A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program that let guns end up with suspected firearms smugglers in an effort to trace the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders lost track of hundreds of the weapons, many of which had ties to crimes, The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
The ATF ran the program, known as Operation Fast and Furious, despite concerns that the firearms might be utilized in criminal activities.
The program made it possible for suspected smugglers to buy 1,765 firearms, 797 of which were recovered in Mexico and the United States after they were used in crimes. Of those crime guns, 195 were recovered in Mexico. And two had links to the December killing of Customs and Border Protection Agent Brian Terry in Arizona.
John Dodson, an ATF agent who worked on the program said he is anguished by the operation.
“With the number of guns we let walk, we’ll never know how many people were killed, raped, robbed,” Dodson told the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit research group. “There is nothing we can do to round up those guns. They are gone.”
ATF spokesman Scot L. Thomasson, told The Times that his Justice Department agency continues to review the program. On Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder requested that DOJ officials work with the Inspector General to decide whether further review of the program is necessary.
Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he is looking into whether firearms came to Mexico as part of a deliberate U.S. policy.
“Too many government agencies always want the big case,” Grassley told The Times. “They keep these gun-running sales moving along, even when they have people within the agency that say something bad’s going to happen. They had plenty of warnings … and the prophets turned out to be right.”
