but it could be as big of a story as the Watergate scandal.
According to Mr. Melson, he and ATF's senior leadership team moved to reassign
every manager involved in Fast and Furious, from the Deputy Assistant Director for
Field Operations down to the Group Supervisor, after learning the facts in those
documents.
Mr. Melson also said he was not allowed to communicate to Congress the
reasons for the reassignments. He claimed that ATF's senior leadership would have
preferred to be more cooperative with our inquiry much earlier in the process.
However, he said that Justice Department officials directed them not to respond and
took full control of replying to briefing and document requests from Congress. The
result is that Congress only got the parts of the story that the Department wanted us to
hear. If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively
muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand. That
approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation. The Department's
inability or unwillingness to be more forthcoming served to conceal critical information
that we are now learning about the involvement of other agencies, including the DEA
and the FBI.
The Role of DEA, FBI, and Other AgenciesWhen confronted with information about serious issues involving lack of
information sharing by other agencies, which Committee staff had originally learned
from other witnesses, Mr. Melson's responses tended to corroborate what others had
said. Specifically, we have very real indications from several sources that some of the
gun trafficking "higher-ups" that the ATF sought to identify were already known to
other agencies and may even have been paid as informants. The Acting Director said
that ATF was kept in the dark about certain activities of other agencies, including DEA
and FBI. Mr. Melson said that he learned from ATF agents in the field that information
obtained by these agencies could have had a material impact on the Fast and Furious.
The evidence we have gathered raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice
Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons but that taxpayer dollars
from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities. While this is
preliminary information, we must find out if there is any truth to it. According to
Acting Director Melson, he became aware of this startling possibility only after the
murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and the indictments of the straw purchasers,
which we now know were substantially delayed by the u.s. Attorney's Office and Main
Justice. Mr. Melson provided documents months ago supporting his concerns to the
official in the ODAG responsible for document production to the Committees, but those
documents have not been provided to us.
It is one thing to argue that the ends justify the means in an attempt to defend a
policy that puts building a big case ahead of stopping known criminals from getting
guns. Yet it is a much more serious matter to conceal from Congress the possible
involvement of other agencies in identifying and maybe even working with the same
criminals that Operation Fast and Furious was trying to identify. If this information is
accurate, then the whole misguided operation might have been cut short if not for
catastrophic failures to share key information.
If agencies within the same Department,
co-located at the same facilities, had simply communicated with one another, then ATF
might have known that gun trafficking "higher-ups" had been already identified. This
raises new and serious questions about the role of DEA, FBI, the United States
Attorney's Office in Arizona, and Main Justice in coordinating this effort. Nearly a
decade after the September 11th attacks, the stovepipes of information within our
government may still be causing tragic mistakes long after they should have been broken
down.emphasis added http://oversight.house.gov/images/stories/Letters/2011-07-05%20ceg-dei%20to%20ag.pdf 
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