BATFE's Project Gunwalker

[Tim Nunan]

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government ... r-subpoena

Indiana Democrat Rep Joe Donnelly voiced his support for the Oversight Committee’s subpoena of Attorney General Eric Holder over Operation Fast & Furious documents.
“One of the duties of Congress is to provide oversight of the Executive Branch,” Donnelly told Mr. Boyle. “There has been a serious allegation of federal law enforcement misconduct and we need to get to the bottom of this issue without playing partisan politics.”

Mr. Holder was issued the subpoena on October 12, 2011. He’s had 7 months to turn over the remaining documents. I posted a few days ago how the contempt draft illustrates how deep Fast & Furious went into the DOJ.

Many Democrats, including Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the Committee, have accused the Republicans of an election year witch-hunt.

“Attorney General Eric Holder could end this today if he gives us the documents,” Rep Jason Chaffetz told Breitbart News last week. “Fast & Furious has become Slow & Stonewalling and it really makes you wonder what they’re hiding. We were promised those responsible would be held accountable and that has not happened.”

Fact remains if Mr. Holder and the DOJ just gave them the documents they needed this could have ended by the end of last year.

This is a big step because no one can claim this is a partisan issue. It is now bipartisan and hopefully more Democrats will come forward and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and the hundreds of Mexicans will finally receive the justice they deserve.

[Tim Nunan]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/06/ ... y-arrived/

By John Lott
Published June 20, 2012


With the House committee voting Wednesday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt, the stalemate between the Obama administration and Congress ultimately boils down to about 1,300 documents.

Congress wants to know who prepared a February 4, 2011 letter where the Obama administration claimed that the U.S. did not knowingly help smuggle guns to Mexico (so-called “gun walking”), including the gun used to kill US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

The Obama administration admits the letter was in error, but they have always maintained that the knowledge of these tactics did not reach the top political appointees in the Obama Department of Justice.

After a year-and-a-half, the dam broke when a mole in the Justice Department gave the House Oversight committee a set of wiretap applications proving that high department officials knew about the administration's efforts to aid the gun smuggling. The leaked documents destroyed much of Attorney General Eric Holder's credibility since he had claimed that they were not relevant to the case and refused to release them.

Holder exacerbated this mistrust when he testified before the House in early June. Holder simply tried to run out the clock by either repeating the questions that he was being asked or saying over and over again that there was nothing being hidden. After all, he noted that 7,600 documents had already been turned over to the committee.

In return, the Republicans pointed out that he wasn’t answering their questions and that these documents were just a fraction of the 140,000 that they had asked for.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s (R-Utah) questioning of Holder gives an example of the extremes that Holder was willing to go. After Holder reiterated that senior political appointees at Justice hadn’t seen the wiretap applications, Chaffetz read one of the email exchanges the mole had leaked. The emails were between Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein and James Trusty, the chief of Justice’s Organized Crime and Gang Section, dated October 17, 2010. All this was well before the February 4, 2011 letter denying any “gun walking.”

Weinstein: “Do you think we should have Lanny participate in press when Fast and Furious and Laura’s Tucson case [Wide Receiver] are unsealed? It’s a tricky case, given the number of guns that have walked, but it is a significant set of prosecutions.” Trusty wrote back: “I think so, but the timing will be tricky, too. Looks like we’ll be able to unseal the Tucson case sooner than the Fast and Furious (although this may be just the difference between Nov. and Dec). . . . It’s not any big surprise that a bunch of US guns are being used in MX [Mexico], so I’m not sure how much grief we get for ‘guns walking.’”
Holder’s response? “The e-mail that you just read, and this is important, that e-mail referred to Wide Receiver, it did not refer to Fast and Furious,” Holder claimed. Holder dug in his heals and kept asserting that the e-mails referred to Wide Receiver (which was true), but it also referred to Fast and Furious, which Holder kept denying.

All this came to a head TuesdaY night. Congressman Darrell Issa had dramatically pared back his earlier requests to just 1,300 documents, focusing on just the February 4, 2011 letter. But Holder instead offered a briefing where Congress would again be told that top officials were out of the loop and some documents that Holder thought were relevant for Congress to see. In return, Holder demanded a promise that Congress would shutdown its investigation into Fast and Furious.

So much for President Obama's promise that his administration would be “the most open and transparent in history.”

It is little wonder that this week the union for 17,000 border patrol agents, the same union that represented Brian Terry, announced that they had lost faith in Holder and demanded that he resign. The agents joined a long list of others who have already called for Holder's resignation: 129 members of the House, five US Senators, two sitting governors, Mitt Romney, and the NRA.

It is understandable why Holder wants to deny that senior political appointees in his administration knew about the gun smuggling. American gun dealers were forced by the federal government to make gun sales that they thought were going to Mexican drug gangs.

Worse, despite desperate pleas from government agents, the Obama administration refused to trace the guns being given to these gangs.

Nor has the Obama administration ever offered a plausible justification for why anyone would have started a program to push untraceable guns into Mexico.

Instead, Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News found Justice Department emails discussing how their covert operation “Fast and Furious” could be used to push for controversial new rules on gun sales.

And the Obama administration wonders why people question the Justice Department’s commitment to thoroughly investigate recent national security leaks.

President Obama may want this scandal to disappear, but supplying guns to Mexican drug gangs that are then used in crimes is itself a crime. Supplying the guns as a way to push for gun control should be a crime. But, with the Congressional vote today to hold Eric Holder in contempt, the a year-and-a-half of stonewalling is coming to an end.

[Tim Nunan]

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government ... nd-Furious

As part of President Barack Obama’s 23-point gun control plan, he nominated Minnesota U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones–who currently doubles right now as the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives–to be the ATF director.

Jones was personally a part of the high-ranking Department of Justice unit that first met on October 26, 2009, to create the new DOJ policy that was used to justify “gunwalking” in Operation Fast and Furious. In Fast and Furious, the ATF “walked” roughly 2,000 firearms into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. That means through straw purchasers the agency allowed sales to happen and didn’t stop the guns from being trafficked, even though they had the legal authority to do so and were fully capable of doing so.

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens–estimates put it around at least 300–were killed with these firearms.

Obama nominated Jones after he said in his gun control plan that the “ATF has not had a confirmed director for six years. There is no excuse for leaving the key agency enforcing gun laws in America without a leader. It is time for Congress to confirm an ATF director.”

According to a congressional report from House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley, Jones was one of several senior DOJ officials in the meeting. Before the meeting, then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden disseminated a strategy that became the new law enforcement platform on which gunwalking was based.

"On October 23, 2009, Deputy Attorney General Ogden disseminated this strategy to the heads of Department components, including the ATF, DEA, and FBI,” the Issa-Grassley report, released on Oct. 23, 2012, reads. “The Deputy Attorney General also formed a Southwest Border Strategy Group, which he headed, responsible for implementing the new strategy. The Strategy Group’s first meeting was on October 26, 2009, when it assembled to discuss the new strategy.”

“The meeting invitation included Deputy Attorney General Ogden and his deputies Ed Siskel and Kathryn Ruemmler (both of whom would later leave the Justice Department for the White House Counsel’s Office); Assistant Attorney General Breuer and his deputies, Jason Weinstein, Kenneth Blanco, and Bruce Swartz; ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson and Deputy Director William Hoover; the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, Dennis Burke; and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota, B. Todd Jones, then serving as Chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee,” the report continues.
(more at link)

[Tim Nunan]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/ ... 99197.html

A store calling itself Fearless Distributing opened early last year on an out-of-the-way street in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood, offering designer clothes, athletic shoes, jewelry and drug paraphernalia,” begins an investigative report by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the latest Keystone Kops operation carried out by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). As you might expect from the agency that carried out the disastrous “Fast and Furious” gunrunning program along the Mexican border, the store was part of an elaborate sting aimed at getting guns off the streets. The agency arrested some 30 people on low-level criminal charges in conjunction with the operation, but in at least three cases the ATF seems to have identified the wrong suspect. In one case, they charged a man who was in prison during the time he was alleged to have been selling drugs to them. Not only that, he was in prison as a result of a prior arrest made by, yes, the ATF.

The ATF was paying such high prices for guns that at least one defendant, Courvoisie Bryant, was buying new guns at a nearby sporting goods store and selling them back to the ATF at a tidy profit. During the operation, three guns were stolen out of the back of an ATF SUV parked nearby—“a Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun, a Sig Sauer .40-caliber pistol and an M-4 .223-caliber fully automatic rifle.” (Ammunition and an ATF radio were also stolen.) The very next day, Marquise Jones, 19, sold the Sig Sauer handgun back to the ATF for $1,400. Jones wasn’t arrested for another two months, and, perhaps to save face, none of the charges against him are related to the vehicle break-in. He’s merely charged with possession of a stolen handgun. Meanwhile, the other handgun and a fully automatic rifle are still loose on the streets of Milwaukee.

Finally this past October, four men were seen breaking into Fearless Distributing, walking away with $35,000 in taxpayer-purchased goods. The landlord, David Salkin, claims the ATF owes him $15,000 in lost rent, damage from the burglary and an overflowing toilet, and for exceeding their utility allotment. But the ATF agent who signed the lease gave him a fake name and address. After Salkin contacted the ATF to get them to pay up, ATF attorney Patricia Cangemi sent him an email saying, “If you continue to contact the Agents after being so advised your contacts may be construed as harassment under the law. Threats or harassment of a Federal Agent is of grave concern.”

The Scrapbook has low expectations for the ATF but was nonetheless a bit taken aback by this comment from Michael Bouchard, former assistant director for field operations for the agency. “I have never heard of those kinds of problems in an operation,” he told the Journal Sentinel. The Scrapbook wishes Bouchard a speedy recovery from the coma he must have been in for the last few years, during which it came to light that the ATF gave Mexican criminal gangs thousands of weapons as part of the botched Fast and Furious operation (named after a 2001 movie in which an undercover cop attempts to infiltrate a criminal ring).

But you know what they say—incompetent law enforcement agents who think they’re living out a bad action flick are doomed to repeat themselves. Notes the Journal Sentinel, “The operation created a Facebook page and chose a striking logo—a skull with a slew of guns and knives fanned out behind—ripped off from a recent Sylvester Stallone movie, ‘The Expendables.’ ”

If they keep it up, Congress might decide The Expendables is a fitting name for the ATF.

[Tim Nunan]

http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchd ... 28421.html

The ATF leader who oversaw a botched undercover operation in Milwaukee will now be in charge of the agency's embattled Phoenix office, where agents allowed more than 2,000 guns to walk into the hands of suspected criminals through the infamous "Operation Fast and Furious."

Bernard "B.J." Zapor will be reunited in Phoenix with Fred Milanowski, another key figure in Milwaukee's "Operation Fearless," where a Journal Sentinel investigation found agents lost government guns, had their storefront ripped off and arrested at least four of the wrong people.

Zapor was in charge of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' St. Paul Field Division, which covers Wisconsin and three other states. In November, shortly after the Milwaukee sting was abruptly shut down, he was promoted to a position in Washington, D.C., supervising eight field divisions.

Officials from the ATF and the U.S. Department of Justice told congressional staffers in April that disciplinary action was under way against Zapor because of the Milwaukee operation. They won't say if Zapor's assignment to Phoenix is punishment.

Zapor has roots in Arizona. He started his career as an agent in Phoenix in 1989 and has family members living in that part of the country. Zapor will be able to retire when he turns 50, in two years. With its proximity to the Mexican border and population, Phoenix is a higher profile field division than St. Paul.

Zapor is well-known to Acting ATF Director B. Todd Jones, who continues to be U.S. attorney in St. Paul, where he and Zapor have served for several years. In August 2011, Zapor told the Star Tribune that Jones' appointment as acting director would "benefit public safety nationally."

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) last week questioned putting Zapor in charge of Phoenix, given Zapor's "failed management of Operation Fearless."

"Why would you put him in charge of an office that so clearly needs good leadership?" Grassley wrote in questions to Jones. A vote on Jones' confirmation was delayed last week in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Jones told Grassley he was unable to answer his questions because of the federal Privacy Act, but confirmed Zapor will lead the Phoenix office.

"I can state I am confident that Mr. Zapor is well qualified to provide strong and effective leadership in Phoenix," Jones wrote.

Zapor and Milanowski are among several people involved in the planning and execution of the Fearless sting who have landed new jobs in the ATF.

Milanowski supervised the Milwaukee ATF office during the planning and initial phases of the Fearless operation, then moved to the Phoenix office last year, in the midst of the sting.

Special Agent Jacqueline Sutton, who was in charge of the operation, has been transferred to ATF headquarters in Washington. And John Schmidt, who supervised the operation in Milwaukee, was transferred to a leadership school, according to sources familiar with the moves.

ATF spokeswoman Ginger Colbrun declined to comment on the personnel moves, including whether they are promotions, citing the Privacy Act. Zapor, Milanowski, Schmidt and Sutton did not return messages for comment.

(more at link)

[Tim Nunan]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-575 ... in-mexico/

Three more weapons from Fast and Furious have turned up at crime scenes in Mexico, CBS News has learned, as the toll from the controversial federal operation grows.

According to Justice Department tracing documents obtained by CBS News, all three guns are WASR-10 762-caliber Romanian rifles. Two were purchased by Fast and Furious suspect Uriel Patino in May and July of 2010. Sean Steward, who was convicted on gun charges in July 2012, purchased a third. The rifles were traced yesterday to the Lone Wolf gun shop in Glendale, Ariz.

During Fast and Furious and similar operations, federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) encouraged the Lone Wolf and other gun stores to sell massive amounts of weapons to questionable purchasers who allegedly trafficked them Mexican drug cartels.

Patino is said to have purchased 700 guns while under ATF's watch. Ever since, a steady stream of the guns have been recovered at crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S. But the Justice Department has refused repeated requests from Congress and CBS News to provide a full accounting. An estimated 1,400 guns are still on the street or unaccounted for.

Last November, a Fast and Furious weapon was found at a shootout between a Mexican drug cartel and soldiers where a beauty queen was killed. Two weapons used in the murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico on Feb. 15, 2011 also came from suspects who were under ATF watch but not arrested at the time. And two Fast and Furious AK-47 type rifles were recovered from the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010; he'd been shot by illegal immigrants who were smuggling drugs.

ATF special agent John Dodson blew the whistle on his agency's gunwalking in an interview with CBS News in 2011.

The government first denied any guns had been allowed to "walk" into criminal hands. Later, the Justice Department acknowledged using the strategy, claiming it was intended to see where the weapons ended up in hopes of capturing a major cartel leader. But the agency ordered an immediate halt to the practice calling it highly improper.

The Justice Department's refusal to turn over certain Fast and Furious documents led to a bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives in June 2012 to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. Then, the Obama administration used executive privilege for the first time, to withhold requested documents from Congress. The Republican-led House Oversight Committee is suing for release of the material.

[Tim Nunan]

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government ... aw-problem

Left-wing activists and officials within President Barack Obama’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), part of Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice (DOJ), attempted this week to reframe Operation Fast and Furious as a problem with America’s gun laws.

“Stricter U.S. gun measures are needed to stem the flow of guns to Mexico, where the weapons are fueling violence and leaving people ‘under siege’ with little hope of help from their government, activists said Thursday,” according to Chad Garland of Cronkite News. “In addition to tougher laws, they called for tougher enforcement by federal officials, who they say have been reluctant to act since the fallout from Operation Fast and Furious, the failed ‘gun-walking’ operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.”

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and a leader of the ongoing congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious, told Breitbart News on Friday that such an argument is ludicrous. “Restricting the constitutional rights of law abiding citizens will never serve as a deterrent for criminals intent on committing future crimes,” Gosar said in an email.

In Operation Fast and Furious, several “straw purchasers”—people who work for the Mexican drug cartels’ American-based weapons smugglers—bought guns in the U.S. which were then smuggled into Mexico. ATF agents, at the direction of supervisors within the agency, allowed this to happen and directed gun store owners to allow it to continue—a practice known as letting the guns “walk.”

As a result of Fast and Furious, Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and about 300 Mexican nationals have been murdered with the weapons the ATF allowed to “walk” into Mexico. Many of the weapons have still not been recovered years later. The congressional investigation that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has shown that ATF willingly allowed—and helped facilitate—cartel-affiliated smugglers in their efforts to purchase firearms in the United States and then traffic them into Mexico.

Despite having enough evidence and laws already on the books to arrest and prosecute those so-called “straw purchasers,” documents and congressional testimony shows that ATF agents were ordered to allow the straw purchases to continue without making arrests. Even Holder, who has since been held in both criminal and civil contempt of Congress on a bipartisan basis for his failure to comply with Issa’s subpoenas for more documents, has admitted that the tactics employed in Fast and Furious were wrong.

“That was a fundamentally flawed program, fundamentally flawed,” Holder said in a February 2012 budget hearing when responding to a question about Fast and Furious. “And, I think that I can agree with some of my harshest critics that there are legitimate issues that need to be explored with regard in which the way Fast and Furious was carried out.”

Holder still denies having known about the tactics at the time but will not share all the requested documents with Congress.

Garland quoted an official from ATF, Phoenix-based Special Agent Thomas Mangan: “By no means are we turning our back or turning a blind eye... Trying to stem that flood of guns and that iron river of guns… and trying to keep ahead of the techniques and tactics that these criminal organizations are using in obtaining guns is ever-evolving.”

Mangan’s comments were in a response to a forum that the far-left Center for American Progress (CAP) hosted at George Washington University (GWU) on Thursday. CAP’s Associate Director of Crime and Firearms Policy, Chelsea Parsons, reportedly said that part of the reason why things like Operation Fast and Furious happened and the reason why U.S. guns are found at Mexican crime scenes is because it is “easy and legal to buy [guns] without a background check.”

“Parsons called for universal background checks and tougher sanctions on straw purchasers to ‘make it worthwhile’ for law enforcement to prosecute the ‘little fish’ in gun-trafficking operations,” Garland explained. “She also pointed to the cartels’ creativity in evading customs inspections to smuggle guns into Mexico."

In response to left-wing groups now trying to use Fast and Furious to promote gun control efforts, Gosar ripped CAP for not attempting to hold Holder accountable for his actions in Fast and Furious and the subsequent congressional investigation. "It sounds like the agenda of this forum, and the personal agenda of some of its organizers, was to talk about the need for stricter gun laws,” Gosar told Breitbart News. “Where has the Center for American Progress been in the fight to hold Attorney General Holder responsible for his role in Fast and Furious and the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans and U.S. Border Patrol Agent Terry?"

“These groups want to have it both ways; call for tougher penalties for gun crimes then turn a blind eye to the gun crimes committed under Holder's watch,” Gosar added. “Justice is blind to the partisan agenda of these gun grabbing groups. The victims' families deserve better.”

Garland also quoted a Jesuit priest from Mexico, Rev. Javier Avila, who serves as the president of the Commission of Solidarity and Defense of Human Rights in Chihuahua, Mexico. Avila said violence resulting from ATF’s gun walking and other cartel activity is brutal in Mexico. “You lose someone in a terrible way and nothing happens,” Avila said. “Young people massacred, mothers disappeared, children disappeared, husbands, wives disappeared.”

Gosar told Breitbart News that he wants “Rev. Avila and the people of Mexico to know our nation joins theirs to mourn the innocent lives lost through gun crimes. This is why it is so important we seek justice and accountability for those responsible for Fast and Furious," he explained. "Our government armed the violent criminals responsible for these deaths and no one wants to take responsibility. This is why I continue to push for Attorney General Holder’s resignation.”

Gosar has a resolution in the House of Representatives calling for Holder to resign his position over Operation Fast and Furious. Holder remains in both criminal and civil contempt of Congress, but Holder’s subordinate, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ron Machen, refuses to prosecute Holder on the criminal contempt resolution. As a result, House Republicans, led by Issa’s committee, have fought against the Obama administration in court for the release of the documents it is continuing to withhold from Congress and the American people.

President Obama asserted executive privilege over the documents last year. Obama is asserting the lower of two executive privilege forms, deliberative process privilege rather than presidential communications privilege. If Obama asserted the higher form, it would have meant that either he or his senior White House staff was aware of the gun walking tactics employed in Operation Fast and Furious, something that both Obama and Holder have denied.

A federal judge recently allowed the House oversight committee’s lawsuit against the administration and the president’s claim of executive privilege to proceed, despite calls for dismissal from Holder's DOJ. Traditionally, deliberative process executive privilege claims are considered invalid with even the suspicion of any government wrongdoing. In this case, the administration has admitted wrongdoing with regards to the tactics employed during Operation Fast and Furious and in how the Justice Department misled Congress with a false statement when first confronted about the scandal in early 2011.

The administration has since withdrawn that false statement and admitted it provided inaccurate information to Congress.

Sen. Grassley told this reporter last year that if the federal judge in the case does not overturn the privilege claim, it would be "the most sweeping abuse of executive privilege in the history of executive privilege."

The Obama administration has also been reportedly holding up the publication of ATF Special Agent John Dodson’s tell-all book on Fast and Furious. Dodson was the original whistleblower who brought this scandal to the attention of Congress.

[Tim Nunan]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/31/justice/m ... index.html

Washington (CNN) -- A dramatic shootout between authorities and suspected cartel gunmen at a Mexican seaside resort this month has ties to a botched U.S. gun operation.

A U.S. official said Tuesday that investigators have traced at least one firearm recovered at a December 18 gunfight in Puerto Peñasco, across from the Arizona border, to Operation Fast and Furious.

That's the disastrous operation run by agents in the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Agents allowed suspected gun smugglers to buy about 2,000 firearms with the goal of trying to find and prosecute high-level traffickers. They couldn't track the firearms and most are believed to have ended up with cartels and gangsters in Mexico.

Many have turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States, including at a shooting that killed a U.S. border agent in 2010.

The shootout in Puerto Peñasco, also called Rocky Point by Arizona tourists, two weeks ago left at least five suspected cartel gunmen dead, including possibly a high level Sinaloa cartel chief, according to Mexican authorities.

Witnesses reported hours of shooting and grenade explosions, with Mexican authorities using helicopters to attack fleeing suspected cartel gunmen on the ground.

Guns recovered at such scenes are routinely checked with the ATF's tracing lab to try to determine their origin. At least one AK-47 style firearm was found, and U.S. investigators identified it as one that was allowed to be sold to suspected traffickers as part of Fast and Furious, according to the U.S. official.

The ATF, in a statement, said: "ATF has accepted responsibility for the mistakes made in the Fast and Furious investigation and at the attorney general's direction we have taken appropriate and decisive action to ensure that these errors will not be repeated. And we acknowledge that, regrettably, firearms related to the Fast and Furious investigation will likely continue to be recovered at future crime scenes."

Guns from Fast and Furious have turned up at other high-profile killings in Mexico, including those of the brother of a Mexican state prosecutor and of a beauty queen.

The Fast and Furious operation gave rise to more than a year of political controversy for the Justice Department.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, led a congressional probe to determine how it came to be approved.

Eventually, House Republicans sanctioned Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt of Congress in a legal dispute over the White House's refusal to turn over documents.

Holder has said tactics used in Fast and Furious never should have been allowed. A Justice Department inspector general report cleared Holder of wrongdoing and placed most blame on officials at the ATF and the Phoenix U.S. attorney's office for failing to properly oversee the agents running the operation.

Grassley, in a statement Tuesday, said: "In Operation Fast and Furious, the Mexican drug cartels found an easy way to supplement their own illegal ways. Worse yet, the Obama administration has yet to publicly hold anyone accountable for this disastrous policy. Unfortunately, guns from Fast and Furious will be found in operations like this for years to come."