The Republican-led Congressional witch-hunt to pin blame for ATF’s failed Fast and Furious operation on high-level Obama administration officials may well come full circle back to Congress itself.
Documents released by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, as part of his probe into Fast and Furious, as well as testimony provided to Congress prior to the launch of the flawed operation, all seem to indicate that the weapons-trafficking investigation was set up under a strategy pushed by former U.S. Attorney General David Ogden — who stepped down from his post in early 2010 after less than a year on the job.
In addition, Ogden actually publicly outlined the strategy that prompted Fast and Furious as part of testimony he provided to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs in March 2009 — some six months prior to the launch of Fast and Furious in the fall of that year.
Fast and Furious was, according to a July 11 letter penned by U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley and U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, “an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force [OCDETF] prosecutor-led strike force case” operated out of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix.
Fast and Furious has come under fire because, as part of a strategy aimed at targeting higher-ups in the weapons- and narco-trafficking business, it allegedly allowed some 2,000 or more firearms illegally purchased in the U.S. to “walk” (or be smuggled under ATF’s watch) across the border, where they helped to fuel the murder rate in Mexico, ATF whistleblowers contend.
Two of the guns linked to the Fast and Furious operation also allegedly were found at the murder scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, who was shot to death by Mexican border marauders in Arizona late last year. The whistleblower revelations about Fast and Furious have since sparked Congressional inquiries spearheaded by Grassley and Issa.
However, the strategy of using multi-agency OCDETF strike forces to target Mexican narco-kingpins, a plan that encompassed ATF operations like Fast and Furious as well, should have come as no surprise to Congressional leaders such as Grassley and Issa. [...]
"...the root of the problem here can be found in the prohibitionist strategy that propels and encourages the continued insanity of the drug war — a pretense in which law enforcers and official brass are rewarded with larger budgets and promotions for making headline-grabbing “kingpin” cases — even at the expense of lives, it seems, as Fast and Furious seems to bear out."
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