A Fast & Furious Coverup

by JASmius

How fast can Red Barry tapdance? His Watergate, which would BE a Watergate even in most other Democrat regimes, is finally triggering a cascade reaction of musical chairs at Eric The Red's hideout:

The acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is leaving his post after months of controversy over “Operation Fast and Furious’’ gunrunning debacle that put assault rifles in the hands of Mexican drug dealers.

The apparent shake-up has been simmering for months, amid Republican allegations that higher-ups in the Department of Justice should be held accountable for the scandal, in which the weapons ended up at crime scenes, including murders.

Acting Director Kenneth Melson will become senior adviser to the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Policy, the ATF announced today. Melson has been a flash point in the investigation of the Fast and Furious program and Project Gunrunner.

Does this constitute a housecleaning at the Department of Injustice & Revenge? Holding at least one of the perps for this major scandal accountable? A flunky falling on his sword?

Nope, nope, and nope. Melson's crime, in the eyes of the White House, wasn't running guns to Mexican narco-terrorists, it was defying orders and obeying a congressional summons to testify about F&F.

Perhaps that explains this "unexpected" flurry of personnel reshuffling:

In a related development, Phoenix U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, who worked with the ATF on the operation, has resigned. And in still more fallout, Emory Hurley, an assistant U.S. attorney in Phoenix who helped oversee Fast and Furious, is being moved out of the criminal division to the civil division.

This follows the transfer of three agents heavily involved in the scheme from the ATF’s Arizona field office to Washington, D.C.

Move the shells fast enough, and they'll never find the pea. "They" being House Government Reform & Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA49) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who in a letter to Eric The Red expressly warned the White House against avenging itself on Melson for his compliance with the law.

Said warning was in addition to the following conclusions based upon Melson's testimony:

• The ATF isn’t the only agency to bear some responsibility for the botched operation that sent guns to Mexico. The Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Drug Enforcement Agency seem to have possessed information that could have had a material impact on Fast and Furious (i.e. info that could have eliminated or reduced the ostensible ‘need’ for the operation in the first place). Or, as the letter puts it, “We have very real indications from several sources that some of the gun trafficking ‘higher-ups’ that the ATF sought to identify were already known to other agencies and may even have been paid as informants.”



• Taxpayer money was likely used to finance the gunrunning. “The evidence we have gathered raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities.”



• Senior ATF officials would have preferred to cooperate with Congressional inquiries — but “Department of Justice officials directed them not to respond and took full control of replying to briefing and document requests from Congress.”

True, Melson hasn't been terminated with extreme prejudice; this is a mothballing, not Red Barry's answer to the Saturday Night Massacre. They know that high-profile bureaucratic beheadings is what it would take to attract enough public attention to F&F to ignite it into full-fledged scandalhood, which is the last thing False Messiah needs with his economy in the waste extractor and his poll numbers in freefall. Stick Melson in a career cul-de-sac and batten down the pawns (to pre-empt any more whistleblowers) and this stuff stays "inside baseball" and easily suppressed by the Regime's Obamaedia propaganda operatives. Or so they hope.

But Chairman Issa isn't calling off the dogs:

“While the reckless disregard for safety that took place in Operation Fast and Furious certainly merits changes within the Department of Justice, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee will continue its investigation to ensure that blame isn’t offloaded on just a few individuals for a matter that involved much higher levels of the Justice Department.

There's still lots of time for this stinkbomb to blow up in The One's haughty countenance at the worst possible time. Oh, my, yes.

Why else do you think this poor bastard is getting questions like this?

[cross-posted @ Hard Starboard]