Friday, September 30, 2011

Another country heard from . . . a year and a half later. Must have strayed over from a Media Matters link.


Two notorious capitalist bloodsuckers play golf in Cuba in 1959.

Responding to this post, we have today -- a year and a half late -- received a message from that other country and its alternate universe.


Another candid shot of a corporate right-wing nazi plotting to exploit the workers.

Anonymous said...

WHAT YOU FAIL TO UNDERSTAND IS THAT THERE ARE AS MANY LEFTY MOTHER FUCKERS FULLY ARMED WHO HATE THE BLOODSUCKING CORPORATIONS AND ALL THEIR LACKEYS LIKE YOU....THE IDEA OF A COUNTRY CLUB,WHERE YOU IDIOTS HANG OUT, EXPLODING IN A BURST OF FLAMES JUST GETS ME HARD. I HATE CORPORATE RIGHT WING NAZIS WITH ALL MY HEART.
September 30, 2011 6:57 PM



Running dog imperialist trying to hit humble country club yardman with his deadly balls.

You know, I don't know about y'all, but I don't hang out at the country club. Just one of those places that I find inherently uninteresting.

"In memory of Nena."

The Zetas' Biggest Rival: Social Networks

Oh, yeah, and one more thing.

Just to show you I'm on the ragged edge . . . The gun show isn't for another two weeks. Heck I'll probably be in DC again by then.

CBS: White House does Friday night document dump! Admits more contacts between O'Reilly and Newell. Once again, Sipsey Street sources are dead on!

"New Fast and Furious docs released by White House."

Late Friday, the White House turned over new documents in the Congressional investigation into the ATF "Fast and Furious" gunwalking scandal.

The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell - who led Fast and Furious - and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O'Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O'Reilly are long time friends. (Emphasis supplied, MBV.)

ATF agents say that in Fast and Furious, their agency allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to be sold to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels. At least two of the guns turned up at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.

The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. They discuss ATF's gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O'Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office's gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as "letting guns walk."

A lawyer for the White House wrote Congressional investigators: "none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to allow guns to 'walk.'"

Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF's Newell sent the White House's O'Reilly an "arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up." The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.

In response, O'Reilly wrote on Sept. 3, 2010 "The arrow chart is really interesting - and - no surprise - implies at least that different (Drug Trafficking Organizations) in Mexico have very different and geographically distinct networks in the US for acquiring guns. Did last year's TX effort develop a similar graphic?" (Emphasis supplied, MBV.)


"Last year's Texas effort?" Houston, you have a problem.

The White House counsel who produced the documents stated that some records were not included because of "significant confidentiality interests."

Also included are email photographs including images of a .50 caliber rifle that Newell tells O'Reilly "was purchased in Tucson, Arizona (part of another OCDTF case)." OCDTF is a joint task force that operates under the Department of Justice and includes the US Attorneys, ATF, DEA, FBI, ICE and IRS. Fast and Furious was an OCDTF case. An administration source would not describe the Tucson OCDTF case. However, CBS News has learned that ATF's Phoenix office led an operation out of Tucson called "Wide Receiver." Sources claim ATF allowed guns to "walk" in that operation, much like Fast and Furious. (Emphasis supplied, MBV.)


Been waitin' for that one. We heard about "Wide Receiver" a while ago and were asked not to break the story. Knowing that it would come out one day, we agreed. Can you say, "national policy to allow weapons to walk"? I knew you could. And the frigging White House is asking about it. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Congressional investigators for Republicans Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have asked to interview O'Reilly by September 30. But the Administration informed them that O'Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq and unavailable.

One administration source says White House national security staffers were "briefed on the toplines of ongoing federal efforts, but nobody in White House knew about the investigative tactics being used in the operation, let alone any decision to let guns walk."


Riiiiight.

NOTE: To those folks I talked with in Chicago and tasked with certain open source research, please contact me as soon as possible.

OK, so I lied. Couldn't sleep, came down here to check email and Wow!

Check the stories after this.

Will be at Birmingham AGCA gun show tomorrow (only).

I'm beat. Sorry, no more tonight. Been a helluva week, really. Air conditioner out for two days, bangin' on the desert telegraph and the Georgetown bar and grill tipster line trying to get some more corroboration on the State Department story (and others), back and forth to the docs trying to stay out of another cast, badgering the lawyer to see if we still have to go to court on Monday (we do).

Oi veh. So much trouble on the house and I've been soooo good.

On a happier note, the subscription button has been paying off (how do you think I paid the A/C guys?) and I am obviously blessed with some great readers. May God bless you all.

I'd also like to thank y'all who have sent me cards and good wishes for the Jewish New Year. Same to ya.

Well, gotta crap out now. I'll post some stuff before I go to the AGCA show. Will NOT be there Sunday and actually will probably only make the morning on Saturday.

God bless you all.

Mike
III

State Department story won't appear until Monday.

Sorry, I know I told some of you folks that I would have a story on Hillary's connection to Gunwalker this week, but I have to make sure this one's right and I still don't have something I need back from a source. I'll try to have some more stuff later this evening.

"I am more interested in the first than the second."

A reporter interviewed me late last night, pressing me on the Media Matters indictment, including, of course, the call to break Democrat Party county headquarters windows in advance of the passage of Obamacare. Among other things, I told him this:

"I am interested in two big things at the moment and have bent all my energy and ability to them.

First, I am interested in preserving my liberty and property -- and that of my children and their children -- from further encroachment by a predatory federal government AND in getting some of those lost liberties back that have frittered away by previous generations over the past century or so.

Second, I am interested in preventing another bloody civil war in this country by convincing the same arrogant, stupid and power-hungry people who have been trying -- and are continuing to try -- to steal those liberties that it is in their own best interest to quit pushing people -- armed people -- who refuse to be pushed back any more from the free exercise of their rights and liberties.

I am more interested in the first than the second."

Praxis: Get 'Em While You Can. The Supply of Previously Ubiquitous BDUs is Drying Up.

The Battle Dress Uniform (BDU) were the fatigues that the armed forces of the United States used as their standard uniform for combat situations from September 1981 to April 2005. Since then, it has been replaced in every branch of the U.S. military. Only the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy currently authorize wear of the BDU uniform (the former until October 2011, the latter at locations such as U.S. Special Operations Command until a Navy-specific digital woodland camo uniform is available). BDUs are also still worn by officers of the US Public Health Service in dirty or austere environments, and is often the prescribed uniform for any deployment activities. BDU-type uniforms still see active use in other nations (most of them ex-US stocks transferred under US security assistance programs), while others are still worn by some US Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies or activities who may work in tactical situations, such as the DEA and SWAT. -- Wikipedia.




The Battle Dress Uniform, Woodland Pattern (BDU) has been the standard of most constitutional militia formations since the 90s. The reason: they were cheap and ubiquitous -- you could find them literally anywhere, from gun shows to thrift stores to yard sales to on-line and usually for a little bit of nothing compared to other patterns. Also, those members who were veterans already had them.

For any given area of operation's terrain and foliage you can find better patterns, and in militia circles "what's the best pattern?" ranks right up there with "what's the best caliber?" and "AR versus AK" as a source of vociferous debate. But the Woodland BDU, because it was cheap and it was universally available has predominated, and likely will for a while simply because so many units have standardized on it. But I have noticed anecdotally in our thrift stores and surplus stores around here that the supplies of cheap BDUs are drying up and thus, getting more expensive.

This is because the military has shifted out of BDUs to ACUs and to MARPATs. However, a post on Survival Blog points to a source (while the window is still open) that I had never tried:

Jim,
Woodland pattern battle dress uniforms (BDUs) were phased out by the Army years ago, but the U.S. Air Force has allowed their personnel to wear them longer, even as they transitioned to other camo pattern uniforms. Final BDU phase out for the Air Force is reported to be November 1st, 2011, so the availability of this used gear will continue to taper off, even in base thrift stores.

Note that with two forms of identification, most Americans can access a base to visit a thrift store. Military base thrift stores are usually operated as private, charitable organizations and have limited hours and days. - W.J.


Now, I realize that this post will start another round of "Uneeforms? UNEEFORMS?!? We don' need no steenkeeng uneeforms!!!"



But consider, camouflage uniforms are not simply about concealing you as you lie in ambush behind a bush:

1. Uniforms are called that because they are, well, UNIFORM, that is, all the same. Initially military clothing was standardized to provide simple friend-or-foe identification on the battlefield. When all target acquisition was line of sight and all communication verbal this was important, especially on a battlefield obscured by drifting smoke. It still is.

2. In the militia context, uniforms announce not only who you are, but they suggest -- to the untrained eye at least -- organization, competence and authority. Working a roadblock into your community where you have to interface with total strangers who may or may not wish to kill you if they can, uniforms state to the potential Evil Bad Guy that there may be easier targets down the road.

3. When dealing with other authorities, the same suggestion of organization, competence and authority provided by the uniform can make it easier for them to grok that you are on the same side in a breakdown situation. Assuming, that is, that you ARE on the same side.

4. Finally, they do help camouflage you from easy detection while operating in foliage.

I invite discussion of this point. Please try to keep the volume down.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

How they teach tolerance in Iran.



Iranian pastor refuses to renounce Christ, sentenced to death.

Truth, media bias, and the collectivist dialectic as practiced by "Media Matters" in their attacks on FOX News using, well, uh, me.


"Th newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward". -- Finley Peter Dunne (1867 — 1936), Chicago journalist, writing as "Mr. Martin J. Dooley,"


Writing in the golden age of "muckraking journalism," Finley Peter Dunne was acutely aware of the power of institutions and their susceptibility to corruption at the expense of justice and truth. The passage above was, and remains, a caution about his own institution -- journalism -- and the power it had and continues to have to influence events for good or ill.

In the century since Dunne wrote those words, they have been boiled down by some from a sensible caution to a sometimes insensate battle cry -- "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable!" -- used as a weapon of war against a perceived enemy at the expense of truth and even reason.

Newspapers in the times Mr. Dooley commented upon were understood to be politically biased on both the editorial page and the front page. The very term "crusading reporter" assumes that bias, and such reporters were often directed at stories which attacked the interests of the perceived enemies of the editorial board, which of course themselves reflected the political opinions of the owners.

The people who read such newspapers understood this bias and by and large did not mind it as part of the back-and-forth struggle of points-of-view in the marketplace of ideas. In retrospect, the honesty of it all is refreshing.

Today, however, we live in the age of the "professional unbiased journalist," or so the "professional unbiased journalists" and their editors and paymasters would have us believe. The fact of the matter is that modern media are every bit as bias-driven as their 19th and 20th century counterparts, but like the bride in church whose white gown conceals a prostitute past, a couple of sexually transmitted diseases and sincere doubts of future faithfulness to her husband, the media would rather you not look under their collective dress lest you spot the whore.

Nothing demonstrates this more convincingly than the "professional unbiased journalists'" actions, or lack thereof, in the current Gunwalker Scandal. I can count on one hand the number of major stories ABC, to pick a network at random, has done on Gunwalker in the more than nine months since the story broke following the murder of Brian Terry with a Fast & Furious weapon. It takes just one finger for NBC, a network that in the 90s we used joke stood for "No Bad Clinton News." The overwhelming majority of "serious newspapers of record" in the country have done hardly better.

But as the newspapers had to make room, first for radio and then television, all of them are now being forced to make way for, and adapt to the new market forces of, the "new media" of the Internet. And the new media, like the old, old media of Dunne's time, is refreshingly honest about its points of view.

In the final analysis, however, -- regardless of the individual reporter's point of view -- a story is a story, a source is source, and a fact is a fact, and when all due diligence has been done and all facts known and compared with other facts, sources and stories, the public can work out the truth on its own. The problem in the Gunwalker scandal is that the bias of most old media has apparently prevented them from covering the story at all.

This will, in time, be studied with a considerable amount of puzzled angst by the cub-reporters-in-vitro of the Columbia School of Journalism. As Frank Miniter wrote in Forbes yesterday:

Why a gunrunning scandal codenamed “Fast and Furious,” a program run secretly by the U.S. government that sent thousands of firearms over an international border and directly into the hands of criminals, hasn’t been pursued by an army of reporters all trying to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein is a story in itself.


Indeed.

Which brings us to Media Matters latest clumsy attack on FOX News, using me as a club.

Now the Soros-funded Media Matters makes no particular secret of THEIR bias. Politico reported back in March on "Media Matters' war against Fox."

The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel.

The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as political organizations and the “nerve center” of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement, as well as the loathing it inspires among liberals — not least among the donors who fund Media Matters’ staff of about 90, who are arrayed in neat rows in a giant war room above Massachusetts Avenue.

“The strategy that we had had toward Fox was basically a strategy of containment,” said Brock, Media Matters’ chairman and founder and a former conservative journalist, adding that the group’s main aim had been to challenge the factual claims of the channel and to attempt to prevent them from reaching the mainstream media. (Emphasis supplied, MBV.)

The new strategy, he said, is a “war on Fox.”

In an interview and a 2010 planning memo shared with POLITICO, Brock listed the fronts on which Media Matters — which he said is operating on a $10 million-plus annual budget — is working to chip away at Fox and its parent company, News Corp. They include its bread-and-butter distribution of embarrassing clips and attempts to rebut Fox points, as well as a series of under-the-radar tactics.


Now this is, in its own way, somewhat refreshing. Of course as with most collectivist-oriented operations it involves no small amount of calculated hypocrisy. Media Matters (hereinafter MM), takes FOX to task as simply the most important target of what they perceive as their enemy in an ideological war. Why? Because they and their media and political tovarisches are not interested in other media stories which compete with their common collectivist dialectic and which serve to discredit that dialectic.

It is smart, from their point of view. As an ex-communist myself (and now a virulent anti-communist), I understand it perfectly.

However, the naked hypocrisy of using the false standard of "unbiased professional journalism" to attack FOX is akin to the whore in white accusing the prettier bridesmaid of being unchaste. And for all of MM's willingness to fess up to a Politico reporter about their "war on FOX," they hardly put their intentions so plainly to the public. If they did their header would read: "Media Matters: Propaganda Directorate of the Obama Administration and the Collectivist Internationale."

What is MM's principal charge against FOX? That they are seeking to "mainstream" an "extremist." In fact, FOX has, like many other news outlets in the Gunwalker Scandal story, simply come to an extremely knowledgeable source who has a unique perspective of the subject because he has been in it since the beginning.

MM's opening screed:

In March 2010, right-wing blogger Mike Vanderboegh made headlines across the country after he urged his followers to respond to health care reform by breaking the windows of Democratic offices and then took credit after it actually happened.

Eighteen months later, Fox News has repeatedly featured the former militia and Minuteman leader as an "authority" on the ATF's failed Operation Fast and Furious. (MBV: Note "authority." So sorry, MM, but when it comes to Gunwalker, I are one. More so I daresay than MM.)

In January, Vanderboegh was among the first to break the story that ATF agents had knowingly allowed gun trafficking suspects to take weapons across the border into Mexico.


Not among the first, unless you count the "rumor post" on CleanUpATF.org, I was THE first. Which is why FOX and other reporters representing a wide variety of news outlets contacted me to begin with. A short recap is in order here.

For two years prior to the breaking of the Gunwalker Scandal on my blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars, I had been covering ATF scandals that the rest of the media, and our misnamed "public servants," were ignoring. I also used Sipsey Street to call my fellow Second Amendment activists to action, urging them not take one step further back in the free exercise of their God-given and inalienable, natural rights to liberty and property. I enunciated a theory of resistance, the Three Percent movement, and used every outlet I could to warn that with the coming of the Obama administration, for the first time since 1861, civil war was a very real prospect in this country simply BECAUSE people thought it was impossible -- especially because the ignorant and arrogant "people-exist-to-do-what-the-government-tells them-do" advocates were now in charge of all three branches of government.

I am proud to say that I am, in the political party sense, a non-partisan "extremist," if MM wishes to use the word. As evidence of this, I have been on the "enemies lists" of the past three White Houses. My loyalty is to my God, my people, liberty and the Founder's Republic. I consider myself a Christian libertarian, which is not as much of an oxymoron as many folks think.

As MM (mostly) correctly reports, I have in my time been a Second Amendment activist, a leader of constitutional militia (one reporter called me the "Gray Eminence of the militia movement"), a Minuteman border scout and an Internet journalist in the 90s (before there even was a clear notion of what that was) as a part of the independent investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing. I believe that the Founders would have long ago taken up arms against the mutated all-powerful federal leviathan, and especially its out-control militarized federal police who prove daily that they represent a clear and present danger to our property and our liberty. As just one example, I do not believe that the ATF has a constitutional right to exist.

As such, it may seem more than passing strange that ATF street agents should come to trust me. But they did. Working the pre-Gunwalker ATF scandals on Sipsey Street, I came to meet and interact with men and women who in the 90s I would have dismissed by the cartoonish label of "jack booted thugs." For their part, they came to understand that dismissing folks like me as "gun queers" and "barrel suckers" (two often used appellations within the agency) was equally devoid of meaning. I think the ATF agents came to trust us because we shared many of the enemies -- arrogant, dangerous federal bureaucrats with an agenda and an overwhelming instinct to protect those of their own class, no matter how dirty -- and we valued the big things like truth, justice and an appreciation for the antiseptic qualities of light on wayward government.

We never played them false, nor abused the trust that they placed in us. We helped them bring a little bit of light into their dark corner of the agency, and they helped us understand the inner workings of an agenda-driven agency gone absolutely arrogant and out of control at the top.

We, all of us, began to understand that we were all people, not cartoon characters, and that the things that we shared were greater than the things we disagreed on. Especially when confronted with the Gunwalker evil.

So we had, by the second week of December 2010, constructed an informal network of ATF agents, 2nd Amendment activists, yes, even militiafolk, civilian government employees, retirees from a variety of agencies, including military and what is styled as "the intelligence community." Then Brian Terry was murdered.

For the ATF agents like John Dodson, that was it. The final straw. So then came the rumors, and I heard my first one before the CUATF post, just before Christmas. We asked our ATF contacts to check it out. Was it confirmed? Yes, it was confirmed. Gunwalking, facilitation of murder of Brian Terry and uncounted Mexican citizens -- it was all true. And why, we asked? "To pump up the numbers" of civilian market firearms in Mexico. Why? To justify more power and money, more gun control.

The longest two weeks of my life were when we were trying to get whistleblower protection for the Phoenix agents, to get them in touch, first with my own Senator Jeff Sessions' office, and then, later, Senator Grassley and Congressman Issa.

After Senator Grassley wrote the first of his letters demanding answers in January, we began to get requests from old media journalists who worked for USA Today, Newsweek, CNN, FOX, CBS, the LA Times and others to put them in touch with the whistleblowers.

At this point, you must understand, we didn't actually know the NAMES of the whistleblowers, only how to contact them by means of what we dubbed "The Desert Telegraph," an email chain. So we would put the reporters' requests with their contact information into the "telegraph" and it was up to the agents to contact them directly. Sometimes David Codrea and I would hear from a reporter, "Okay, guys, the big boys are here, just give us your sources and we'll figure out if you're lying." Sources, of course, we would never give.

Sometimes, after we did pass on messages on the "telegraph," we would hear back from an agent, "Don't send me anything from that arrogant asshole again." For some media outlets, especially television, the particular security needs of the agents, who were, despite the attention of Senator Grassley, still hanging out there in the desert with bosses and fellow agents who were armed, had badges, and considered them traitors. Some networks lost their chance to break the story because they would not or could not understand that.

The singular exception early on was Sharyl Attkisson, who understood exactly what the agents needed to be able to tell their stories. Sharyl and her producer were never demanding, never condescending, and always careful. Which is why they got the first television story and the others who were there before her didn't.

So when MM puts quotation marks on the word authority when referring to me and Gunwalker, it is merely an insult without basis in fact. Hell, yes, I'm an authority on it. Far more than Media flipping Matters, I assure you.

But the principal charge in the MM screed against FOX seems to be that my previous political activism, which did include urging modern day Sons of Liberty to break the windows of local Democrat party headquarters' windows before the vote on Obamacare, therefore disqualifies me from being treated as an expert on Gunwalker, but, even if they put me on, that they should identify me as an "extremist."

Well, there are extremists and then there are extremists and once again it is a matter of perspective. Take Morris Dees for example. Founder of the wrongfully-named "Southern Poverty Law Center," he is considered to a "militia expert" by the old media. Since 1993, whenever the subject of militia comes up, his phone number is in the Rolodex (or whatever passes for a Rolodex these days) of a thousand intellectually lazy reporters. And when he is quoted, or when he is interviewed on the tube, it is as a "militia expert" that he is identified.

Now, having been in the constitutional militia movement for two decades, I can tell you that Morris Dees wouldn't know a militia if it bit him in the ass. What Morris really is is a fund-raiser. It is what he does best and has since he was selling cookbooks. That was back before he represented the Ku Klux Klan. Yeah, I didn't stutter. He was a Klan lawyer before he found the golden goose in the meme "The Third Reich is coming again (send me money to stop it)." His Southern "Poverty" Law Center has more than a hundred million in the bank at last count and some of it, is held offshore in the Grand Caymans. (See The Wages of Lies and "Hate." Gays and Lefties Expose Southern "Poverty" Lie Center. The Cayman Island's Bank Account & The House That "Hate" Built.)

Yet, with all that loot Morris and his comrades continue to fund raise like the Fourth Reich is coming tomorrow. Denounced by intellectually honest leftists as a liar and a fraud, the surviving "civil rights foot soldiers" and veterans of the black militia, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, spit every time you mention his name, calling him a "civil rights pimp." (Also see my essay, "Birmingham - Race and Armed Defense of Individual Liberty and the Republic."

The divorce complaint of his now ex-wife Maureen Bass Dees also makes interesting reading, accusing him of, among other things, trying to molest his underage step daughter.

Dees (and the ADL) have been taken to task by Professor Robert Churchill in his book "To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face." (University of Michigan Press, 2009), for fabricating what the academic calls "The Narrative of 1995" and a "new Brown Scare" regarding the militia movement.

So, by the MM standard, I suppose when Morris Dees is interviewed on television, the text slug below him should read: "Morris Dees, rich former Klan lawyer, unscrupulous cookbook salesman and fundraiser, civil rights pimp, pedophile and militia expert. (Please send money.)"

If I've missed anything I certainly do regret it, which is not the same as an apology. When the "old media" interviews Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn they do not call them "unrepentant retired terrorist bomber friends of Barack Obama and fans of silverware stuck in the bellies of rich preganant movie stars," although those are true statements.

So the hypocrisy reeks from anything MM writes about FOX. Media Matters wouldn't hold anybody in the media that they approve of what they say to that standard, just FOX.

Lost in all this, of course, is the fact that what Media Matters is really doing is effectively trying to assist in the cover-up of arms smuggling, mass-murder, government corruption and acts of war against another sovereign nation and its people.

This doesn't matter, however, because for MM as for all collectivists, the ends justify the means. Any lie, half-truth or exaggeration they tell is excused by dialectic. Or, as ATF supervisor David Voth put it, "If you want an omelet you have to break some eggs."

And that, dear readers, is what Project Gunwalker was all about. So it is hardly surprising that a hard-collectivist outfit like Media Matters, funded by George Soros, would be trying to use me to attack FOX. You might as well blame a rattlesnake's disposition for biting a child. It is, after all, what they do.

Praxis: The M14 Rifle.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Codrea: Senate Judiciary Committee staffer corroborates ATF gunwalking purchases.

Link here.

The Silencer

Grassley/Issa letter PDF

Link.

Media Matters continues to waste George Soros' money attacking me.

At least they credit me with breaking the story. The truth is that Roger Ailes is a secret mad-dog militiaman under my psychic control.

"There's something sinister going on."

Dave Workman reports that "Grassley puts it bluntly: ‘It’s a lie.'"

Bet yer ass it is.

"Ici London": We interrupt this broadcast for a message from The C.O.W.L. NMS Directorate. Jiggs Casey says John has a long mustache, or something.


"I got into an elevator at work and this man followed in after me... I pushed "1" and he just stood there... I said, "Hi, where you going?" He said, "Phoenix." So I pushed Phoenix. A few seconds later the doors opened, two tumbleweeds blew in... We were in downtown Phoenix. I looked at him and said, "You know, you're the kind of guy I want to hang around with." We got into his car and drove out to his shack in the desert. I asked him why he lives all alone out in the desert. He said, "Don't tell anyone, but I'm doing secret research for the government." I asked what kind of research. He said, "I'm trying to determine who REALLY built the pyramids. Now, I'm not positive, but I think it was a guy named 'Phil'." Then the phone rang. He said, "You get it." I picked it up and said, "Hello?"... The other side said, "Is this Steven Wright?"... I said, "Yes..." The guy said, "Hi, I'm Mr. Jones, the student loan director from your bank. It seems you have missed your last 17 payments, and the university you attended said that they received none of the $17,000 we loaned you. We would just like to know what happened to the money?" I said, "Mr. Jones, I'll give it to you straight. I gave all of the money to my friend Jiggs Casey, and with it he built a nuclear weapon... And I would appreciate it if you never called me again." -- Stephen Wright.


We now return to our regular programming.

Exclusive:"Arizona is a strange, strange place." DOJ Gunwalker conspirator being interviewed by GOP Gov. Jan Brewer for an AZ Superior Ct. judgeship.


Pat Buchanan was once quoted as saying that the two major political parties represent "two wings of the same bird of prey." When it comes to Arizona, it seems, he was certainly right.

Credible sources tell Sipsey Street Irregulars that Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Morrissey of the Phoenix office is being interviewed by Jan Brewer's office for an Arizona superior court judgeship.

Said one:

"This guy was Emory Hurley's boss through most, if not all of F & F. None of these clowns have any sense of accountability. Burke resigned, but he wasn't calling the shots on a day to day basis. He was an absentee landlord at best. . . Arizona is a strange, strange place . . ."


For those of you who don't recall exactly where Morrissey fits into the grand scheme of Phoenix gunwalking, let's take a trip down memory lane.

Do you, gentle readers, recall this letter on 1 September from Senator Grassley and Congressman Issa to Acting U.S. Attorney Anne Scheel in Phoenix? It demands, among other things, any communications to or from Mr. Morrissey. Mr. Morrissey, it can then be said, is a current target of a Congressional investigation into the Gunwalker Conspiracy.

Do you also recall this from David Codrea? -- "Federal LEO advocacy group charges retaliation for Gunwalker testimony."

Senator Charles Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa were sent a letter last Wednesday by Luciano Cerasi, Associate General Counsel, Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, detailing allegations of whistleblower retaliations against Peter J. Forcelli, Group Supervisor, ATF, by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona and the Department of Justice Office of Deputy Attorney General as a result of testimony he gave on June 15. Forcelli was one of the individuals who appeared before the second House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing into “Project Gunwalker,” where he testified “I believe that these firearms will continue to turn up at crime scenes, on both sides of the border, for years to come.”


The letter goes on to provide details of what has been dubbed the "Grenadewalking Incident," and Mr. Morrissey's role in that fiasco.

In short, the Governor of Arizona has expressed interest in appointing to the Arizona Superior Court an individual whose role in the felonious Gunwalker Conspiracy is at best unknown and at worst a conspirator and cover-up artist himself. Governor Brewer cannot be totally ignorant of this, even if her vetting process is being run by a college sophomore with basic access to the Internet.

What the citizens of Arizona think about this surprising turn of events remains to be seen, for as one of my sources said, "Arizona is a strange, strange place . . ."

LA Times: "Informant helped smuggle guns to Mexico, investigators say."

botch (bch)
tr.v. botched, botch·ing, botch·es

1. To ruin through clumsiness.
2. To make or perform clumsily; bungle.
3. To repair or mend clumsily.


"The FBI/DEA informant helped get the guns from the Fast and Furious operation over the border, congressional investigators say."

An FBI/DEA confidential informant helped smuggle firearms from the ATF's Fast and Furious gun-trafficking surveillance operation to drug cartels in Mexico, according to evidence compiled by congressional investigators.

The investigators said the informant obtained the weapons from Manuel Celis-Acosta, considered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to be the "biggest fish" of 20 individuals indicted in Fast and Furious. At the same time the informant was receiving large amounts of "official law enforcement funds as payment" for his services, they said.

Congressional investigators believe the informant was working with U.S. law enforcement over a two-year period, beginning in early 2009, and often contacted DEA agents such as Jim Roberts, the resident agent-in-charge in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, to "pass on information to these agents about Mexican drug cartels."

The revelations were contained in a letter Tuesday from Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, to Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. They contend that had the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration told the ATF about the informant, Fast and Furious would have been shut down much earlier. . .


Really? Grassley and Issa continue to give the Gunwalker conspirators too much slack. Why not quit pretending that this plot against the Second Amendment of the Constitution involved anything having to do with the word "botched?" The only thing that was "botched" here was the cover-up, thanks to ATF agents like John Dodson.

The letter signals that the congressional investigation is looking beyond the ATF operation and into the possibility of a major breakdown in law enforcement cooperation on the border.

Fast and Furious ran for 15 months, from fall 2009 to last January, and culminated in indictments in Phoenix. Among them was Celis-Acosta. Documents show that when Fast and Furious was first proposed, the ATF targeted Celis-Acosta because they said he was "believed to be supplying firearms" to a drug cartel.

Congressional investigators have learned that the DEA was aware of Celis-Acosta's alleged drug trafficking activity as early as late 2009, just when Fast and Furious was getting underway, and that he was "providing hundreds of firearms to members of Mexican drug cartels." In fact, they knew Celis-Acosta allegedly was moving guns to Ciudad Juarez, south of El Paso, "but that he was uneasy about taking the guns across the border himself."

The FBI and DEA also knew that the informant, identified as "CI#1," was ordering weapons from Celis-Acosta and smuggling them into Mexico. That informant, "apparently the financier for Celia-Acosta's firearms trafficking ring, later began cooperating with the FBI and may have received additional government payments as a confidential informant."

In one payment, the investigators learned, the U.S. government gave the informant $3,500 for his services.


But what "services" are we talking about, exactly? Issa should add FBI Director Robert Mueller to his witness list at the next hearing and grill him until we know exactly and precisely what those "services" were.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Along the lines of "too much democracy." Former Obama advisor also wishes for the ability to order folks around.

Too Much of a Good Thing. Why we need less democracy.

"Certain aspects of representative government can end up posing serious problems. And so, we might be a healthier democracy if we were a slightly less democratic one."

You know, for somebody trying to defend the murderously indefensible by attacking the guy trying to get to the bottom of it, this sure is weak tea.

Mother Jones dons the cover-up apron.

FBI still after those pesky "militia extremists."

Watch out for the militia boogeymen.

Those pesky militia extremists might even conspire to rig the NICS system to facilitate the purchase by felons of weapons to arm Mexican drug cartel gunmen. Or they could make evidence disappear at the murder scene of a Border Patrol agent. They might even deport murder suspects so that Senators can't interview them. They could even, Heaven forfend, pay one-armed cartel snitches to move the arms across international borders.

Why would the FBI be upset about that?

Because they don't want the competition.

NC Dem Gov. Bev Perdue doesn't want to have to worry about the next election. How about worrying about the next civil war? Does that work for her?


Mr. President? Janet, Kay and I were talking and we think it would be a great idea if you just suspended the 2012 elections. Yes. . . Yes . . . You do too? Why that's just wonderful."

Ace of Spades writes here about this. No wonder CSGV advocates a "Government Monopoly of Violence."

Speaking to a Cary rotary club today, N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue suggested suspending Congressional elections for two years so that Congress can focus on economic recovery and not the next election.

"I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that," Perdue said. "You want people who don't worry about the next election."

The comment -- which came during a discussion of the economy -- perked more than a few ears. It's unclear whether Perdue, a Democrat, is serious -- but her tone was level and she asked others to support her on the idea.

Read her full remarks below.

"You have to have more ability from Congress, I think, to work together and to get over the partisan bickering and focus on fixing things. I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. The one good thing about Raleigh is that for so many years we worked across party lines. It's a little bit more contentious now but it's not impossible to try to do what's right in this state. You want people who don't worry about the next election."


Let's see. Suspend an election, get a bloody civil war. . . What's not to like?


When democracy turns to tyranny, I still get to vote.

The next hearing will be JOINT hearings.

From Lori Jane Gliha at ABC15 in Arizona.

More Congressional hearings in the Fast and Furious case could come as early as next month, meanwhile hearings could be starting up right here in Arizona.

Congressman Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and committee member, Rep. Paul Gosar, were in Phoenix over the weekend, talking to the ABC15 Investigators about the future of the controversial case, which involves the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

More hearings will come, they said. The next people called to testify will likely do so in front of both the House Judiciary Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform committee, jointly.

“We want (the House Judiciary Committee) who has direct oversight over the Attorney General and of (the Department of Justice) to take a more active role, and we believe they will,” Issa said. Eventually, Attorney General Eric Holder and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer will be called to testify, he said.

“This is the kind of thing that threatens the fabric of how America trusts law enforcement,” he said. “So, [the investigation] goes on until we get a real understanding that this can never happen again.”

Issa said the people involved in the Fast and Furious case must be either “punished legally or are at least dismissed.” He called the recent resignations and transfers of a handful of leaders within the Department of Justice a “good start.”

JPFO's Charles Heller, David Codrea, an old fat man with a cane and the "David & Goliath Award."


Photo courtesy Dave Workman.

Video of the Tuscon Town Meeting on Gunwalker.


Anecdotes of the Good Life in the Philadelphia Victim Disarmament Zone of the People's Democratic Collectivist Paradise.

Chased home: Mob attacks man in his house.

David has another exclusive: "ATF Chief Counsel’s office warned management of Gun Rights Examiner column." Ramsey A. Bear strikes again!


Burglar angst.

If the photo credit on this email is to be believed, C.O.W.L. deep-cover operative Ramsey A. Bear has struck again!

Gun Rights Examiner has obtained a copy of a January 20, 2011 email from Barry Orlow, Associate Chief Counsel (Field Operations and Information) for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, calling top management’s attention to a January 19 column posted by this columnist, “Open Letter to Senate Judiciary Committee staff on 'Project Gunwalker'.”

Written to inform the committee of whistleblower allegations and to arrange for their protection, the ultimate goal of the open letter was to prompt a full congressional investigation.

Orlow was named by House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa in July for sending intimidating warning letters to witnesses about what they could not talk about, with the result that “at least one witness wanted to back out of testifying to his committee after receiving the letter.”



. . . Also receiving a copy of the Orlow email was Mike Vanderboegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars, who originally reported the gunwalking allegations on CleanUpATF and their link to the murder of border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Vanderboegh’s reaction:

Very illuminating. This very early email demonstrates something that our sources have been saying all along. Even when the rest of the media and the political class were as yet ignorant of the Gunwalker Scandal, the gunwalkers themselves, the upper management types of ATF and DOJ, were monitoring -- and acutely aware of -- every tiny development in the story as reported by Gun Rights Examiner, Sipsey Street and CleanUpATF.org. They exhibited all the tension and straining of senses that a burglar does right after he breaks a window and makes too much noise. Did anybody hear? Is anybody paying attention? Will somebody call a cop?

And who were they afraid of? A few -- very few -- dissident ATF agents and lowly gun rights bloggers who, by Internet standards, were hardly noticeable or noticed. Yet, even at this early stage, we were apparently living in their heads rent free, all expenses paid.

They had broken the window, somebody they couldn't control had noticed, and were now in the process of calling the cops. No wonder they were paying attention to you.



Ramsey A. Bear and friend. Even from retirement, this deep-cover operative of the Coalition of Willing Lilliputians continues to strike terror into the hearts of the Gunwalker conspirators.

14, 349 hits yesterday. I guess we must be doing something right.

Not bad for a blog that on a weekday gets between five and six thousand and less on weekends (which in Internet terms is chump change).

Thanks for the links, folks, and thank you for visiting to all you Sipsey Street newbies. We hope you'll keep coming back.

Also don't forget to visit the website of my partner in "enemy of the state"-type crime -- David Codrea. (See "I'd Like to Thank the Academy.")

To the extent that I have been successful in drawing attention to the Gunwalker Conspiracy, I couldn't have done it without him. Also, he makes his living on the scant resources that the Examiner format gives him (pennies for hits) and he has two big strapping boys to feed. So visit him every chance you get.

That said, for all you new readers, sit down, put your seatbelts on and keep your trays in the upright and locked position.

The rest of this scandal is going to be a bumpy ride.

LA Times: "Government by crime syndicate." "Let me tell you how important this is, the White House started their morning with a briefing on you."

"You just described my country."

The remarkable public confrontation between the Gandhi-like ascetic Anna Hazare and the government of India — which came to a triumphant end last month with a glass of orange juice and a government promise to create a strong, independent anti-corruption agency — is the latest manifestation of a worldwide explosion of outrage at what historians may someday come to deem humanity's latest form of tyranny: the capture of states by criminal syndicates. Otherwise known as rampant public corruption.

In early 2010, I was asked to make a presentation to a counter-narcotics symposium at the Marshall Center in Germany. In attendance were several hundred high-ranking military and law enforcement officers from around the world. I dutifully explained the opium economy in Afghanistan, which I've had a chance to observe during nearly a decade living and working in Kandahar. But I could not resist inserting two slides at the end of the talk. They depicted the phenomenon that really interests me: the increasingly structured capture of the Afghan government by what amounts to a set of interlocking, vertically integrated criminal networks.

I have watched the phenomenon evolve over the last 10 years. At first, there was a furtive testing of the limits, as Kalashnikov-toting ruffians shook down travelers for "sweets" (as extorted bribes are prudishly called). Over time, the corruption expanded and evolved, and today, Afghanistan is controlled by a structured, mafiaesque system, in which money flows upward via purchase of office, kickbacks or "sweets" in return for permission to extract resources (of which more varieties exist in impoverished Afghanistan than one might think) and protection in case of legal or international scrutiny. Those foolish enough to raise objections are punished. The result is a system that selects for criminality, excluding and marginalizing the very men and women of probity most needed to build a sustainable state.

When I finished my presentation, to my astonishment, the participants rose in a standing ovation. Many came down to the front of the room to talk further. "You just described my country," they chorused.


Yes, well, my country too. Michael Barone called the Obama administration "gangster government" for the bailouts, picking winners and losers with taxpayer dollars like Solyndra based on political dogma, rewarding campaign supporters like the unions with the NLRB decisions they want, you name it. The list could go on and on. Sometimes the Great Eye of Mordor-on-the-Potomac focuses on you for the most trivial of reasons.

Read this story about how a car dealer in Missouri ran afoul of the White House. Neil McCabe writes in Human Events:

Max Motors targeted by ATF, banks and General Motors

Despite the White House harassment, and the loss of financing and insurance arrangements that came in the past, the Butler, Mo., car dealer who will be giving away AK-47’s again starting in October.

“Guess what? We are doing it again! It is the Fourth Annual Great Guns and Gas Give-Away!” said Mark Muller, the owner of Max Motors, whose July 17, 2009 interview with CNN’s Carol Costello about his promotion was great publicity, but brought him unwelcome attention.

Within days of the CNN broadcast, three agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrived at the dealership, he said.

“I was not there, they identified themselves and asked who was in-charge, and everybody pointed at each other,” he said.

Undeterred, the agents demanded to see the guns, he said. When it was explained that there were no actual guns, and that the promotion was really for vouchers towards the purchase of an AK-47, the agents did not believe it.

“There was an empty gun box here from a gun dealer in North Carolina, and they took that and demanded to see the gun that came with that box,” he said. The agents also went into storage rooms and took photos.

The next day, Muller received a call from the ATF asking him to come in for a meeting with all of his personal guns, which they insisted they had to authority to order, he said. Muller held his ground and refused to submit to the audit without first going through due process.

“The ATF people were just as nice as can be. They were not mean or hateful—and finally I asked the lady on the phone: Don’t you have something better to do?” he said. He then re-explained that there were vouchers for guns and that no guns were being given away.

“She said: ‘Let me tell you how important this is, the White House started their morning with a briefing on you. We got a call from Washington, D.C. this morning. They wanted you checked out,” he said. (Emphasis supplied, MBV.)

“That’s your big government in action. I’m a guy exercising his constitutional rights and I’m such a threat to security that the White House has to check in on me?” he said.

At the end of his conversation with the ATF agent, she threatened to raid his house to audit his personal firearms, but it never happened, Muller said.


Folks, we may not have the government we deserve, but we certainly have the government we tolerate. And whose fault is that?

Tucson Tea Party Town Hall on Gunwalker packs 'em in. Vince Cefalu wows the crowd. Nobody died at the Watergate Hotel.

Tea Party looking for answers in ATF gun mistake

Now that it's over the people said they hope they can sustain the energy from the meeting to reach the ultimate goal of accountability and transparency.


Folks, we need more of these. Tea Partiers, if you want a scandal that highlights your critique of how large and dangerous really big government is, Gunwalker is it. We need MANY more of these.

LATER: Katie Pavlich reports Vince Cefalu wows the crowd.

Now, Katie gets some important things wrong in this story. To my knowledge, Vince Cefalu was never "heavily involved in Operation Fast and Furious." He WAS instrumental in many ways by seeing that the Phoenix whistleblowers were able to get their story out to the Congresscritters, the press and the wider world. Vince was himself victimized by ATF management for insisting that the right thing be done in another case he was involved in. This was some time before John Dodson's revelations in early 2011.

However, she reports:

“To think that they could do this sort of operation knowing there could be a dead ATF agent at the ends of those guns made me nauseous,” he said.

Despite threats from his superiors, Cefalu blew the whistle about Operation Fast and Furious anyway, which has landed him under review for what he describes as “a proposal for removal for telling the truth.“

“Unchecked power corrupts,” he said, adding that there are no longer checks and balances within ATF.

In his speech, Cefalu made the larger argument that this is a major government corruption problem, not only surrounding Operation Fast and Furious, but about a runaway government that doesn't answer to the people, saying ATF agents and the Department of Justice shouldn’t be able to say no to Congress when asked for documentation surrounding operations within the Bureau. The Obama Justice Department has been stonewalling the House Oversight Committee in its investigation into Operation Fast and Furious since day one.

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, who is fighting on the ground in Arizona against the very cartels the federal government has been arming, was appalled at the operation, saying this scandal will “totally eclipse Watergate,” and made the case that Operation Fast and Furious was used as program to restrict Second Amendment rights for law abiding citizens. He brought up the lie that 90 percent of guns in Mexico come from the United States, told over and over again by President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. The 90 percent figure has been proven false by multiple fact checking organizations, intelligence sources and even ATF agents yet, Obama and Holder have tried to make the case that all the violence in Mexico comes from the United States.

“He’s [Obama] saying that to build the argument to restrict our gun rights in America,” Babeu said, and internal ATF emails prove it.

Babeu was also disgusted at the idea that the government has never apologized to the family of Brian Terry, despite guns from Operation Fast and Furious being used by a cartel member to kill him.

“He was a cop, he was a marine and was murdered on American soil,” Babeu said.

“I want nothing out of this bit for justice to be served and for Brian Terry’s mama to know that somebody cared,” Cefalu said. “You’ve sent that message tonight, that you cared.”

Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar described Operation Fast and Furious as “A Few Good Men being played out in real life,” adding that humans were used as collateral damage while the federal government armed Mexican cartel members with .50 caliber sniper rifles, a weapon strong enough to take down a helicopter, and AK-47s.

“I want to remind you, we had a couple of guys break into a hotel take down an administration, nobody died,” Gosar said. “When are we going to hold agencies and bureaucrats to task?”

Gosar, Babeu and Cefalu all called for accountability from the Obama Administration multiple times throughout the evening and questions from the audience were centered around who ultimately would be held responsible for not only the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, but also for the deaths of thousands of innocent Mexicans.

“These people are now being killed wholesale,” Cefalu said.

In the past 18 months, 22,000 Mexicans have been killed.

“President Obama is not above the law and he and this administration will have to account for this,” Babeu said.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Guys, I'm exhausted.

See you in the morning. Dutchman 6 out.

"New Fast & Furious document: ATF bought guns with taxpayer money and sold them to illegal buyers directly."

Allahpundit.

Interviewed with FOX today about CleanUpATF.org, the early days of the scandal and the role of "new media" in Gunwalker.


I am informed that they are scheduled to air some of the interview tomorrow morning. William LaJ’s first report will be at 7:20AM Central and he should be on several more times throughout the day.

Bob Owens: ATF Walked Guns Directly to Cartel Using Taxpayer Dollars.

The unraveling Gunwalker conspiracy has the potential of being the most devastating scandal in the history of American politics.

Fast and Furious Town Hall in Tucson TONIGHT!

News 4 previews 'Fast and Furious' Town Hall.

A group of Tucsonans are upset about the alleged failures of the ATF's "Fast and Furious" operation, and tonight, a congressman and a whistleblower will be at a town hall to answer questions and discuss the facts about the program.

The Tucson Tea Party is hosting a "Fast and Furious" Town Hall from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. tonight at the CDO High School's Performance Auditorium. Congressman Paul Gosar, representing Arizona's 1st District, and a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, will be at the town hall. A well-known whistleblower for the Fast and Furious program will also be present, organizers say.

FOX (and Drudge) pick up The Story.

U.S. Government Used Taxpayer Funds to Buy, Sell Weapons During 'Fast and Furious,' Documents Show.

CBS: "White House answers Congress in Gunwalker." Yeah, by stashing a major W.H. witness in Iraq. Let's ask O'Reilly how he likes camel spiders.


Big honking camel spiders in Iraq.

White House answers Congress in Gunwalker

An administration official Congress wanted to interview before the end of the month may be unavailable. That's according to a new letter from a White House counsel to members of Congress investigating the ATF Fast and Furious "Gunwalker" scandal.

On September 9th, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) asked the White House to make former National Security Advisor Kevin O'Reilly available for an interview before the end of September to help "determine the extent of the involvement of White House staff in Operation Fast and Furious."

Emails already obtained by Congress show O'Reilly communicated about gun trafficking efforts with then-Special Agent in Charge of ATF's Phoenix office William Newell as early as summer of 2010. In the email exchanges O'Reilly asked Newell if it was okay to share the information with other White House staffers. Congressional investigators are seeking all related communications.

The new letter from the President's counsel doesn't say O'Reilly can't be interviewed by Congressional investigators, but neither does it provide an availability date. Instead the letter states that

O'Reilly, who has moved from the White House to the State Department from where he was tasked, is "currently on a previously scheduled assignment to Iraq."

The members of Congress also asked for other documents and communications within the White House staff regarding Fast and Furious by September 23rd. No materials were provided, but the President's Attorney indicated some could be handed over by the end of this week.

In Operation Fast and Furious, ATF allegedly allowed thousands of weapons to "walk" onto the streets and into the hands of Mexico's drug cartels.

President Obama has said neither he nor Attorney General Eric Holder approved of or knew about any gunwalking. Further, a spokesman for the administration has said nobody in the White House knew of any gunwalking tactics.


I know. We've got some Threepers still in Iraq. Someone could always interrogate O'Reilly by locking him up in a small box with two male and one female camel spiders. Oh yeah. ;-)

Jack Kelly: "Scandals proliferate. But most media are playing them down."

More scandals swirl about Barack Obama than perhaps any president before him.

The Saga of the Odyssey of The Return, or, How I was almost forced to eat a passenger on a Continental flight from Houston to Huntsville.


We had the story of our dreams. All I had to do was get from Chicago back to Birmingham to write it up and post it. Flying up was just a two hour hop. My ticket for the return said Chicago to Indianapolis to Birmingham. I planned to use the long layover in Indy to write the story and send it to David for vetting. He was driving back to Ohio and had the additional assignment of posting The Letter on Scribd.

Made it to Indy, set up my laptop, and began to churn out some of the best prose reporting I've done in a while. (Much of which I could not later remember and so it didn't make it back into The Story. But I'm getting ahead of myself.) Finally, I was done, I called David (still on the road) to read it to him. Almost finished, my computer screen went black and my cell phone went on the fritz at almost the same time, both of them proved to be temporary but I couldn't get back on the computer to finish. Frustrated beyond belief, I go to ask the United ticket counter person how long until the Birmingham plane arrives. She looks puzzled. "There is no direct Indianapolis to Birmingham flight. Let me see your original ticket and boarding pass."

Turns out when United handed me over to Continental, they neglected to mention that Continental was going to fly me first to Houston and then on to Birmingham. OK, fine, I said. How soon will I get to Birmingham? About 10 PM Central, I was told. OK, fine. Whatever.

But I must confess the double fritzing of my electronics shook me up a bit. How in the hell had that happened? A power surge might have got the computer and knocked it off, but the cell phone wasn't plugged into anything and it went out at nearly the same time. Solar flare? EMP? Captain Kirk's photon torpedoes bursting on the near side of Venus?

Whatever. It all came back to The Story. We had to make sure The Story came out. I called David back and told him, I would rewrite it by hand on the flight to Houston, but don't do anything until I post it.

David gets home, I am still in the air. He cranks up his computer, checks Sipsey Street and Holy Excrement, Batman!, there's my post, or at least the first part down to the letter transcript. The rest seemingly disappeared, but that's not the mystery. The mystery is how in Hell did it post, in part, all by itself?

I do not know this. I am still flying Continental to the heathen side of Texas. But although it is posted, David does not know that it is incomplete. He's actually puzzled that it is different -- far shorter -- than what I had read to him, but, hey, there it is. I don't blame him. Neither of us got much sleep at the conference, so we're both beat. He proceeds with the rest of what we agreed upon: his version, the Scribd post, sending me his link.

I get to Houston, having had to fly around a thunderstorm. First thing I do (the plane hadn't stopped rolling yet) is call David. David tells me it is all done, no worries. W!?! T!?! F!?! I bust out, frightening my fellow passengers. Immediate fix to problem (his idea I think because I was not thinking too clearly at that moment): I give David my password to Sipsey Street, and he changes the post, pulling it back down into edit mode. He does the same for his, then he notices the Scribd post already has hits so he locks that up in private mode until I can get to Birmingham and fix the whole damn thing.

The Story still is not out. Worse, we have obviously tipped somebody off prematurely that there IS a story and a damned important one at that. It gets worse.

I get off the plane. I am instructed that plane I just debarked from must be cleaned and then we are going to Birmingham. I sit where I am told. After about five minutes, somebody comes to man the little boarding booth. I explain I was told to get off and wait, but when, please ma'am, will the plane arrive in Birmingham? Quizzical look. Oh, no. I've seen that before.

That plane is not going to Birmingham. The plane going to Birmingham left at 25 after the hour. I look at my watch. It is TWENTY SEVEN MINUTES PAST. Lady, I explain, it has only had the door shut for two minutes. The flight attendant hasn't even made it to the oxygen mask explanation yet. Too bad. Doors closed. Heap bad juju if they open again. Someone will be tortured to death by Human Resources.

Well, I demand, when is the next plane to Birmingham? I am becoming frustrated and a little tetchy. "Tomorrow morning" is the answer. I am directed to the inaptly named "Service Desk." Gritting teeth, explain problem. Must get to Birmingham. MUST GET TO BIRMINGHAM. Answer same-same. No Birmingham. Too bad. Where the hell am I going to sleep? (Here I am hoping that because they screwed up they will put me up in a hotel WITH AN INTERNET CONNECTION, hint, hint, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.) Blank looks. Dunno. They look at seats around the concourse. I am thinking now is a bad time for a heart attack due to stress and hypertension.

Then the girl on the end (really, she was a girl, but obviously more creative than her elders) clicks some keys and says, "We can get you on a flight to Hunstville, sir, would that be fine?"

Through gritted teeth I reply, "Fine? Why just as fine as my first marriage I suppose." She did not get the menace behind it. A passenger behind me guffawed, but when I turned on him he looked all innocent, like "Who me?."

And there was STILL The Story.

Using superlative self-control I turned back to the girl and asked, when will the plane arrive? She told me. And when does it leave? Well, uh, it seems like, well, right now(?). I call Rosey, who has just driven four hours back from Hattiesburg, MS, after visiting Zoe for the weekend. Explain problem tersely. Can you get to Huntsville in the car and pick me up if I land there? Sure, no problem, well maybe a problem. Hour and a half away. No gas, little money. Gave all of hers to Zoe because "she needed stuff." Quarter tank of gas. Little money. How much is little? Three dollars and some change, besides she says definitively, "YOU were coming home." Yes, but I are not home. Must fetch me. Find money. Go to PO Box see if there is subscription money. Uh, huh. And if not go to good friend in Pinson and borrow some gas money until tomorrow. OK? Well, yeah, okay. She goes to box. No money. Goes to friends, borrows ten dollars.

I turn to girl. OK, now how to I get to plane to Huntsville? Long way, can't get there, must have help. They call a little shuttle car that runs up and down the concourses when summoned, if you're lucky.

I am lucky. We load my carry-on laptop and meds (my check luggage, they say, will be efficiently sent on to Birmingham, no worries). Whatever. Worries, but whatever. Not a priority. The Story. THAT is the priority.

Shuttle guy breaks all land speed records getting to Huntsville bound plane, almost flattening two small children. I am amazed at how indifferent I am to their near-death experiences. Realize I am getting low on sugar. Go to boarding desk. Hand her new paperwork. Are there snacks for sale on plane? No, too short, big hassle, no can do. I reply, no problem, I'll just eat a passenger when my sugar gets low enough. Ha, ha. You are late, must board now, don't eat passenger where anybody in authority can see you.

Get on plane, last guy. I must look deranged. Guy in seat beside me moves to empty seat. Too bad, he was small and it looked like it would be easy to eat him.

Plane takes off. Flight attendant comes by with drinks. I ask her about possibility of snacks. No, too short, big hassle, no can do. I repeat my by-now very serious threat to eat a passenger when my sugar gets low enough that I can plead temporary insanity afterward. Then, A THOUGHT occurs to me. Do you have any orange juice?

No. Ran out. Have apple juice. Enough sugar, Mr. Cannibal? I look at can. 37 grams. Yup, that ought to do it. Still no food, but what I most need is sugar and this is packed with it.

She comes back afterward. Sugar up. No eat passenger now. Tell that guy who fled he can come back. He hears me and without making eye contact he shakes his head.

Whatever.

Finally land at Huntsville. Another Bataan Death March to the pick-up lane. Ask for assistance from a bored cop, the only official looking guy around. No. No help. Short way. You can crawl it. He still looked bored, but he had a firearm and I didn't.

I make it to the exit. Rosey is there. We load my stuff. You look beat. How'd it go? I almost ate a passenger, I replied. She doesn't bat an eye. Oh, OK, she says. "I'll drive," she says.

I get home, crank up the computer, still had no food but on a sugar rush from the apple juice. Finish The Story. Notify David who is dozing next to his computer waiting for my sorry ass to crank it out. I crank it out. He cranks his out.

Hal-a-damn-lujah.

Had to delete all premature comments on the blog and answer all pissed off emails -- "Where the hell did the story go?"

Look, don't dick with me. I almost ate a passenger. But I got The Story.

I'm going to bed now, OK? I'll eat tomorrow.

Wait, this IS tomorrow.

Whatever.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Vanderboegh & Codrea exclusive: U.S. Gov't used an ATF employee to buy weapons with taxpayer money & walk them -- without help from straw buyers!

A Sipsey Street Irregulars/National Gun Rights Examiner Column Exclusive: ATF Letter and Sources Confirm That There Was No "Botched Sting Operation" in Fast and Furious.

"One hundred percent us."


By Mike Vanderboegh & David Codrea



Official ATF documents as well as sources in Arizona and Washington D.C. confirm that in at least two instances in 2010, an agent of the United States government purchased Kalashnikov-pattern semi-automatic pistols from licensed federal firearms dealers with taxpayer money and delivered those weapons directly into the hands of cartel smugglers.

In a letter dated June 1, 2010, then Phoenix ATF Group VII supervisor David Voth instructed a Federal Firearms Licensee in Arizona as follows:

Dear Sir,

Per Section 925(a)(1) of the Gun Control Act (GCA) exempts law enforcement agencies from the transportation, shipment, receipt, or importation controls of the GCA when firearms are to be used for the official business of the agency.

Please accept this letter in lieu of completing an ATF Form 4473 for the purchase of four (4) CAI, Model Draco, 7.62x39 mm pistols, by Special Agent John Dodson. These aforementioned pistols will be used by Special Agent Dodson in furtherance of the performance of his official duties. In addition, Special Agent Dodson has not been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. If you have any questions, you may contact me at telephone number 602-605-6501.

Sincerely,

(Signature)
David Voth
ATF Group Supervisor
Phoenix Group VII


In the lower left-hand margin of the one-page letter is the hand-written notation:

"Picked guns
up 6/10/10
Paid Cash"


"Paid Cash" is underlined.

The existence of this letter provided to these reporters by a previously reliable source familiar with the Fast and Furious investigation, coupled with interviews of other sources across the country which put it into context, provides startling proof that the Federal government did not merely "lose track" of weapons purchased by "straw buyers" under surveillance by the ATF and destined for the Mexican drug cartels. In an undercover operation ordered by Fast and Furious supervisor David Voth, the U.S. government purchased firearms with taxpayer money from licensed firearms dealers, instructed them to conduct the sales "off the books," and used an ATF agent, John Dodson, to deliver them directly to people that Dodson believed were conducting them across the border.

According one source close to the Issa committee and knowledgeable of its workings, this revelation "puts a stake in the heart of the 'botched sting operation' lie." He continued, "There never was any 'sting,' there was only a deliberate effort to provide weapons to the DTO's (Drug Trafficking Organizations)." He added, "this was one hundred percent us -- our money, our guy, our (gun)walking."

This source also provided context and explanation of how the letter came to exist in the first place.

(It should be noted that although we would never reveal our sources for any story, it is important in this case for the readers to understand where we did NOT get it. Neither John Dodson nor his lawyer provided us this letter. Nor did they pass it through to us via a third party, as the DOJ has been known to do lately.)

"Dodson was given this undercover assignment by Voth," said the source, "to purchase weapons directly and provide them to the smugglers. He was operating under cover, pretending to be a 'straw buyer.'" He continued, "I think Dodson demanded the letter from Voth to cover both himself and the FFL (Federal Firearm Licensee). He didn't want to be hung out to dry" by Voth.

A source also said that the undercover assignment was an effort by Voth to "dirty him (Dodson) up," pointing out that by the time of the undercover assignment that Dodson's vocal opposition to "letting guns walk" was well known to his superiors in the Phoenix ATF office.

Sources also describe a second letter from Voth to another FFL authorizing Dodson to purchase two more Draco pistols. One source stated flatly: "Issa and Grassley have copies of both letters, and have had for a long time."

Subsequent to this undercover weapons buying and transfer to cartel smugglers by Dodson, say the sources, "Dodson just about came apart all over them (his supervisors)." In a "screaming match" that was heard throughout the Phoenix office by many employees, Dodson yelled at Voth and Assistant Special Agent in Charge George Gillett, "Why not just go direct and empty out the (ATF) arms room?" (to the cartels), or words to that effect.

After this confrontation, say the sources, ATF managers transferred Dodson to a post as "liaison to the intel guys at FBI" in the Phoenix office. For clarification, it is worth noting that the Brian Terry murder investigation was at this time being carried out by the criminal investigations side of the FBI out of the Tuscon office, not Phoenix.

Sources describe continuing harassment of Dodson as his access to the Phoenix office building was restricted. "They removed him from the (Fast and Furious) case as politically unreliable," said another source, adding, "And of course after the Terry murder all the shots were being called by D.C."

After the death of Brian Terry, the "rumor" post on the ATF agent's website, CleanUpATF.org and the initial coverage by these reporters in the early weeks of January, 2011, "things got ugly" for Dodson. Blamed by his immediate supervisors as well as many of his fellow agents in the Phoenix office for "treason" as one source described it, Dodson's existence at the Phoenix office was described as "precarious" by one D.C. source. The threats to his life were perceived to be so great that "solitary range days" were arranged by a sympathetic supervisor so Dodson could practice marksmanship in safety. "He (the supervisor) didn't want him (Dodson) to eat one in the back" in a range "accident," said the source.

Dodson has not given any more interviews of late. "Not since the hearings as far as I know," said one source, and it is not because he hasn't been asked.

"They're (the Justice Department) coming at him hard, looking for anything they can use against him," said another. "Can you blame him for keeping his head down?"

Although our sources firmly agree that Senator Grassley and Congressman Issa have both of the Voth/Dodson letters, we are forwarding copies of the June 1, 2010 letter to staffers of both men, asking for comment on this story and an explanation as to why they have not previously released the letters.

Given the fact that it is a weekend, these reporters do not expect any reaction until later on Monday morning.