White House Schmucks Leak New Memo Pointing to Bush AG on "Gunwalking." (But manage to raise more questions about their own actions.)

White House scandal deflection flack seen wandering aimlessly in the West Wing.

Schmuck is most often used in American English as a pejorative or insult, meaning an obnoxious, contemptible person; one who is stupid, foolish, or detestable. -- Wikipedia.

2007 memo mentioned gun-walking probe.
This is what passes for White House battlefield preparation in advance of the Holder appearance before the largely friendly Senate Judiciary Committee hearing next week. Boy, is it lame.

A briefing paper prepared for Attorney General Michael Mukasey during the Bush administration in 2007 outlined failed attempts by federal agents to track illicitly purchased guns across the border into Mexico and stressed the need for U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials to work together on such efforts using a tactic that now is generating controversy.

The information contained in one paragraph of a lengthy Nov. 16, 2007, document marks the first known instance of an attorney general being given information about the tactic known as "gun-walking." It since has become controversial amid a probe by congressional Republicans criticizing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for using it during the Obama administration in an arms-trafficking investigation called Operation Fast and Furious that focused on several Phoenix-area gun shops.

Ah, the old "Bush made us do it" defense. But wait, the details further down in the story put the lie to the excuse.

Headlined "Meeting of the attorney general with Mexican Attorney General Medina Mora," the briefing paper informed Mukasey that the tactic had been tried unsuccessfully but that the ATF wanted to try again and wanted Mukasey to persuade Mexico's attorney general to provide a team of corruption-free Mexican agents who would assist in the effort. Perhaps implied but not fully detailed in this document was the reason for the failure — that Mexican authorities south of the border fell down on the job, claiming they didn't see the vehicle carrying the guns that the ATF agents had alerted them to.

The briefing paper for Mukasey — dated two days after he was installed as attorney general — was among hundreds of pages of documents that Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., subpoenaed in his investigation of Operation Fast and Furious. The Justice Department turned over the material this week to the Issa-chaired House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

In Section G, titled "Arms Trafficking," the briefing paper for Mukasey states that "of particular importance, ATF has recently worked jointly with Mexico on the first-ever attempt to have a controlled delivery of weapons being smuggled into Mexico by a major arms trafficker." It adds: "While the first attempts at this controlled delivery have not been successful, the investigation is ongoing, and ATF would like to expand the possibility of such joint investigations and controlled deliveries — since only then will it be possible to investigate an entire smuggling network, rather than arresting simply a single smuggler."

"To that end, it is essential that a Mexican vetted unit be assigned to work with ATF in this regard," the document states. "ATF's attache in Mexico City has briefed Attorney General Medina Mora on this attempted controlled delivery, and stressed the importance of such a vetted unit being assigned," the paper states.

The briefing paper said it was the "first-ever attempt," but an email by an ATF official disputed that.

"I am going to ask DOJ to change 'first ever.' ... There have been cases in the past where we have walked guns," ATF official Carson Carroll wrote in an email to ATF headquarters official William Hoover, the assistant director for field operations.

Note, the DOJ memo calls it "controlled delivery" and ATF calls it gunwalking. This memo is full of "we must get the Mexicans on board." Recall what Agent Dodson and the other whistleblowers said: not only was there no coordination with Mexico but ATF employees like Mexico City attache Darren Gil were first kept in the dark and then ordered not to even tell the Mexican government about gunwalking. In addition, the deliberate "calling off" of surveillance after the weapons passed out of the hands of the straw buyers is in no way a "controlled delivery." Wide Receiver may have been an attempt at "controlled delivery." Fast and Furious and the other Obama gunwalking operations were simply designed to pump American civilian market firearms into Mexico for the purpose of pumping American civilian market firearms into Mexico.

Every document these schmucks leak digs their own hole to perdition deeper.