Fast and Furious

The goal of the Fast and Furi­ous op­er­a­tion, run by the Phoenix of­fice of the ATF, was to al­low straw pur­chasers to il­leg­ally buy weapons in the U.S. so agents could learn the traf­fick­ers’ routes in­to Mex­ico. The agents were then sup­posed to in­ter­vene be­fore the guns were sold to drug car­tels. But agents lost track of roughly 1,700 weapons, and hun­dreds soon began show­ing up at hom­icide scenes in Mex­ico.

Full cov­er­age: ATF’s Fast and Furi­ous scan­dal

Sept. 19, 2012  By Richard A. Serrano
An in­vest­ig­at­ive re­port by the De­part­ment of Justice’s Of­fice of the In­spect­or Gen­er­al found that 14 fed­er­al law en­force­ment of­fi­cials — from field agents in Ari­zona to top man­agers in the Bur­eau of Al­co­hol, To­bacco, Fire­arms and Ex­plos­ives and the Justice De­part­ment in Wash­ing­ton — cre­ated a “sig­ni­fic­ant danger to pub­lic safety” un­der Op­er­a­tion Fast and Furi­ous.
Aug. 5, 2011  By Richard A. Serrano
The head of the Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion has ac­know­ledged to con­gres­sion­al in­vest­ig­at­ors that her agency provided a sup­port­ing role in the ill-fated Op­er­a­tion Fast and Furi­ous run by the group’s coun­ter­parts at the ATF.
July 28, 2011  By Richard A. Serrano
The ATF’s field su­per­visor on the South­w­est bor­der sent a series of emails last year to a top White House na­tion­al se­cur­ity of­fi­cial de­tail­ing the agency’s am­bi­tious ef­forts to stop weapons traf­fick­ing in­to Mex­ico, but did not men­tion that a botched sting op­er­a­tion already had al­lowed hun­dreds of guns to flow to drug car­tels.
July 26, 2011  By Richard A. Serrano
The claim by seni­or ATF of­fi­cials that none of the weapons lost in the botched Fast and Furi­ous sting op­er­a­tion were used in the shoot­ing of a Bor­der Patrol agent is not sup­por­ted by FBI bal­list­ics tests, ac­cord­ing to a copy of the FBI re­port on the shoot­ing.
July 26, 2011  By Richard A. Serrano
Rep. Dar­rell Issa (R-Vista) and Sen. Charles E. Grass­ley (R-Iowa) of the Sen­ate Ju­di­ciary Com­mit­tee are in­vest­ig­at­ing the ATF’s Fast and Furi­ous op­er­a­tion. A re­port re­leased Monday by the House Com­mit­tee on Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Re­form, which Issa chairs, doc­u­ments their find­ings so far.
July 25, 2011  By Richard A. Serrano
An em­bassy cable adds to evid­ence that of­fi­cials at ATF were keep­ing oth­er parts of the gov­ern­ment in the dark about their op­er­a­tion.
July 21, 2011  By Richard A. Serrano
Two days after U.S. Bor­der Patrol Agent Bri­an A. Terry was killed in Decem­ber, the top ATF su­per­visors in Phoenix said in in­tern­al emails that weapons found at the scene in Ari­zona came from a failed agency sting op­er­a­tion.
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