Mexican Drug
Lord Freed After Pledging To Cooperate, Keep In Touch
March 19, 2012 | 1 Comment
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Just
when you think you’ve heard it all involving the Obama Administration’s
disastrous Mexican gun-running experiment, new details surface to illustrate a
new level of negligence and incompetence on the part of federal authorities
orchestrating the scandalous program.
Known
as Fast and Furious, the federal experiment allowed Mexican drug traffickers to
obtain U.S.-sold weapons so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels.
Instead federal law enforcement officers lost track of more than 1,700 guns
which are believed to have been used in an unknown number of crimes.
In
the past year lost guns have been linked to violence on both sides of the
border while top administration officials, including Attorney General Eric
Holder, insist they knew nothing about the reckless operation. Among the first
reports to surface; that Fast and Furious weapons were used to murder a U.S. Border Patrol agent
(Brian Terry) in Peck Canyon Arizona. The assault weapons known as AK-47s were
traced through their serial numbers to an Arizona dealer the feds repeatedly
allowed to smuggle firearms into Mexico, according to a mainstream newspaper.
This
week the same publication published a scathing article that paints a clown-like
portrait of the agency—Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
(ATF)—charged with running the program. It turns out that the ATF stumbled upon
a top drug-cartel suspect targeted by its unscrupulous gun operation but let
him go after he “pledged to cooperate and keep in
touch with investigators.”
It would almost be funny if
it wasn’t so pathetic. Seven months after launching the Fast and Furious
operation, federal agents caught their main suspect in a remote Arizona outpost
on the Mexican side, according to internal documents obtained by the newspaper.
The drug lord, Manuel Fabian Celis-Acosta, had 74 pounds of ammunition and nine
cell phones hidden in his German-made sports car.
So
what did the feds do? The top Fast and Furious investigator, Special Agent Hope
MacAllister, scribbled her phone number on a $10 bill after Celis-Acosta
promised to cooperate and keep in touch with investigators. Then Celis-Acosta
disappeared into Mexico and later slipped back and forth across the border,
illegally buying more American weapons and financing others. It’s all in the
government records. You can’t make this stuff up.
Eventually
Celis-Acosta got arrested, but the damage had been done and the government gun
operation had spiraled out of control. Nearly 2,000 firearms have disappeared
and scores have surfaced in Mexican crime scenes. Not surprisingly, the ATF refuses
to explain why it didn’t arrest this drug lord when it had him the first time.
An ATF spokesman quoted in this week’s story said: “Due to the fact that the
criminal case is still ongoing in the courts, and the inspector general’s
office is still investigating, we cannot comment about this.”
Judicial
Watch is investigating the genesis of the Fast and Furious operation and has sued the Department of
Justice (DOJ) and the ATF to obtain records. Both agencies have refused to
provide even the most basic information about the program and neither has
responded by the statutorily mandated deadline.
Read more about
ATF,
Fast and Furious
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