What the BDN Doesn't Tell Us About 'Fast and Furious'
What the BDN Doesn't Tell Us About 'Fast and Furious'
Thu, 06/21/2012 - 6:30am
Posted by zmogus
Knowing the history of the Bangor Daily News, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that on the front page of today's BDN, "below the fold", there's an article about the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voting to hold AG Eric Holder in contempt. Nowhere in today's paper is there any mention of the President using Executive Privilege to prevent the release of documents to the Committee, documents that 24 hours earlier Holder was willing to release if the oversight committee agreed to subsequently end its investigation of Fast and Furious. That was Holder's deal. Of course, it was unacceptable. Congressman Issa, Chair of HOGR, is the source of the terms of the deal. I haven't heard other national news reporters mention the terms. No investigator would accept them. What's interesting is that the documents the committee wants have little to do with the actual operation of Fast and Furious. The documents reportedly are related to the response of government agencies towards the investigating Congressional committees.
I found this interesting column at Human Events which details a conversation between Hope McAllister, the ATF field agent overseeing at least part of F&F, and Andre Howard, the owner of Lone Wolf Trading Company, one of the retailers used in F&F to sell weapons. Read here: Human Events. One of the McAllister's subordinates, Gary M. Styers an ATF field officer with F&F, detailed, for his superiors, his phone conversation with Senator Grassley's investigators: Read here, Gary Styers Memo.
1. It was Hope McAllister, in at least the one instance that Styers detailed, who ordered the agents to let the weapons "walk". 2. McAllister acknowledges in her conversation with Howard that Senator Leahy, D-VT, killed the investigation by his committee in the Senate: "Leahy, as we both know, has adjourned this inquiry right now, okay, with no plans to reconvene it. So your people were successful to that end."
Who are "your people" and why was adjourning the inquiry in the Senate considered to be "successful"? What did Senator Leahy know and when did he know it and why did he kill the investigation of Fast and Furious in the Senate?
Every answer should lead to another question.