Washington --
Justice Department and ATF officials have
described the controversial gun-walking tactics used in Operation Fast
and Furious as an aberration, but ATF agents have employed variations
of the same surveillance techniques for decades.
ATF has long
targeted gun traffickers through a combination of tailing, wiretaps and
"controlled delivery" - following a contraband trail to the point where
agents can catch a criminal organization's masterminds in the act,
often with the help of an inside informant.
"Once the criminal
takes receipt, ATF generally swoops in and locks up everybody," said
Michael Bouchard, former operations director for the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "That's a part of doing undercover
work. It happens all the time."
Straw purchasers
What
doesn't happen all the time, current ATF officials insist, is
gun-walking - Phoenix-based agents instructed to observe Mexico-bound
gun purchases rather than interdict them.
------------------------------cut------------------------
Asked during a congressional hearing last year how ATF planned to
arrest Mexican cartel kingpins implicated in such crimes, Newell
responded that agents would simply inform Mexican authorities and
nothing more.
More Here
Note: The Obama administration did not trust the Mexican authorities enough to inform them what was happening, but they trusted them to take some additional action after they were told that they guns found at crime scenes were obtained illegally?
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