Video: Issa’s Opening Statement at Today’s Operation Fast and Furious Hearing + More

Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) opening statement at today’s explosive Oversight hearing on the Obama Administration’s deadly program that let thousands of high-powered weapons fall into drug smugglers’ hands. Oversight released a scathing report w/ all the tragic facts about the Obama Administration’s deadly mistake of a program, Operation Fast and Furious. Read the report here: http://1.usa.gov/mySoTv

Issa on the CBS Early Show asked a good question:  Since the president said “something may have gone wrong”, why have months have gone by, and no one has lost their jobs?

On Fox News William La Jeunesse said sources told him that this disaster was “not a mistake, it was a deliberate strategy approved by the Justice Dept and carried out by the ATF over the strenuous objections of multiple agents and dealers. From what I’ve been told, Mexico is going to be livid, outraged when they see the congressional report that shows that US officials could have cared less when guns they intentionally sent south, killed people in Mexico – not just drug dealers, but innocent victims and cops.”

Via Tucson Citizen: Statement of John Dodson about ATF gunwalker scandal: “The very idea of letting guns walk is unthinkable to most law enforcement.”

Statement of John Dodson to House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform June 15, 2011.

Dodson is the first whistleblower to come forth in public after Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered with guns “walked” by ATF.

I have never heard an explanation from anyone involved in Operation Fast and Furious that I believe would justify what we did. The ATF is supposed to be a guardian of our citizens. To paraphrase the analogy of Army LTC Dave Grossman, ATF is supposed to be the sheepdog that protects against the wolves that prey upon our southern border. But rather than meet the wolf head-on, we sharpened its teeth and added number to its claws, all the while we sat idly by watching, tracking, and noting as it became a more efficient killer.

Prior to my coming to the Phoenix Field Division, I had never been involved in or even heard of an operation in which law enforcement officers let guns walk. The very idea of letting guns walk is unthinkable to most law enforcement. I and other field agents involved in the operation repeatedly raised these concerns with our supervisors. In response, we were told that we simply did not understand the plan. However, the numerous guns we let walk have yet to be recovered. Those that have been, were only recovered after the last time they were used in a crime. I cannot begin to think of how the risk of letting guns fall into the hands of known criminals could possibly advance any legitimate law enforcement interest. I hope the Committee will receive a better explanation than I ever did.

Read full statement at link.

This whole debacle begs the question: How could top officials at the DOJ have been this criminally,  insanely, impossibly incompetent?

In the past, the Obama Administration and the Department of Homeland Security had implied that the violence in Mexico was the fault of the Second Amendment — law abiding gun shop owners who sold to cartel members.

This whole thing stinks to high heaven and heads should roll.
The higher up – the better.