In the book Stonewalled Sharyl Attkisson shows the answer is yes.
Myself I had thought that the Fast and Furious scheme was simply an effort to trace how guns get to Mexican Cartels and that though it went horribly wrong it was non-political.
And indeed under Republican president George W Bush a similar scheme named Wide Receiver was tried though on a much smaller scale and it was quickly abandoned.
What was Fast and Furious? It was a program where the Federal Bureau of Alchohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) helped supply Mexicos drug cartels with fearsome weapons. They did this by telling licensed gun dealers in Arizona to sell weapons powerful enough to bring down an elephant to suspected cartel members. Then ATF did not intercept the weapons instead letting the criminals use them. Supposedly the idea was that this would lead investigators to the leaders of the cartels. That didnt happen but innocent people were killed. Cartels used the weapons against the Mexican police and Mexican military. And they were used on our side of the border.
On Dec 14 2010 a Border Patrol agent named Brian Terry was gunned down in the dark Arizona desert night by Mexican bandits using guns that they had obtained from this program.
After Attkisson broke the Fast and Furious story the Justice Department told reporters that her unnamed sources were lying.
Then she spoke with John Dodson an ATF agent who had raised objections with his supervisors and been told in response if youre going to make an omelet youve got to break some eggs.
CBS news aired footage of Dodson telling the story to Attkisson so finally there was a named source.
On February 4 2011 the Justice Dept. wrote a letter to Congress saying that the ATF does not let guns walk. This was a lie.
Ten months later it retracted this statement but implied there was no intent to deceive.
In the coming months Republicans asked for internal emails. They asked for other documentation too. The Justice Dept. refused to turn over this material. Then President Obama claimed executive privilege to keep the documents secret!
The Justice Dept. now said that the operation was due only to rogue ATF agents in Phoenix and nobody else.
But Congress got its hands on internal documents that prove that was not true.
So the Justice Dept. changed its story again and claimed that though the ATF knew about it the Justice Dept. did not.
But Congress received documentation showing that the Justice Department not only knew but approved wiretaps for the case.
Rene Jaquez an agent of the ATF in the very dangerous city of Juarez Mexico told Sharyl that he was outraged that as he faced frequent brushes with death in that city his own agency was helping arm the bad guys. Jaquez has family living in Mexico and added that any one of us could have been shot with one of those guns.
Attkisson tries to understand what the mission really was. She notes that other agencies of the government including the IRS and DEA and Homeland Security participated in the program. She noted that the Feds commonly claim that up to 90 percent of the weapons used by drug cartels are sold over the counter in the United States. The problem with this argument is that the sample is biased since only weapons that the Mexican police believe might come from here are sent here for testing.
But imagine a scenario in which a greater percentage of guns from Mexican crime scenes are traced in a fairly short defined period of time and hundreds--no thousands of them--are discovered to have come from the United States. Gun control advocates could have their checkmate.
Attkisson does present evidence that at least some government officials saw Fast and Furious as a way to encourage gun control.
On May 3 2011 Eric Holder head of the Justice Department claimed that he heard of Fast and Furious only six months after Terrys death and three months after the CBS News reports. Unfortunately for his version of events it turns out he was sent weekly briefings on the case as early as ten months before.
On Sept 2 2011 Attkisson does a live shot for the CBS Early Show to tell Americans that an email was sent the day after Brians murder by Attorney Emory Hurley to cover up the connection between the murder of Brian Terry and Fast and Furious.
So the answer to my initial question is yes the government lies to you.
In this case more remarkable may be the devious nature of the underlying agenda. Attkisson suggests that the agenda was not to trace criminals as it seemed but to achieve gun control. If that is the case then the government is giving lethal weapons to some of the worst people in the world in order to deprive law-abiding Americans of their own weapons.
Whatever the purpose was the mainstream media as Attkisson shows was not interested in digging beneath the surface of stories potentially embarrassing to the Obama administration.
You cant correct mistakes if you stonewall those who would investigate those mistakes and when the media sinks into an anesthetized state and dismisses Fast and Furious--or Benghazi as a Republican story.
Sources:
Stonewalled by Sharyl Attkisson
http://www.truthrevolt.org/videos/bill-whittle-sir-i-will-not-obey-order
http://www.nysun.com/foreign/iraqs-wmd-secreted-in-syria-sada-says/26514/
In the book Stonewalled Sharyl Attkisson shows the answer is yes.
Myself I had thought that the Fast and Furious scheme was simply an effort to trace how guns get to Mexican Cartels and that though it went horribly wrong it was non-political.
And indeed under Republican president George W Bush a similar scheme named Wide Receiver was tried though on a much smaller scale and it was quickly abandoned.
What was Fast and Furious? It was a program where the Federal Bureau of Alchohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) helped supply Mexicos drug cartels with fearsome weapons. They did this by telling licensed gun dealers in Arizona to sell weapons powerful enough to bring down an elephant to suspected cartel members. Then ATF did not intercept the weapons instead letting the criminals use them. Supposedly the idea was that this would lead investigators to the leaders of the cartels. That didnt happen but innocent people were killed. Cartels used the weapons against the Mexican police and Mexican military. And they were used on our side of the border.
On Dec 14 2010 a Border Patrol agent named Brian Terry was gunned down in the dark Arizona desert night by Mexican bandits using guns that they had obtained from this program.
After Attkisson broke the Fast and Furious story the Justice Department told reporters that her unnamed sources were lying.
Then she spoke with John Dodson an ATF agent who had raised objections with his supervisors and been told in response if youre going to make an omelet youve got to break some eggs.
CBS news aired footage of Dodson telling the story to Attkisson so finally there was a named source.
On February 4 2011 the Justice Dept. wrote a letter to Congress saying that the ATF does not let guns walk. This was a lie.
Ten months later it retracted this statement but implied there was no intent to deceive.
In the coming months Republicans asked for internal emails. They asked for other documentation too. The Justice Dept. refused to turn over this material. Then President Obama claimed executive privilege to keep the documents secret!
The Justice Dept. now said that the operation was due only to rogue ATF agents in Phoenix and nobody else.
But Congress got its hands on internal documents that prove that was not true.
So the Justice Dept. changed its story again and claimed that though the ATF knew about it the Justice Dept. did not.
But Congress received documentation showing that the Justice Department not only knew but approved wiretaps for the case.
Rene Jaquez an agent of the ATF in the very dangerous city of Juarez Mexico told Sharyl that he was outraged that as he faced frequent brushes with death in that city his own agency was helping arm the bad guys. Jaquez has family living in Mexico and added that any one of us could have been shot with one of those guns.
Attkisson tries to understand what the mission really was. She notes that other agencies of the government including the IRS and DEA and Homeland Security participated in the program. She noted that the Feds commonly claim that up to 90 percent of the weapons used by drug cartels are sold over the counter in the United States. The problem with this argument is that the sample is biased since only weapons that the Mexican police believe might come from here are sent here for testing.
But imagine a scenario in which a greater percentage of guns from Mexican crime scenes are traced in a fairly short defined period of time and hundreds--no thousands of them--are discovered to have come from the United States. Gun control advocates could have their checkmate.
Attkisson does present evidence that at least some government officials saw Fast and Furious as a way to encourage gun control.
On May 3 2011 Eric Holder head of the Justice Department claimed that he heard of Fast and Furious only six months after Terrys death and three months after the CBS News reports. Unfortunately for his version of events it turns out he was sent weekly briefings on the case as early as ten months before.
On Sept 2 2011 Attkisson does a live shot for the CBS Early Show to tell Americans that an email was sent the day after Brians murder by Attorney Emory Hurley to cover up the connection between the murder of Brian Terry and Fast and Furious.
So the answer to my initial question is yes the government lies to you.
In this case more remarkable may be the devious nature of the underlying agenda. Attkisson suggests that the agenda was not to trace criminals as it seemed but to achieve gun control. If that is the case then the government is giving lethal weapons to some of the worst people in the world in order to deprive law-abiding Americans of their own weapons.
Whatever the purpose was the mainstream media as Attkisson shows was not interested in digging beneath the surface of stories potentially embarrassing to the Obama administration.
You cant correct mistakes if you stonewall those who would investigate those mistakes and when the media sinks into an anesthetized state and dismisses Fast and Furious--or Benghazi as a Republican story.
Sources:
Stonewalled by Sharyl Attkisson
http://www.truthrevolt.org/videos/bill-whittle-sir-i-will-not-obey-order
http://www.nysun.com/foreign/iraqs-wmd-secreted-in-syria-sada-says/26514/