The Department of Justice continues to deny that it knew of an ATF sting operation that allowed hundreds of guns to “walk” into Mexico, and two Republican members of Congress have asked Attorney General Eric Holder to come clean. In a letter today, Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley accuse Justice of making “false statements” in trying to refute the allegations of ATF whistleblowers.
Two guns from this operation were evidently used in a gunfight that claimed the life of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. For background on the scandal, see NRO’s coverage here and here. I’ve pasted the press release from the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform below the break.
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WASHINGTON — Congressman Darrell Issa and Senator Chuck Grassley today pressed Attorney General Eric Holder to provide a complete and accurate accounting of the policy to allow guns to be purchased by known straw buyers and then transported across the border into Mexico.
In a letter received yesterday from the Office of Legislative Affairs, the department once again denied any knowledge of the policy. The denial comes despite the documents that have been provided to the department that are contrary to the official stance.
Issa and Grassley said in a response to Holder that they will continue to conduct constitutionally mandated oversight of the Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ policy to allow guns to be purchased by known straw buyers.
“We are extremely disappointed that you do not appear to be taking this issue seriously enough to ensure that the Department’s representations are accurate, forthcoming, and complete. We will continue to probe and gather the facts independently, as it has become clear that we cannot rely on the Department’s self-serving statements to obtain any realistic picture of what happened,” Issa and Grassley wrote.
Grassley began looking into allegations brought forward by Agent John Dodson, and more than a dozen other ATF agents after the Justice Department Inspector General failed to investigate their concerns. The agents indicated that their supervisors kept them from stopping gun traffickers with the normal techniques that had been successfully using for years. They instead were ordered to only watch and continue gathering information on traffickers instead of arresting them as soon as they could. In the meantime, the guns were allowed to fall into the hands of the bad guys even as agents told supervisors that it could not end well. Many of the guns have subsequently been found in firefights along the border, including a December 14, 2010 firefight where Customs and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed.
Grassley and Issa’s requests for information from the Justice Department have gone mostly unanswered about what transpired at the ATF and the Department of Justice during the time when Terry was killed and the policies instituted during Project Gunrunner that allowed guns to be sold to known straw purchasers and moved across the border without intervention.
As chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Issa has begun issuing subpoenas to uncover the facts about how this reckless policy was approved.
Here is today’s letter to Holder. Here is a copy of the May 2 letter to Grassley and the February 4 letter to Grassley.