ATF's Milwaukee sting operation marred by mistakes, failures

A store calling itself Fearless Distributing opened early last year on an out-of-the-way street in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood, offering designer clothes, athletic shoes, jewelry and drug paraphernalia.

Those working behind the counter, however, weren't interested in selling anything.

They were undercover agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives running a storefront sting aimed at busting criminal operations in the city by purchasing drugs and guns from felons.

But the effort to date has not snared any major dealers or taken down a gang. Instead, it resulted in a string of mistakes and failures, including an ATF military-style machine gun landing on the streets of Milwaukee and the agency having $35,000 in merchandise stolen from its store, a Journal Sentinel investigation has found.

When the 10-month operation was shut down after the burglary, agents and Milwaukee police officers who participated in the sting cleared out the store but left behind a sensitive document that listed names, vehicles and phone numbers of undercover agents.

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Real News: MEXICO MASSACRE TO THE SOUTH

Fast and Furious Scandal New Details Emerge: Univision Report

Fast and Furious Scandal 57 New Deaths related to Fast and Furious guns

ABC NEWS & UNIVISION – On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college students in Villas de Salvarcar, Ciudad Juarez. Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more were wounded before the hit men finally fled.


Indirectly, the United States government played a role in the massacre by supplying some of the firearms used by the cartel murderers. Three of the high caliber weapons fired that night in Villas de Salvarcar were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), according to a Mexican army document obtained exclusively by Univision News.

Univision News identified a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious, and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings, and at least one other massacre.

As part of Operation Fast and Furious, ATF allowed 1,961 guns to “walk” out of the U.S. in an effort to identify the high profile cartel leaders who received them. The agency eventually lost track of the weapons, and they often ended up in the hands of Mexican hit men , including those who ordered and carried out the attack on Salvarcar and El Aliviane, a rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez where 18 young men were killed on September 2, 2009.

Read More:  The Right Scope

New Report Links Mexican Cartel Weapons to Obama’s ‘Fast and Furious’ Program

A new report by Spanish-language network Univision links weapons Obama’s “Fast and Furious” program.
Univision identifies a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms bought during “Fast and Furious” that were later recovered in Mexico.

A new report by Spanish-language network Univision links weapons Obama’s “Fast and Furious” program.
Univision identifies a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms bought during “Fast and Furious” that were later recovered in Mexico.

Twelve hit men broke into El Aliviane rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and shot 20 young men who were reportedly praying. The weapons used in this massacre have been linked to Operation Fast and Furious. (Mexican Federal Government- ABC)

FOX News reported:

A new report claims previously unreported weapons can be linked to the botched Operation “Fast and the Furious,” and that the U.S. supplied some of the weapons used in a massacre of young men in Mexico in 2009.

The report by Spanish-language news network Univision aired on the channel Sunday night in Spanish and a partial transcript was obtained by Fox News.

In the report, Univision identifies a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation “Fast and Furious,” and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings and other actions by Mexican hit men and drug cartels.

The report also reveals that the Obama administration may have indirectly played a role in the 2009 massacre, where 18 young men were killed at a rehabilitation center in the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez. The massacre was reportedly ordered and carried out by Mexican hit men.

According to a Mexican army document obtained by Univision, three of the high caliber weapons used in the attack were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the ATF. The partial transcript obtained by Fox News did not specify whether this was Operation “Fast and Furious,” or another similar ATF operation.

The “Fast and Furious” program caught the attention of Congress and the rest of the country after weapons from “Fast and Furious” were found at the crime scene of murdered U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

ABC reports that “Fast and Furious” weapons were linked to the alleged leaders of La Linea:

The massacre at the Aliviane rehabilitation center was ordered by Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez, alias “El Diego”, the same man who ordered the massacre of Villas de Salvarcar, an action in which three weapons from an ATF gun-tracing operation were used to murder 16 teenagers. At the time, Acosta Hernandez was one of the alleged leaders of La Linea, the armed branch of the Juarez Cartel…

…In 2009, Acosta Hernandez led La Linea in an effort to stave off an offensive from the Sinaloa Cartel, commanded in Juarez by Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, a violent enforcer close to Chapo Guzman, who reputedly skinned an enemy’s face to create a soccer ball.

TSA to purchase 1,400 pounds of explosives

TSA to purchase 1,400 pounds of explosives for canine training program
Wed, 2012-08-08 09:43 AM
By: Jacob Goodwin

TSA has put an invitation to bid on the street for 700 pounds of A-5 Flake RDX explosives and 700 pounds of high density ammonium nitrate explosives, which will be used as training aids by explosive-sniffing dogs participating in the National Canine Program (NCP).

“The [Canine Explosives Section] has selected to use High Density Ammonium Nitrate and A-5 Flake RDX as it will provide NCP participants with a more realistic training aid and complement the current aids provided,” explains a statement of work released by TSA on August 7.

The invitation to bid is a 100% small business set-aside opportunity, and prospective vendors have until August 13 to submit their bids. Delivery of the explosives, which must be packed in bags, is required within 15 days, says the TSA notice.

The RDX and ammonium nitrate will be sent to the William J. Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City, NJ.

“TSA's National Explosives Detection Canine Team Program prepares dogs and handlers to serve on the front lines of America's War on Terror,” says the agency’s Website. “These very effective, mobile teams can quickly locate and identify dangerous materials that may present a threat to transportation systems. Just as important, they can quickly rule out the presence of dangerous materials in unattended packages, structures or vehicles, allowing the free and efficient flow of commerce.”

RDX, an initialism for Research Department Explosive, is an explosive nitroamine widely used in military and industrial applications. It was developed as an explosive which was more powerful than TNT, and it saw wide use in WWII.

In its pure, synthesized state RDX is a white, crystalline solid. It is often used in mixtures with other explosives and plasticizers, phlegmatizers or desensitizers. RDX is stable in storage and is considered one of the most powerful and brisant of the military high explosives.

RDX was widely used during World War II, often in explosive mixtures with TNT such as Torpex, Composition B, Cyclotols, and H6. RDX was used in one of the first plastic explosives. RDX is believed to have been used in many bomb plots including terrorist plots.

Terrorism
The 1993 Bombay bombings were the first terrorist blasts in Mumbai which used RDX by placement into several vehicles as bombs. RDX was the main component used for the 2006 Mumbai train bombings and the Jaipur bombings in 2008. It is also believed to be the explosive in the 1999 Russian apartment bombings, 2004 Russian aircraft bombings, and 2010 Moscow Metro bombings.

Ahmed Ressam, the al-Qaeda Millennium Bomber, used a small quantity of RDX as one of the components in the explosives that he prepared to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve 1999/2000; the combined explosives could have produced a blast forty times greater than that of a devastating car bomb.

In July 2012, the Kenyan government arrested two Iranian nationals and charged them with illegal possession of 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of RDX. According to the Kenyan Police, the Iranians planned to use the RDX for "attacks on Israel, US, UK and Saudi Arabian targets".

Fast and Furious Facts

"Our federal government knowingly, willfully, purposefully gave the drug cartels nearly 2,000 weapons — mainly AK-47s — and allowed them to walk," Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, recently told NBC News.

These arms were supposed to lead federal agents in Phoenix to the Mexican thugs who acquired them. Instead, Fast and Furious guns melted into Mexico. Approximately 300 Mexicans have been killed or wounded by Fast and Furious guns, estimates former Mexican attorney general Victor Humberto Benitez Trevino. Relevant details are scarce. However, at least one case generated enormous headlines — in Mexico. On Oct. 21, 2010, Sinaloa drug cartel members kidnapped Mario Gonzalez, brother of Chihuahua state's attorney general at the time, Patricia Gonzalez. That Nov. 5, his tortured body was discovered in a shallow grave. Mexican police soon nabbed eight of his suspected kidnappers in a shootout. They seized 16 weapons, including two Fast and Furious guns, serial numbers confirm. These guns were tied to two kidnappings. That case is detailed in a congressional report prepared for two top Republicans — Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Darrell Issa of California — and released last July 26. Fast and Furious guns have befouled at least 200 crime scenes, including murders and abductions. Among them: • Members of La Familia drug gang fired at a Mexican federal police helicopter on May 24, 2011, wounding three officers and forcing an emergency landing in Michoacan, western Mexico. Five days later, four more helicopters attacked La Familia. Gang members returned fire, striking all four choppers and injuring two more government agents. Police prevailed, killing 11 cartel members and arresting 36 — including those suspected of targeting the first chopper. Mexican authorities say La Familia possessed heavy-duty body armor and 70 rifles, including several Fast and Furious weapons. • Two weapons purchased by Fast and Furious targets were recovered in Sonora July 2010, and to what the Justice Department classifies as a "homicide/willful kill — gun." • Two Fast and Furious guns were linked to a February 2010 assassination conspiracy against Julian Leyzaola, then police chief in Baja California. • Four Fast and Furious guns found in January 2010 were connected to a "kidnap/ransom." • Eleven Fast and Furious firearms were discovered in Atoyac de Alvarez, a city on Mexico's Pacific Coast, after Mexican soldiers saved a kidnap victim in November 2009. Team Obama's defenders correctly argue that George W. Bush administration investigators distributed some 450 guns in Mexico through Operation Wide Receiver, the precursor to Fast and Furious. But there are several key differences between the two initiatives: No known deaths pertain to Operation Wide Receiver. Many of its weapons featured radio-tracking devices, unlike most Fast and Furious guns. Also, Mexico's government knew about and supported Wide Receiver.

In contrast, Issa and Grassley's report observed, "ATF and DOJ leadership kept their own personnel in Mexico and Mexican government officials totally in the dark about all aspects of Fast and Furious." "Fast and Furious has poisoned the wellspring of public opinion in Mexico as it relates to the cooperation and engagement with the United States," Mexico's ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan, said in a May 31 speech. The Grassley-Issa report concluded that 1,048 of these weapons "remain unaccounted for." Unlike carrier pigeons, these Fast and Furious guns will not fly safely home. Instead, for years to come, they will keep drawing blood in Mexico and points north.

ATF Gunrunner Testimony

Another murder linked to ATF's "Fast and Furious"

CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports on the discovery that AK-47 assault rifles found at the scene of a shootout with Mexican narco-terrorists have been linked to the ATF's controversial "Fast and Furious" gunwalking operation.

ATF's Testimony Proves Fast and Furious was an Obama Plot

On July 4th, Acting ATF Director Ken Melson testified for hours before representatives of the Grassley/Issa congressional committees. Personal counsel in tow, Melson made a number of allegations concerning the Department of Justice and two agencies under DOJ control—the FBI and the DEA.

According to his testimony, not only did the DOJ refuse his repeated requests that the ATF be permitted to provide information demanded by the congressional committees, the Department also arranged for tax dollars from the FBI and DEA to help finance Fast and Furious straw buyers.

And as Fast and Furious supplied weapons were found at the murder scenes of both ICE agent Jaime Zapata and Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, it means that both killings were financed by American taxpayers.

Equally disturbing to Sen. Chuck Grassley and Congressman Darrell Issa is the fact that the Justice Department tried to “conceal from Congress the possible involvement of other agencies in identifying and maybe even working with the same criminals that Operation Fast and Furious was trying to identify.”

That is, the FBI and DEA were working with the same drug dealing, gun trafficking higher ups the ATF was ostensibly targeting and hoping to unmask with Fast and Furious.

One such individual, deported years earlier by the DEA, is now working as a “counter terror informant,” tasked with reporting to the FBI the possible presence of dirty bombs and al-Qaeda members crossing the Mexican border into the U.S. Yet neither agency shared this information with the ATF. And, of course, neither did Eric Holder’s Department of Justice.

Two days after Melson’s testimony, the story broke of guns being walked out of the ATF office in Tampa, Florida. Their destination, Honduras, has become a major gateway for Colombian drugs entering Mexico and the United States. The weapons presumably went to Honduran M-13 and M-18 gangs, which have taken over the drug trade in the nation, making deals with Mexican and Colombian cartels.

So, these are the facts:
■Fast and Furious was not purely a Phoenix-based operation. Guns are now known to have been walked from Houston and Tampa field offices and perhaps many others. This makes Gunwalker a nationwide federal scheme.
■The FBI and DEA employed drug dealers and gun traffickers, who participated in Fast and Furious.
■One Fast and Furious weapon was found at the scene of Jaime Zapata’s murder, two at the scene of Brian Terry’s. Has anyone ever heard of murderers leaving their weapons at the scene of the crime, unless they were killed or captured on the spot?
■Although U.S.-procured weapons account for only about 14 percent of firearms found at Mexican crime scenes, three Fast and Furious guns mysteriously showed up at murder scenes – of American agents.

A surefire way for the Second Amendment-hating Obama regime to secretly manufacture an outcry for tougher gun control legislation is to create as much news, as many deaths and as many criminal firearms traces back to U.S. gun sellers as possible.

Step one, the ATF made thousands of weapons available from gun stores across the nation to straw purchasers, who then sent them where criminal activity was most rampant, in Mexico and Honduras.

Step two, three of these weapons were deliberately left at scenes where U.S. agents had been killed.

And finally, serial number traces revealed the origin of these firearms, along with hundreds of others, to have been American gun stores.

Either that was all a remarkable coincidence benefiting a regime intent upon undermining the Second Amendment rights of the American people, or Fast and Furious/Gunrunner is an even more perverse and despicable betrayal of the public trust than anyone has imagined.

Given the histories of those involved, the choice is clear.

Congress starting ATF "gunwalker scandal" probe

(CBS News) Congress holds its first hearings Monday on the "gunwalker scandal" that CBS News first uncovered back in February.


Officials at the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) encouraged gun shops to sell thousands of assault rifles and other weapons destined for Mexican drug cartels.



On "The Early Show" Friday, CBS News Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reported those who defend the strategy say their goal was to let the little fish go -- to get the big fish. But insiders say, in the process, lives were needlessly put in danger.

Last June, about nine months into the ATF operation known as "Fast and Furious," suspects had "purchased 1,608 firearms for over $1 million in cash transactions at various Phoenix-area gun shops," according to internal documents obtained by CBS News. The documents indicate ATF already knew that 179 of those very weapons had turned up at crime scenes in Mexico, and 130 in the U.S.

Yet, ATF allowed some of the same suspects -- accused of being middlemen for Mexican drug cartels -- to continue to buy and transfer assault weapons. Sometimes, agents say, they videotaped the buys, but didn't interdict the guns.


Documents indicate intentions were good. The idea, according to those documents, was to "allow the transfer of firearms" to pinpoint big cartel crooks rather than the small-time traffickers supplying them.


Former New York State Deputy. Secretary of Public Safety Mike Balboni told CBS News, "They want to change the dynamic and truly go after the kingpin, so give the kingpin something that they can't resist -- this flow of weapons over 15 months -- and then track 'em, find 'em and take 'em down."


But several ATF agents strongly objected to letting any guns "walk."

Darren Gil was ATF's lead official in Mexico during "Fast and Furious." He told CBS News, "We're in the business of interdicting weapons; we're not in the business of putting weapons out there for criminals to use. And that's what happened in this case."


Attkisson reported that sources say putting electronic trackers on the guns usually wasn't possible and the number of weapons let on the street in Fast and Furious grew to more than 2,500.


One suspect allegedly purchased 20, even 40 weapons at a time, and at least 220 over the course of about a year. That included 178 AK-47-type assault rifles and three Barret 50-caliber rifles.


"Using our sources, and reviewing documents provided to us over the past four months," Attkisson said, "we've been able to piece together a disturbing picture of where 'Fast and Furious' guns have turned up so far: at a dozen seizures and crime scenes along the U.S. border and in Mexico.


Most notably, two turned up last December at the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in Arizona.


And documents obtained by CBS news indicate some of the weapons were recently found at a drug cartel shooting of a government of Mexico helicopter, as shown on a Spanish language website.


Even insiders appeared awed by the scale. Six months into the investigation, in March of last year, a senior ATF attorney under the Justice Department commented, "Every time I read this case, I am amazed at the amount of firearms we are talking about."


Acting ATF director Kenneth Melson and his deputy, William Hoover, are said to have been "briefed weekly" on the investigation.


ATF Special Agent John Dodson worried about all those guns hitting the streets.


Dodson said, "I don't think anybody really fathoms how long we're gonna be dealing with this. The gun is not gonna go away. It's not a one-time use."


Dodson is expected to testify at a hearing Wednesday along with two other special agents. Attkisson said Monday's hearing will explore whether the Justice Department has obstructed justice in withholding certain information from congressional investigators. That agency has said it's cooperating with the Inspector General's probe.

"Early Show" co-anchor Chris Wragge asked Attkisson if the ATF's plan of going after the big fish -- or large drug cartels -- has paid off. He asked, "Is there any proof this actually worked in any instances?"

"Not yet," Attkisson said. "The idea was to try to take down a major cartel. That didn't happen. Insiders say they still hope evidence they have gleaned from some of this operation that went on over 15 months may eventually help do that. So far, it has not done that. And the argument on the other side, from the insiders who did not approve of the strategy, said you never let one gun walk. It's too dangerous. Even if you're trying to get the big fish."