The interesting news just keeps on coming.
We earlier reported on the “intentionally botched” Project Gunwalker and the stunning promotions of the local ATF honchos who orchestrated the debacle.
Since then:
• Acting Director of the ATF, Kenneth Melson, has been shuffled to a “rubber room” — a cushy, well-paying desk job that not only keeps him out of the way but purchases his silence.
• More ATF guns have turned up on the Mexican border, linked to more violent crimes.
• FOX News has revealed that not two but three of the “walked” guns were found at the scene of ICE agent Brian Terry’s murder. Why does the exact number matter? Because it appears that the FBI was covering up the existence of the third gun to protect one of their confidential informants in the Mexican cartels.
And speaking of confidential informants, it also turns out that some of the murderous gangsters the ATF was allegedly targeting when they let U.S. firearms “walk” into Mexico were actually on the payroll of the FBI and the DEA. Um . . . wasn’t that lack of communication between agencies supposed to have been ended after 9/11? (In any case, it doesn’t matter much because it’s been clear from the start that the ATF never actually intended to bust key cartelistas. The more we learn, the more apparent it is that the real intent was to create scary headlines so the Obama administration could justify more anti-gun legislation.)
And now, in addition to guns “walking” from Texas and Arizona into Mexico with ATF consent, we have reports of the ATF deliberately allowing guns to “walk” from Indiana into the hands of Chicago gangsters. Can anybody hear D.C. politicians demanding “better controls to prevent deadly interstate trafficking of guns”?
At least, we would have heard anti-gunners making that demand had bloggers like David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh not broken the story and pushed both Congress and the mainstream media into investigating.
The story keeps coming out in dribs and drabs. Some mainstream media outlets have become so enamored of it that they repeatedly claim that they broke the story. CBS News is particularly egregious in tooting its own horn and denying credit where it’s due. Both CBS and FOX, among others, have uncovered parts of the story. But Darrell Issa, the congressman doing the lion’s share to get to the bottom of the scandal, knows who really digs deep and gets the word out. He recently held a telephone news conference for dedicated gun-bloggers only.
Yes, the news keeps coming. But although new guns and new evidence of corruption keep turning up, the one big smoking gun hasn’t been found yet.
Anybody who’s aware knows that Gunwalker goes all the way to the top. It’s no longer possible even to pretend it was merely some local botch — good intentions in an ATF field office gone mistakenly bad. The investigation has extended to White House staffers. We know one of the managers of the disaster briefed a State Department official working at the White House.
So far there’s been no solid evidence to implicate the two top men. But President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder ought to be shaking in their boots. Because evidence that implicates them must be out there. Somewhere.
Claire Wolfe is the author of the Paladin books The Bad Attitude Guide to Good Citizenship, Freedom Outlaw’s Handbook, and I Am Not a Number.