'Furious' mess has Justice in full panic
By MICHAEL A. WALSH
Last Updated: 4:52 AM, October 6, 2011
www.nypost.comSo now the Fast and Furious affair has reached Stage 2 of the classic Washington scandal: House Republicans have called for a special counsel to investigate Attorney General Eric Holder himself for possible perjury.
Justice Department documents indicate that Holder knew of the operation way back in July 2010 -- far earlier than the “in the last few weeks” that he told congressional investigators under oath last May.
Memos from Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and others to Holder clearly show the scope, if not the nature, of the disastrous project: “This investigation, initiated in September 2009 . . . involves . . . straw purchasers [who] are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug cartels.”
That’s the crux of the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ infamous “gunwalking” program, allegedly designed to track illegal gun sales to Mexican drug gangs by turning a blind eye toward, and possibly facilitating, arms sales in Arizona and elsewhere. The death toll so far is more than 200.
The heavily redacted memos don’t explicitly implicate ATF and other federal agencies in an illegal scheme, as ATF whistleblowers have alleged. But if there’s a coverup going on, why would they?
And coverup there seems to be. On top of stonewalling Rep. Darrell Issa’s House investigation of the mess, Justice has floated a series of contradictory excuses:
* There was no such program.
* Even if there weres, Holder never knew about it.
* Even if he should have known about it, he might not have read Breuer’s memos.
* Even if he read Breuer’s memos, he misunderstood the simple question: “When did you first know about the program, officially, I believe, called Fast and Furious?”
With the recent exposure of another apparent “gunwalking” operation, Wide Receiver, that may date back to the Bush administration, some are already pushing a “Bush-did-it-too” meme. If true, it shows the rot at Justice goes deeper than we thought -- but it has nothing to do with whether Holder may have committed perjury.
If Holder is so innocent, why, sources inside Justice say, are folks there engaging in a panicked orgy of finger-pointing and blame-shifting?
A trial balloon has reportedly been floated within Justice to essentially eliminate the ATF by firing 450 agents and transferring the embattled agency’s duties to the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI.
While the bulk of the national press corps is off inspecting Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s back forty for residual signs of racism, CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson and Fox’s William La Jeunesse have been doing the heavy lifting on Fast and Furious -- and getting some tough pushback from Obama officials.
On the Laura Ingraham radio show yesterday, Attkisson told of being “yelled at” by Justice flack Tracy Schmaler and being “screamed” at by White House official Eric Schultz for being “unfair.”
Said Attkisson: “They will tell you that I’m the only reporter -- as they told me -- that is not reasonable. They say The Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, The New York Times is reasonable, I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it.”
CBS has reportedly yanked Attkisson from further media appearances this week. But isn’t independent inquiry the function of a free press? Nobody thought there was a story in Watergate, either, until Woodward and Bernstein proved otherwise.
There’s still plenty of time for Justice and the other implicated agencies to come clean. But to date, all we’ve heard is dog-ate-my-briefing-book excuses and desperate attempts to change the subject.
It’s possible that Fast and Furious was a rogue, poorly conceived sub-operation of the legitimate Project Gunrunner, begun in 2005 to track and interdict illegal weapons traffic. But Holder’s track record in previous congressional testimony leaves ample cause for skepticism.
As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy pointed out yesterday at National Review Online, Holder’s current amnesia recalls his misleading testimony to Congress about another scandal, President Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich. Even though Holder helped arrange the pardon, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2001 that Rich’s name was “unfamiliar” to him.
With the 2012 elections looming, the chances of Holder’s appointing a special prosecutor to investigate himself are slim and none. The Obama administration will bury the scandal -- unless the media and public demand otherwise.
Michael Walsh’s new thriller, “Shock Warning,” is out this week on Amazon Kindle.
