Phoenix – There they stood, ten county sheriffs from the Mexican border country where the cacti grow big as trees, their shadows short in the autumn sun just after noon on Friday, Oct. 7.
Their mission: To tell the world through the unblinking eye of the television camera that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has to go – fired or resigned, it doesn't matter.
Gone.
Their problem with Mr. Holder is simple enough. He fibbed to Congressmen when he said he didn't know anything about Operation Fast and Furious - until just recently.
Wrong. Not true.
Documents have surfaced that put the lie to that one. They say he received extensive briefing as early as a year before he told the Congressmen he first learned of the program his detractors call Operation Gunwalker.
His nose is making like Pinocchio's these days and these guys, every squint-eyed, stonefaced one of them an elected official with the Constitutional duty to see that justice is served in the name of, and the peace and dignity of the People of the State of Arizona, are calling B.S.
With a capital B.S.
Top brass of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – you wonder when they're going to throw in Land, Cattle and Bibles – had their agents authorize sales of weapons to straw purchasers by approving the sales in area gun stores. This way, the weapons would wind up in Mexico where they would turn up in crime scenes and “pad” the figures to fit the administration's agenda, they say.
The Sheriffs picked a heck of a place to say it. The plaza where they stood is a place of honor for law men who have fallen while on duty. Among them, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, gunned down in December, 2010, with a weapon acquired by a straw purchaser in a local gun store, though the sales clerk insisted it was a bogus purchase.
Agents who fielded his phone call said to sell the man the weapons anyway. Operation Fast and Furious was on the road and walking tall, though the agents didn't like it and one of them said it made him “nauseous” to think the guns could be turned on brother officers.
Thousands of such weapons are at large in Mexico and elsewhere today, according to whistle blower BATFE Agent Vince Cefalu.
A crowd of 500 people waited with great expectation to hear him speak at Canyon Del Oro High School in Tucson in late September, many of them concerned about the crosshairs pasted on their Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' constituency by the Tea Party and Sarah Palin in the elections of 2010. A deranged man opened up on them with a powerful handgun in a supermarket parking lot outside her office door.
On a hassle factor of 1 to 10, they're keeping the meter up around 9.5 in the Arizona hell country, for sure.
Agent Cefalu claims he began to squawk about the Fast and Furious program as early as a couple of years ago and was warned by his superiors at the bureau to clam up - or he would be gone.
A crowd of 500 people waited with great expectation to hear him speak at Canyon Del Oro High School in Tucson in late September, many of them concerned about the crosshairs pasted on their Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' constituency by the Tea Party and Sarah Palin in the elections of 2010. A deranged man opened up on them with a powerful handgun in a supermarket parking lot outside her office door.
On a hassle factor of 1 to 10, they're keeping the meter up around 9.5 in the Arizona hell country, for sure.
Agent Cefalu claims he began to squawk about the Fast and Furious program as early as a couple of years ago and was warned by his superiors at the bureau to clam up - or he would be gone.
But things didn't quite work out that way. The acting director of BATFE was fired. The man picked to be his successor was passed over for the promotion. The U.S. Attorney resigned.The agency is still lacking a permanent director. C'est la vie; c'est la guerre.
He and other agents went to Senate Judiciary Committee member Chuck Grassley, R-Ia., in mid-winter of 2011. The Senator grilled Mr. Holder, along with House Judiciary Committee Chair Lamar Smith, R-Tx, in public hearings while he denied any knowledge of the scam.
Rep. Smith has called for the Department of Justice to appoint a special prosecutor to nail this guy. He wrote President Barack Hussein Obama and told him it's his best recommendation on how to handle the situation.
“We should not concern ourselves with any administration's agenda,” Agent Cefalu told his audiece at the Tucson high school. “It defies logic, common sense, it defies our core beliefs, our training and our experience as ATF agents.”
In Phoenix, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said of Agent Terry's family, “They want the truth, and they haven't been given the truth. Where's the honor of our country and us in law enforcement when a brother officer is murdered in our state here in Arizona, protecting our country, and we find out months later that two of these weapons were weapons from Fast and Furious?”
Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever said, “We are here to help defend America...and for our government to be complicit in helping them conduct that business is offensive to us.”
They say it's all a Republican complaint.
Wrong.
Of the 10 sheriffs who spoke up for Agent Brian Terry just after high noon yesterday, 5 are Democrats; 5 are Republicans.
He and other agents went to Senate Judiciary Committee member Chuck Grassley, R-Ia., in mid-winter of 2011. The Senator grilled Mr. Holder, along with House Judiciary Committee Chair Lamar Smith, R-Tx, in public hearings while he denied any knowledge of the scam.
Rep. Smith has called for the Department of Justice to appoint a special prosecutor to nail this guy. He wrote President Barack Hussein Obama and told him it's his best recommendation on how to handle the situation.
“We should not concern ourselves with any administration's agenda,” Agent Cefalu told his audiece at the Tucson high school. “It defies logic, common sense, it defies our core beliefs, our training and our experience as ATF agents.”
In Phoenix, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said of Agent Terry's family, “They want the truth, and they haven't been given the truth. Where's the honor of our country and us in law enforcement when a brother officer is murdered in our state here in Arizona, protecting our country, and we find out months later that two of these weapons were weapons from Fast and Furious?”
Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever said, “We are here to help defend America...and for our government to be complicit in helping them conduct that business is offensive to us.”
They say it's all a Republican complaint.
Wrong.
Of the 10 sheriffs who spoke up for Agent Brian Terry just after high noon yesterday, 5 are Democrats; 5 are Republicans.
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