A House oversight committee
chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., issued a subpoena Wednesday demanding that Attorney
General Eric Holder testify about a botched gun sting along the Mexican border.
The committee is trying to get to the bottom of "Fast and Furious," a
scandal-plagued operation involving the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms,
and Explosives ("ATF") that allowed at least 2,000 high-powered guns
to be sold illegally to couriers who delivered the guns to drug cartels. No
effort was made to keep track of the guns or intercept them before they fell
into the wrong hands. Some of the guns have turned up at crime scenes,
including the murder of a U.S. Border Agent.
The congressional
investigation originally focused on who approved the poorly conceived
operation. But now the attention is also turning to an additional question: did
Eric Holder, the nation's top law enforcement officer, commit perjury?
In May 2011, Holder
testified, "I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about
Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks. "Newly uncovered Justice Department documents, however,
reveal that Holder received memos referring to Fast and Furious in July 2010,
almost a year earlier.
This week, Holder downplayed the memos. "I have no recollection
of knowing about Fast and Furious or of hearing its name prior to the public
controversy about it," Holder insisted in a letter to Issa and other
congressional leaders. "Prior to early 2011, I certainly never knew about
the tactics employed in the operation," namely that guns were allowed to
"walk" -- law enforcement lingo for contraband allowed to be delivered
to criminals without any further tracking.
Yet the memos appear to
contradict Holder's explanation. A memo to Holder from Michael Walter, the Director of
the National Drug Intelligence
Center
Perjury is a serious offense
and Holder could be indicted if prosecutors determine he knowingly gave false
answers to a congressional committee. Holder has one thing going for him: as
the Attorney General, he's in charge of the prosecutors. That's why Issa and
other Republicans have called for the appointment of a special, independent
counsel to look into Fast and Furious and Holder's role in it.
Holder's denials come
against a backdrop of prior accusations of a cover-up. Kenneth Melson, the
acting director of ATF told a congressional committee in July that Justice
Department officials had instructed him not to cooperate with Congress. He also
said Justice was concealing an internal "smoking gun" memorandum on
the scandal in order to protect "political appointees." Holder is, of
course, the Department's top political appointee.
In recognition of the
damaging nature of these memos, Holder offered another defense: he never read
the memos. "On a weekly basis, my office typically receives over a hundred
pages of so-called 'weekly reports' that, while addressed to me, actually are
provided to and reviewed by members of my staff and the staff of the Office of
the Deputy Attorney General," he stated in his letter to Issa.
If this is true, it is
almost as troubling as Holder's apparently misleading testimony. Ever since the
administration of George W. Bush, who began the larger gun sting operation
known as "Project Gunrunner," of which Fast and Furious was just one
part, the operation has been rife with mismanagement and controversy. In 2006,
ATF lost track of approximately 450 guns. And in November
2010, the Office of the Inspector General for the Justice Department issued a
scathing report criticizing ATF for poor coordination and failure to share
information both internally and with other agencies involved.
If he didn't commit perjury,
Holder is nevertheless guilty of remarkable incompetence for his failure to
oversee such a sensitive operation as selling guns to violent drug cartels.
Perhaps the administration
was just hoping the Fast and Furious controversy would die out. It won't. The
Republicans in Congress have set their sights on Holder in what is likely to
turn out to be the first major scandal of the Obama administration. With an
election coming up and Obama's opposition eager to expose any wrongdoing by
this administration, you can be sure we'll hear much more about Fast and
Furious in the coming months.
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