A Meaningful Adventure

My college career began at Tufts in Boston. Political leanings weren’t as schismatic a half century ago as they are today, and universities weren’t the bastions of liberalism which they have become. So imagine my shock to learn that the 2012 Tufts Commencement speaker this past Sunday was Eric Greitens, a bemedaled former Navy SEAL officer for ten years and a combat veteran who was deployed four times: Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, the Horn of Africa, and Iraq. He commanded several specials ops units and an al-Qaeda Targeting Cell in Iraq. Eric hardly fits the profile of the usual choice for Ivy League Commencement speakers, who typically come from the ranks of politicians and media luminaries.

But Eric is also a Rhodes Scholar with a Ph.D., the author of two books, Strength and Compassion and The Heart and The Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL, and he is the founder of The Mission Continues, a humanitarian organization he created with his Iraq combat pay to help disabled veterans serve the needs of American communities. He has won too many awards to list.

I had planned a different blog post for today, but after reading Eric’s Commencement Address, I decided its message should be shared. I doubt it will make headline news. I’ve had to edit it for length, but the entire address can be found here.

Thank you, President Monaco, Chairman Stern, faculty and staff, friends and family and the graduates of the Class of 2012. It is a pleasure to be here with all of you today.

I am honored that you would ask me to be here with you today. I have never had the opportunity to give a commencement before this year – and I initially felt unqualified. And then I remembered I have spoken to people who were on the precipice of life changing moments; moments of severe consequences and even potential disaster. I have spoken to refugees in danger of starvation. I have talked to United States Marines as they had to face down death in Iraq. I have talked to Navy SEALs who faced the prospect of being severely wounded in Afghanistan. And now I add to that list you, the graduates of the class of 2012, who face the very real danger of going home to live in your parents’ basements.

A graduation is a celebration, and it also is a passage. And it’s a time to reflect. It’s a time to make important choices. So in an effort to help you, I went back and looked at some sources of ancient wisdom. I didn’t look at Plato’s dialogues, or the Bible or the Declaration of Independence. Instead, I went back to look at one of the most profound sources of insight I’ve ever known, which were the “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories that I read as a kid. One of my favorites, “Journey Under the Sea,” began, “Beware and warning, this book is different from other books. You and you alone are in charge of what happens in this story. There are dangers, choices, adventures and consequences. This is your most challenging and dangerous mission. Fear and excitement are now your companions.”

“Fear and excitement are now your companions.” It kind of sounds like a college graduation, right? There’s a tremendous amount of excitement, but it is also natural for there to be some fear. Fear because you are all leaving one phase of your life and are about to step out into a new frontline to face a new set of challenges, hardships, fears, and opportunities. The time has now come for all of you to choose your own adventure. As you go forward, you may find that there are lessons that you learned here at Tufts that will help you along the way.

For me, college was an important time. I grew up in Missouri, and before I had been to college, I had never been outside of the country, and I had never really been very far outside of Missouri. But when I was in college, I had a professor who asked me to leave this country for the first time to go with him to do international humanitarian work. It was the summer of 1994, at the time there was a brutal civil war that had broken out a few years earlier in the former Yugoslavia, and it was a war that was marked by horrific bouts of ethnic cleansing. I went to live and to work in refugee camps with survivors of the ethnic cleansing. And I was working with people who had lost every material possession they’d ever owned. I was working with many people who had lost friends and family, and I remember during that time, I was thinking to myself that if I had lost everything they had lost and if I was in a refugee camp, that I would be very concerned about myself and my own pain and my own hardship and my own difficulty.

But what I found in the camp was that the people who were doing the best were oftentimes the parents and grandparents who had to care for really young kids. Because they knew that even in that incredibly difficult situation, they had to wake up every single day to be strong for someone else. The people I saw who were often struggling the most were the people who were my age at the time, many of them were the age that many of you are now; they were the young adults and the older teenagers who felt like their life had been cut short, but they didn’t yet feel like anyone was counting on them. They didn’t yet feel like anyone needed them to be strong. I saw the same thing later when I worked in Rwanda with survivors of the genocide, and in Cambodia when I worked with kids who had lost limbs to landmines. In every case, those who knew that they had a purpose that was larger than them, those who knew that others were counting on them, they grew to be stronger.

College should have been for you a time to think about yourself, to explore the world, to focus on your interest, to hone your abilities, to test your ideas. As you step into the world it is right and fair for you to have questions and concerns about your future. What kind of job will you find? What kind of friends will you make? Where will you live? What I also learned in college is that the more you ask the question “What kind of service can I provide? What kind of positive difference can I make in the lives of others;” if you work every day to live an answer to that question, then you will be stronger.

In my own journey I also came to believe there were times when people with strength needed to use that strength to protect others. And that led me to serve in the United States military. When I joined the military, I went to BUD/S. BUD/S stands for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. It is often considered to be the hardest military training in the world. And in that training, they ask you to do a lot of difficult things. They ask you to swim 50 meters underwater. Later, they ask you to swim down 50 feet and tie a knot. There is an evolution called drown-proofing, and what they do is they tie your feet together and they tie your hands behind your back and you have to jump in the pool. And with your feet tied together and your hands tied behind your back, you then have to swim 50 meters. They ask you to do physical training on the beach with logs that weigh several hundred pounds.

And there is one thing that they love to have people do. They love to have people do firemen-carry drills. You grab somebody and you have to throw them over your shoulder and then you run with them down the beach through soft sand. You grab somebody, throw them over your shoulder, and run with them through a path, through the mountains. And one test in the training requires everybody to wear a 40-pound rucksack, and carrying a rifle, they have to do a 10-mile run. But the trick is that over the course of that 10-mile run, at least one person is injured and has to be carried. Now are there any thoughts about what it takes to do something like that successfully? Ma’am, do you have any thoughts? You guys thought I wasn’t going to call on you! It’s commencement, you still get called on. Teamwork, absolutely. Any other thoughts? For sure, it takes a tremendous amount of determination to do it.

Well, I will tell you what I learned and this is important to know, absolutely essential. What I learned after the beginning of these drills is that you wanted to position yourself so that you are standing next to the lightest guy. And that made a tremendous difference over the course of the 10-mile run.

But the pinnacle of all of that training comes in a week that is often considered the hardest week of the hardest military training in the world It was called “Hell Week.” Over the course of Hell Week, the average class sleeps for a total of two to five hours over the course of the whole week. They have you doing four mile timed runs on the beach, two mile ocean swims, running the obstacle course. It’s a week of constant change and challenge and chaos and confusion. And I remember my hardest moment in Hell Week.

My hardest moment came at what should have been one of the easiest moments in that week. It came at the time that we were allowed to run to the tents to get some sleep. The instructors had everybody go outside to the parallel bars and do a dip contest to see which crew was going to be allowed to run into the tents first. My crew lost, so I was the last person to run into the tents.

We had been awake at that point for over 72 hours, and by the time I ran into the tents everyone was passed out asleep. I collapsed on a cot but I could not fall asleep. With every beat of my heart I could feel my right foot pumping. So I got up and I took my boot off and there was a bandage that had been wrapped around my foot. I ripped the bandage off, threw it on the ground, tied my boot back on, laid back down and I still couldn’t go to sleep. And what happened next was fear started to run through my mind, and I started to think, what is going to happen if I can’t sleep? We only get two to five hours of sleep over the whole week. What is going to happen to me if I can’t sleep? And I knew that I was a going a little crazy because the thought actually ran through my mind, well, maybe if I can’t sleep they’ll let me have a nap later.

So I couldn’t sleep and we’re in this tent, it’s an Army general purpose tent, and in the top of the tent there is a small cut out and a beam of sunlight is coming down on my cot and the cots of the people around me. After having been oppressively cold all week, it now was incredibly hot in the tent. And then I started to feel sorry for myself. I started to think, you know, it’s not fair that I ran into the tent last; it’s not fair that I got the worst cot; it’s not fair that they wrapped my foot the wrong way the last time I went through medical; it’s not fair, it’s not fair. And I started to feel all of this self-pity for myself, and all of this fear, and that was my hardest moment.

I was really worried about what was going to happen. And I just got up and walked outside of the tent, and I walked over to a faucet. It was about shoulder height, and I turned it on and put my head underneath and just washed some water over my head, and as I turned back to the tents, I just said to myself, I said, “It’s not about me.” I said, “This test isn’t about me. This test is about my ability to be of service to the people who are asleep in that tent right now.” And the minute that I stopped focusing on myself, all of that fear, and all of that self-pity and all of that worry washed away, and I walked into the tent and lay down and went to sleep.

I found that what was true for the refugees in Bosnia was true in my own life and my own hardest moment; that the more I thought about myself, the weaker I became. The more I recognized that I was serving a purpose larger than myself, the stronger I became. Having learned that lesson in college, having lived it in the SEAL teams, today, I try to share that lesson in the work we do at The Mission Continues.

That work can be traced to March 28, 2007, when many of you who are graduating today I think were probably juniors in high school. At the time I was serving as the commander of an al-Qaeda targeting cell in Fallujah, Iraq. As the commander of an al-Qaeda targeting cell, my unit's mission was to capture mid- to senior-level al-Qaeda leaders in and around the Fallujah area.

On March 28, 2007, my team was hit by a suicide truck bomb. I was fine. I was taken to the Fallujah surgical hospital and I was able to return to duty 72 hours later. But some of the people who were in the barracks with me, some of whom were just an arm's length from me, ended up being hurt far worse than I was. And when I came home to visit them, I also went to Bethesda, to the naval hospital, to visit with some recently returned wounded Marines.

I walked into one of those hospital rooms and I’m talking to men and women who are my age. They are my friends, they are my colleagues, they are certainly my brothers and sisters, if not in blood then in spirit, and they are part of my generation. When I asked each one of them what they wanted to do when they recovered, every single one of them said to me. "I want to return to my unit." Now the reality was that many of the men and women I saw that day were not going to be able to return to their units. One of them had lost both of his legs. The other lost the use of his right arm, part of his right lung. Another lost a good part of his hearing.

So I asked each one of them, well, if you can’t return to your unit right away, tell me what else you’d like to do. And every single one of them told me that they wanted to find a way to continue to serve. They didn’t necessarily use the word “service;” one of them said service; one of them said, “You know I had kind of a rough childhood growing up, and I’d like to find a way to go home and maybe be a mentor and a football coach.” Another one told me, “You know what, my dad and I were talking and I think I might try and find a way to go back to college and become a teacher.” Another one told me he was thinking about going home to get involved in law enforcement.

It became clear to me that day that I was just one of many visitors coming in to see all these men and women to say thank you. They appreciated when people came in to say thank you. But what they also had to hear in addition to thank you was, “we still need you.” They had to know that we saw them as assets and that we were willing to challenge them to find a way to continue to be of service.

Today at The Mission Continues, we have over 350 veterans who have gone from being citizen warriors to citizen leaders in their community. They work at Habitat for Humanity and Big Brothers, Big Sisters, and the American Red Cross. One of our fellows, Roman Baca, had worked for eight years as a machine gunner in the United States Marine Corps. He is also an incredibly talented ballet artist. When he came home from Iraq, The Mission Continues gave him a fellowship to set up a ballet and dance program in the New York City public schools. Within 72 hours of setting up that program he had students from 15 schools sign up for his program, and Roman recently took his students back to Iraq on a cultural exchange program, where they taught dance to Iraqi students.

Our fellows have overcome loss of eyesight, loss of limbs, severe burns, post-traumatic stress, and yet they have come home to continue to serve in our communities. And they are outstanding citizen leaders. I know from working with them, what you and your generation are capable of. And I know that all of you here at Tufts can become involved in the idea of active citizenship. What I want to say to you is the same thing that I said to the vets in The Mission Continues, “We still need you.”

The best definition I have ever heard of a vocation is that it's the place where your greatest joy meets the world's greatest need. For you to build that vocation will require both compassion and courage. There are infinite possibilities for joy, for service, to make a contribution, and we need all of you to find your vocation … to develop your joys, your passions, and to match them to the world’s great needs.

It is traditional for commencement speakers to come and give advice. I have very little advice to give you. Instead, I would like to ask something of you. Let’s decide that today will be both a day of celebration and a day that we embrace a challenge. Let’s look back with pride at all that you have accomplished, and let’s also look forward with confidence, knowing that you will go forward to use all of your talents and abilities, all of your creativity and energy to find a way to be of service to others. If you do that, life will not be easy, but you will have chosen for yourself a very meaningful adventure.

It is a bright path ahead for all of you, and it’s a great honor for me to share this day with you. Congratulations Tufts Class of 2012.

Fast and Infuriating -- Part II

(continued from last week’s blog post, Fast and Infuriating – Part I. Please read it first if you haven’t)

With the testimony of the F&F whistleblowers complete, it was the government’s turn to face the Issa committee investigation. The committee’s questions centered on what and when did Holder and Obama know about F&F. More contradictions – or lies, take your pick. Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) grilled Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich (DOJ). Again, space limits putting the entire testimony in this blog, but Representative Chaffetz seems to have captured his frustration nicely in this response to one of Weich’s evasions:

… what I don’t understand is, when you go back and look at the record, President Obama knew about it back in March. If the President knew about it, why didn’t the Attorney General know about it? And why are you issuing a memo in May, when the President of the United States, in an interview with, I believe, Univision, is saying we know that there were some mistakes made? How does that happen? The President makes this comment, and then, still, months later, you have the gall to issue a memo to this Congress saying that it is just false, it is not true. That does not add up.

In July, Issa received secret testimony from Acting ATF Director Melson who, after being blocked from speaking for months, was told by DOJ that he could testify outside of his official capacity with a personal attorney present. He confirmed DOJ’s knowledge of F&F, unauthorized wiretaps, and the gruesome details of F&F tactics his department had used. Much to Issa’s surprise, Melson became physically ill as he revealed the gritty details of F&F and he appeared to be distancing himself from DOJ. Melson revealed that the unwillingness to cooperate was because the "wagons were being circled around Obama’s political appointees."

But the Obama administration wasn’t ready to play softball. On August 15,2011William Burns, the Deputy Secretary of State reporting to Hillary Clinton, traveled to Mexico to meet with its Foreign Secretary. Pavlich would not reveal her source which gave her the content of the meeting, because it was provided on the condition of anonymity, but Pavlich says the source is credible. Burns gave the Mexican government an ultimatum. Mute its criticism of F&F or forego the $500 million that the US paid Mexico under the Merida Initiative to combat drug violence and traffic. After that meeting the official outrage from Mexico abated.

In 1986 Congress passed the Whistleblower Act and No Fear Act expressly to protect people who come forward to disclose corruption and illegality in government activities. The DOJ is responsible for enforcing these laws, but when it comes to DOJ misbehavior, we have a classic fox in the hen house protection system. DOJ, FBI, IRS, Homeland Security, Immigration, and the DEA rarely worked independently on the same case – each had members on the F&F team.

So when ATF Agent Jay Dobyns infiltrated the Hells Angels gang, dozens of its members were sent to prison, blowing his cover. A contract was put out on him which involved kidnapping him and injecting him with the AIDS virus, kidnapping and torturing his 15-year old daughter, and kidnapping his wife to videotape her being gang raped. Dobyns reported this to Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office, Bill Newell, asking for protection of his family. Newell refused. Newell had a reputation for punishing those who questioned his authority, so when Dobyns told others in ATF that he and his family were denied protection by Newell, Newell was determined to make Dobyns life a living hell since he couldn’t fire him.

Shortly afterward, Dobyns house was set on fire at 3a as his family slept inside. Although all escaped safely, Newell doubled down. He accused Dobyns of setting the fire. That served only to infuriate Dobyns’ friends who reported Newell to his superiors in Washington. Later investigation by the Inspector General confirmed that indeed Dobyns was denied reasonable protection from a work-related threat. Yet Newell was never reprimanded or removed from office. He remained head of the Phoenix office when Obama took office.

When John Dodson complained about the laxity of F&F operation, his rifle was taken away and every agent in the Phoenix office was told that if they expected to have a career with ATF they had best stay away from Dodson. He was no longer allowed to participate in operations. His supervisor, David Voth, required unnecessary written reports of his daily activities. Ultimately, his ATF badge was taken and he was transferred to the FBI. When Dodson gave testimony to Issa’s committee and refused to sign a retraction, he was confronted by a supervisor in a hall of the Phoenix office who screamed that any agent who communicated with Dodson would find it detrimental to his ATF career.

Vince Cefalu always wanted to be a cop. His hero was Frank Serpico, the New York cop who exposed police corruption in the city’s police department. A movie starring Al Pacino as Serpico was produced in 1973 and highlighted five years of torment that Serpico endured. Testifying before the Knapp Commission in 1971, Serpico said he hoped no future police officer would suffer what he had gone through at the hands of his superiors when he went public with police corruption.

Yet when Cefalu discovered the procedures for getting authority to wiretap were being circumvented by ATF and reported it to his superiors, they told him to forget it unless he wanted to be reassigned to Fargo, ND. He went over the heads of the Phoenix office and reported the infractions to Washington, which told him if he ever broke the chain of command again, there would be severe consequences. He was officially reprimanded on trumped up charges five times, ordered to get a psychiatric evaluation, given two termination proposals, sent on long assignments to separate his from his family – and all of this had the official sanction of his bosses. The worst part, Cefalu said, was that people in the bureau who had been his friends for 20 years ignored him. They had gotten the message that to be seen with Vince is hazardous to your career.

Cefalu co-founded CleanUpATF.org, an online forum to disclose corruption in the agency. Stories flooded in.

The Issa committee labored on summoning members of ATF, DOJ, and Homeland Security to appear and answer questions about the government’s role in F&F, who knew what and when, details, and names. Documents were so redacted that they made no sense. Some documents were totally redacted and thus useless. Most witnesses were uncooperative. One of the subpoenaed witnesses was "restationed" to Iraq, putting him well beyond the committee’s reach. Eric Holder’s testimony gave new meaning to the term buffoonery, at one point causing Issa to conclude:

It appears your latest testimony has reached a new low. You now claim that you were unaware of Fast and Furious because your staff failed to inform you of information contained in memos that were specifically addressed to you. At best, this indicates negligence and incompetence in your duties as Attorney General. At worst, it places your credibility into serious doubt.

The White House circled the wagons. Jay Carney, Obama’s press secretary, said in an October 2011 press briefing in which a question regarding F&F came up,

The bottom line is the Attorney General’s testimony to both the House and the Senate was consistent and truthful. He said in both March and May of this year that he became aware of the questionable tactics deployed in the Fast and Furious Operation in early 2011 when ATF agents first raised them publicly. He asked the inspector general to investigate the matter, demonstrating how seriously they took them.

Obama told reporters, "I have complete confidence in Attorney General Holder, in how he handles his office," causing Issa to respond:

The President has said he has full confidence in this attorney general. I have no confidence in a president who has confidence in an attorney general who has in fact not terminated or dealt with the individuals, including key lieutenants, who from the very beginning had some knowledge, and long before Brian Terry was gunned down, knew enough to stop this program.

Issa’s committee obtained emails that made hash of Holder’s testimony, causing him to go from "I didn’t know about the operation until a few weeks ago" to "I knew a year ago, but didn’t know any details" to "my aide was informed of the details right after Brian Terry’s death." But Holder has been consistent in refusing to accept responsibility for F&F. Asked by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) of the Senate Judiciary Committee, if he had apologized to the Terry family, Holder said he had not. Asked, then, if he had contacted them, Holder again said he had not. His rationale? "It is not fair to say the mistakes that happened in Fast and Furious directly led to the death of Agent Terry."

Both Terry and Zapata were ATF agents, both were killed, and both were part of Homeland Security headed by Janet Napolitano, former two-term governor of Arizona and familiar with the state’s Mexican drug violence. Yet in testimony before a Senate committee in September 2011 Napolitano denied knowing anything about F&F – despite the toll it had taken among her agents.

But Pavlich’s sources say otherwise. "When she says that [she] and Attorney General Eric Holder have not discussed it, that is a lie. That’s why they keep asking her those questions in the Judicial, Oversight, Homeland Security Committee hearings. They’ve asked her that same question twice and she’s lied twice," said an anonymous source. "There are five emails linking her to Holder. They go back to two days after it happened – the first email was two days after Brian was killed." The emails show Holder discussing Brian Terry’s death with Napolitano. Custom and Border Protection agents also report to her and would have to have had Napolitano’s permission to let guns cross the border. Moreover, parallel Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reports have to be written for every ATF report by the co-case ICE agent who briefs Napolitano. There is no way she could not have known about F&F.

But even in the unlikely event that Holder kept her in the dark, which emails refute, she won’t get off without consequences. Lying under oath to a congressional committee carries perjury charges. "Let me tell you one thing about Janet," Pavlich’s informant said, "Janet will be lucky if she does not to go to prison."

In the final analysis, the lingering question is: What was the purpose of F&F? Only a fool would believe the government’s answer that it was to take down the drug cartels. How was it to accomplish that? Sure, the guns that walked across the border could be connected to a crime scene – after the fact, of course, but not before. But neither the guns nor the crime could be connected to a drug lord. If the purpose was to gather evidence against straw purchasers, why weren’t they arrested before they crossed the border with what has been estimated as nearly $700,000 worth of guns?

The one sure thing that F&F did is connect Mexican gun crimes to American gun shops, even though their illegal gun sales were forced by ATF under threat of losing their seller license. Was that the purpose – to make a case for gun control laws that otherwise would never make it through Congress? Obama and his coterie of Leftists are avowed opponents of the Second Amendment. While the F&F fiasco was happening, the Obama administration used it to expand the government’s gun database by requiring all of the 8,700 firearm dealers in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to report all sales of two or more semi-automatic rifles within five consecutive business days, if the rifles are larger than .22 caliber and use detachable magazines. Obama would like to see this highly controversial executive order made the law of the land for all states.

An argument could be made – which is logically consistent with the known facts in F&F – that ATF was "deputized" by the Obama administration to sell guns to bad guys knowing they would use them to commit mayhem, and thus proving a lie that border state gun shops, particularly those selling assault weapons, are the cause of Mexican violence. The hoped-for public outrage would pressure Congress to reinstitute the assault rifle ban, which Holder says remains a policy priority of the Obama administration.

Suppose Obama is reelected in 2012. How might he advance his anti-gun agenda? Unless the Republicans and Second Amendment Democrats are routed in the fall – an unlikely possibility – Obama won’t have the legislature to help him. Nor will he have the country behind him. The NRA has four million members, one in three people owns a gun, and Gallup says reinstatement of the assault rifle ban, support for new gun laws and gun regulations, and public anti-gun antagonism is at an all-time low. But Obama has shown in his first four years that he doesn’t need Congress to get his agenda enacted. He uses executive orders – as he and Eric Holder have done in enacting the expanded gun registration database.

A reelected Obama can also structure the federal judiciary with more judges who are anti-Second Amendment. A Washington DC federal district judge upheld a suit against the Holder four-state gun database executive order. Obama can also stack the appellate courts. He has already appointed two Supreme Court judges – Kagan and Sotomayor – who oppose individual gun ownership. As Thurgood Marshall’s clerk, Kagan wrote anti-Second Amendment memos and drafted a Clinton executive order outlawing high powered rifles. Sotomayor has argued that the Second Amendment is a collective right, not an individual one, and that local governments have the authority to limit gun ownership.

Although Hillary Clinton has said she’s had it with a second term as Secretary of State, she and Obama support allowing the UN to regulate US gun laws. Shocked? Obama said his administration supports the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). Its provisions extend even to accessories like scopes and magazines. President Bush refused to participate in this treaty, but Obama has said he’d like to see the treaty ratified as a way to show America’s respect for international norms – translated: to show that we Americans are civilized in a world that includes Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, the Taliban, Islamic radicals, and other paragons of civilized behavior.

The UN’s definition of "criminal activity" in the treaty is so broad that an American gun owner in Tennessee could find himself prosecuted for owning a hunting rifle. Hunting weapons have not been excluded from the treaty. And even if it were, why would Americans allow the officials they elect to be dictated to by unelected UN bureaucrats, many of whom represent countries best described as thugocracies? If you don’t have enough to worry about, read the details of the ATT, which should be ready to go to press in July. This treaty will require every country to keep track of weapons sold or transferred and report transactions to the UN! Guess which countries won’t abide by this provision.

Finally, a second Obama term could bring us more F&Fs. In his 2013 budget, Obama stripped language that would prevent other F&Fs from happening. Wonder why?

There has been uncommon secrecy surrounding the murder scene of Brian Terry. When Napolitano’s aide, US Attorney Dennis Burke resigned to pursue a private sector career, the Terry case was transferred out of Arizona to San Diego where a federal judge immediately sealed it, preventing the Terry family or media from seeing any of the information in the case. Using a stunt only the federal judiciary would pull, the reasons for sealing the case are sealed.

Yet details continue to leak out. Two guns were found at the Brian Terry murder site which were traced to F&F. Eye witnesses say there was a third gun and the serial number of the missing gun was taken. But its existence has never been revealed. Why?

The investigations of F&F thus far have revealed that the FBI was working with at least six informants. These were truly bad guys – killers with shady pasts. They were able to infiltrate Mexican cartels because they once were – or still are – members of them. Senator Grassley and Darrell Issa believe one of the informants was a double agent who was communicating or conspiring with someone the ATF was observing. Pavlich has an anonymous source who allegedly told her that the third gun at the Terry murder scene was hidden by the FBI because it was linked to their confidential informant or his brother. If so, the ultimate tragedy for the Terry family would be that their son was killed by an F&F weapon provided by the country he served and fired by a man paid and now protected by a US government agency.

Fast and Infuriating – Part I

Like many of you, I’m sure, I’ve casually followed the news on the government program called Fast and Furious. I knew that it had something to do with gun-running and the US government’s attempts to track the flow of illegal guns into Mexico which were being used in gun-related violence in that country and ours along the border states.

Then I heard an interview of Katie Pavlich, the news editor of Townhall magazine. She spoke about her just-released book, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-up, and I was so shocked by what she had to say that I immediately ordered the book and spent this past Sunday afternoon reading it. My blood pressure rose with each of its 200-plus pages. I urge you and your friends to read it before voting in the 2012 election.

This story hasn’t developed legs because, predictably, no Fast and Furious investigative reporting has been done and published by the mainstream media. The exception is Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News and three reporters with the Los Angeles Times. Pavlich compares this scandal to Watergate and the Iran-Contra Affair, but unlike those scandals, we don’t see the non-stop reporting, heads rolling, a presidential apology. No, we see the New York Times, Washington Post, and other major metro papers giving Obama the cover he needs in a close election year. If this scandal becomes widely known and believed, Obama will not be reelected and the Democrats will lose both houses of Congress.

To keep within the word budget of my blog, I can only give the highlights of the Fast & Furious scandal, which is unfolding as I write. A Contempt of Congress resolution has been prepared this week to be served on Eric Holder. Two Democrats have signed on and 31 Democrats wrote a letter to Obama asking him to order Holder to testify and produce documents. It’s risen to that level of seriousness in a showdown between the legislative and executive branches. Let’s hope Speaker Boehner has the guts to bring the resolution to the floor of the House for a vote. 

This blog will cover two weeks. Even then I’m leaving out a lot of important detail. I hope these two blogs will whet your interest in reading the book. Full disclosure: I have never owned a gun in my life and I have never been a hunter.

Fast and Furious (F&F) began as a program under the Bush administration except it was then called Operation Wide Receiver. Its purpose was to interdict the illegal flow of arms into Mexico. When the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) lost track of some of the guns that crossed the border, the program was shut down.

Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, is an avowed opponent of Second Amendment gun ownership rights. In Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote of stories his grandmother had told him about white men with guns who terrorized the Kenyan village of his ancestors. Moreover, Obama was mentored by Lawrence Tribe, the liberal anti-gun Harvard law professor who influenced Obama’s positions on many social issues. Candidate Obama famously spoke derisively of Southerners (who are more likely than Northerners to grow up with guns) characterizing them as “clinging to their guns and Bibles.” It’s hard to read Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-up without believing it was part of a larger plan to scuttle or severely limit Second Amendment rights from the start.

Years ago the ATF was staffed by people whose careers had started as street cops but transitioned their career to wear the gold badge of an ATF officer. They worked their way up the organization by hard work, not influence and politics. But somewhere along the way, all of that changed. The old bosses who wore cheap suits from Sears and stuck an old six-shot Smith and Wesson in their rear waistband were replaced by guys who wore monogramed shirts with French cuffs. The last thing they wanted was gun oil on their Armani jackets. The old dogs who spent decades on the street perfecting their craft as ATF agents were gradually replaced by wunderkinds with little in the way of street smarts which comes from shoe leather police work.

In 1995 Time magazine described ATF as “the most hated federal agency in America,” no doubt helped by Janet Reno’s use of ATF to engineer the infamous Ruby Ridge killings of Vicki Weaver and her teenage son and her later incineration of 75 Branch Davidians including 20 children and two pregnant women. Within Reno’s second-rate mind there was always a third-rate mind struggling to get out. As her tenure thankfully drew to a close in 2000, her mismanagement of the Elián Gonzalez affair showed us what happens when stupidity and power are combined in one person. ATF was shifted to Homeland Security when that agency was created partly to resuscitate its fouled-up image.

Another change in ATF came with the Obama administration’s redefinition of who the bad guys are. Under Wide Receiver they were the straw purchasers who bought the guns as agents for the drug lords. And they were the drug lords who wreaked havoc in Mexico and the US border states. But as we shall see, over time under F&F, the bad guys became the gun dealers who not only sold the guns to the straw purchasers but, knowing the sales were illegal, were ordered by ATF to make the sales. The dealers were told that ATF was after the big fish, not the couriers. And the dealers were reminded that their licenses and livelihoods could be taken by the ATF at any moment if they didn’t play ball.

During one of his visits with Obama, Mexican President Calderon and Obama had a joint news conference. In it, both presidents had the gall to ignore the cartels that were making billions from illegal drug sales in the US, they had the gall to ignore the corrupt Mexican police, who many times were in cahoots with the drug lords, they had the gall to ignore the Mexican politicians who were bribed by the cartels to look the other way … and instead both presidents pointed their fingers at the American gun dealers who had been set up by F&F.

The Phoenix lead case agent for F&F was Hope MacAllister. One of her direct reports was John Dodson, a straight shooter, former Virginia state patrol officer who had joined ATF in order to work on big federal cases and see them through to the end instead of having the feds take away jurisdiction. MacAllister gave Dodson the names of 45 straw purchasers who would be visiting local Phoenix gun shops to make illegal buys. Dodson was told that he was allowed to observe and follow, but he could not arrest an illegal guy buyer. He could tap cell phones, but not text messages – which was the way the drug lords communicated with their straw purchasers. The gun buys were allowed to “walk” right over the border into the hands of the cartels. Dodson was stunned by the operation. In his training he was told no one left for home and hearth until an illegal gun purchase was found and firearms were back in enforcement hands. But F&F was different.

One of the purchases Dodson observed from an unmarked car over a live video feed – but was prevented from interdicting – was made by Jaime Avila in November 2009.

On December 15, 2010 an alert was issued by the US Attorney’s office of the ATF that shots had been fired in a shootout near Nogales, AZ and that a border agent was down. The agent was Brian Terry. He was dead. The gun that killed him had been purchased by Avila and was one of two found at the murder site. Although ATF agents had been told to keep their mouths shut, some had had enough of the incompetence in ATF and the F&F operation. Whistleblowers and two bloggers revealed the existence of F&F to the public at CleanUpATF.org. Moreover, they disclosed that guns were allowed to “walk” into Mexico without the knowledge of the Mexican government.

Anonymous users of the website were livid in their comments. They had protested that Mexican authorities were intentionally kept in the dark, but their protests had been overridden by the Gucci-shod bureaucrats in the Phoenix ATF office and ultimately their higher ups in Washington. These were not hare-brained conspiracy theorists. Bloggers Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea used their network of ATF informants to vet the information that was anonymously passed to them. The F&F genie was out of the bottle.

Vanderboegh and Codrea contacted the offices of three senators known for their steadfast support of the Second Amendment – Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Charles Grassley (R-IA), and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). The senators were shocked that a government agency charged with preventing illegal gun trafficking would actually perpetrate it. Despite the risk to his career, John Dodson came forward and gave closed door testimony to Grassley and his staff. He gave the grisly stats – hundreds of Mexicans had been murdered with guns bought illegally in the US with the cooperation of the ATF. Dodson was granted whistleblower protection. But being the straight-up agent he was, he reported to his ATF superiors what he had done when he returned to Phoenix. His bosses called him into a private office and ordered him to write a repudiation of his testimony. He refused.

Grassley demanded an explanation of F&F from the acting director of the Phoenix ATF office, Ken Melson. Melson refused. Grassley reminded him that interfering with a congressional investigation is a felony. He also reminded him that interfering with or retaliating against a whistleblower, such as demanding a retraction from Dodson, is also a felony. Melson sought advice from Attorney General Eric Holder’s deputy, Lanny Breuer who assured Melson that the DOJ supported him 100%. When a response was finally sent to Grassley, it repudiated the claim that ATF supported the sale of weapons to straw purchasers. The letter went on to lay down a marker that the DOJ would not cooperate further because ongoing investigations were in process which conveniently prevented further revelations.

But the hits just kept on coming.

On February 15, 2011 two special immigration and customs enforcement agents, Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila, were driving on a busy Mexican highway, headed back into the US after a meeting in Mexico City. Their Chevy Suburban was armored and the car carried diplomatic tags, but the agents weren’t armed because Mexican law prohibits it. A car pulled up beside them and gestured that they should pull over. They refused. After a brief car chase, they were forced off the road, disabling the vehicle. A man approached carrying an AK 47. Zapata lowered the window slightly to show his diplomat badge. Ignoring it, the assailant shoved the barrel of the gun into the car and let loose with a hail of bullets, killing Zapata instantly and wounding Avila severely in the legs. The AK 47 was traced to an F&F purchase.

Now the mainstream press, specifically Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, got interested. She first reported the existence of F&F and then interviewed John Dodson on air. He told Attkisson all of the details of the F&F operations, and then he added that she now had the testimony of a first-hand eye witness and he dared anyone listening to say he was not telling the truth. When Attkisson asked if Dodson had any words for the family of Brian Terry, tears welled in his eyes as he said that he was sorry for their loss and by coming forward he had now done all he could for Brian.

After months of her digging up details on F&F, the White House decided it was time to give Attkisson a piece of its mind (if it has one.) Communications Director Tracy Schmaler contacted her by phone and screamed at her. White House spokesman Eric Shultz let fly a stream of expletives at her. Why couldn’t she be reasonable like the New York Times and Washington Post, they asked?

“I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it,” Attkisson said later. The New York Times and Washington Post weren’t being “reasonable” they were acting like the press secretaries for the White House.

Because the Democrats have the majority in the Senate, Senator Grassley has no subpoena power to compel the DOJ to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee of which he is the ranking minority member. However, the Republicans have the majority in the House and since the 2010 election which gave it to them, Darrell Issa, the Chairman of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform has used his subpoena power to make a number of Obama administration officials sweat in his committee room. He planned a “no holds barred” investigation of F&F. “It’s going to be acrimonious, there’s no question. [Obama] has been one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times,” Issa said on the Rush Limbaugh show just before the November 2010 elections put him in the Chairmanship. Now he intended to prove it.

On March 16, 2011 Issa wrote a letter to the head of the ATF giving him until the end of the month to provide the documents he and Grassley requested. ATF did not comply. Two weeks later Issa issued his first subpoena – to Melson. Issa demanded details about Terry’s murder, the weapons found, emails, internal memos – a laundry list of documents – so that he could get the names of the DOJ officials who authorized this “fatally stupid” program. ATF remained uncooperative, citing “ongoing investigations” that, if you can believe it, prevented elected representatives of the people from overseeing the activities of unelected bureaucrats. Issa would not be put off. If DOJ failed to comply with a congressional subpoena, Eric Holder would be held in contempt of Congress – something the Obama administration doesn’t need in an election year.

Issa was determined to get Holder on the record under oath and on May 3, 2011 he found his opportunity. Holder was to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, of which Issa is also a member, about routine activities of DOJ. The day before he was to testify, Holder and Janet Napolitano (Head of Homeland Security which includes ATF) visited the White House. Since both are cabinet officers, the procedure for their visits is to sign the log and give the purpose of the visit. The log for their visit has no purpose. It shows only that they were to meet with Obama in the East Room. It’s inconceivable that F&F was not discussed nor that Obama was not briefed on their appearance on Capitol Hill the next day.

It would take too much space to include Holder’s testimony before Issa in this blog. You can read it for yourself in pages 94 through 100. Suffice it to say that Holder was evasive and contradictory. One could conclude that his testimony under oath was not truthful, which is a polite way of saying he lied.

The next month on June 15, 2011 Issa set a committee hearing of the F&F affair. For the first time some of the whistleblowers would publicly tell what they knew about the ATF and DOJ involvement. Dodson was summoned. The day before his testimony was to be given, he was handed a gag order from DOJ forbidding him to speak about F&F lest he compromise an “ongoing investigation” – the same canard DOJ cooked up to stonewall congressional investigation of this operation. Dodson ignored the order and testified anyway, saying F&F was not a botched “sting” operation, it was mandated from the outset to put “loads” of weapons in the hands of criminals. Agent Peter Forcelli, also a whistleblower, said murders will be committed for years to come because of F&F. Brian Terry’s mother and family testified that to this day, the government had refused to give them the details surrounding Brian’s death. Dodson wept as he listened to the Terry family speak about a man he never knew.

(Continued next week)