ATF gunwalking scandal

During Operation Fast and Furious, dozens of AK-47 variants might be purchased in one day.

The ATF gunwalking scandal came to national attention in the United States in 2011 after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ran a series of “gunwalking” sting operations between 2006 and 2011 under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, a project intended to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico by interdicting straw purchasers and gun traffickers within the U.S. “Gunwalking” or “letting guns walk” was a tactic whereby the ATF knowingly allowed thousands of guns to be bought by suspected arms traffickers (“gunrunners”) working through straw purchasers on behalf of Mexican drug cartels.

The stated goal of allowing these purchases was to continue to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher−level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels, in theory leading to their arrests and the dismantling of the cartels. Operation Fast and Furious, by far the largest "gunwalking" probe, led to the sale of over 2,000 firearms, of which fewer than 700 were recovered as of October 20, 2011. A number of straw purchasers have been arrested and indicted; however, as of October 2011, none of the targeted high−level cartel figures have been arrested.

Firearms "walked" by the ATF have been found at violent crime scenes on both sides of the US−Mexico border, and are believed responsible for the deaths of many Mexicans and at least one US federal agent, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. The “gunwalking” operations became public in the aftermath of Agent Terry's murder. As investigations have continued, the operations have become increasingly controversial in both countries, and diplomatic relations have been damaged as a result.

The "gunwalking" method of Operation Wide Receiver (2006-2007) was questioned at ATF HQ by Acting Director for Field Operation William Hoover and the operation terminated by Phoenix ATF SAC William Newell 6 Oct 2007 after Mexican police failed to interdict gun traffickers after they crossed into Mexico. Gunwalking under Operation Fast and Furious (2009-2010) without involvement of Mexican law enforcement was first questioned by the ATF field agents and the licensed gun dealers cooperating with them. Under Fast and Furious, dissident ATF field agents expressed their concerns to Congress after the death of Border Patrolman Brian Terry.

Background

Further information: Project Gunrunner

Further information: Mexican Drug War

ATF "gunwalking" operations were, in part, a response to longstanding criticism of the bureau for focusing on relatively minor gun violations while failing to target high–level gun smuggling figures. Even the low–level cases are problematic because there is no federal firearms trafficking law. This makes cases difficult to prosecute and forces law enforcement to use a variety of laws without stringent penalties. For example, in a recent case in San Juan, Texas, under existing 1968 Gun Control Act provisions on straw purchasing (Title 18 United States Code, Section 924(a)(1)(A)), straw purchaser Taisa Garcia received 33 months and buyer Marco Villalobos received 46 months, plus two years supervision after release.

According to a twenty-year ATF veteran, Jay Wachtel, letting guns "walk" was done in the past in a controlled manner that involved surveillance and eventual seizure of the weapons. According to ATF field agents involved in Operation Fast and Furious, under Project Gunrunner "...ATF agents were trained to interdict guns and prevent criminals from obtaining them" and not to allow guns to walk and then disappear.

Operations

There have been allegations of "gunwalking" in at least 10 cities in five states. The most widely known and controversial operations took place in Arizona under the ATF's Phoenix, Arizona field division.

2006−2007: Operation Wide Receiver and other probes

The suspicious sale of AR-15s led to Operation Wide Receiver.

The first known ATF "gunwalking" operation to Mexican drug cartels, named Operation Wide Receiver, began in early 2006 and ran into late 2007. Licensed dealer Mike Detty informed the ATF of a suspicious gun purchase that took place in February 2006 in Tucson, Arizona. In March he was hired as a confidential informant working with the ATF's Tucson office, part of their Phoenix, Arizona field division. With the use of surveillance equipment, ATF agents monitored additional sales by Detty to straw purchasers. With assurance from ATF "that Mexican officials would be conducting surveillance or interdictions when guns got to the other side of the border", Detty would sell a total of about 450 guns during the operation. These included AR-15s, AK-47s and Colt .38s. The vast majority of the guns were eventually lost as they moved into Mexico.

At the time, under the Bush administration Department of Justice (DOJ), no arrests or indictments were made. After President Barack Obama took office in 2009, the DOJ reviewed Wide Receiver and found that guns had been allowed into the hands of suspected gun traffickers. Indictments began in 2010, over three years after Wide Receiver concluded. As of October 4, 2011, nine people had been charged with making false statements in acquisition of firearms and illicit transfer, shipment or delivery of firearms. As of November, charges against one defendant had been dropped; five of them had pled guilty, and one had been sentenced to one year and one day in prison. Two of them remained fugitives.

Another, smaller probe occurred in 2007 under the same ATF Phoenix field division. It began when the ATF identified Mexican suspects who bought weapons from a Phoenix gun shop over a span of several months. The probe ultimately involved over 200 guns, a dozen of which were lost in Mexico. On September 27, 2007, ATF agents saw the original suspects buying weapons at the same store and followed them toward the Mexican border. The ATF informed the Mexican government when the suspects successfully crossed the border, but Mexican law enforcement were unable to track them.

Less than two weeks later, on October 6, William Newell, then ATF's special agent in charge of the Phoenix field division, shut down the operation at the behest of William Hoover, ATF's assistant director for the office of field operations. No charges were filed. Newell, who was special agent in charge from June 2006 to May 2011, would later play a major role in Operation Fast and Furious.

2009−2011: Operation Fast and Furious

On October 26, 2009, a teleconference was held at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. to discuss US strategy for combating Mexican drug cartels. Participating in the meeting were Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, ATF Director Kenneth E. Melson, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Michele Leonhart, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Mueller and the top federal prosecutors in the Southwestern border states. They decided on a strategy to identify and eliminate entire arms trafficking networks rather than low–level buyers. Those at the meeting did not suggest using the "gunwalking" tactic, but ATF agents would soon use it in an attempt to achieve the desired goals. The effort, beginning in November, would come to be called Operation Fast and Furious for the successful film franchise, because some of the suspects under investigation operated out of an auto repair store and street raced.

The strategy of targeting high–level individuals, which was already ATF policy, would be implemented by Bill Newell, special agent in charge of ATF's Phoenix field division. In order to accomplish it, the office decided to use "gunwalking" as laid out in a January 2010 briefing paper. This was said to be allowed under ATF regulations and given legal backing by U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona Dennis K. Burke. It was additionally approved and funded by a Justice Department task force. However, long–standing DOJ and ATF policy has required arms shipments to be intercepted.

In November 2009, the Phoenix office's Group VII, which would be the lead investigative group in Fast and Furious, began to follow a prolific gun trafficker. He had bought 34 firearms in 24 days, and he and his associates bought 212 more in the next month. The case soon grew to over two dozen straw purchasers, the most prolific of which would ultimately buy more than 600 weapons.

The tactic of letting guns walk, rather than interdicting them and arresting the buyers, led to controversy within the ATF. As the case continued, several members of Group VII, including John Dodson and Olindo Casa, became increasingly upset at the tactic of allowing guns to walk. They watched guns being bought illegally and stashed on a daily basis, while their supervisors, including David Voth and Hope MacAllister, prevented the agents from intervening.

Responding to the disagreements, Voth wrote an email in March 2010: "I will be damned if this case is going to suffer due to petty arguing, rumors, or other adolescent behavior. I don’t know what all the issues are but we are all adults, we are all professionals, and we have an exciting opportunity to use the biggest tool in our law enforcement tool box. If you don’t think this is fun you are in the wrong line of work — period!”

By June 2010, suspects had purchased 1,608 firearms at a cost of over US$1 million at Phoenix-area gun shops. At that time, the ATF was also aware of 179 of those weapons being found at crime scenes in Mexico, and 130 in the US. As guns traced to Fast and Furious began turning up at violent crime scenes in Mexico, ATF agents stationed there also voiced opposition.

On the evening of December 14, 2010, U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and others were patrolling Peck Canyon, Pima County, Arizona, 11 miles from the Mexican border. The group came across five suspected illegal immigrants. When they fired non-lethal beanbag guns, the suspects responded with assault weapons, leading to a firefight. Agent Terry was shot and killed; four of the suspects were arrested and two AK-47 assault rifles were found nearby. The rifles were traced to Fast and Furious within hours of the shooting, but the bullet that killed Terry was too badly damaged to be linked to either gun.

After hearing of the incident, Agent Dodson reached out to ATF headquarters, ATF’s chief counsel, the ATF ethics section and the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, none of whom immediately responded. He and other agents then contacted Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who would become a major figure in the investigation of "gunwalking." At the same time, information began leaking to various bloggers and web sites.

FN Five-sevens were among the weapons allowed to walk.

On January 25, 2011, US Attorney Burke announced the first details of the case to become officially public, marking the end of Operation Fast and Furious. At a news conference in Phoenix, he reported a 53-count indictment of 20 suspects for buying hundreds of guns intended for illegal export between September 2009 and December 2010. Newell, who was at the conference, called Fast and Furious a "phenomenal case," while denying that guns had been deliberately allowed to walk into Mexico, a claim that was later revealed to be false.

Altogether, 2,020 firearms were bought by straw purchasers during Fast and Furious. These included AK-47 variants, Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles, .38 caliber revolvers, and FN Five-sevens. As of October 20, 2011, 389 had been recovered in the US and 276 had been recovered in Mexico. The rest remained on the streets, unaccounted for. Most of the guns went to the Sinaloa Cartel, while others made their way to El Teo and La Familia.

Aftermath and reaction

Fate of walked guns

Since the end of Operation Fast and Furious, related firearms have continued to be discovered in criminal hands. As of October 2011, guns found at about 170 crime scenes in Mexico were linked to Fast and Furious. U.S. Congressman Darrell Issa has estimated that more than 200 Mexicans were killed as a result of the operation. Reflecting on the operation, Attorney General Eric Holder said that the United States government is "...losing the battle to stop the flow of illegal guns to Mexico," and that the carnage linked to Operation Fast and Furious is most likely to continue for years, as more guns appear at Mexican crime scenes.

In April 2011, a large cache of weapons, including 40 traced to Fast and Furious, was found in the home of Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, a prominent Sinaloa Cartel member, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The stash included an anti-aircraft machine gun and a grenade launcher. Torres Marrufo was indicted, but as of October 2011 law enforcement has been unable to locate and arrest him.

On May 29, 2011 four Mexican Federal Police helicopters attacked a cartel compound, where they were met with heavy fire, including from a .50 caliber rifle. According to a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, this rifle is likely linked to Fast and Furious.

There have been questions raised over a possible connection between Fast and Furious and the death of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata on February 15, 2011. The gun that killed Zapata was purchased by Otilio Osorio in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas (outside the area of responsibility for the ATF Phoenix field division which conducted Fast and Furious), and then smuggled into Mexico. Congressional investigators have stated that Osorio was known by the ATF to be a straw purchaser months before he purchased the gun that killed Zapata, leading them to question ATF surveillance tactics and to suspect a Texas-based operation similar to Fast and Furious.

Investigations and fallout

In the US Congress, Representative Darrell Issa (R–CA–49), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Senator Chuck Grassley (R–IA), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have been investigating "gunwalking" operations. On January 27, 2011, Senator Grassley wrote a letter to ATF Acting Director Kenneth E. Melson requesting information about the ATF–sanctioned sale of hundreds of firearms to straw purchasers. The letter mentioned a number of allegations that walked guns were used in the fight that killed Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. A second letter from Grassley on January 31 accused the ATF of targeting whistleblowers.

On February 4, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote a letter, based on misleading information from US Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke and others, in response to the allegations. In it, he stated that claims "...that ATF ‘sanctioned’ or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them to Mexico [are] false. ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.” Also in February, Attorney General Eric Holder requested that the Department of Justice's Inspector General begin an investigation of Fast and Furious.

Reports on Operation Wide Receiver surfaced in March. On March 23, President Barack Obama appeared on Univision and spoke about the "gunwalking" controversy. He said that neither he nor Attorney General Holder authorized Fast and Furious. He also stated, "There may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made, and if that's the case then we'll find out and we'll hold somebody accountable."

On May 3, Attorney General Holder testified to the House Judiciary Committee that he did not know who approved Fast and Furious, but that it was being investigated. He also stated that he "probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks," a claim which would later become controversial.

In June, ATF Agent Vince Cefalu, who helped to publicize Fast and Furious, was served with termination papers, in a move by the agency he described as politically–motivated retaliation. He had been at odds with ATF management since he filed a complaint over tactics in an unrelated case in 2005. The ATF denied that the firing was retaliation, and Cefalu's termination letter noted that he leaked documents to the Internet and showed a "lack of candor" in other operations.

On June 14, 2011, a preliminary joint staff report was released by Representative Issa and Senator Grassley. Among the findings: agents were told to stand down rather than interdict weapons, they complained about the strategy and were ignored, and Fast and Furious led to increased violence and death in Mexico. Agents were panicked, certain that "someone was going to die."

Representative Issa continued to hold hearings in June and July where ATF officials based in Phoenix and Mexico, and at headquarters in Washington, testified before the committee. ATF agent John Dodson stated that he and other agents were ordered to observe the activities of gun smugglers but not to intervene. He testified:

Over the course of the next 10 months that I was involved in this operation, we monitored as they purchased hand guns, AK-47 variants, and .50 caliber rifles almost daily. Rather than conduct any enforcement actions, we took notes, we recorded observations, we tracked movements of these individuals for a short time after their purchases, but nothing more. Knowing all the while, just days after these purchases, the guns that we saw these individuals buy would begin turning up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico, we still did nothing. ...
I cannot begin to think of how the risk of letting guns fall into the hands of known criminals could possibly advance any legitimate law enforcement interest.

A second joint staff report was released on July 26.

In August, three important Fast and Furious supervisors were transferred to new management positions at ATF headquarters in Washington: William Newell and David Voth, field supervisors who oversaw the program from Phoenix, and William McMahon, an ATF deputy director of operations. The transfers were initially reported as promotions by the Los Angeles Times, but the ATF stated that they did not receive raises or take on greater responsibilities. In late August, it was announced that ATF Director Melson had been reassigned to the Justice Department, and US Attorney Burke announced his resignation after being questioned by Congressional investigators earlier that month.

In October, documents were found showing that Attorney General Holder had been sent briefings on Fast and Furious as early as July 2010, contradicting his May statement that he had known about it for only a few weeks. The briefings were from the National Drug Intelligence Center and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer. In response, the Justice Department stated that Holder misunderstood the question from the committee; he had known about Fast and Furious, but he didn't know the details of the tactics being used.

On November 8, Attorney General Holder stated for the first time in Congressional testimony that "gunwalking" was used in Fast and Furious. He remarked that the tactic is unacceptable, and that the operation was "flawed in its concept and flawed in its execution." He further stated that his office had inaccurately described the program in previous letters sent to Congress, but that this was unintentional. Reiterating previous testimony, he said that he and other top officials had been unaware that the "gunwalking" tactic was being used. Holder stated that his staff had not showed him memos about the program, and he denied any personal wrongdoing.

In December, documents revealed that some ATF agents discussed using Fast and Furious to provide anecdotal cases to support controversial new gun rules. The regulation, called Demand Letter 3, would require some gun stores to report the sale of multiple rifles.

As 2012 began, investigations by Congress and the DOJ Inspector General continued. In January, it was reported that Patrick Cunningham, the head criminal prosecutor at the Phoenix office of the US Attorney for Arizona, invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, refused to testify before Congress, and abruptly resigned his government post. Cunningham worked directly under US Attorney Burke during Fast and Furious. He was subpoenaed because of the role he might have played in the operation, and in the letter sent from the DOJ to Senator Grassley in February 2011 that claimed the ATF did not allow weapons to be trafficked to Mexico.

Mexican reaction

The Office of the General Prosecutor in Mexico is seeking the extradition of six citizens of the United States implicated with smuggling weapons from the operation. Three of the requested citizens for extradition are from Madera, California, while the other three are from the state of Texas. The current Attorney General of Mexico, Marisela Morales, said the PGR will search "to the end" in order to clarify what happened in the Operation Fast and Furious.

The ATF's "gunwalking" operations were deliberately kept secret from the Mexican government, even after related firearms began to be found at violent crime scenes and in criminal arsenals in 2010 and 2011. When they were told in January 2011 that there was an undercover program in existence, they still were not given details. Mexican politicians expressed widespread anger at the operations as information developed in 2011. Mexican officials stated in September that the US government still had not briefed them on what went wrong nor had they apologized.

Mexican Senator Arturo Escobar stated, "We can no longer tolerate what is occurring. There must be condemnation from the state," and that the Mexican Senate condemned the actions of the ATF.

Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín, president of the Chamber of Deputies of Mexico from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, said "This is a serious violation of international law. What happens if next time they need to introduce trained assassins or nuclear weapons?"

Attorney General of Mexico Marisela Morales, well-liked by US law enforcement, said, "At no time did we know or were we made aware that there might have been arms trafficking permitted. In no way would we have allowed it, because it is an attack on the safety of Mexicans." In addition, she expressed that allowing weapons to "walk" would represent a "betrayal" of Mexico.

Chihuahua state prosecutor Patricia Gonzalez, who had worked closely with the US for years, said, "The basic ineptitude of these officials [who ordered the Fast and Furious operation] caused the death of my brother and surely thousands more victims." Her brother, Mario, had been kidnapped, tortured and killed by cartel hit men in fall 2010. It was later revealed that his killers owned AK-47 assault rifles traced to Fast and Furious.

Some Mexican officials were more circumspect. For example, Mexican Congressman Humberto Benítez Treviño, a former attorney general, called Fast and Furious "a bad business that got out of hand." He had also characterized it as "an undercover program that wasn't properly controlled."

Like many politicians, Mexican pundits across the political spectrum expressed anger at news of the operations. La Jornada, a left-leaning newspaper, asked "US: ally or enemy?" The paper also argued that the Mérida Initiative should be immediately suspended. A right-leaning paper accused the US of violating Mexican sovereignty.

Manuel J. Jauregui of the Reforma newspaper wrote, "In sum, the gringo (American) government has been sending weapons to Mexico in a premeditated and systematic manner, knowing that their destinations were Mexican criminal organizations."

See also

• Eric Holder
• Mexican Drug War
• Mérida Initiative

External links

• Los Angeles Times: ATF's Fast and Furious Scandal