Sharyl Attkisson: Docs indicate ATF was using Fast and Furious to justify new gun regs

Just as Second Amendment civil rights activists feared, federal government bureaucrats were supplying illegal firearms to Mexican drug cartels in the expectation that it would led to pressure for more regulation. Analyzing a 60 page document release in response to a FOIA action by Judicial Watch Attkisson writes:

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Eric Holder: ATF Planning to Use Drones

Attorney General Eric Holder admitted Tuesday that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was in the process of looking at the use of domestic drones.  Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, questioned Holder during a House Judiciary Committee hearing, asking the Attorney General if he believed if the Federal Aviation Administration or Congress should regulate of drone use.  “Would you think that it would be better that Congress intervene and employ legislation safeguarding the Fourth Amendment, right of privacy basically on citizens or do you suggest as Attorney General that the FAA still control who gets a drone or not?” Poe asked.

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ATF Director: 'Wish I Had Better Answers' About ATF Agents Probing a Tea Party Conservative

B. Todd Jones, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, couldn't tell Congress why his agents made two visits to a tea party conservative in a 13-month period -- but only after she requested tax-exempt status for her conservative group, True the Vote.  Catherine Engelbrecht had a Federal Firearms License (FFL) for 12 years. "And suddenly she applies for tax exempt status, and you're knocking on her door twice in 13 months," Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told Jones at a hearing on Wednesday.  "Congressman, I wish I had better answers," Jones said.

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ATF uses rogue tactics in storefront stings across the nation

Aaron Key wasn't sure he wanted a tattoo on his neck. Especially one of a giant squid smoking a joint.  But the guys running Squid's Smoke Shop in Portland, Ore., convinced him: It would be a perfect way to promote their store.  They would even pay him and a friend $150 apiece if they agreed to turn their bodies into walking billboards.  Key, who is mentally disabled, was swayed.  He and his friend, Marquis Glover, liked Squid's. It was their hangout. The 19-year-olds spent many afternoons there playing Xbox and chatting with the owner, "Squid," and the store clerks. So they took the money and got the ink etched on their necks, tentacles creeping down to their collarbones.  It would be months before the young men learned the whole thing was a setup. The guys running Squid's were actually undercover ATF agents conducting a sting to get guns away from criminals and drugs off the street.

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ATF settles with landlord after flawed sting

The ATF has settled a claim from the landlord of the building where the agency ran a troubled undercover sting in Milwaukee last year, leaving behind broken doors and walls, unpaid utility bills and damaged carpeting from an overflowing toilet.  The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives closed its phony store, called Fearless Distributing, in October after an agent's guns, including an automatic machine gun, were stolen from his vehicle. Then, the storefront was burglarized of $40,000 in merchandise. The stolen machine gun remains missing.  The landlord, David Salkin, asked the ATF to pay to cover damage to the building and unpaid utility bills. ATF supervisors in Milwaukee and regional headquarters in St. Paul refused.  When Salkin pressed his case, an ATF attorney warned him to stop contacting the agency or it may be considered threatening a federal agent.

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Agent: I was ordered to let U.S. guns into Mexico

An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen.  Dodson's bosses say that never happened. Now, he's risking his job to go public.  Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico.

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CB: ATF Promotes 3 Managers Who Oversaw ‘Operation Fast and Furious’

CONSERVATIVE BYTE - Three ATF officials who held direct supervisory roles involved in the controversial “Operation Fast and Furious” gun trafficking program have been promoted and moved to ATF headquarters in Washington DC, according to the LA Times. ✧ Two of the three ATF agents in question have admitted to mistakes they made in their managerial roles in the botched border gun trafficking operation that let approximately 2,000 weapons be sold to straw buyers. Those weapons were then allegedly allowed to cross the border despite initial law enforcement surveillance, and many of them ended up in the hands of ultra-violent Mexican drug cartels.

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BREAKING NEWS: ATF attaché calls Gunwalker 'perfect storm of idiocy'

A Joint Staff Report prepared for Rep. Darrell Issa of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Senate Judiciary Committee has just been released today. Titled “The Department of Justice’s Operation Fast and Furious Fueling Cartel Violence,” the report asserts:

Operation Fast and Furious made unprecedented use of a dangerous investigative technique known as “gunwalking.” Rather than intervene and seize illegally purchase firearms, ATF’s Phoenix Field Division allowed known straw purchasers to walk away with guns, over and over again. As a result, the weapons were transferred to criminals and Mexican Drug Cartels.

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Justice Officials in 'Panic Mode' over pending hearings

FOXNEWS.COM, 6/10/2011 by William La Jeunesse - Officials at the Department of Justice are in "panic mode," according to multiple sources, as word spreads that congressional testimony next week will paint a bleak and humiliating picture of Operation Fast and Furious, the botched undercover operation that left a trail of blood from Mexico to Washington, D.C. Read more at Fox...

The public refers to the debacle as 'Operation Gunrunner.' --bc Read More......