http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2011/11/12/20111112atf-gun-probe-operation-fast-and-furious-fall.html
When the National Rifle Association launched a TV ad campaign this month to have Attorney General Eric Holder fired, it culminated a political frenzy over a once-obscure Arizona gun-smuggling case.
Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed hundreds of weapons to cross the border in hopes of catching Mexican drug kingpins, wound up increasing the firepower of cartels without getting any key players. By all accounts, both the strategy and execution were flawed, leading to investigations by Congress and the Justice Department's inspector general.
The initial story line of Fast and Furious was about outrage -- anger that guns, let out of sight, had been used in crimes. But the backstory of the investigation is one of hidden motives, curious contradictions and strange allegiances, both among those who organized the effort and those who exposed it:
Officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Justice Department authorized the investigation to catch bad guys, stem the flow of guns to Mexico and, presumably, elevate their own careers. Instead, they failed to arrest drug lords, helped arm the cartels and damaged their professional reputations.
Rigid defenders of the right to bear arms, who typically assail ATF for enforcing gun laws, took a polar position on Fast and Furious, arguing that ATF agents should have arrested suspected straw buyers and seized their weapons even though the purchases were, in most cases, legal.
ATF agents who were outraged by the gun-walking strategy normally are proud to enforce firearms laws. But, ignored by superiors when they raised questions about the strategy, they turned for support to Second Amendment bloggers who loathe the ATF and its mission.
Key Republicans in Congress welcomed an opportunity to go after the Justice Department and White House. All of them have speculated that the Obama administration devised the investigation so that Mexico would be flooded with U.S. firearms, thereby justifying new gun-control legislation. But, as it turned out, the Fast and Furious strategy originated with field agents in Phoenix and was first employed not under Democratic leadership, but years earlier during the Republican administration of George W. Bush.
The upshot: Fast and Furious unfolded to America in the form of spin provided by multiple players with mixed motives.
What follows is a look at those involved, their agendas and their roles. It's a tale full of complications and nuance from the streets of Phoenix to Mexico City to Washington, D.C. It's a saga of violence, intrigue and impassioned politics.
Flaws begin to emerge
The plan seemed simple: Let some weapons go across the border in hopes of tracing them to drug lords.
The plan seemed simple: Let some weapons go across the border in hopes of tracing them to drug lords.
And, at least early on, few seemed to question the strategy devised by Phoenix ATF agents.
A successful case would put big-time narcotics criminals in prison, enhance ATF's reputation and advance agents' careers. It might also put a spotlight on American gun laws that enable straw buyers to help arm the Mexican syndicates.But as Fast and Furious progressed in 2009-10, obvious and crucial flaws emerged: Hundreds of high-powered rifles vanished into Mexico because investigators had no way to follow the guns -- or to develop criminal cases against those who wound up with them.
Within weeks, firearms began turning up at Mexican crime scenes, often next to corpses.
Some ATF agents tried to warn that people in Mexico were getting killed and that a public-relations disaster was inevitable. A few lawyers in the Justice Department also became alarmed, pressing for the flow of firearms to stop.
Their complaints were dismissed or ignored. More guns went south.
Gunrunners were not arrested.
The bloodshed in Mexico escalated.
Then, in December 2010, matters got worse: U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down in a midnight shootout with banditos near Rio Rico, and two AK-47-style rifles from Fast and Furious were found nearby.
ATF administrators and federal prosecutors kept the connection under wraps. But, within days, whistle-blower agents started leaking information.
ATF and Department of Justice officials denied that guns were allowed into Mexico. But congressional inquiries revealed that more than 2,000 guns were sold to straw buyers during the operation and about two-thirds of them apparently crossed the border.
Most of the weapons were semiautomatic rifles, but the arsenal included 34 high-powered .50-caliber guns.
Cartels, which operate like quasi-military outfits, were well-armed before Fast and Furious. It is impossible to say whether the flow of guns into Mexico increased because of the gun-walking case or has diminished in the aftermath.
Still, in retrospect, even those responsible for the operation admitted to a gross misjudgment: In their zeal to catch high-level cartel members, they overlooked the potential for mayhem when criminals get weapons. And the death of Brian Terry provided headline-grabbing proof.
The once-obscure case in Phoenix blew into a national controversy, putting a giant bull's-eye on President Barack Obama and the Justice Department.
The case led to the September resignation of Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke and the reassignment of ATF administrators, including acting Director Kenneth Melson and William Newell, special agent in charge for Arizona.
Members of Congress called on Obama to appoint a special counsel, and some demanded that Holder resign.
It remains to be seen how high the scandal will reach or how many it will drag down.
ATF's image problems
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, with about 5,000 employees, has been plagued for decades by leadership problems, mishandled cases and relentless criticism from staunch defenders of the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
The bureau dates to America's infancy, when Treasury Department agents enforced taxes on booze and tobacco. During Prohibition, that role expanded as investigators targeted bootleggers and the mob. When gangsters armed themselves with machine guns, and laws were passed to restrict automatic weapons, ATF's antecedent got the oversight job over firearms and explosives.
Always controversial because of its taxing and regulatory role, the ATF has been especially troubled over the past two decades.
In 1992, the bureau played a pivotal role in a shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, which took the lives of a U.S. marshal, a woman and a child.
One year later, an ATF siege against the Branch Davidian religious group near Waco, Texas, ended in a gunbattle and fiery deaths of 76 people, including 20 children and sect leader David Koresh.
In 1995, Time magazine described the bureau as "the most-hated federal agency in America."
To reduce criticism, the bureau was moved from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department in 2003.
A 2006 Inspector General Office's report found the ATF rife with mismanagement and employee grievances.
That same year, Mexican President Felipe Calderón began a crackdown on narcotics syndicates. Under enforcement pressure, cartels went to war with one another and with law enforcement. Street massacres became almost commonplace in border towns like Juarez, Tijuana and Nogales. Assassins, known as sicarios, did the fighting. And they needed firepower.
Gun sales boomed on the U.S. side of the border, especially in Arizona and Texas. Licensed firearms dealers were selling 10 or more semiautomatic rifles at once to customers visiting several times weekly. Some of the store owners reported the phenomenon to ATF agents. But most buyers were U.S. citizens with clean records, legally entitled to acquire an unlimited number of rifles.
Based on the volume and pattern of sales, agents were convinced that the customers were buying guns on behalf of drug lords in Mexico. But, without proof, what could they do?
Project Gunrunner
Five years ago, the Bush administration launched Project Gunrunner, an umbrella campaign to combat firearms smuggling along the Southwestern border. ATF agents conducted surveillance to find legal grounds to arrest the straw buyers. Over time, they seized more than 10,000 weapons and indicted scores of low-level criminals.
But straw buyers were easily replaced, the gunrunning continued and Mexico's mayhem escalated. In four years, more than 35,000 people died. While Calderón pressed his U.S. counterparts to stem the flow of weapons, law enforcement struggled to block smuggling operations.
In 2007, acting ATF Director Michael Sullivan told Congress that 90 percent of the criminal firearms recovered in Mexico originated in the United States. Federal officials now concede the number was inaccurate because not all guns seized in Mexico get traced, and those submitted are more likely to have a U.S. connection. But Sullivan's statistic became a staple of U.S. media reports on cartel violence, enraging gun-rights advocates who saw it as propaganda to support anti-gun legislation.
Amid that controversy, Obama was elected president -- prompting thousands of Americans to buy firearms because they feared a spate of gun-control measures.
In 2008, Arizona firearms dealer George Iknadosian was arrested after authorities said he sold hundreds of weapons to straw buyers. The case against him was thrown out because prosecutors failed to prove that he knew the guns were purchased for criminal purposes.
About that time, the Justice Department's Inspector General's Office began a review of Project Gunrunner to determine whether agents were wasting resources arresting "minnows" instead of going after drug lords in Mexico. The inspector general's findings, released in November 2010: "ATF's focus remains largely on inspections of gun dealers and investigations of straw purchasers, rather than higher-level traffickers."
Fast and Furious
As the inspector general review was under way, ATF agents in Phoenix uncovered a network of more than 20 people buying guns at an alarming rate. A plan was devised to put suspects under surveillance and conduct wiretaps to identify cartel bosses in Sinaloa. The operation was named "Fast and Furious."
The strategy was hardly unique: Police have followed contraband for decades to catch criminal leaders. But guns were different. ATF agents had been trained never to let a firearm "walk" because of potentially deadly consequences.
It turns out, however, that Fast and Furious was not the first anti-smuggling case in which ATF agents used such a technique. Firearms were allowed into Mexico during two earlier operations, including a 2006-07 Tucson case known as Operation Wide Receiver. Those investigations were carried out quietly during the George W. Bush administration, without public controversy.
In Fast and Furious, an agent named John Dodson recognized early on that allowing guns to travel south could lead to bloodshed and scandal. What made the strategy especially dubious was the lack of a plan to follow the weapons. Agents used wiretaps and once installed a tracking device in the stock of a gun. But, mostly, firearms simply disappeared. And Mexican authorities, who were pleading with the U.S. government to prevent the exportation of assault rifles, had no idea.
By early 2010, straw buyers were picking up more than 300 guns monthly from Arizona firearms dealers, and cartels in Mexico were killing up to 1,200 people per month. Authorities said one straw buyer in Phoenix bought a total of 720 guns.
"Although my instincts made me want to intervene and interdict these weapons," Dodson testified later in a congressional hearing, "my supervisors directed me and my colleagues not to make any stop or arrest but rather to keep the straw purchaser under surveillance while allowing the guns to walk."
By April 2010, even some ATF administrators were sounding alarms, to no avail. According to congressional testimony, Dodson and other agents asked to make seizures but were turned down by prosecutors who wanted more evidence and by bosses who wanted to catch drug lords.
David Voth, a supervisor over Fast and Furious, warned complainers in an e-mail that they might wind up working as jail guards if they continued raising a fuss. He urged them to relish being part of a major case, writing, "If you don't think this is fun, you're in the wrong line of work -- period!"
Dodson later told the Center for Public Integrity, a government-watchdog organization, that massacres were occurring almost daily in Mexico as gun trafficking escalated. "I even asked them (ATF supervisors) if they could see the correlation," he said. "With the number of guns we let walk, we'll never know how many people were killed, raped, robbed."
On Dec. 14, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Terry was killed. According to federal records, ATF agents raced to the crime scene only to find what they feared: two weapons from Fast and Furious. The AK-47-style rifles had been sold 11 months earlier with ATF blessing at the Lone Wolf Trading Co. in Glendale to suspect Jaime Avila.
According to ATF records, Avila was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, legally eligible to purchase as many rifles as he wanted. Avila was not under surveillance when he bought the weapons, and investigators did not learn about the buy until days later.
Still, the public-relations implications were devastating: An investigation had allowed criminal suspects to walk with guns, two of which were used during the murder of a federal agent.
Avila was arrested hours after the shooting, and he is accused of being the leader of an Arizona smuggling ring. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. But his link to the Terry homicide -- and to the gun-walking strategy -- went undisclosed for weeks.
Operation gone haywire
Dodson's fears were compounded by guilt after Terry's death and by outrage at what he perceives as a cover-up.
He turned for advice and support to colleagues who were not assigned to the case, Jay Dobyns and Vince Cefalu, two agents so disgruntled with management that they help operate an Internet site, cleanupatf.org, assailing ATF leaders with accusations of corruption, cronyism and incompetence.
Dobyns is an undercover investigator who gained national celebrity several years ago for penetrating the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club during an Arizona sting operation. In civil-court filings, he alleges that bureau bosses failed to provide proper protection for his family when death threats were made, retaliated when he complained, then sabotaged the investigation of an arson fire at his Tucson home. Dobyns says the agency he loves is run by arrogant and dishonest managers. "Fast and Furious is a prime example of that," he adds. "They refused to listen to anything from the field employees."
Cefalu, a special agent for 24 years, was notified by ATF in June that he is being fired and is accused of giving false testimony in a criminal case and making unauthorized disclosures. He has challenged the allegations and contends that his termination is retaliation for efforts to expose Fast and Furious.
When Terry was killed, Dobyns says, Dodson sought advice about becoming a whistle-blower. "I told him, 'You are going to be train-wrecked because that's what they (ATF managers) do,' " Dobyns recalls saying.
Dodson did not respond to interview requests for this story.
Seven days after the border shootout, cleanupatf.org posted an anonymous message advising that ATF bosses in Arizona had allowed criminal suspects to get away with hundreds of AR-15-type weapons, and "one of those rifles is rumored to have been linked to the recent killing."
It was the first public inkling of a federal operation gone haywire.
Efforts by mainstream media to verify the information were met with a government shield of silence. But gun-rights advocates on the Internet picked up the tip and embellished it with speculation.
Bloggers
A growing number of ATF employees wanted to expose Fast and Furious. The question: How?
Dobyns and Cefalu began networking with two of the most prominent and prolific Second Amendment bloggers in America.
David Codrea, an Ohio-based writer, is field editor for GUNS Magazine and an author on a website known as "The War on Guns: Notes From the Resistance."
Mike Vanderboegh runs a website, Sipsey Street Irregulars, which he identifies as a gathering place for the 3 percent of Americans willing to fight for the right to bear arms.
Vanderboegh and Codrea, longtime friends, this year received Soldier of Fortune Magazine's Second Amendment Freedom Award and the David and Goliath Award from Jews for Preservation of Firearms Ownership.
Dobyns says he turned to the bloggers because of a shared animus toward ATF administrators. "Do they have an agenda? Of course they do," he said. "But it's my experience that they're not anti-ATF; they're anti-bad ATF."
Codrea and Vanderboegh began churning out essays on Fast and Furious, even giving the operation its sardonic nickname, "Project Gunwalker." They joined forces with other bloggers, government employees and gun dealers in what Vanderboegh calls "a coalition of willing Lilliputians."
Their reports, frequently quoting anonymous sources, exposed the dubious investigative strategy but went much further, speculating that the White House was involved. A typical posting by Vanderboegh carried the headline, "... Obama's Gunwalker Was a Deliberate Conspiracy Vs. the 2nd Amendment."
That hypothesis has gone viral in the gun-rights blogosphere. Proponents, noting that Obama was endorsed by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence during the 2008 campaign, claim that high-placed officials in Washington, D.C., devised a plan to flood Mexico with firearms as justification for a crackdown on gun ownership.
In fact, the president talked about resurrecting a ban on assault weapons during his campaign, and the NRA predicted he would become the most anti-gun president in history. But, once in office, Obama failed to fulfill his pledge, and he has not pushed any bills impinging on the right to bear arms since taking office. The Brady Campaign was so disappointed it gave him an "F" for his performance.
But Second Amendment defenders see Obama's inaction as a ruse. During a speech last month to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Wayne LaPierre, vice president of the NRA, acknowledged that the president "hasn't pushed for new gun controls," but said that was "a big, fat, stinking lie" designed to mislead Americans.
"It's all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country," LaPierre said.
Pressure to investigate
At a news conference in late January 2011, federal authorities announced indictments against 20 gun-trafficking suspects, including the man who bought weapons found at Agent Terry's death scene.
Newell, then the special agent in charge for Arizona, said those who arm the cartels "have as much blood on their hands as the criminals that use them."
Asked if the ATF knowingly let guns "walk," Newell answered, "Hell, no."
Codrea, the anti-ATF blogger, says outrage swelled because of that response, plus a growing sense of urgency: People were getting killed on both sides of the border, and ATF whistle-blowers were risking their careers by criticizing an agency that has a reputation for retaliation. But mainstream media -- lacking on-the-record sources -- resisted publication of undocumented claims about Fast and Furious.
Bloggers turned to politicians, making calls and e-mailing members of Congress.
Codrea wrote an open letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, begging for an inquiry. "We had to bang pots and pans because we were small fry," he says.
Vanderboegh sent e-mails to politicians for two weeks, with no success. Finally, he says, he wrote to Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., threatening to publish an accusation that the senator was "complicit in the cover-up." Within hours, Vanderboegh says, he heard from Sessions' staff and was channeled to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.
A congressional investigation was under way.
"We were the midwives of this scandal because nobody else would touch it and the agents were out there, twisting in the wind, willing to tell the truth at great risk to themselves," Vanderboegh boasted in a subsequent Internet post.
In interviews, Vanderbeogh and Codrea chuckle at the irony of government agents relying on their critics to find a congressional audience.
"It's so improbable that ATF guys would come to us, the Second Amendment advocates," Vanderbeogh says. "But we realized we did have common enemies in the ATF hierarchy."
Congress
Vanderbeogh says politicians were hesitant, unable to believe whistle-blowers, afraid to go after the Obama administration with such a bizarre tale.
"They were hunting some very, very dangerous game," he says of congressional investigators. "This was something that could turn on them and eat them."
As more agents came forward, some with corroborating records, Republican lawmakers became attentive -- and more assertive in going after an executive branch run by Democrats.
Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, began working with Grassley. Both men had received A grades from the NRA for Second Amendment positions. A longtime Grassley friend and campaign officer, Kayne Robinson, is a former NRA president who now serves as the organization's executive director for operations.
Issa, R-Calif., and Grassley demanded documents from the Justice Department. They started calling agents and administrators to testify under oath.
On July 15, Dodson appeared before the House Oversight Committee. His message: "During this operation known as Fast and Furious, we, ATF, failed to fulfill one of our most fundamental obligations, to caretake the public trust; in part, to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. ... This was not a matter of some weapons getting away from us, or allowing a few to walk so as to follow them to a much larger or more significant target. Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals -- this was the plan."
"We were giving guns to people to kill other humans," added Peter Forcelli, another whistle-blower agent in Phoenix. "This was a catastrophic disaster."
With government records and sworn testimony, mainstream media ran with the story. And, day by day, Issa and Grassley issued news releases exposing new details about Fast and Furious -- a tactic known as "death by a thousand cuts."
Grassley, speaking to CNSnews.com in June, speculated that the White House had intended to use the case as an excuse to push for new firearm regulations: "My suspicion is they don't like the Second Amendment the way it is, and they want to do everything they can to hurt guns and restrict guns," he said. "So they could have been building a case for that. But I can't prove that."
Obama and Holder offered terse disclaimers, saying they were not aware that guns were being allowed into Mexico until after Terry's death, and they would never have authorized such a strategy. Obama called the tactic "bad judgment." Holder described it as "fundamentally flawed."
Grassley told The Republic that his objective is to identify and remove the top government official responsible for Fast and Furious so that mistakes are not repeated. He said he has a reputation for neutral oversight and any suggestion of political motives would be an insult. He added that Democrats, who have demanded further investigation of Operation Wide Receiver under President Bush, are to blame for partisanship.
Grassley said that he still believes Fast and Furious began in Washington, D.C., as a ploy "to get more gun-control legislation," but he has yet to uncover smoking-gun proof of that theory.
Conspiracy alleged
Using whistle-blower testimony and records obtained by subpoena, Grassley and Issa proved that high-level officials in the Justice Department were aware of the gun-walking strategy, failed to stop it and then issued false denials to Congress.
One example: In February, Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Ronald Weich sent a letter to Grassley insisting that guns were not purposely allowed to walk: "ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico."
Earlier this month, Lanny Breuer, chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, admitted in sworn testimony that Weich's assertion was false.
Even under siege from Grassley and Issa, Holder continued to blame weak U.S. firearms laws for gunrunning on the border.
In a letter to Congress last month complaining about "political posturing," Holder said authorities are "severely impaired by a lack of effective law enforcement tools." The penalty for straw purchases is so weak, he argued, that trafficking is not deterred and agents have no leverage to flip suspects into informers. Holder also lamented the lack of laws restricting multiple rifle purchases.
Gun-rights advocates point to such statements as evidence that Fast and Furious was part of a gambit to justify gun control.
But Operation Wide Receiver seems to challenge that assertion. That investigation, based in Tucson during 2006-07, allowed nearly 300 guns to be smuggled into Mexico. The objective, according to federal records: catch cartel kingpins.
The problem for those who see gun-walking as a conspiracy of the Obama administration: Operation Wide Receiver was carried out during the Bush administration, under then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Even Dobyns, one of the agents behind cleanupatf.org, discounts notions that the gun-walking tactic originated in Washington, D.C. He says Fast and Furious was concocted by an Arizona field agent and endorsed by ATF bosses up the line from Phoenix.
"I think it was a ploy at self-glorification," he said. "When the OIG report came out and said, 'Hey, ATF, you're failing miserably,' I think they decided to prove him wrong. They said, 'I'm going to get the big fish, and how do you like me now?' "
Outcome unclear
As controversy swirled, so did media coverage: Right-leaning news outlets sought to show a scheming, dishonest White House. Left-wing press sought to blame a system that allows unlimited purchases of semiautomatic rifles. Mainstream journalists struggled to separate truth from propaganda.
Lara Brown, a Villanova University professor of political science who focuses on scandals in Washington, D.C., says a pattern of mistakes commonly ensues when something goes wrong in government: Those responsible try to cover up. Critics try to gang up. Concealment efforts smack of a plot, fueling suspicions of conspiracy.
"I think it was Napoleon who said, 'Don't attribute malice to incompetence,' " Brown says.
The endgame remains unclear.
Some gun-rights advocates are calling for the impeachment of Obama.
The NRA and others want Holder fired, even airing commercials calling for his ouster.
Many have suggested that the ATF should be abolished.
Codrea and Vanderboegh say that last option would be a mistake because firearms enforcement might become the province of a larger, more powerful agency such as the FBI -- difficult to attack politically.
"I very much prefer the devil that I know in rehab to the devil that I don't know," Vanderbeogh says.
Dobyns says the ATF is filled with good agents, and he's hoping the new acting director, B. Todd Jones, will clean house by removing all of the top management.
Cefalu sees major reforms. "Change is coming," he wrote in a recent blog. "THAT IS EXACTLY what we have been asking for. ... Take a deep breath and let's see where they are going to take our bureau."
Harry L. Wilson, director of Policy and Opinion Research at Roanoke College, says political motivations in a scandal often generate unsupported conspiracy theories and unwanted results.
"It was botched incredibly badly," he says of Fast and Furious. "But I can't imagine anybody was intentionally putting guns into Mexico as a ploy to regulate firearms in the U.S. To me, that is just beyond paranoia. ... The issues are always more complicated than what they appear to be, and than how partisans on both sides make them out to be."
Wilson, who wrote the book, "Guns, Gun Control and Elections: The Politics and Policy of Firearms," says attempts at secrecy undoubtedly conflated the controversy over Fast and Furious.
"Cover-ups often are worse than what you were trying to cover up, whether it's Watergate or 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman,' " he said. "You can never separate out political motives. If you look at Watergate, were Democrats after Richard Nixon? Yeah, but there was a reason to be after him. It's the perfect scenario: Go after the bad guy and do yourself good at the same time.
"At the end of all this, where does it stop? Nobody knows."
A successful case would put big-time narcotics criminals in prison, enhance ATF's reputation and advance agents' careers. It might also put a spotlight on American gun laws that enable straw buyers to help arm the Mexican syndicates.But as Fast and Furious progressed in 2009-10, obvious and crucial flaws emerged: Hundreds of high-powered rifles vanished into Mexico because investigators had no way to follow the guns -- or to develop criminal cases against those who wound up with them.
Within weeks, firearms began turning up at Mexican crime scenes, often next to corpses.
Some ATF agents tried to warn that people in Mexico were getting killed and that a public-relations disaster was inevitable. A few lawyers in the Justice Department also became alarmed, pressing for the flow of firearms to stop.
Their complaints were dismissed or ignored. More guns went south.
Gunrunners were not arrested.
The bloodshed in Mexico escalated.
Then, in December 2010, matters got worse: U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down in a midnight shootout with banditos near Rio Rico, and two AK-47-style rifles from Fast and Furious were found nearby.
ATF administrators and federal prosecutors kept the connection under wraps. But, within days, whistle-blower agents started leaking information.
ATF and Department of Justice officials denied that guns were allowed into Mexico. But congressional inquiries revealed that more than 2,000 guns were sold to straw buyers during the operation and about two-thirds of them apparently crossed the border.
Most of the weapons were semiautomatic rifles, but the arsenal included 34 high-powered .50-caliber guns.
Cartels, which operate like quasi-military outfits, were well-armed before Fast and Furious. It is impossible to say whether the flow of guns into Mexico increased because of the gun-walking case or has diminished in the aftermath.
Still, in retrospect, even those responsible for the operation admitted to a gross misjudgment: In their zeal to catch high-level cartel members, they overlooked the potential for mayhem when criminals get weapons. And the death of Brian Terry provided headline-grabbing proof.
The once-obscure case in Phoenix blew into a national controversy, putting a giant bull's-eye on President Barack Obama and the Justice Department.
The case led to the September resignation of Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke and the reassignment of ATF administrators, including acting Director Kenneth Melson and William Newell, special agent in charge for Arizona.
Members of Congress called on Obama to appoint a special counsel, and some demanded that Holder resign.
It remains to be seen how high the scandal will reach or how many it will drag down.
ATF's image problems
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, with about 5,000 employees, has been plagued for decades by leadership problems, mishandled cases and relentless criticism from staunch defenders of the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
The bureau dates to America's infancy, when Treasury Department agents enforced taxes on booze and tobacco. During Prohibition, that role expanded as investigators targeted bootleggers and the mob. When gangsters armed themselves with machine guns, and laws were passed to restrict automatic weapons, ATF's antecedent got the oversight job over firearms and explosives.
Always controversial because of its taxing and regulatory role, the ATF has been especially troubled over the past two decades.
In 1992, the bureau played a pivotal role in a shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, which took the lives of a U.S. marshal, a woman and a child.
One year later, an ATF siege against the Branch Davidian religious group near Waco, Texas, ended in a gunbattle and fiery deaths of 76 people, including 20 children and sect leader David Koresh.
In 1995, Time magazine described the bureau as "the most-hated federal agency in America."
To reduce criticism, the bureau was moved from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department in 2003.
A 2006 Inspector General Office's report found the ATF rife with mismanagement and employee grievances.
That same year, Mexican President Felipe Calderón began a crackdown on narcotics syndicates. Under enforcement pressure, cartels went to war with one another and with law enforcement. Street massacres became almost commonplace in border towns like Juarez, Tijuana and Nogales. Assassins, known as sicarios, did the fighting. And they needed firepower.
Gun sales boomed on the U.S. side of the border, especially in Arizona and Texas. Licensed firearms dealers were selling 10 or more semiautomatic rifles at once to customers visiting several times weekly. Some of the store owners reported the phenomenon to ATF agents. But most buyers were U.S. citizens with clean records, legally entitled to acquire an unlimited number of rifles.
Based on the volume and pattern of sales, agents were convinced that the customers were buying guns on behalf of drug lords in Mexico. But, without proof, what could they do?
Project Gunrunner
Five years ago, the Bush administration launched Project Gunrunner, an umbrella campaign to combat firearms smuggling along the Southwestern border. ATF agents conducted surveillance to find legal grounds to arrest the straw buyers. Over time, they seized more than 10,000 weapons and indicted scores of low-level criminals.
But straw buyers were easily replaced, the gunrunning continued and Mexico's mayhem escalated. In four years, more than 35,000 people died. While Calderón pressed his U.S. counterparts to stem the flow of weapons, law enforcement struggled to block smuggling operations.
In 2007, acting ATF Director Michael Sullivan told Congress that 90 percent of the criminal firearms recovered in Mexico originated in the United States. Federal officials now concede the number was inaccurate because not all guns seized in Mexico get traced, and those submitted are more likely to have a U.S. connection. But Sullivan's statistic became a staple of U.S. media reports on cartel violence, enraging gun-rights advocates who saw it as propaganda to support anti-gun legislation.
Amid that controversy, Obama was elected president -- prompting thousands of Americans to buy firearms because they feared a spate of gun-control measures.
In 2008, Arizona firearms dealer George Iknadosian was arrested after authorities said he sold hundreds of weapons to straw buyers. The case against him was thrown out because prosecutors failed to prove that he knew the guns were purchased for criminal purposes.
About that time, the Justice Department's Inspector General's Office began a review of Project Gunrunner to determine whether agents were wasting resources arresting "minnows" instead of going after drug lords in Mexico. The inspector general's findings, released in November 2010: "ATF's focus remains largely on inspections of gun dealers and investigations of straw purchasers, rather than higher-level traffickers."
Fast and Furious
As the inspector general review was under way, ATF agents in Phoenix uncovered a network of more than 20 people buying guns at an alarming rate. A plan was devised to put suspects under surveillance and conduct wiretaps to identify cartel bosses in Sinaloa. The operation was named "Fast and Furious."
The strategy was hardly unique: Police have followed contraband for decades to catch criminal leaders. But guns were different. ATF agents had been trained never to let a firearm "walk" because of potentially deadly consequences.
It turns out, however, that Fast and Furious was not the first anti-smuggling case in which ATF agents used such a technique. Firearms were allowed into Mexico during two earlier operations, including a 2006-07 Tucson case known as Operation Wide Receiver. Those investigations were carried out quietly during the George W. Bush administration, without public controversy.
In Fast and Furious, an agent named John Dodson recognized early on that allowing guns to travel south could lead to bloodshed and scandal. What made the strategy especially dubious was the lack of a plan to follow the weapons. Agents used wiretaps and once installed a tracking device in the stock of a gun. But, mostly, firearms simply disappeared. And Mexican authorities, who were pleading with the U.S. government to prevent the exportation of assault rifles, had no idea.
By early 2010, straw buyers were picking up more than 300 guns monthly from Arizona firearms dealers, and cartels in Mexico were killing up to 1,200 people per month. Authorities said one straw buyer in Phoenix bought a total of 720 guns.
"Although my instincts made me want to intervene and interdict these weapons," Dodson testified later in a congressional hearing, "my supervisors directed me and my colleagues not to make any stop or arrest but rather to keep the straw purchaser under surveillance while allowing the guns to walk."
By April 2010, even some ATF administrators were sounding alarms, to no avail. According to congressional testimony, Dodson and other agents asked to make seizures but were turned down by prosecutors who wanted more evidence and by bosses who wanted to catch drug lords.
David Voth, a supervisor over Fast and Furious, warned complainers in an e-mail that they might wind up working as jail guards if they continued raising a fuss. He urged them to relish being part of a major case, writing, "If you don't think this is fun, you're in the wrong line of work -- period!"
Dodson later told the Center for Public Integrity, a government-watchdog organization, that massacres were occurring almost daily in Mexico as gun trafficking escalated. "I even asked them (ATF supervisors) if they could see the correlation," he said. "With the number of guns we let walk, we'll never know how many people were killed, raped, robbed."
On Dec. 14, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Terry was killed. According to federal records, ATF agents raced to the crime scene only to find what they feared: two weapons from Fast and Furious. The AK-47-style rifles had been sold 11 months earlier with ATF blessing at the Lone Wolf Trading Co. in Glendale to suspect Jaime Avila.
According to ATF records, Avila was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, legally eligible to purchase as many rifles as he wanted. Avila was not under surveillance when he bought the weapons, and investigators did not learn about the buy until days later.
Still, the public-relations implications were devastating: An investigation had allowed criminal suspects to walk with guns, two of which were used during the murder of a federal agent.
Avila was arrested hours after the shooting, and he is accused of being the leader of an Arizona smuggling ring. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. But his link to the Terry homicide -- and to the gun-walking strategy -- went undisclosed for weeks.
Operation gone haywire
Dodson's fears were compounded by guilt after Terry's death and by outrage at what he perceives as a cover-up.
He turned for advice and support to colleagues who were not assigned to the case, Jay Dobyns and Vince Cefalu, two agents so disgruntled with management that they help operate an Internet site, cleanupatf.org, assailing ATF leaders with accusations of corruption, cronyism and incompetence.
Dobyns is an undercover investigator who gained national celebrity several years ago for penetrating the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club during an Arizona sting operation. In civil-court filings, he alleges that bureau bosses failed to provide proper protection for his family when death threats were made, retaliated when he complained, then sabotaged the investigation of an arson fire at his Tucson home. Dobyns says the agency he loves is run by arrogant and dishonest managers. "Fast and Furious is a prime example of that," he adds. "They refused to listen to anything from the field employees."
Cefalu, a special agent for 24 years, was notified by ATF in June that he is being fired and is accused of giving false testimony in a criminal case and making unauthorized disclosures. He has challenged the allegations and contends that his termination is retaliation for efforts to expose Fast and Furious.
When Terry was killed, Dobyns says, Dodson sought advice about becoming a whistle-blower. "I told him, 'You are going to be train-wrecked because that's what they (ATF managers) do,' " Dobyns recalls saying.
Dodson did not respond to interview requests for this story.
Seven days after the border shootout, cleanupatf.org posted an anonymous message advising that ATF bosses in Arizona had allowed criminal suspects to get away with hundreds of AR-15-type weapons, and "one of those rifles is rumored to have been linked to the recent killing."
It was the first public inkling of a federal operation gone haywire.
Efforts by mainstream media to verify the information were met with a government shield of silence. But gun-rights advocates on the Internet picked up the tip and embellished it with speculation.
Bloggers
A growing number of ATF employees wanted to expose Fast and Furious. The question: How?
Dobyns and Cefalu began networking with two of the most prominent and prolific Second Amendment bloggers in America.
David Codrea, an Ohio-based writer, is field editor for GUNS Magazine and an author on a website known as "The War on Guns: Notes From the Resistance."
Mike Vanderboegh runs a website, Sipsey Street Irregulars, which he identifies as a gathering place for the 3 percent of Americans willing to fight for the right to bear arms.
Vanderboegh and Codrea, longtime friends, this year received Soldier of Fortune Magazine's Second Amendment Freedom Award and the David and Goliath Award from Jews for Preservation of Firearms Ownership.
Dobyns says he turned to the bloggers because of a shared animus toward ATF administrators. "Do they have an agenda? Of course they do," he said. "But it's my experience that they're not anti-ATF; they're anti-bad ATF."
Codrea and Vanderboegh began churning out essays on Fast and Furious, even giving the operation its sardonic nickname, "Project Gunwalker." They joined forces with other bloggers, government employees and gun dealers in what Vanderboegh calls "a coalition of willing Lilliputians."
Their reports, frequently quoting anonymous sources, exposed the dubious investigative strategy but went much further, speculating that the White House was involved. A typical posting by Vanderboegh carried the headline, "... Obama's Gunwalker Was a Deliberate Conspiracy Vs. the 2nd Amendment."
That hypothesis has gone viral in the gun-rights blogosphere. Proponents, noting that Obama was endorsed by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence during the 2008 campaign, claim that high-placed officials in Washington, D.C., devised a plan to flood Mexico with firearms as justification for a crackdown on gun ownership.
In fact, the president talked about resurrecting a ban on assault weapons during his campaign, and the NRA predicted he would become the most anti-gun president in history. But, once in office, Obama failed to fulfill his pledge, and he has not pushed any bills impinging on the right to bear arms since taking office. The Brady Campaign was so disappointed it gave him an "F" for his performance.
But Second Amendment defenders see Obama's inaction as a ruse. During a speech last month to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Wayne LaPierre, vice president of the NRA, acknowledged that the president "hasn't pushed for new gun controls," but said that was "a big, fat, stinking lie" designed to mislead Americans.
"It's all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country," LaPierre said.
Pressure to investigate
At a news conference in late January 2011, federal authorities announced indictments against 20 gun-trafficking suspects, including the man who bought weapons found at Agent Terry's death scene.
Newell, then the special agent in charge for Arizona, said those who arm the cartels "have as much blood on their hands as the criminals that use them."
Asked if the ATF knowingly let guns "walk," Newell answered, "Hell, no."
Codrea, the anti-ATF blogger, says outrage swelled because of that response, plus a growing sense of urgency: People were getting killed on both sides of the border, and ATF whistle-blowers were risking their careers by criticizing an agency that has a reputation for retaliation. But mainstream media -- lacking on-the-record sources -- resisted publication of undocumented claims about Fast and Furious.
Bloggers turned to politicians, making calls and e-mailing members of Congress.
Codrea wrote an open letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, begging for an inquiry. "We had to bang pots and pans because we were small fry," he says.
Vanderboegh sent e-mails to politicians for two weeks, with no success. Finally, he says, he wrote to Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., threatening to publish an accusation that the senator was "complicit in the cover-up." Within hours, Vanderboegh says, he heard from Sessions' staff and was channeled to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.
A congressional investigation was under way.
"We were the midwives of this scandal because nobody else would touch it and the agents were out there, twisting in the wind, willing to tell the truth at great risk to themselves," Vanderboegh boasted in a subsequent Internet post.
In interviews, Vanderbeogh and Codrea chuckle at the irony of government agents relying on their critics to find a congressional audience.
"It's so improbable that ATF guys would come to us, the Second Amendment advocates," Vanderbeogh says. "But we realized we did have common enemies in the ATF hierarchy."
Congress
Vanderbeogh says politicians were hesitant, unable to believe whistle-blowers, afraid to go after the Obama administration with such a bizarre tale.
"They were hunting some very, very dangerous game," he says of congressional investigators. "This was something that could turn on them and eat them."
As more agents came forward, some with corroborating records, Republican lawmakers became attentive -- and more assertive in going after an executive branch run by Democrats.
Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, began working with Grassley. Both men had received A grades from the NRA for Second Amendment positions. A longtime Grassley friend and campaign officer, Kayne Robinson, is a former NRA president who now serves as the organization's executive director for operations.
Issa, R-Calif., and Grassley demanded documents from the Justice Department. They started calling agents and administrators to testify under oath.
On July 15, Dodson appeared before the House Oversight Committee. His message: "During this operation known as Fast and Furious, we, ATF, failed to fulfill one of our most fundamental obligations, to caretake the public trust; in part, to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. ... This was not a matter of some weapons getting away from us, or allowing a few to walk so as to follow them to a much larger or more significant target. Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals -- this was the plan."
"We were giving guns to people to kill other humans," added Peter Forcelli, another whistle-blower agent in Phoenix. "This was a catastrophic disaster."
With government records and sworn testimony, mainstream media ran with the story. And, day by day, Issa and Grassley issued news releases exposing new details about Fast and Furious -- a tactic known as "death by a thousand cuts."
Grassley, speaking to CNSnews.com in June, speculated that the White House had intended to use the case as an excuse to push for new firearm regulations: "My suspicion is they don't like the Second Amendment the way it is, and they want to do everything they can to hurt guns and restrict guns," he said. "So they could have been building a case for that. But I can't prove that."
Obama and Holder offered terse disclaimers, saying they were not aware that guns were being allowed into Mexico until after Terry's death, and they would never have authorized such a strategy. Obama called the tactic "bad judgment." Holder described it as "fundamentally flawed."
Grassley told The Republic that his objective is to identify and remove the top government official responsible for Fast and Furious so that mistakes are not repeated. He said he has a reputation for neutral oversight and any suggestion of political motives would be an insult. He added that Democrats, who have demanded further investigation of Operation Wide Receiver under President Bush, are to blame for partisanship.
Grassley said that he still believes Fast and Furious began in Washington, D.C., as a ploy "to get more gun-control legislation," but he has yet to uncover smoking-gun proof of that theory.
Conspiracy alleged
Using whistle-blower testimony and records obtained by subpoena, Grassley and Issa proved that high-level officials in the Justice Department were aware of the gun-walking strategy, failed to stop it and then issued false denials to Congress.
One example: In February, Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Ronald Weich sent a letter to Grassley insisting that guns were not purposely allowed to walk: "ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico."
Earlier this month, Lanny Breuer, chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, admitted in sworn testimony that Weich's assertion was false.
Even under siege from Grassley and Issa, Holder continued to blame weak U.S. firearms laws for gunrunning on the border.
In a letter to Congress last month complaining about "political posturing," Holder said authorities are "severely impaired by a lack of effective law enforcement tools." The penalty for straw purchases is so weak, he argued, that trafficking is not deterred and agents have no leverage to flip suspects into informers. Holder also lamented the lack of laws restricting multiple rifle purchases.
Gun-rights advocates point to such statements as evidence that Fast and Furious was part of a gambit to justify gun control.
But Operation Wide Receiver seems to challenge that assertion. That investigation, based in Tucson during 2006-07, allowed nearly 300 guns to be smuggled into Mexico. The objective, according to federal records: catch cartel kingpins.
The problem for those who see gun-walking as a conspiracy of the Obama administration: Operation Wide Receiver was carried out during the Bush administration, under then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Even Dobyns, one of the agents behind cleanupatf.org, discounts notions that the gun-walking tactic originated in Washington, D.C. He says Fast and Furious was concocted by an Arizona field agent and endorsed by ATF bosses up the line from Phoenix.
"I think it was a ploy at self-glorification," he said. "When the OIG report came out and said, 'Hey, ATF, you're failing miserably,' I think they decided to prove him wrong. They said, 'I'm going to get the big fish, and how do you like me now?' "
Outcome unclear
As controversy swirled, so did media coverage: Right-leaning news outlets sought to show a scheming, dishonest White House. Left-wing press sought to blame a system that allows unlimited purchases of semiautomatic rifles. Mainstream journalists struggled to separate truth from propaganda.
Lara Brown, a Villanova University professor of political science who focuses on scandals in Washington, D.C., says a pattern of mistakes commonly ensues when something goes wrong in government: Those responsible try to cover up. Critics try to gang up. Concealment efforts smack of a plot, fueling suspicions of conspiracy.
"I think it was Napoleon who said, 'Don't attribute malice to incompetence,' " Brown says.
The endgame remains unclear.
Some gun-rights advocates are calling for the impeachment of Obama.
The NRA and others want Holder fired, even airing commercials calling for his ouster.
Many have suggested that the ATF should be abolished.
Codrea and Vanderboegh say that last option would be a mistake because firearms enforcement might become the province of a larger, more powerful agency such as the FBI -- difficult to attack politically.
"I very much prefer the devil that I know in rehab to the devil that I don't know," Vanderbeogh says.
Dobyns says the ATF is filled with good agents, and he's hoping the new acting director, B. Todd Jones, will clean house by removing all of the top management.
Cefalu sees major reforms. "Change is coming," he wrote in a recent blog. "THAT IS EXACTLY what we have been asking for. ... Take a deep breath and let's see where they are going to take our bureau."
Harry L. Wilson, director of Policy and Opinion Research at Roanoke College, says political motivations in a scandal often generate unsupported conspiracy theories and unwanted results.
"It was botched incredibly badly," he says of Fast and Furious. "But I can't imagine anybody was intentionally putting guns into Mexico as a ploy to regulate firearms in the U.S. To me, that is just beyond paranoia. ... The issues are always more complicated than what they appear to be, and than how partisans on both sides make them out to be."
Wilson, who wrote the book, "Guns, Gun Control and Elections: The Politics and Policy of Firearms," says attempts at secrecy undoubtedly conflated the controversy over Fast and Furious.
"Cover-ups often are worse than what you were trying to cover up, whether it's Watergate or 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman,' " he said. "You can never separate out political motives. If you look at Watergate, were Democrats after Richard Nixon? Yeah, but there was a reason to be after him. It's the perfect scenario: Go after the bad guy and do yourself good at the same time.
"At the end of all this, where does it stop? Nobody knows."
