Even as high-powered weapons flowed toward Mexican drug cartels in a controversial U.S. surveillance program, hundreds more guns likely escaped into the hands of criminals inside the U.S., federal agents told Congress on Wednesday.
“We weren’t giving guns to people who were hunting bears. We were giving guns to people who were killing people,” Peter Forcelli, group supervisor at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix, told a House committee.
The ATF agents said they were ordered to watch as more than 1,700 guns — including AK-47 variants and high-powered rifles — were sold to straw purchasers in Arizona and transferred to suspected agents of Mexico’s violent drug-trafficking organizations.
Mexican lawmakers now believe that at least 150 Mexicans have been killed or wounded with guns smuggled under the operation code-named “Fast and Furious.”
Less understood is what happened to guns that slipped into the hands of suspected criminals in the U.S.
By the ATF’s own estimates, at least 372 guns sold to suspect purchasers have been recovered in Arizona and Texas, mainly at crime scenes. ATF agent John Dodson has estimated that about a third of the guns sold under the operation remained in the U.S.
ATF’s guns at shootout
“These firearms will continue to turn up at crime scenes on both sides of the border for years to come,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which heard testimony from disgruntled ATF agents, the Justice Department and the family of former Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, who died in a December shootout with Mexican border bandits in southern Arizona. Two weapons sold under the Phoenix ATF office’s “Fast and Furious” operation were found at the scene of the shootout.
In the face of the agents’ testimony, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich backtracked on a letter he wrote in February asserting that “the allegation … that ATF ‘sanctioned’ or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico — is false.”
“Obviously, there have been allegations that call into serious question that particular letter … (although) everything we say is true to the best of our knowledge at the time we say it,” Weich told the committee.
“Some of the testimony that was provided today is of great concern to the Justice Department,” he added. “We share the committee’s interest in getting to the bottom of these allegations.”
Director could monitor
A series of e-mails released as part of the hearing show acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson and his deputy, Bill Hoover, were getting “weekly briefings” on the Phoenix-run operation. Melson also had requested and been supplied with log-in information that would allow him to monitor the video surveillance at an Arizona gun dealership that was supplying weapons under the ATF’s watch.
“With this information … Melson was able to sit at his desk in Washington and — himself — watch a live feed of the straw buyers entering the gun stores to purchase dozens of AK-47 variants,” Issa’s office said in a statement accompanying the e-mails.
Dodson and two fellow agents who testified said their repeated objections were rebuffed.
“When I voiced surprise and concern with this tactic to (Phoenix special agent in charge) William Newell and (assistant) George Gillett, my concerns were dismissed. SAC Newell referred to the case as ‘groundbreaking’ and bragged that ‘we’re the only people in the country doing this,’ ” Forcelli told the committee.
The agents said they had no idea how their superiors planned to prosecute senior members of Mexican drug cartels for buying the weapons when surveillances were routinely called off once the guns were initially transferred by the straw purchasers.
