Knowledge is Power

so what were those Ends, again?

Here’s your Friday-Before-The-4th-of-July-Weekend Dump:

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) quietly dropped …quotes from and describes in detail a secret wiretap application that has become a point of debate in the GOP’s “Fast and Furious” gun-walking probe.

The wiretap applications were signed by senior DOJ officials in the department’s criminal division, …

In Fast and Furious, agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed assault guns bought by “straw purchasers” to “walk,” which meant ending surveillance on weapons suspected to be en route to Mexican drug cartels.

The tactic, which was intended to allow agents to track criminal networks by finding the guns at crime scenes, was condemned after two guns that were part of the operation were found at U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s murder scene.

So the expectation — the point, really — of F&F was to allow guns to disappear into the Mexican Drug Cartel, yet “track” them by “finding” them at crime scenes.

erm… DoJ doesn’t do crime scenes in foreign countries — like, oh, say, Mexico — so the expectation must have been to “find” these guns at crime scenes in America, right?

“Crime scenes” involving Mexican Drug Cartels — in America — generally also involve a great deal of spilt blood: or am I worng? Or do “crime scenes” in America involving Mexican Drug Cartels generally look like a calm traffic stop wherein the Bad Guyz throw up their hands and cry “Oh! You caught me! I give up! You are too smart for me!” Then they throw down their gunz and gajillions of dollars worth of drugs and cuff each other in fear of DoJ’s Overwhelming Awesomeness™…

Doesn’t seem to be what they did for U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Maybe someone didn’t get a memo. or something…

In the application [for the wiretap] , ATF agents included transcripts from a wiretap intercept from a previous Drug Enforcement Administration investigation that demonstrated the suspects were part of a gun-smuggling ring.

…The application included details such as how many guns specific suspects had purchased via straw purchasers and how many of those guns had been recovered in Mexico.

It also described how ATF officials watched guns bought by suspected straw purchasers but then ended their surveillance without interdicting the guns.

Ok — I guess I’m stupid and “lacking concern for the facts” but that looks like Bad Action to me. I, an admitted raaaacist barbarian, also have a bitter tendency to cling to my guns as opposed to sending them out into the world encouraging young things to grow kill and rob…

At least when a similar thing was tried before, some lame attempt was made to affix RFID chips to the guns so that they could be actually, yanno, tracked. Somewhat.

But it seems to me that the whole worldview of those combatting Drug Cartels has shifted away from White Hat Good Guy toward Set A Thief To Catch A Thief. And now we need a scorecard to tell which Thief is The Good Guy.

So no one will remember this after the whole Hot Dogs and Fireworks week, and neither will Congress. They used the biggest arrow in their quiver and now they’re, well, quivering.

The Department of Justice, following longstanding practice by prior administrations, is declining to prosecute Attorney General Eric Holder for being in contempt of Congress, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said Thursday in a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

Whoda thunk?

Oh, and the ‘whistleblowers’ who tipped this whole thing?

…two of the main Fast and Furious whistleblowers have been placed under the supervision of …Scot Thomasson, said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives needed to “take [the whistleblowers] down.”

“All these whistleblowers have axes to grind. ATF needs to f–k these guys,” Thomasson said

How ’bout a nice new career in, say, ladies handbags?

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