Obstruction of Justice? Obama Administration Accused of Intimidating Fast and Furious Witnesses

It appears that the Obama administration is forgetting a key rule of politics, its not the mistake that gets you, it's the cover-up.

For the second time in less than a month they are being accused of obstructing the Congressional  inquiry into Operation Fast and Furious, the ATF operation which allowed Mexican drug cartels and convicted felons to obtain weapons. The purpose of these committee hearings is to discover how such a lame-brained scheme was allowed to proceed.

Today the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is holding hearings continuing its investigation into Operation Fast and Furious.

According to Committee Chairman Issa, the Obama administration sought to intimidate witnesses into not testifying before his committee. Issa said at least two scheduled witnesses ”received warning letters from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to limit their testimony.

Issa made this revelation in an interview last night with the Washington Times.

But after receiving subpoenas, at least two of the agents got letters from ATF Associate Chief Counsel Barry S. Orlow warning them to keep certain areas off-limits, including those still under investigation. Neither of the targeted agents was identified.

Mr. Issa said at least one witness wanted to back out of testifying to his committee after receiving the letter, but the chairman declined that request. Instead he fired a letter back to William J. Hoover, deputy director of ATF, saying the “timing and content of this letter strongly suggest that ATF is obstructing and interfering with the congressional investigation.” 

This is the second time, there have been charges of obstruction made against the Obama administration regarding the Fast and Furious scandal.  On July 4th ATF Director Ken Melson testified before Darrell Issa's  Committee. As a result of the meeting, Issa along with ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley  fired off a letter about  Melson's charge that he had been directed to obstruct the Congressional investigation.

"If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand," Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder. "That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation."

Issa  told the Washington Times  he is certain Fast and Furious was known about by most top officials at the Justice Department and that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. either knew and misled Congress, or was so out of the loop that he’s guilty of mismanagement.

“How is it that the No. 2, 3, 4 at Justice all knew about this program, but the No. 1 didn’t?,” Mr. Issa said. “Is it because he said ‘don’t tell me’? Is it because they knew what they were doing is wrong, and they were protecting their boss? Or is it that Eric Holder is just so disconnected … ?

“Whichever it is — he knew and he’s lied to Congress, or he didn’t know, and he’s so detached that he wasn’t doing his job — that really probably is for the administration to make a decision on, sooner not later,” Mr. Issa said.

It will be interesting to see this play out, what can be stated as fact is that this was a misguided program which led to the death of at least one ATF Agent.  We also know that as of today there are two separate distinct charges of obstruction of justice against this, the "most transparent" administration in American history.

In more Fast And Furious News Chairman Issa released a report that summarized what the committee has discovered so far (embedded below). The report found:

• In the fall of 2009, ATF officials in Mexico began noticing a spike in guns recovered at Mexican crime scenes. Many of those guns traced directly to an ongoing investigation out of ATF’s Phoenix Field Division.

• As Operation Fast and Furious progressed, there were numerous recoveries of large weapons caches in Mexico. These heavy-duty weapons included AK-47s, AR-15s, and even Barrett .50 caliber rifles – the preferred weapons of drug cartels.

• At a March 5, 2010 briefing, ATF intelligence analysts told ATF and DOJ leadership that the number of firearms bought by known straw purchasers had exceeded the 1,000 mark. The briefing also made clear these weapons were ending up in Mexico.

• ATF and DOJ leadership kept their own personnel in Mexico and Mexican government officials totally in the dark about all aspects of Fast and Furious. Meanwhile, ATF officials in Mexico grew increasingly worried about the number of weapons recovered in Mexico that traced back to an ongoing investigation out of ATF’s Phoenix Field Division.

• ATF officials in Mexico raised their concerns about the number of weapons recovered up the chain of command to ATF leadership in Washington, D.C. Instead of acting decisively to end Fast and Furious, the senior leadership at both ATF and DOJ praised the investigation and the positive results it had produced. Frustrations reached a boiling point, leading former ATF Attaché Darren Gil to engage in screaming matches with his supervisor, International Affairs Chief Daniel Kumor, about the need to shut down the Phoenix-based investigation.

• Despite assurances that the program would be shut down as early as March 2010, it took the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol Agent in December 2010 to actually bring the program to a close.

• ATF officials in Mexico finally realized the truth: ATF allowed guns to walk. By withholding this critical information from its own personnel in Mexico, ATF jeopardized relations between the U.S. and Mexico.

• The high-risk tactics of cessation of surveillance, gunwalking, and non-interdiction of weapons that ATF used in Operation Fast and Furious went against the core of ATF’s mission, as well as the training and field experience of its agents. These flaws inherent in Operation Fast and Furious made its tragic consequences inevitable.

ATF 07-26-11 Report on Impact on Mexico 2

COVER UP! ATF Director Says Justice Department Obstructing 'Fast and Furious' Gun Probe

Obstruction of Justice a very serious charge when made against any U.S. citizen.  Its even worse when the charge is made against the Justice Department which is charged with enforcing the law. But according to Ken Melson, the acting director of the ATF, the Justice Department is obstructing the congressional investigation of Operation Fast and Furious the ATF operation that allowed Mexican drug cartels to purchase and keep weapons from the United States

Apparently while the rest of us were having hot dogs and beer on July 4th Ken Melson was testifying before Darryl Issa's Government Oversight Committee. As a result of the meeting, Issa along with ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley chair off a letter (embedded below)  which passed along the Melson's charge that he had been directed to obstruct the Congressional investigation.

"If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand," Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder. "That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation."

According the the letter Melson testified that he was personally in the dark about the full extent of the Gun Walker program until public controversy erupted, and was “sick to his stomach” when he reviewed the Reports of Investigation. 

Melson also confirmed Operation Fast and Furious was never supposed to end up as a giving guns to drug cartels operation, at least from the ATF point of view.

“Specifically, we have very real indications from several sources that some of the gun trafficking ‘higher-ups’ that the ATF sought to identify were already known to other agencies, and may even have been paid as informants,”

Issa and Grassley concluded their letter to Holder with a remarkably stern warning:

 Any decision about Mr. Melson's future with the Department would need to be justified solely on the basis of the facts and the needs of the agency, rather than on his decision to speak to us. We encourage you to communicate to us any additional significant information about any such decision so that we can work together to ensure that it would not impede our investigation.

For now, the Office of Inspector General is still conducting its review, and we are still conducting ours. Knowing what we know so far, we believe it would be inappropriate to make Mr. Melson the fall guy in an attempt to prevent further congressional oversight.

And it gets even worse, according to Fox News, many of those Fast and furious guns were purchased with American tax dollars.

According to sources, unbeknown to the ATF, the target of their operation was a FBI confidential informant, a fact that only became known to them in April of this year after an 18-month investigation that cost millions of dollars of tax dollars.

"They were going after someone they could never have," a source in Washington told Fox News. "The Mr. Big they wanted was using government money to buy guns that went to the cartels. The FBI knew it and didn't tell them."

Something tells me that pretty soon the DOJ is going to learn that old axiom that the cover-up is worse than the original act.  Sadly when you look at the track record of the DOJ including things like the New Black Panther investigation, it seems as if AG Holder has very  little regard for the voters right to know.




issaholderATF

Related articles

• The ATF Program Of Arming The Mexican Cartels: The Perfect Argument AGAINST Big Government (yidwithlid.blogspot.com)
• Obama Administration "Rewards" Project Gunrunner Whistle-blower With Termination Notice (yidwithlid.blogspot.com)

Obama Administration "Rewards" Project Gunrunner Whistle-blower With Termination Notice

Here's another chapter in the "you don't piss off President Obama" guide book. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) is trying to fire an agent who helped publicize the agency’s role in "Project Gunrunner"  (A.K.A Fast and Furious) which allowed thousands of guns to cross the U.S. border and fall into the hands of Mexican drug gangs.

The agent, Vince Cefalu, who has spoken out about the ATF's so-called "Project Gunrunner" scandal, says he was served with termination papers just last week.

"Project Gunrunner"  (A.K.A Fast and Furious)Was a project of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Fireworks  In late 2009, the ATF was alerted to suspicious buys at seven gun shops in the Phoenix area. Suspicious because the buyers paid cash, sometimes brought in paper bags. And they purchased classic "weapons of choice" used by Mexican drug traffickers - semi-automatic versions of military type rifles and pistols. According to news reports several gun shops wanted to stop the questionable sales, but Bureau encouraged them to continue.

ATF managers allegedly made a controversial decision: allow most of the weapons on the streets. The idea, they said, was to gather intelligence and see where the guns ended up. Insiders say it's a dangerous tactic called letting the guns, "walk." Yes, that's right, the US government decided--in order to fight the Mexican Drug Cartels, we should arm them and let them keep their weapons once they were used in committing crimes (kind of the same thing we do with the Palestinian terror groups such as Fatah).

The House Oversight committee reported that some of these guns were used in crimes. For example,  two of the approximately 2,000 guns that ATF let criminals walk away with were found at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

Agent Cefalu was a key figure in letting the public know about this idiotic program.

“Aside from Jay Dobyns, I don't know of anyone that's been more vocal about ATF mismanagement than me,” said Cefalu, a senior special agent based in Dublin, Calif. “That's why this is happening.” Dobyns, an ATF special agent based in Tucson, has appeared several times on Fox News to discuss the scandal.

Cefalu first told FoxNews.com about the ATF’s embattled anti-gun smuggling operation in December, before the first reports on the story appeared in February. “Simply put, we knowingly let hundreds of guns and dozens of identified bad guys go across the border,” Cefalu said at the time.

Cefalu was on Fox News this morning to report that last week, after 24 years of service he
was forced to turn in his gun and badge. He can appeal but will be on “paid administrative leave” during the process.

Cefalu’s dismissal follows a string of allegations that the ATF retaliates against whistleblowers. When the Project Gunrunner scandal broke, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote the ATF that an agent who had been giving his staff members information about the scandal had been "allegedly accused... of misconduct" by the agent’s boss for talking with Grassley’s staffers

And two days before Cefalu was served with termination papers, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to the ATF warning officials not to retaliate against whistleblowers.

ATF spokesman Drew Wade denied in a statement to FoxNews.com that the bureau is retaliating, but he declined to comment about Cefalu's case. “ATF will not comment on specific, ongoing personnel matters. It is illegal to use disciplinary actions to retaliate against employees, and ATF does not engage in such improper reprisals.”

The ATF's termination letter to Cefalu, obtained by FoxNews.com, makes no mention of Cefalu’s role in the latest scandal.

“You think they would just come out and say that?” Cefalu said.

The letter claimed that Cefalu showed a lack of candor about a 2005 operation that he led. If their claim is true, its funny that there was no disciplinary action for six years, but once he let people know about project Gunrunner, coincidentally he was terminated.

In the 2005 case, local police wanted to wiretap a suspect to gather evidence, but Cefalu objected, saying it would be illegal to use wiretaps until all other options for gathering evidence had been tried.

Cefalu was then removed from the case. But he continued to speak out and file internal complaints about what he viewed as illegal ATF wiretapping. And that’s when his life became difficult.

So it seems that Cefalu is being fired is because he is one of those "do-gooders."  Oh wait, he is an ATF agent...he is supposed to be a "do-gooder."

Another ATF agent, who requested to remain anonymous but who has provided accurate information on the Project Gunrunner case to FoxNews.com in the past, discussed what he knew about Cefalu.

“Common knowledge in the agency is that Cefalu outed an illegal wiretap quite some time ago, and he has been in the crosshairs since,” the agent told FoxNews.com. “My impression of him is that he has probably ruffled lots of feathers and delicate egos in his time. He is very direct and honest.”

But this agent said he'd “prefer that to a ‘go along to get along’ type."

"We don't avoid or learn from mistakes if we just lie to each other about how we never do anything wrong -- which is pretty much standard operating procedure from what I have seen of our HQ people," the agent said.

It sounds to this observer that Vince Cefalu is the type of person we need in government service.  Well..except in the Obama administration the believes silent compliance is the correct way to operate because every decision made by this administration is a perfect one. I am sure that House Oversight  Committee Chair, Darrell Issa will work to correct this wrong.

Congressional Report: Obama Deliberately Causing Oil Prices To Spike

Yesterday, Congressman Issa's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee issued a scathing report about the nation's energy (embedded below) saying in part that the President has deliberately created policies which would cause energy prices to rise.

"The United States has the largest reserves in the world—resources that can provide good paying American jobs and fuel our economic expansion. But standing between that energy and U.S. consumers is an obstacle course of government red tape, regulation, delays and obfuscations," Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) said. He pointed to statements by President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu about intentionally raising energy costs for Americans and how these goals are being implemented throughout the government.

The committee's report found that U.S. domestic energy resources are currently the largest on earth—greater than Saudi Arabia, China and Canada combined. It also said that the recent EPA and Department of Interior regulatory actions, some in collaboration with environmental groups or outside normal scope, are having a detrimental impact on independent energy producers.

The report had eight basic findings:

1. Key Obama Administration figures have expressed a belief that Americans should pay more for energy – a pattern of actions shows the Administration is, in fact, pursuing an agenda to raise the price Americans pay for energy.

President Obama, Energy Secretary Chu and others have stated that American consumers should pay more for energy, including electricity and gasoline. From a political perspective, increasing the price of energy (by whatever means) helps them make the case for “green” energy. Even beyond the effort to raise energy prices through “cap and trade” legislation that Congress rejected, a pattern of increased enforcement, regulatory delay and new hurdles can be seen across numerous agencies and approval processes. The result of this government action is less production, higher costs for producers, and more expensive energy.

2. While the Administration touts nascent “green” energy technologies, U.S. domestic energy resources are currently the largest on earth—greater than Saudi Arabia, China and Canada combined. New developments in drilling and extraction technology have dramatically expanded the amount of total recoverable reserves of oil and natural gas. Much of this, however, may be put off-limits by the government.

3. Still trying to capitalize on domestic energy resources, U.S. firms are nevertheless investing billions of dollars to tap newly recoverable resources in California, Texas, Colorado and North Dakota, among others.

By 2015, fields in these areas could yield more daily oil than the Gulf of Mexico produces today, boosting domestic production by 20-40 percent and increasing our energy independence if government action does not severely restrict development and yields.

4. Recent Administration action has already led to significant cost and regulatory barriers that have limited domestic production of oil. 

Even before the Gulf oil spill, the Department of the Interior had undertaken significant steps to restrict access to much of the energy resources located in the outer continental shelf: Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, and along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

5. Other agencies have stepped up their efforts to indirectly curtail energy production through environmental regulations.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed placing the dunes sagebrush lizard that lives in New Mexico and Texas on the Endangered Species list—designation that would severely restrict production activity in a resource-rich part of Texas.

6. EPA has collaborated with environmental groups to target independent energy producers for environmental concerns not related to their operations.

In an email message reviewed by the Committee, environmental advocates and EPA’s Texas-based regional director exchanged celebratory accolades for efforts that create barriers to energy production. One exchange concluded: “Yee haw! Hats off to the new Sheriff and his deputies!”

7. President Obama’s proposal to increase taxes on the energy industry will cost American jobs and hamper economic recovery.

Independent operators are responsible for 95 percent of domestic oil and gas wells and they currently invest 150% of their domestic cash flow back into future projects development. Tax increases proposed by President Obama, some of which would be transferred to “green” energy producers, would cost energy producing firms a combined $12 billion in the first year.

8. Some green energy sources the Administration is promoting at the expense of expanded domestic oil, gas, and coal supplies create unintended environmental, security and economic consequences.

"Viewed in tandem with Obama Administration efforts to slow production from the Gulf of Mexico, block "fracking" a technology that would increase domestic oil production by 40 percent in only five years, and stifle production on public lands, this can be seen as nothing less than a concerted campaign to raise the price of energy as a means to force the issue of green alternatives," Issa added.

"Today's hearing exposed the many ways the government is limiting access to our vast natural resources. With this understanding, Congress can enact policies that support American businesses and consumers, rather than give more reasons to look overseas for economic opportunities and more favorable regulatory climates.

There is no big surprise in Issa's findings many of us in the blog world have been saying it for a long time.  But its nice to see congress get involved.  The report is very informative, and its worth giving it a read below.
REPORT - Rising Energy Costs an Intentional Result of Government Action