“Fast & Furious” Guns Used in Multiple Crimes

Reuters
July 26, 2011

At least 122 firearms from a botched U.S. undercover operation have been found at crime scenes in Mexico or intercepted en route to drug cartels there, according to a Republican congressional report being issued on Tuesday.

Mexican authorities found AK-47 assault rifles, powerful .50 caliber rifles and other weapons in late 2009 that were later linked to the U.S. sting operation to trace weapons going across the border to Mexico, the report said.

Guns from the program, dubbed “Operation Fast and Furious,” also were found at the scene of the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in the border state Arizona last December. It is not clear if they were the weapons responsible for his death.

The sting has become an embarrassment for the Obama administration and its Justice Department, rather than a victory in cracking down on the illegal flow of drugs and weapons to and from Mexico.

It has also hurt ties with Mexico, which has been battling the violent cartels in a war in which thousands have died.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and federal prosecutors had hoped the sting would help them track gun buyers reselling weapons to cartels. But U.S. agents did not follow the guns after the initial purchaser re-sold them.

The House of Representatives Oversight Committee, led by Republican Darrell Issa, and the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles Grassley, have been investigating the sting and will issue the report Tuesday.

Their investigators say at least 122 firearms bought by suspected gun traffickers were found at Mexican crime scenes or caught going to the cartels.

Of the 2,000 weapons sold to the suspected gun traffickers, just over half remain unaccounted for, the report added. The Justice Department said that the ATF was not aware of the majority of those gun sales when they occurred.

“Given the vast amount of ‘Operation Fast and Furious’ weapons possibly still in the hands of cartel members, law enforcement officials should expect more seizures and recoveries at crime scenes,” said the congressional report.

The independent watchdog at the Justice Department is also conducting its own investigation of the sting operation.

The Justice Department said it could only confirm 96 guns recovered in Mexico were tied to suspects being tracked in the operation, but it said that ATF did not have complete information on how many were recovered at crime scenes there.

The agency said another 274 weapons were recovered in the United States and, so far, about a dozen were found at U.S. crime scenes, according to information given to Grassley obtained by Reuters.

Soon after the sting began, Mexican authorities arrested a young woman with 41 AK-47s and a Beowulf .50 caliber rifle that were bought the previous day by a so-called straw buyer, or somebody buying a weapon for somebody else.

She told police she was taking them to the Sinaloa drug cartel, the congressional report said.

During a May, 2001 raid by Mexican federal police on the La Familia drug cartel, in which 11 members of the group were killed and 36 were captured, some of the more than 70 weapons recovered at the scene were traced back to the U.S. sting, according to the congressional report.

Issa’s committee will hold a hearing later Tuesday with current and former ATF officials including those who worked in the U.S. embassy in Mexico who complained that they were kept largely out of the loop about the scope of the operation.

Another ATF Fast and Furious?

FoxNews
July 15, 2011

Several lawmakers are questioning the Obama administration about whether the controversial “Fast and Furious” gunrunning probe may have had a cousin in Florida that resulted in guns being trafficked to Central America.

Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., penned a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder and ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson inquiring about a program known as “Operation Castaway.” Other top lawmakers are also starting to look into it, though ATF claims the program was above board and not similar to Operation Fast and Furious at all.

The Justice Department says Castaway was an anti-gun trafficking operation handled by an ATF division in Florida. It resulted last year in a slew of convictions for defendants the department claimed provided firearms linked to violent crimes around the world. But in light of questions surrounding the Fast and Furious probe out of ATF’s Phoenix division, Bilirakis questioned whether Castaway bore the same suspicious hallmarks.

Fast and Furious came under fire for allegedly allowing guns to “walk” across the Mexico border in an attempt to track their migration into cartel hands. Weapons tied to the program were found at the scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s murder last year.

Bilirakis expressed concern about reports that the strategy “may not have been limited to weapons trafficking to Mexico.”

He asked Holder and Melson whether “similar programs included the possible trafficking of arms to dangerous criminal gangs in Honduras with the knowledge of the ATF’s Tampa Field Division” and a Justice Department office, via Castaway.

Bilirakis’ letter specifically asked whether the Tampa division participated in a “gun walking” scheme allowing guns to go to Honduras. He also asked whether ATF or DOJ know if any of the firearms ended up in the hands of the “notorious” MS-13 gang — a violent gang spread across Central America, Mexico and the United States.

Court documents from the Operation Castaway takedown claim that at least five firearms from the illegal sales of the main suspect ended up later being connected to crimes, several in Puerto Rico. One pistol was recovered in Colombia after being used in a homicide.

But an ATF official told FoxNews.com that the investigation, which targeted Florida gun dealer Hugh Crumpler III, did not appear to be designed like Fast and Furious. Though Justice and ATF have not yet formally responded to Bilirakis, the official explained that ATF got involved in the Crumpler case after the fact, and was not using the investigation to track firearms sales across international lines.

“We became involved with Crumpler at the first opportunity of realizing that criminal activity was afoot,” the official said. “Once we were able to put our case together, establish probable cause … then at that point, we did so at the soonest opportunity to stop the illegal activity.”

The official noted that the case is “complete,” though two fugitives are still at large.

The 2010 plea agreement suggests ATF agents monitored him for just a few months before taking him in — it does not describe any long-term effort to track firearms outside U.S. borders.

The lengthy court document states that the ATF noticed Crumpler’s numerous purchases in a national firearms database — it turned out he was later selling them at gun shows. According to the plea agreement, the ATF had an undercover agent buy from Crumpler and later observed the suspect at several gun shows in late 2009, selling to numerous buyers without a license. At one point, he told an undercover agent that he knew the firearms were making their way to Honduras.

By early 2010, ATF agents were seizing guns sold by Crumpler and within weeks confronted him, putting a stop to the operation.

Despite ATF’s claims, the issue is starting to pop up on the radar screen of other lawmakers, including those leading the charge to find out more about Fast and Furious — Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

“Senator Grassley is looking into the allegations and trying to get some firsthand information from people involved,” Grassley spokeswoman Beth Levine told FoxNews.com.

Bilirakis apparently was alerted to Castaway by news reports, as well as calls received by his office.

An article on Examiner.com initially claimed the Tampa division was “walking guns” to Honduras in a way similar to Fast and Furious.

Bilirakis spokesman Creighton Welch said his boss saw the report, but also received “several calls from folks who I guess you could say were familiar with the situation in Tampa.”

He declined to go into further detail about where the tips were coming from.

“We’re placing a lot of firearms in potentially the wrong hands,” Welch said. “There are a lot of unanswered questions for a potentially very dangerous situation.”

Bilirakis was joined by Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., in writing a separate letter seeking similar answers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton.

“We find it extremely troubling that the United States government would willfully allow weapons to be acquired by dangerous criminal and drug trafficking organizations, in direct contravention of our strategic and national interests,” they wrote.

However, Crumpler’s attorney told The Tampa Tribune that ATF agents “closely monitored” his client’s activity, and he didn’t think the guns made their way to Latin American criminals during the course of the probe.

U.S. government admits arming Mexican drug gangs

by Mike Adams
NaturalNews.com
July 8, 2011

It is now a widely-reported fact that under the Obama administration, U.S. federal agents actively placed over 30,000 fully-functional weapons into the hands of Mexican drug gangs, then halted all surveillance and tracking activities of where those weapons were going.

This is not a conspiracy theory, nor a piece of fiction. It is now an openly-admitted fact that this was pulled off by the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, more commonly called “ATF”) under orders from Washington. The program was called “Fast and Furious.”

Even Reuters is now covering the news and reporting how members of Congress are outraged to learn that this happened (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011…).

Details are also starting to leak about the cover-up inside ATF, which was led by the U.S. Attorney in Arizona, Dennis Burke, an Obama appointee

(http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/06/i…). The engineering of the illegal gun running went right up the chain of command to the director of the ATF, Kenneth Melson, who is now expected to resign. The real planning of this event went even higher up the chain of command in Washington, possibly all the way to Attorney General Eric Holder (http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/21/i…).

Among the firearms sold to the Mexican drug gangs were AK-47s, thousands of pistols and, remarkably, .50-caliber rifles which are typically used to disable vehicles or carry out sniper-based assassinations at extremely long ranges (up to two miles). The mainstream media is now reporting that these weapons are turning up in violent crimes being committed in Phoenix, Arizona. As an ABC news affiliate reports:

“According to the testimony of three Phoenix ATF agents, including Dodson, hundreds of weapons are now on the streets in the United States and Mexico, possibly in the hands of criminals. Dodson estimated the number could be as many as 1,800 weapons. He estimated agents in the Phoenix field division facilitated the sale of approximately 2,500 weapons to straw purchasers. A few hundred have been recovered.”

How the “Fast and Furious” program put thousands of weapons directly into the hands of Mexican drug gangs

Here’s how “Fast and Furious” worked: Under orders from Washington, ATF agents were specifically told to acquire these weapons using “straw” buyers in the USA, find new buyers in Mexican drug gangs, then sell the weapons and “lose track” of them. Although some agents raised concerns about the insanity, they were overruled by the higher-ups in Washington who wanted to pursue this policy for their own reasons. “It made no sense to us either, it was just what we were ordered to do, and every time we questioned that order there was punitive action,” said Phoenix Special Agent John Dodson.

But what could be the reasons for Washington initiating such a program in the first place? Why would the Obama administration actively send 30,000 sniper rifles, assault weapons and firearms into Mexico even while claiming to follow an anti-gun stance back in the USA?

To answer that question, you need to understand P.R.S — Problem, Reaction, Solution. It is the “playbook” that governments use to get what they want, which usually involves: 1) Disarming their populations, 2) Taking away all their rights and freedoms, and then 3) Ruling over their people as tyrants with complete power.

Precisely such an effort is now underway in the United States, led by the Obama administration which has repeatedly demonstrated itself to be an enemy of the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

How Problem, Reaction, Solution really works

If you’re the U.S. government, you can’t just announce a new program to disarm the country, end the Bill of Rights and install yourself as the King. People won’t go for it if you try to sell it that way. Instead, you need to find a way to get people to BEG you to do all that.

So you need a way to put people in a state of mind where they are terrified of drugs, terrified of guns and terrified of the border violence — to the point where they insist that somebody in Washington do something about it.

Therefore, you first need a way to cause the problem that results in all the violence that people react to. You effectively need to create violence and then wait for people to beg you to stop it.

This is where the Obama administration’s program to send 30,000 firearms into Mexico comes into play. If you want to cause gun violence and drug war violence, what better way to accomplish it than to just arm all the bad guys?

Think about it: 30,000 weapons in the hands of drug criminals! Then all you have to do is sit back and wait for all the violence to kick in. And it has kicked in — in huge numbers. Shootings on the border, kidnappings, armed conflict across the border with U.S. border agents, and so on. Violent crimes in Arizona are now being committed with these very same weapons the ATF trafficked into the hands of Mexican drug gangs.

As Judicial Watch president Tim Fitton explains, his belief is that Operation Fast and Furious was purely an anti-gun political ploy from the Obama administration, designed to put more guns into the hands of criminals as a justification for confiscating guns from all citizens. He adds, “I think another major part of this story is that the narrative of the Obama administration and the ATF is that, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we could tie guns, as part of our anti-gun agenda, to the Mexican civil war, as opposed to, you know, our lack of enforcement of the drug laws or failure to protect the borders.’” (http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/21/i…)

And here’s the real kicker: Of all the weapons now being confiscated by police in Mexico, an astonishing 70 percent came from the United States. So now you have a situation where the USA is actually arming the criminals in Mexico and destabilizing that country’s entire system of law and order. The drug gangs are at war with the police there, and thanks to thinks like U.S.-supplies AK-47s and .50-caliber sniper rifles, the drug gangs are winning!

ATF can now demand more power and bigger budgets

Getting back to the U.S. issue, if you’re the DEA or the ATF, you now have 30,000 more reasons to have your own budgets increased. There’s a wave of violence coming across the border! The drug gangs are out of control! They’re shooting back!

Well gee, I wonder why? It’s because the ATF actually sold them these 30,000 rifles under orders from Washington.

And now the Obama administration is, predictably, saying there’s so much “gun violence” in the Southern USA that new laws are needed to curb gun sales there.

Seriously? New laws? What about the 30,000 guns the ATF openly and admittedly sold to the Mexican drug gangs? Wasn’t that already a violation of law?

It all comes back to Problem, Reaction, Solution, you see. Want to keep the useless War on Drugs going a little longer? Just dump a few thousand pounds of cocaine into the hands of criminals and let ‘em run loose with it. Want to beef up the budgets of the ATF? Just distribute 30,000 illegal weapons into the hands of drug gangs and then sit back and wait for people to beg for your help. Want to justify a war on “terror” in the Middle East? Dream up some stupid story about Weapons of Mass Destruction and then launch a war.

For every power-hungry tyrannical agenda in Washington, there’s a false flag operation that will make it come true.

If the U.S. government would actively arm drug gangs, in what other ways might it betray the American people?

Now that you know the truth about how Washington put 30,000 guns into the hands of Mexican drug gangs, it naturally makes you start to wonder about the government’s involvement with things like vaccines.

Want to make people so afraid of infectious disease that they beg for vaccines? Just release an infectious disease into the population yourself! It’s a simple matter, really.

Want to get the public to beg for new food safety regulations? Just release e.coli into the food supply and then wait for the deaths to be reported in the news. All of a sudden people are demanding more food safety regulations.

Want to justify military imperialism and expansion? Just stage your own terrorist attack against your own country! Then magically find the passports of some terrorists at the scene of the crime and blame the whole thing on them.

When theory becomes fact

You see, all this used to exist solely in the realm of conspiracy theory. A few years ago, if you even suggested this kind of thing was going on, you were called a kook. But now it’s an established fact being reported by Reuters, Washington Post and other major news outlets. Now the U.S. government has been forced to admit that yes, it actively delivered 30,000 firearms into the hands of Mexican drug gangs and then intentionally stopped tracking where they went.

This is no longer conspiracy theory. It’s conspiracy FACT. And similar types of operations are being planned right now for other agendas the government has in mind: Taking away your Fourth Amendment rights, for example. How do you accomplish that? Just stage an airport terrorism attack, just like the one the TSA was caught rehearsing in Minnesota

(http://www.naturalnews.com/032458_T…).

Want to take away peoples’ Second Amendment rights? Just brainwash some low-IQ psychopath to walk into a shopping mall and start blazing away with fully automatic weapons that were provided to him by the ATF!

It’s simple, you see. Pick a topic, choose an agenda, then cause the problem yourself. Then sit back and wait for the reaction. Works every time.

The CDC pulled the same stunt back in the 1980′s with AIDS. At a time when the CDC was facing severe budget cuts, it actually hyped up the whole AIDS epidemic and started releasing complete scientific fictions as if they were fact. The disease mongering by the CDC caused widespread fear and panic across the country, earning it huge budget increases from the U.S. government.

This is all fully documented in the movie House of Numbers, by the way, using recorded video interviews from many of the key scientists involved in the whole fiasco who finally went on record to tell the truth. Almost everything you’ve been fed about AIDS is a fabrication or a distortion of the scientific truth. Watch these astonishing videos to see for yourself:

http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=D35F0…
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=BE507…
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=4FE73…

The American government is working AGAINST you, not for you

The point in all this is that much of what you see happening in the world today in terms of terrorism, the drug war, infectious disease and health care are just fabricated, staged events actually pulled off by the very people who stand to benefit from the reaction!

Suckers and sheeple always believe the mainstream news at face value. They believe we’re under attack from terrorists who bring down tall buildings, or we’re being assaulted by Mexican drug gangs on the border, or we’re threatened by the Swine Flu. That’s what suckers are supposed to believe, you see: That your government is never working against you… it’s always working FOR you, right?

But intelligent people know the opposite is true: Your government is usually plotting against you and trying to figure out how to expand its power, expand its reach, reduce your freedoms and control your life. This is accomplished by unleashing the very problems that the government claims to be fighting to prevent.

The government, for example, says it’s trying to solve our nation’s economic problems. And how does it accomplish that? By generating trillions of dollars in new fiat currency and handing it over to the criminals running Wall Street. This has the net effect of stealing money from everybody else through dollar devaluation.

How does the government solve our national health care crisis? By enacting Obamacare, which mandates that more people buy into a system that has utterly failed to serve the health interests of the American people in the first place!

So at the very same time the government says it’s working to improve the economy, it’s actually stealing from you behind your back. At the very same time the government says it’s trying to stop cancer, its own health-related agencies (National Cancer Institute, for example) are openly engaged in massive disinformation campaigns that spread false information about sunlight being “dangerous” to your health (while conveniently ignoring the truth about vitamin D and its cancer preventive properties).

The government says it wants to make your food safer, and yet the USDA keeps approving genetically modified foods that are essentially massive biological experiments that cause widespread infertility and disease.

The same story goes on and on… with fluoride in the water, mercury in dental fillings, aspartame in diet sodas, pesticide use in agriculture and so on. At nearly every turn, the government itself is actively plotting against the People to keep them financially enslaved, biologically diseased and mentally ignorant.

Shipping guns into Mexico, you see, is just a tiny part of the big picture that’s going on today in the USA. The same process — Problem, Reaction, Solution — is in use almost everywhere in government at both the state and federal level.

Big Government is the enemy of peace and freedom

Bureaucrats hate to lose their jobs, and if there’s a way to stage something that makes them suddenly look more important, they won’t hesitate to roll it out. The U.S. government, just so you know, has been actively engaged in weapons trafficking, drug running and counterfeiting for decades. If you or I did what our own government does every single day, we’d be arrested as felony criminals. But when the government runs guns into Mexico, or traffics in cocaine, or prints counterfeit dollar bills that have no backing with real value, somehow it’s all okay.

Amazing how our own government has now turned into the very criminals that it claims to be protecting us against, isn’t it? Who are the real terrorists in America? The ATF agents running guns into the hands of Mexican drug gangs, of course. And the FBI agents who set up Arab-looking patsies to try to set off fake bombs that the FBI actually assembled for them!

By the way, Alex Jones (www.PrisonPlanet.com) has been covering all this for years. He’s been saying this all along, and time and time again, he’s been proven right. I realize his presentation style may seem a little intense to some people, but at the end of the day, Alex Jones is far more accurate at decoding what’s really going on behind the scenes than any mainstream news channel or newspaper. Here’s an article from InfoWars on this very topic:http://www.infowars.com/obama-admin…

I’m scheduled to host the Alex Jones show next week and will likely be discussing more about the ATF’s gun-running activities in Mexico. In the mean time, stay tuned to NaturalNews.com for more stories that aren’t afraid to report the truth about what’s really happening in our world today.

 

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