(NEW YORK) MintPress — The controversy over the federal government’s gun-walking operations is heating up with fresh allegations by a Mexican drug cartel member that Fast and Furious was about supplying rather than tracking guns, and a lawsuit filed on Monday by a House committee against the Attorney General seeking the release of documents related to the scandal.
The Justice Department (DOJ) launched Fast and Furious in 2009 in collaboration with the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), as part of a strategy to identify and eliminate key operatives in the Mexican drug cartels.
Instead of prosecuting the individual “straw buyers,” who purchase the guns for the cartels, ATF agents would allow the weapons to “walk” and then track them to the cartel bosses.
The gun-walking strategy was in fact started during the Bush administration in 2006, but Fast and Furious, which was implemented by agents in Phoenix, Ariz., was the biggest operation, monitoring the sale of more than 2,000 firearms. As of Oct. 20, 2011, 389 had been recovered in the U.S. and 276 in Mexico.
More than 100 have been found at crime scenes on both sides of the border, including the site where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was murdered in Arizona in December 2010.
After that incident, several ATF agents, who already had concerns about the tactic of gun-walking, became whistleblowers and contacted Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who began investigating its use.
On Jan. 25, 2011, U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona Dennis K. Burke announced what were the first details of the case to become public, marking the end of Fast and Furious.
Explosive charges
Most of the drugs that were traced went to the Sinaola Cartel, and now a high-ranking operative in U.S. custody is alleging that Fast and Furious was part of an elaborate agreement between Washington and his cartel to take down rival cartels.
Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, the cartel’s logistics coordinator, was arrested by Mexican soldiers in March 2009, reportedly after meeting with DEA agents at a Mexico City hotel, though the U.S. government was not involved in his arrest. In February 2010, he was extradited to Chicago to face federal drug charges.
He claims that under a “divide and conquer” strategy, the U.S. helped finance and arm the Sinaloa Cartel through Fast and Furious in exchange for information that allowed federal agents to take down other cartels.
A motion filed in U.S. District Court by Zambada-Niebla’s attorney states, “The Sinaloa Cartel under the leadership of defendant’s father, Ismael Zambada-Niebla and ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, were given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago and the rest of the United States and were also protected by the U.S. government from arrest and prosecution in return for providing information against rival cartels which helped Mexican and U.S. authorities capture or kill thousands of rival cartel members.”
During his initial court proceedings, Zambada-Niebla stated that he was granted full immunity by the DEA in exchange for his cooperation.
U.S. officials have in the past acknowledged working with the Sinaloa Cartel through another informant, Humberto Loya-Castro, but the government has denied all of Zambada-Niebla’s allegations and contends there was no official immunity deal.
In its official response, the government confirmed the existence of “classified materials” regarding the case but argued they “do not support the defendant’s claim that he was promised immunity or public authority for his actions.”
In April 2012, a federal judge refused to dismiss charges against him.
Zambada-Niebla and his lawyer also requested official records about Fast and Furious, but their request was denied.
Legislators investigating Fast and Furious will likely monitor his trial, scheduled to begin on Oct. 9, to determine whether there is any evidence substantiating his allegations.
Congressional action
Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee has filed a civil contempt lawsuit this week against Attorney General Eric Holder in U.S. District Court over his failure to respond to a Congressional subpoena for documents concerning Fast and Furious.
The litigation follows votes in June where the House overwhelmingly approved resolutions holding Holder in contempt and authorizing the filing of a lawsuit to force release of the documents.
The DOJ has turned over thousands of pages relating to the practice of gun-walking under the Bush and Obama administrations, but Holder has refused to provide all of the other subpoenaed material, such as documents explaining how officials responded to Congressional and media inquiries about the operations and an inaccurate letter sent to Congress in February 2011 that said top officials knew nothing about Fast and Furious until early that year.
Holder maintains that disclosing them would violate a long standing Justice Department practice.
After a standoff between Holder and Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, President Obama asserted executive privilege, which gives him authority to refuse to comply with some demands from lawmakers and judges to turn over documents and other materials.
It’s not clear whether the courts have authority to force an executive branch official to hand over documents in these circumstances.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) called the suit unnecessary and wasteful. “This litigation will do nothing to shed light on the facts of Fast and Furious, to bring the killers of (Border Patrol) agent Brian Terry to justice or to stem the flow of guns across the border,” he said.
Talk about a draw.