Tag Archives: Jaime Zapata

Countdown to the February 2nd Issa-Grassley hearing into Operation Fast and Furious is underway, and one of the biggest questions still unanswered is whether Congress will offer former AUSA Patrick Cunningham immunity for his testimony, and if Cunningham, so immunized, will shed any light on the parentage of an ATF operation that allowed roughly 2000 military-grade weapons to walk across the US-Mexico border and disappear, without a trace, into cartel arsenals.

Nobody seems to be holding his or her breath, but if Congress does pull an ‘Ollie North’ with Cunningham, or any of the witnesses it seeks to depose on Fast and Furious, expect the narrative to change. The irony alone, in a case that so closely resembles Iran-Contra, may provide the MSM with a much-needed jolt: Cunningham reprises North’s role when Congress, challenged by his close hold on the 5th Amendment, compels him to testify by granting him use or (less likely) transactional immunity.

Don’t remember the way it worked with North? Consider the following, pulled from court documents…

Three House Committees and one Senate Committee are spotlighting ATF’s Fast and Furious. Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas) sent a letter to President Obama more than a month ago asking him to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Eric Holder for perjury. What no one seems to understand is that any US Attorney with jurisdiction in a district where a ‘gun walker’ crime transpired has the statutory authority to empanel a grand jury and open an investigation into more than just perjury…think violation of the Export Control Act. You don’t need a ‘designer prosecutor’ to investigate high profile officials. No one in Washington is going to go out of the way to tell you about this. Read all about it here..

Ok. Now we’re into it. Administration top dogs have thrown ATF Director Ken Melson and US Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke under the truck.In firefighting, they call it a ‘controlled burn,’ torching a perimeter of just enough man-made flame to meet and beat the advance of a wildfire impervious to less-drastic solutions.

Good luck, gentlemen.

The House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the DOJ/ATF gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious is roaring through the halls of Congress, and despite DOJ’s efforts to spin the story every which way but up, Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif) and Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) are on a trail insiders whisper may lead investigators all the way to the top.

The House Oversight Committee calls ATF’s Fast and Furious a ‘failed and reckless operation,’ but was it? If you look at it from Calderon’s perspective, or from the perspective of administration officials–including Obama, Holder, and senior ATF executives–who favor stronger gun legislation, Fast and Furious was a huge success….

…evidence that the US did in fact sign such an agreement with Mexico, authorizing ATF, in cooperation with Mexican authorities, to implement the gun-walking ‘sting’ that provided Mexican gunman with killing tools used to fire on and murder US agents would corroborate the intent and involvement, at the highest levels, of ATF officials, of the Attorney General (either Holder or his representatives would have had to sign off on the operation), and of the President of the United States—who, as Holder’s supervisor, must be held accountable for the decisions and actions of his subordinates.

It would be difficult, as well, to believe that Eric Holder would have undertaken such a risky endeavor, such a politically sensitive gamble, without a discussion having occurred between Holder and Obama before the implementation of the ATF operation. The stakes, in terms of US-Mexico relations, would have just been too high.