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| Project Gunwalker: Darrell Issa Heads To Mexico This Weekend |
| 2011-06-24 |
| A congressional investigation into a controversial federal gun-running surveillance operation is moving to Mexico this week amid new reports that two AK-47s sold in Arizona during the operation were found at the scene of a shootout with the suspected killers of a well-known Mexican attorney. This is a new report. To see the Rantburg report on the discovery of Mario Gonzalez click here. Some additional background concerning the murder of Mario Gonzalez and official links to Mexican organzied crime can be found here.As of this date Patricia Gonzalez has not been changed with any crime, nor has she been cleared. According to testimony provided to investigators with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the two guns were sold to a straw buyer watched by agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who were under orders not to stop the guns from crossing the border. The ATF surveillance program, called Operation Fast and Furious, was supposed to lead to the arrests of high-level drug cartel figures. On Friday, oversight committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Vista), who has been leading the investigation of the ATF operation with Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), will travel with a bipartisan delegation to Mexico, partly in an attempt to draw the government there further into the investigation. Bipartisan delegation? I hope he's got some big ole bodyguards with him --- maybe even some ATF guys that are really ticked off about this entire mess. In a letter this week to Mexico's U.S. ambassador, Arturo Sarukhan, Issa and Grassley requested serial numbers of all firearms recovered in "substantial" violent crimes, along with the numbers of any other weapons that government officials have reason to believe may be connected to the operation. Rantburg posted a translated article from the Mexican leftist weekly Proceso of an interview of ATF agent John Dodson. The Rantburg article of that interview can be found by clicking here. "This information would be tremendously helpful to us in determining the full scale of the effects of Operation Fast and Furious, which includes the deaths of both Mexican and American citizens," the two lawmakers wrote. "We have a shared interest with you in getting to the bottom of this matter." Issa will be joined by eight other U.S. lawmakers for meetings Saturday in Mexico City at the federal police command center and also with representatives of the U.S. Embassy. Hopefully, that dimwit Dem, the Honorable Elijah E. Cummings from Maryland, isn't one of them. He's running some interference and turning this thing "into politics" while pleading "not to turn it into politics." Last Issa hearing, "It's all about love." Mexican officials have not commented on the latest revelations about the two AK-47s linked to the Gonzalez case. "What I can tell you is there are investigations underway, and as a matter of policy, we don't comment on ongoing investigations. We will wait and see what comes out of those investigations," said Ricardo Alday Gonzalez, spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington. |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #6 Mexico could file a complaint with the UN. I'm sure all the usual anti-American crowd there will jump aboard. Irony abounds. |
| Posted by: My two cents 2011-06-24 18:56 |
| #5 Is The One going to apologize to Mexico for this? Apologies to foreign countries are his specialty, after all. |
| Posted by: Matt 2011-06-24 13:06 |
| #4 Mike, just because the MSM in America resolutely refuses to report the fury of the Mexicans doesn't mean they're not furious. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2011-06-24 11:00 |
| #3 Mike, Mexico is riled up about this: Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for March 6. The Mexican Foreign Office stated in a press release that it has proceded to “request detailed information from United States authorities in this matter” and indicated that “the government of Mexico will continue with special interest the investigations announced by both the ATF and the Justice Department [of the United States].” And .. Mexico lawmakers livid over US 'Operation Fast and Furious' By Nacha Cattan, Correspondent / March 9, 2011 [The operation] is a grave violation of international rights,” Jorge Carlos RamÃrez MarÃn, president of Mexico's lower house of Congress, said Tuesday. “What will happen if next time theyÂ’ll need to funnel in trained assassins, for example, or nuclear arms?” Fellow congressman Humberto Trevino claims that an estimated 150 shooting injuries or deaths have been linked to guns that were allowed by US agents to proceed into Mexico. |
| Posted by: Sherry 2011-06-24 10:49 |
| #2 Indeed, who were the cut-outs? |
| Posted by: S 2011-06-24 08:16 |
| #1 ...What strikes me as odd - and perhaps I just haven't been checking the right sources - is a surprising amount of silence from Mexico. I mean, by any reasonable definition, this was an act of war. You'd think that Mexico would be going apeshiat right about now... Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2011-06-24 06:37 |