"HOLDER LIED, HUNDREDS DIED.” WIDE RECEIVER vs. FAST & FURIOUS

I – along with fellow members of the Alternative Media i.e. The Blogosphere - have been reporting on Operation Fast and Furious – and it’s parent Operation Gunrunner – since February 2011:

Death in the Desert: Project Gunwalker and the ATF Cover-Up

Originally posted at American Thinker February 04, 2011

Before last week, everybody was laughing at us about Fast and Furious. The Lamestream Media and their patrons in the Democratic Party thought it was nothing more than a conspiracy theory dreamed up by the Snake Flag Tinfoil Hat Brigade branch of the Tea Party. But now the thing has grown arms and legs to the point where the President of the United States has invoked executive privilege.

Last couple of weeks Attorney General Eric Holder was in the hot seat in front of Congress and as a trained intelligence operator I can tell you I have never seen so much quibbling in my life; this was classic resistance to interrogation, from outright refusal to answer direct questions, to deliberate non-answers, to absolute untruths.

In his desperation to deflect culpability, at one point in the squirmfest Holder suggested that he didn't know about Operation Fast and Furious, that when he came into office it was already underway. Holder was obliquely referring to a Bush-era program; Operation Wide Receiver. When challenged by Congressman Issa to produce any kind of documentation that this was the case, Holder backed down and acknowledged that there was no connection between Wide Receiver and the operation currently being investigated by Congress: Fast and Furious.

Wide Receiver was a sting operation, closed down in 2007. There wasn't any plan for any kind of sting in Fast and Furious, at least not against the gun smugglers, and there were two dormant years between Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious.

In Wide Receiver the Bush administration was trying to build a case (along with the Mexican government) against a violent group of Mexican drug smugglers. Fast and Furious was an effort to build a case against the Second Amendment and American gun dealers. If Fast and Furious worked the way the Obama Administration planned, the legal gundealers (in Arizona and elsewhere) would be pointed out as responsible for the guns that ended up in the hands of the drug cartel.

Whatever proof that is now under protection of Executive Privilege, it's got to be pretty damning. Whatever proof there is, Obama’s invoking of Executive Privilege immediately demands the question: "What's Obama hiding?"

The Democrats - Liberals, including in the media - hate guns. So where is the moral outrage at Fast and Furious?

At this stage, it is important to understand the differences between Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious; they are significant and profound.

Wide Receiver was a small scale law enforcement gun smuggling interdiction effort that involved Phoenix-based ATF agents working in conjunction with Mexican law enforcement. ATF supervisors and Justice Department prosecutors in Arizona were trying to build a case against violent Mexican drug smugglers. Wide Receiver was an attempt to find out who were gun smugglers and the drug cartels, and where they are.

Fast and Furious was an effort to build a case against American gun dealers and the Second Amendment.

Wide Receiver began in 2005. It involved four hundred guns. All of the weapons in Wide Receiver had RFID trackers installed in them, and they were actively tracked. Only the Phoenix ATF and DOJ were involved. The Mexican government was kept fully informed; they were an active participant.

In Wide Receiver, the ATF agents tried to track the guns using radio devices and aircraft. They wanted to find out where the guns ended up, into the hands of which cartels and where they were, so that a case could be made. It was an effort to track these people to find them, locate them.

The Bush administration, as part of Wide Receiver, notified the Mexican government when arms and drug smugglers were crossing. When the guns were being walked across the border to Mexico, the Mexican government was notified. At least 1,400 arrests were made as part of Wide Receiver. Then the ATF found out the smugglers were disabling the RFID tracking devices planted in the guns. When the ATF became aware that the smugglers were ripping the RFID devices out and the guns were lost, the program was shut down in October of 2007.

Fast and Furious began in October of 2009, the tenth month of the Obama Administration; Wide Receiver had already been shut down for two years. Fast and Furious involved over 2,000 guns. Wide Receiver was 400 guns. No tracking devices were planted in the Fast and Furious guns, because the Obama Administration didn't care where they ended up. There was no effort was made to track them - no helicopters, no on-the-ground surveillance of the straw purchasers; the guns were sold and walked across the border. Four federal agencies were involved in maybe as many as 10 cities in five states.

Unlike Wide Receiver, the Mexican government was not notified that Operation Fast And Furious program. They did not use tracking devices or aircraft to try to find and track the smugglers. The local ATF field agents were ordered not to follow the straw purchasers.

Wide Receiver has nothing in common with Fast and Furious, other than guns crossing the border. In Operation Fast and Furious, Federal agents were not allowed to interdict the guns and they even ran interference for the smugglers with local law enforcement on multiple occasions to make sure those guns made it across the border.
No effort was ever made to arrest the straw purchasers, the smugglers, by local law enforcement or anybody else. It took the deaths of at least 200 Mexican civilians and two federal agents, border agent Brian Terry and ICE agent Jaime Zapata - killed in actions with Mexican criminal drug gangsters using the smuggled weapons – for Operation Fast and Furious to be closed down.

The objective of the Bush plan, Wide Receiver, was the authorities wanted to build a case against the local drug cartels in order to put them out of business. It was a risky move, to allow guns to cross the border and to track them. The plan was to find out where they went, to find the cartel's headquarters, and then go in and shut them down. It was a risky move and it didn’t work so they shut it down, in 2007.

In 2009 the Obama Administration initiated Operation Fast and Furious; there were no tracking devices of Obama's guns, and there was no effort to find out where they went.

In Operation Fast and Furious, local law enforcement (LLE) was shoved out of the way if it tried to get in the way and stop the movement of American-bought guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. The Obama Administration - wanted this in order to tightened down gun laws on these kinds of guns – so-called “assault rifles” - because this had failed in Congress.

The Democrat assault weapons ban had failed - back in the 90’s. Now the Obama plan - and Holder and the rest of the Democrats who don't want you having guns - was to change the minds of the American people. The Obama Administration created crimes, facilitated the creation of crimes. Hundreds of Mexicans killed at the hands of drug cartels. The Obama Administration knew - they had to know, what was going to happen - they wanted it to happen.


And now YOU know . . .


. . . now you know . . .


- STORMBRINGER SENDS