Fast & Furious

[ussusimiel]

A couple of things: under what circumstances could Holder legitimately withhold documents?

Listening to Holder (approx. 3.15 into the clip) the reasons he gives for witholding documents are

• - to prevent compromising ongoing investigations
  - to protect witnesses
  - to protect 'people we are working with'

Are these legitimate? Are they enough?

If it went no higher up the ladder than Arizona, why did Holder have to retract three statements and under what right did Obama exercise Executive Privilege?

From what I can find out the three things that Holder had to retract were:

• - that the ATF never used the tactic of 'walking' guns (they did)
  
  - that people high up in the Bush administration knew about 'gun walking' in Wide Receiver (they didn't)
  
  - that there were 70,000 documents in total related to the F&F operation (there are 140,000 (at the last count)).

None of these retractions suggest to a cover-up to me.

As to the use of Executive Privilege two reason now seem plausible to me. The first would be that certain documents relate to the possibility of using F&F (after the fact) as a way of applying pressure for gun control measures such as Demand Letter 3 (the mandatory reporting of bulk sales of long guns similar to what is required regarding bulk sales of handguns). These documents would, IMO, come under the 'deliberative process privilege' because in the hands of Republicans they would be used politically.

The other reason is that Obama wanted to protect Holder from the contempt charges that were looming. The reason he might do this is because he sees the contempt charges as politically motivated. Is this is a legitimate use of EP?

Reading the article that wayfriend posted cleared up many of the points about the F&F operation (apart from why there was no Mexican involvement). If a reporter from Forbes can find this information out without the powers of an oversight committee (and without privileged access to documents) then how much more does the committee need before it can make a report?

u.

[wayfriend]

U, good well-researched post.

I would also add deliberative process privilege: by guaranteeing confidentiality, the government will receive better or more candid advice, recommendations and opinions, resulting in better decisions for society as a whole. Since the documents being subpoenad relate to how a decision was made, it seems a prime candidate to be protected by deliberative process privilege.

No one, as yet, has stated why Mexican involvement is so necessary, that it's lack is indicative of hanky-panky.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

No one, as yet, has stated why Mexican involvement is so necessary, that it's lack is indicative of hanky-panky.

Ideally, if we are going to be allowing guns to be taken into Mexico, knowing that they are going to wind up in cartel hands, then we should let the Mexican officials know about it.

One reason not to alert any Mexican authorities is simple--you can never tell which of them are on the payroll of the cartels and might leak information about the gun-tracking program.

[wayfriend]

No one, as yet, has stated why Mexican involvement is so necessary, that it's lack is indicative of hanky-panky.

Ideally, if we are going to be allowing guns to be taken into Mexico, knowing that they are going to wind up in cartel hands, then we should let the Mexican officials know about it.

Ah... but were the guns supposed to get that far? I really don't know.

I also wonder how it matters to Mexico whether the guns crossing the border were bought from a dealer in the US, or were bought from a dealer in the US working for ATF. It's not like the gunrunners would not have gotten any guns if not for the ATF.

The fear of collusion between the Mex gov and the cartels is also possible. Probable. Pakistan has demonstrated that keeping things close pays off.

We'll probably never know. This is of little interest to Congress, as it isn't on a straight line to nailing Obama.

[Cail]

Yeah, fuck that pesky sovereignty thing.

[Ananda]

Yeah, fuck that pesky sovereignty thing.

Just a question since I don't know the answer, but how reliable is the mexican government now with the drug cartels having so much influence and authority due to their massive amounts of money largely gained from the us war on drugs? I ask because maybe telling someone in the government would be the same as telling the cartels of their plans to deal with them. If that is the case, then it is like the us not telling pakistan of their raid to get bin laden because they feared someone would have tipped them. I am not applying my opinion to it, but just asking if that could be the case?

[Holsety]

No one, as yet, has stated why Mexican involvement is so necessary, that it's lack is indicative of hanky-panky.

Ideally, if we are going to be allowing guns to be taken into Mexico, knowing that they are going to wind up in cartel hands, then we should let the Mexican officials know about it.

One reason not to alert any Mexican authorities is simple--you can never tell which of them are on the payroll of the cartels and might leak information about the gun-tracking program.

The latter point occurred to me. Also, this was apparently a 7 man team, and coordination with the Mexican authorities might be difficult to wrangle when you can't even get larger support from your own country. I think someone, maybe even me, or maybe it was the guy who wrote the article in question about the ATF team for Forbes, pointed this out already.

Yeah, fuck that pesky sovereignty thing.

To me, would've been a huge issue if we had actually carried out operations in Mexico against drug cartels or whoever, but didn't the ATF team actually not carry out any such operations?

Just a question since I don't know the answer, but how reliable is the mexican government now with the drug cartels having so much influence and authority due to their massive amounts of money largely gained from the us war on drugs? I ask because maybe telling someone in the government would be the same as telling the cartels of their plans to deal with them. If that is the case, then it is like the us not telling pakistan of their raid to get bin laden because they feared someone would have tipped them. I am not applying my opinion to it, but just asking if that could be the case?

To me, going after drug dealers with guns - who from the Forbes article are apparently midlevel - might be of a lesser magnitude than a major figure in the September 11th bombings. But doing something against the Mexican drug cartels w/out Mexican govt's awareness seems like it would be comparable, in terms of infringing on sovereignty, to what happened with Bin Laden, imo, ya. Also I guess the US might have an "urgency" case to make for Bin Laden though I'm not sure whether that would really make sense.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Ah... but were the guns supposed to get that far? I really don't know.

I also wonder how it matters to Mexico whether the guns crossing the border were bought from a dealer in the US, or were bought from a dealer in the US working for ATF. It's not like the gunrunners would not have gotten any guns if not for the ATF.

The fear of collusion between the Mex gov and the cartels is also possible. Probable. Pakistan has demonstrated that keeping things close pays off.

We'll probably never know. This is of little interest to Congress, as it isn't on a straight line to nailing Obama.

I thought the whole point of Wide Receiver and Fast&Furious was to track the guns all the way to the cartels, but I could be wrong. There is no point in tracking them to the border and then letting them go without any more pursuit.

In all honesty, the Mexican authorities probably don't care where the guns come from as long as they have gotten their cut of the money. I don't think that there is a possibility of collusion between Mexican authorities and the cartels; instead, I think it is a certainty. In fact, I operate from the presumption that they are in collusion.

[ussusimiel]

Just a question since I don't know the answer, but how reliable is the mexican government

Corruption seems to be endemic in the police force in Mexico. Or, looked at another way, it might be good for your health not to intercept guns that belong to the cartels Whatever the reasons attempts to track guns across the border are fraught with difficulty and, even with the best procedures, it seems that once the guns leave the US there is a high probability of losing track of them.

I've been looking at the reports that the Oversight Committee has produced: this is the second Republican one, and this is the Democrats' one. I haven't read all of them, but they seem fairly partisan. They may sit on the same committee, but, boy! do they manage to see the issues differently

u.

[Avatar]

Objecting to the act of denying a conspiracy by suggesting another conspiracy doesn't require subscribing to the former conspiracy, only noting the irony in another's denial.

Ok, gotcha.

--A

[SerScot]

I agree with Cail. If we are deliberately attempting to put Guns into the hands of Mexican Cartels, regardless of the motivation, failing to tell the Mexican Government about the action is a tremendous violation of Mexican Sovreignty.

If Canada were tracking illegal gun Sales from dealers in it's territory into the US and its failure to inform the US Government lead to deaths in the US would we be relaxed about what the Canadian Government was doing?

[Cail]

Yeah, fuck that pesky sovereignty thing.

Just a question since I don't know the answer, but how reliable is the mexican government now with the drug cartels having so much influence and authority due to their massive amounts of money largely gained from the us war on drugs? I ask because maybe telling someone in the government would be the same as telling the cartels of their plans to deal with them. If that is the case, then it is like the us not telling pakistan of their raid to get bin laden because they feared someone would have tipped them. I am not applying my opinion to it, but just asking if that could be the case?

None of that matters. The Neocon-in-Chief has shown a consistent disregard for international laws and borders when it's convenient or expedient for him. That is an extremely dangerous precedent, not only to set, but to so consistently reinforce.

[ussusimiel]

I agree with Cail. If we are deliberately attempting to put Guns into the hands of Mexican Cartels, regardless of the motivation, failing to tell the Mexican Government about the action is a tremendous violation of Mexican Sovreignty.

If Canada were tracking illegal gun Sales from dealers in it's territory into the US and its failure to inform the US Government lead to deaths in the US would we be relaxed about what the Canadian Government was doing?

Serscot, to the best of my knowledge, this is not what was happening. From what I can gather the cartels were gearing up for a turf war while F&F was ongoing. This meant that a lot of guns were being bought at that time. What the agents in F&F were trying to do was record the patterns of gun sales, not encourage them. While they may have encouraged suspicious gun dealers to make some sales, those sales would, most likely, have been made somewhere else and so not recorded.

When the agents tried to get warrants to interdict the guns in the US they were unable to meet the probable cause standards. What subsequently happened was that many of the guns that the agents recorded, unsurprisingly, started to turn up at crime scenes (many at shoot-outs between rival cartels). And this is where the confusion arises. Just because the agents in F&F recorded suspicious gun sales does not mean that they either enabled those sales or (as the Fortune article shows) were legally able to interdict those guns in the US.

u.

[Avatar]

That is an extremely dangerous precedent, not only to set, but to so consistently reinforce.

I don't think he set that precedent, only reinforced it. The sovereignty of other countries has never exactly been high on the list of limiting factors for the US.

--A

[Ananda]

Yeah, fuck that pesky sovereignty thing.

Just a question since I don't know the answer, but how reliable is the mexican government now with the drug cartels having so much influence and authority due to their massive amounts of money largely gained from the us war on drugs? I ask because maybe telling someone in the government would be the same as telling the cartels of their plans to deal with them. If that is the case, then it is like the us not telling pakistan of their raid to get bin laden because they feared someone would have tipped them. I am not applying my opinion to it, but just asking if that could be the case?

None of that matters. The Neocon-in-Chief has shown a consistent disregard for international laws and borders when it's convenient or expedient for him. That is an extremely dangerous precedent, not only to set, but to so consistently reinforce.

What about the other decades of americans getting involved in other countrys business? Your cia? Your wars? Your puppet states? Your manipulations? I think my question is where do you personally draw the line and why? Obama is not setting any precedent- you just do not like him so you say things like that. You have been up in other countrys business all your life. I mean, it took RAF to shock europe into not being complete american puppet states in the 70s. Obama has done nothing new. So, where are the lines the us should not cross and why and how will you convince them to stop doing it after half a century? Because, I agree that the us should leave other people alone, stop starting wars, stop bombing the shit out of the world and all that.

[Cail]

Just a question since I don't know the answer, but how reliable is the mexican government now with the drug cartels having so much influence and authority due to their massive amounts of money largely gained from the us war on drugs? I ask because maybe telling someone in the government would be the same as telling the cartels of their plans to deal with them. If that is the case, then it is like the us not telling pakistan of their raid to get bin laden because they feared someone would have tipped them. I am not applying my opinion to it, but just asking if that could be the case?

None of that matters. The Neocon-in-Chief has shown a consistent disregard for international laws and borders when it's convenient or expedient for him. That is an extremely dangerous precedent, not only to set, but to so consistently reinforce.

What about the other decades of americans getting involved in other countrys business? Your cia? Your wars? Your puppet states? Your manipulations? I think my question is where do you personally draw the line and why? Obama is not setting any precedent- you just do not like him so you say things like that. You have been up in other countrys business all your life. I mean, it took RAF to shock europe into not being complete american puppet states in the 70s. Obama has done nothing new. So, where are the lines the us should not cross and why and how will you convince them to stop doing it after half a century? Because, I agree that the us should leave other people alone, stop starting wars, stop bombing the shit out of the world and all that.

What about them? Why do you keep defending the man who continually makes George Bush and Ronald Reagan look like isolationist pacifists?

[SerScot]

Ananda,

They were wrong. Now we have a President who campaigned on beig different from those in the past, and isn't. His hypocrisy is very dissappointing.

[wayfriend]

I agree with Cail. If we are deliberately attempting to put Guns into the hands of Mexican Cartels, regardless of the motivation, failing to tell the Mexican Government about the action is a tremendous violation of Mexican Sovreignty.

The US and Mexico have broad agreements in place in order to fight the cartels. In this light, I think you would need to explain to me how FnF violated this agreement before I gave this sovereignty issue any credibility. Also, it would help if you could show that Mexico actually took issue.

Otherwise all I see is people trying to make something seem suspicious that isn't. Butts, and smoke blown in an upward direction.

They were wrong. Now we have a President who campaigned on beig different from those in the past, and isn't. His hypocrisy is very dissappointing.

WRT sovereignty, we've gone from invading and occupying countries to sending drones. If anyone doesn't see an improvement then they don't want to.

[SerScot]

Wayfriend,

So, killing from a distance is better than up close and personal?

[wayfriend]

I look forward to the day when you address a point made to you.