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Thursday, June 7, 2012
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Issa: Fast & Furious Wiretap Applications Reveal Senior DOJ Involvement
by Mary Chastain
Today, Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell
Issa sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder detailing how wiretap applications
reveal how close senior officials at the Department of Justice were
to Operation Fast & Furious.
According to Chairman Issa, the applications were approved from March to
July of 2010. Each one contained a memo from Assistant Attorney General Lanny
Breuer authorizing it on behalf of Mr. Holder. These memos were also marked for
Emory Hurley, the lead prosecutor for Operation Fast & Furious.
The DOJ leadership has repeated many times that this was a local issue and
senior officials in Washington, DC were not involved. Chairman Issa notes Mr.
Holder said during his February 2, 2012 testimony that wiretap applications
contained no information on Fast & Furious.
Since senior officials signed off on these applications, the DOJ can no
longer claim that if they knew about Fast & Furious they would have shut it
down. These wiretap applications contained information on the tactics that were
being used. The documents also showed that top ATF officials, not DOJ
officials, were concerned about the number of weapons involved. Chairman Issa
said it was ATF Deputy Director William Hoover who became concerned about the
volume and demanded an exit strategy to end Fast & Furious as soon as
possible. But when DOJ officials were confronted with the exact same information,
they just let it go.
Chairman Issa said the committee now knows why the DOJ was reluctant
handing over these documents. It destroys the DOJ’s excuse that F&F was
just a local issue.
Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry lost his life on December 14, 2010. Guns
found at the scene were connected to Fast & Furious. Hundreds of Mexicans
have been murdered. Guns from Fast & Furious have been found at 12 crime
scenes in America.
Representative Paul Gosar’s state of Arizona has been greatly affected by
Fast & Furious. On Thursday, he will host a Special Order on Fast &
Furious at the end of the day immediately following votes. He released this
following statement about these developments:
Every detail of Fast and Furious has been alarming. Today’s developments of
misinformation and lies, showing that top DOJ political appointees were in fact
intimately aware of Operation Fast and Furious from the beginning, demonstrate
what we already know—Eric Holder must go now. The American people and Congress
deserve truthful answers in a timely manner. AG Holder and his senior staff
have shown contempt for the Constitution by preventing us from getting those
answers. I reiterate my call for Eric Holder’s resignation, and I am calling
upon leadership to take up my Resolution of ‘No Confidence’ in Attorney General
Holder, which has 114 cosponsors, for a vote as soon as possible.
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