Gunwalker Synopsis: ATF + FBI = FUBAR

I missed this earlier in the week, but I've been on vacation. According to unnamed sources, for which the usual caveats apply:

... unbeknown to the ATF, the target of their operation was a FBI confidential informant, a fact that only became known to them in April of this year after an 18-month investigation that cost millions of dollars of tax dollars.

"They were going after someone they could never have," a source in Washington told Fox News. "The Mr. Big they wanted was using government money to buy guns that went to the cartels. The FBI knew it and didn't tell them."

The confidential informant is a former high-level drug dealer who had been deported by the DEA. The FBI, however, recruited him as a counter-terrorism informant, providing information on potential dirty bombs or Al Qaeda suspects moving through the border region. (emphasis added)

Got that? The FBI was paying this CI, who was turning right around and buying guns with the green ... and a green light from ATF. I don't know if they were actually giving him the buy money, but, hey, dollars are fungible.

I've been vacillating on this thing wondering whether it was: (a) a plan to support gun control legislation by goosing the "X% of guns used in Mexico come from the US" stat or (b) a bureaucratic clusterfuck so massive that it could only be pulled off by the federal government.

The right answer, of course, is "yes."

Via Gun Owners of America.

posted by Andy at 09:26 PM

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