer conceded Oct. 31 he knew federal officials allowed assault guns and other weapons to fall into the possession of Mexican drug cartels as early as April 2010, 10 months before the department denied in the letter to Grassley that the investigative strategy was used.
“Any instance of so-called gunwalking was unacceptable. This tactic was unfortunately used as part of Fast and Furious,” Holder admitted to Senators at a Judiciary Committee hearing Nov. 8. “This should never have happened.”
No shit. The documents released today show tangential involvement by Breuer in preparing the Feb. 4 letter. “Let me know what’s happening with this,” he wrote in a Feb. 1 email asking for an update.
Every criminal conspiracy in the history of Mankind
can be ultimately connected to the administration of George W. Bush.
Tactic B: "Blame George W. Bush, Early and Often"
Breuer’s knowledge of the tactic was about Operation Wide Receiver, a similar, smaller-scale weapons-smuggling investigation that began during President George W. Bush’s administration.
Breuer said in October it was a “mistake” not to alert higher-ranking officials when the information about gunwalking in Fast and Furious “became public,” given his knowledge about Wide Receiver.
That's an understatement.
Tactic C: "Play Both Ends Against the Middle"
“(Jason) Weinstein (Breuer’s deputy) has expressed to me that, in hindsight, he wishes he had not relied on those assertions and that, because he did rely so heavily on them, he viewed, incorrectly, the misguided tactics used in Operation Wide Receiver — which resulted in the ATF losing control of guns that then crossed the border into Mexico — as having no relation to the allegations that were being made about Operation Fast and Furious,” Breuer said today in a written statement to Congressional investigators.
This thing has more twists and turns than a pretzel.
Tactic D: Avoid "Denying Too Much"
The day before the letter was sent to Grassley, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General raised concerns about the scope of the denial it contained.
“In the 2nd full para[graph] — we say ‘categorically false’ — obviously we want to be 300% sure we can make such a ‘categorical’ statement,” Lisa Monaco wrote in an email after reviewing a draft version of the letter. “I’ve developed an aversion to adjectives and oversight letters,” she explained in a later email.
The language was ultimately removed.
BOTTOM LINE - What We Know:
Guns found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder were connected to the Holder Justice Department's Fast and Furious operation.
February 15, 2011: Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata was shot and killed by a gun sold in Dallas, Texas while driving on a highway near the northern Mexico city of San Luis Potosi.
Where is the outrage? At least two good man are dead, and the officials of the organization behind this scandal choose to bend words rather provide straight answers. Have we become so jaded that we tolerate the lame excuses and stalling of a series of Justice Department officials paraded before Congress?
When an individual I'm interviewing resorts to these kind of verbal tactics, my internal lie detector goes on high alert. Right away what I want to know why the liar is lying.
A spokeswoman for Grassley said, "After a first glance at today's document dump from the Justice Department, there appears to be even more questions for Assistant Attorney General Breuer, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Weinstein and former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke."
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO . . . ? ? ?
. . . the Birds of STORMBRINGER?
They're still HERE
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