Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) on Monday said he was not happy with the Justice Department’s response to his queries about a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives policy that allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
In a letter to acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson, Grassley wrote that a letter he received from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich of the DOJ Office of Legislative Affairs “was not an adequate response” to his questions about gun smuggling. Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he wants Melson to respond to questions he asked the Director on March 4 about whether ATF operations contributed to the shooting of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Jaime Zapata, who was killed in Mexico in February.
Weich wrote in his March 8 letter to Grassley that he directed the senator’s letter to DOJ acting Inspector General Cynthia Schnedar, who is investigating the ATF policy. In a letter to Kevin Perkins, the head of the Integrity Committee of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, Grassley wrote that Schnedar shouldn’t conduct the probe because acting inspectors general are caretakers and may not have the tools to conduct thorough investigations.
The Justice Department is under pressure to provide all information about its gun smuggling investigations. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has started his own probe. And Mexican officials have opened their own criminal investigation into the same subject.
Ah, yes. The scandal that will see the hasty departure Janet Napolitano, Eric Holder, Lanny Breuer, Kenneth Melson and a host of minor players and in the process gut both the prospects for an Obama second term and the gun control agenda. The Government of Mexico is already making noises for the extradition of the guilty Gunwalkers. The deadline for documents is Wednesday and the betting among street agents on Melson rolling on the rest of the guilty is 50-50. I was asked by a reporter if this was as bad as Watergate. I said, “Uh, no one died at the Watergate Hotel.” There are hundreds dead in Mexico already if the street agents are to be believed, plus two dead American federal law enforcement agents. This was nothing less than a conspiracy to subvert the Second Amendment by creating an Emanuel “crisis” to exploit. If Lanny Breuer manages to stay out of prison, I’ll be surprised. The question is, which way is Hillary going to jump? State was also consulted on this. The question is, how high up?
Mike Vanderboegh
(The guy who first broke this story on 28 December 2010.)