Attention ATF Firearms Technology Branch: Deadly new sniper rifle suitable for black ops by Ramsey A. Bear. Don't you want to chase this one too?

Remember when the ATF's Chief Counsel's Office spent almost two years and much taxpayer money chasing after the stuffed child's toy, Ramsey A. Bear? Remember when the ATF cracked down on Airsoft toys as machine guns?

Now, here's a sniper rifle fit for Ramsey A. Bear and surely just as deadly as the "Airsoft machine gun" which would actually blow up if modified the way the ATF said it could be. Behold, the LEGO sniper rifle.


Lego sniper rifle brought to you by Funny Videos

Well, duh. "FBI: Friendly fire ruled out in Tucson border agent's slaying." Also, 3 suspects freed. Did ATF walked gun kill Terry all by itself?

Well, Senator, after two months investigating the Brian Terry murder I can tell you we've made about this much progress. Of course, if you ask me specific questions under oath, I'll have to plead the Fifth.

My thanks to Hugh H. for this link.

Friendly fire was not a factor in the killing of a Border Patrol agent during a shootout in December in a canyon near Nogales, the FBI says.

The FBI's statement puts to rest speculation about the Dec. 14, gunfight tin which agent Brian Terry was slain.

"There is no evidence of that all," FBI spokesman Manuel Johnson said Tuesday.

He couldn't comment on the rest of the investigation, which remains ongoing.

Two months into this and they can't comment. And the press ain't particularly interested. Yet. They will be. Trust me. They WILL BE.

LATER: Hugh Holub writing in the Tucson Citizen points out:

This does not answer the question raised by US Senator Charles Grassley who has alleged 2 guns were found at the scene of Agent Terry’s murder that were bought in a Glendale gun shop and slipped to the border bandits under the nose of ATF agents under Project Gunrunner.

OK FBI…whose gun fired the shot that killed Agent Terry?

And where did the gun come from?

Certainly you know this by now FBI…. why isn’t your agency providing that additional information?

Is Grassley’s claim true?

LATER STILL:

"Agent Terry's murder: 3 suspects arrested will not be charged." Steve Nuñez reports from KGUN Channel 9:

Nine On Your Side has learned three of the four suspects arrested in the shootout that killed U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry will not be charged with his murder. In fact, all three suspects could be freed and deported sometime this week.

The FBI suspected bandits shot and killed Terry on the night of December 14th. Agents immediately arrested four suspects. But two weeks after Terry's killing, KGUN9 News learned the FBI had yet to charge them with murder.

The Federal Public Defender's office and private defense Attorney Leslie Bowman then sounded off by telling Nine On Your Side if the FBI had evidence it would have pinned murder charges on all four suspects.

"They rarely wait," said Bowman at the time. "They generally charge it from the beginning of the case."

On January 5th, the U.S. Marshal's in Tucson then reported a total of six suspects had been arrested in Terry's murder probe.

But the FBI denied the claim and confirmed to KGUN9 News it only knew of four suspects.

Then on January 13th, the U.S. Attorney's office indicted the four suspects but only on immigration charges for illegal re-entry after deportation. The felony charge carries a prison sentence between six months to two years.

Now, exactly two months after Terry's murder, Nine On Your Side has learned through sources close to the case, three of the suspects will plead guilty to lesser misdemeanor charges and are expected to be released and deported within the next several days.

That leaves one suspect in custody. The Federal Public Defenders office tells Nine On Your Side its yet to receive any type of formal disclosure or word from the U.S. Attorney's office clearing its client of Terry's murder.

Therefore, as far as it knows, its client continues to only face illegal re-entry charges. This same suspect was gravely injured and had to be hospitalized after his arrest.

The Federal Public Defenders office also said it's unusual for the U.S. Attorney's office to take so long to charge a suspect with murder if it has forensic evidence.

So, I guess that the ATF "walked gun" just jumped up and killed CBP Agent Brian Terry all by itself? When is the mainstream press going to get tired of these serial lies?

Firearms Coalition Immediate Action Needed – ATF Comment Window Closes Today!!

David Codrea draws our attention to this Firearms Coalition call for immediate action: Oppose Regulation Expanding Multiple Sale Reporting

Here's David's:

To: barbara.terrell@atf.gov

Subject: Oppose Regulation Expanding Multiple Sale Reporting

Two words: Project Gunwalker.

Let's see what allegations of ATF management's mishandling of the Southwest Border Initiative prove out in Sen. Grassley's investigation before we start giving them even more power.

Here's mine:

-----Original Message-----
From: georgemason1776
To: barbara.terrell
Sent: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 3:40 pm
Subject: Comment on Multiple Long Arm Sales Reporting Requirement.

Ms. Terrel:

The ATF does not need more power. What the ATF needs at the least is immediate adult supervision in the form of Congressional oversight beginning with the culpability of your Phoenix office in the murder of CPB Agent Brian Terry. Until that happens, the senior executive cowboys of "Project Gunwalker" do not need to be further emboldened or empowered. Neither do the lying criminals in the Chief Counsel's Office. Just ask the family of Brian Terry.

Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126

cc: Senator Charles Grassley, Senator Jeff Sessions.

"Media response to ‘Project Gunwalker’ story practically nonexistent ."

David Codrea's justifiable and angry indictment.

Also, David on Tom Gresham's Gun Talk radio show.

Another ATF whistleblower asks -- "Senator Grassley: are you watching?" Waste, fraud and abuse, this time at ATF's Martinsburg facility.

ATF employee "Zorro" posts on CleanUpATF.org.

Update from the Martinsburg Pork Facility:

Office of the Inspector General
U.S. Department of Justice
Investigations Division
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Room 4706
Washington, DC 20530

This is a new attempt in an effort to bring the misappropriations of funds and material to your attention. In the previous letters the abuse of work time and automobiles by ATF special agents was addressed. Personnel have continued with this abuse to the extent that letters of justification, for misuse, have been written by the agents in Martinsburg, WV. Every day the employees of ATF are being told that we must tighten our belts, control spending, no one will be let go, and use integrity in every decision we make. ATF employees have come to the realization that this only applies to non-agents.

I am sure you have been made aware of how many special agents are under investigation for thievery, lying, falsifying information, and on and on in ATF. Yet it doesn’t seem to matter. There is no integrity in ATF.

Go to the link and read the rest. It is obvious that after the Project Gunwalker scandal hearings are opened, that they need to be expanded to a thoroughgoing, wide-ranging hearing on other ATF scandals.

This just in: "The Washington Post is still dead." But, the Washington Times finally picked up the Project Gunwalker Scandal story!

Apologies: but in the original of this column (in the first sentence under the photo and caption), I misnamed the Washington Post, a collection of latter-day Pharaonic scribes, with the Washington Times, a real newspaper. My apologies to the Times. -- Mike Vanderboegh


Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer scans this morning's Washington Post: Damn the Washington Times! At least Grimaldi is still helping us out. I must send him some more tins of caviar.

Like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the Washington Post is still dead to the Project Gunwalker Scandal. However, the other Washington paper's Jerry Seper did, finally, take notice:

The ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee wants Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to explain why Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents allowed suspected gun smugglers to purchase and keep assault rifles that later may have been used in the fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Preemeptive Strike: "Liberals launch anti-Darrell Issa crusade."

"Credibility. It's the only currency that means anything on this kind of playing field. Dean's got the tape and he's going to come out with it. And when he does, I want his credibility. I want people to know he's lying before they hear what he says." -- Jon Voight as Thomas Reynolds in Enemy of the State.

This is how they intend to defend against Project Gunwalker and other scandals.

Democrats are understandably obsessed with Darrell Issa — he’s built himself up as a one-man investigative machine aimed straight at the Obama presidency.

But a handful of liberal political operatives in California — including a former Hillary Clinton hand — are taking their anti-Issa passion to a whole new level, launching a nonprofit group, a website and even paid media advertisements aimed at undermining and investigating the rabble-rousing chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

They say they’re leaving no stone unturned in digging into Issa’s personal and business history. This week, the group will reveal more than 100 pages about an investigation into a fire that burned down a building that housed his business in the early 1980s.

The launch of this group — which calls itself The Third Lantern, and is naming the website the Issa Files — is remarkable because it’s wholly focused on the activities of one lawmaker who has no immediate plans to run for higher office. The purpose of this new group is to make public documents more public, make life difficult for Issa and sow seeds of doubt on his investigations.

They plan to run TV advertisements and other paid media in the future, saying they already have a “significant commitment” of cash. A spokesman for Issa, Kurt Bardella, dismissed the effort as a “misguided and distasteful smear campaign against Chairman Issa.”

The group will be run by the principals of SCN Strategies, a San Francisco-based consulting firm that produced ads last cycle for California’s Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). One of those deeply involved is Averell “Ace” Smith — who ran Hillary Clinton’s successful 2008 California and Texas primary operations and is known as one of the more cutthroat political operatives in the business.

Dan Newman of SCN Strategies, one of the three people leading the anti-Issa campaign, declines to disclose how much is being spent on the effort or who is bankrolling it, telling POLITICO it is being paid for by “patriotic Americans who don’t want to see the potential of an ethically challenged congressional investigator run amok with McCarthyesque fishing expeditions.”

The structure of the organization does not require that it disclose its funding.

But the goal is clear: Newman, Smith and the third partner, Sean Clegg, want to raise enough questions about Issa’s background and personal history that anything he turns up in probes of the Obama administration will be immediately discredited.

Fly on the wall inside ATF: C.O.W.L. deep-cover agent Waldo presents the alternate universe working inside the heads of ATF upper management.

Waldo's secret nano-fly listening device, on the wall at a recent meeting of ATF Special Agents in Charge.

Coalition of Willing Lilliputians deep-cover agent code-named Waldo presents the alternate universe working inside the heads of ATF upper management. Below are the highlights of a recent ATF SAC Meeting. This is only the sanitized stuff, designed to make the source more generic and harder to trace. And yes, as much fun as I'm having with this bit of intelligence (and with the ATF's search for the identity of Waldo) this is the real deal. It is not satire. Some of the highlights:

ATF briefed Senator Grassley’s office relative to memo written to ATF and recent whistleblower allegations concerning Southwest Border. AD McDermond thought meeting went well and that ATF delegation provided full debriefing of Project Gunrunner and ATF’s Firearms Trafficking strategy overall.

Waldo's comments have been rewritten but the meaning is intact: Note that Senator Grassley was briefed by a former Secret Service exec brought over by Truscott who hasn’t spent more than a day or two in Phoenix since he’s been here. He has never been an ATF Agent and HE is going to explain the Gunrunner debacle? He could only regurgitate what HQ and Main Justice told him to say.

SAC Andrew Traver confirmation process was moving forward. Expected to get a Hearing date within the next two weeks at which time SAC Traver will attend numerous briefings on the Hill and at DOJ and ATF will begin the process of getting SAC Traver prepared for the confirmation process.

My comment: Next to Border Patrol union chief Bonner, Traver is the guy most missing in action in this scandal. Does anyone doubt that as the anointed fair-haired boy that he's been completely briefed at every stage of this since at least the death of CBP Agent Brian Terry? I will have more about MIA Traver tomorrow.

AD Mark Chait advised that Billy Hoover has been named as the new SAC for the Washington FD and has been detailed back to HQ to serve as deputy director.

A mixture of my comments and Waldo's: Poor, sad Billy Hoover. He represents yet another Deputy Director who is being downgraded 3 levels in the past six years and nobody is asking "WTF?" After losing ATF's explosive jurisdiction, failing miserably at the ESF-13 (the Bureau component to major terrorist attack), completely dropping the ball on our flagship NRT arson teams, overseeing a complete failure on the SW border, having been in the management loop while ATF dropped from the Top 20 to 41st in best places to work AND with employee disputes rocketing through the roof, Billy Hoover gets to walk across the street to Washington Field division so he doesn’t have to move. Poor, poor Billy Hoover. How much of this represents his consignment to a cashmere-lined "rubber room"? Too highly placed in the cover-up of Gunwalker to cut loose, too unsuccessful to reward, the DOJgers who are now in control of ATF obviously don't want him to get too far away from their oversight. Does this increase the likelihood of Hoover beating Melson to the roll on the conspiracy? I'll wait for the street agent betting pool to tell me the odds.

(Reminder) If we are working an explosive incident we MUST provide the name of the person at the FBI was contacted and when he/she was contacted on all SIR’s. DOJ requirement concerning explosive coordination.

My comment: As if the SAC's needed reminding of how much an abject failure the bomb mission has been.

In the coming months new policy will be coming concerning internal memorandum’s. This is in response to documents that have been recently leaked without proper authorization. ATF needs to protect information until approved to be disseminated to public.

My comment: Yes, well, no doubt about that. But then how do they expect to evade Waldo's nano-fly listening device? And where IS Waldo, really? Hiding in plain sight, of course.

What Haley Barbour Didn't Tell Fox News: He Lobbied For Mexico On “Amnesty”

From Time Magazine's Swampland.

"National Border Patrol Council silent on ‘Project Gunwalker’ allegations."

T.J. Bonner (image size corresponds to his actual presence in the search for the truth in the death of CBP Agent Brian Terry).

David Codrea comments on my post of yesterday:

Rank and file Border Patrol agents must understand that unless and until all “Project Gunwalker” allegations and supporting evidence are explored in full, including what role top officials in ATF and the Justice Department have played, they will continue to face additional unnecessary risks in an already dangerous job. And they will continue to perform it knowing that should tragedy befall them, the primary motivation of those who order them into harm’s way will not be, in Senator Grassley’s words, to “come clean.”

What type of management expects people to risk their lives under such conditions? What kind of representative would not make it a priority to immediately rectify things to protect those he has been tasked--and trusted--to serve?

We make people leaders for a reason: we expect them to lead. The best way to encourage Mr. Bonner to direct his union’s substantial influence toward determining the truth is for its members to let him know--in no uncertain terms-- that they expect it of him.

Of course, somebody could have shot the SOB, if NYC allowed packing.

"28 HOURS OF MADNESS!"

Glad to be of service: LaRue Tactical to make things right.

Received this in today's email:

Mike,

I finally got a response from Mark (REDACTED) LaRue, which I forwarded to you. A result of your post on Sipsey Street? . . . Anyway he is apparently going to resolve this now, thanks to your help.

The below email is what he sent to his staff. He's really a personable fellow, eh?

Thanks.

Well, I will say that like all good bosses, he used this as a teachable moment in customer relations to his staff.

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: sales
To: REDACTED
Cc: Tyler ; Paul@laruetactical.com; Alfred Lindsey
Sent: Sun, February 13, 2011 10:22:32 PM
Subject: RE: LT139-1 1 LaRue Tactical SPR-E LT-139

Tyler, see link below, and remember what fucking up gets us with some people.

ML

Sucked into the sewer as willing turds.

Rebel frosh play by D.C. rules.

"Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead," and the Washington Post is still not covering Grassley's slap-down of Eric Holder.

Remember this television classic?



Thereafter, it became a running SNL headline: "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead."



In view of the inability of Pravda's James Grimaldi to cover the latest turn in the Project Gunwalker Scandal (which by the way includes documents -- you know, evidence? -- which is what he claimed he was waiting on), I'm thinking of starting a new service here at Sipsey Street: every day I shall announce with a straight face: "The Washington Post is still dead."

The Washington Post: Ignoring inconvenient stories during Democrat administrations since 1877.

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer reads the "Nation's capitol 'paper of record'": Hmm. Still nothing in the Post about the Gunwalker documents. Good. Very good. I must send Grimaldi over some caviar.

Swiss vote to keep automatic weapons in the closet -- where they can get them if they need them!

A pro-gun campaign poster reads 'Weapons Monopoly for Criminals?'

Swiss stick to their guns in weapons vote.

Switzerland upheld its reputation for having one of the most liberal yet lethal firearms laws in Europe yesterday after voters overwhelmingly rejected proposals that would have obliged some two million gun owners in the country to keep their weapons in public arsenals rather than at home.

Official results from a national referendum on gun control showed that more than half of Switzerland's 26 cantons voted against an initiative which aimed to ban army rifles from households in an attempt to reduce domestic shootings and a record number of suicides involving firearms.

Swiss soldiers have been encouraged to keep their rifles at home after leaving the forces under a national defence policy introduced during the Second World War. The practice is seen as a symbol of the trust the state invests in the Alpine country's largely conscript army.

Yesterday Switzerland's conservative politicians welcomed the outcome, saying it demonstrated the nation's reluctance to end a practice that upheld the traditions of its folk hero, William Tell. "This is an important sign of confidence in our soldiers," said Pius Segmüller, a Christian Democrat MP and a former member of the Swiss Vatican Guard.

A gun ban was strongly opposed by the populist, right-wing Swiss People's Party, which organised a referendum last year banning minaret building at mosques. Shooting club owners had complained that the law would have effectively destroyed many of the country's 3,000 gun clubs, which function as key social centres in hundreds of villages.

The result amounted to a serious blow to Switzerland's nascent gun control lobby. It had banked on a high turnout by women voters to get its initiative approved. But results showed that only the cities of Basel and Geneva and a few French-speaking cantons bucked a national trend in favour of keeping guns at home.

Social Democrat and Green women MPs said that they were disappointed by the low turnout among women. "Women in Switzerland have only had the vote for the past 40 years, but they aren't getting involved in politics even when it concerns them," complained Martine Brunschwig-Graf, a Social Democrat politician.

The gun control lobby, which includes doctors, churches and suicide prevention groups, launched their "weapons initiative" campaign four years ago in an attempt to make it illegal for ex-soldiers and reservists to keep guns at home. Their aim was to ensure that all military weapons were kept in public arsenals and retrievable only for training or in case of war.

David Codrea sends us a "GunTalker" reminder for today.

David is the handsome guy on the left.

Project GunTalker reminder.

I’ll be discussing the unfolding “Project Gunwalker” story later today on two national radio programs.

First up will be Tom Gresham’s GunTalk Radio. I’ll be on during the 3:00 pm EST segment. Click here for the show’s complete lineup, here for a list of radio stations around the country, and here to listen via live streaming from your computer.

Then at 8:30 pm EST I’ll be joining host Mark Walters and his special celebrity co-host, country music star Mark Willis on Armed American Radio. Click here for a station in your area, or here to listen from your computer.

WikiLeaks memos confirm: "Heavy firepower now in the hands of Mexican criminal organizations isn’t linked to mom-and-pop gun stores."

Yeah, I'm sure they got the M249 machine gun at a Phoenix gun show. Yup.

A deep genuflection and tip of the boonie hat to Irregular John P. for this link:

Pentagon Fingered as a Source of Narco-Firepower in Mexico.

No wonder ATF bosses felt like they had to boost their numbers to justify the existence of Project Gunrunner.

Another series of leaked State Department cables made public this week by WikiLeaks lend credence to investigative reports on gun trafficking and the drug war published by Narco News as far back as 2009.

The big battles in the drug war in Mexico are “not being fought with Saturday night specials, hobby rifles and hunting shotguns,” Narco News reported in March 2009, against the grain, at a time when the mainstream media was pushing a narrative that assigned the blame for the rising tide of weapons flowing into Mexico to U.S. gun stores and gun shows.

Rather, we reported at the time, “the drug trafficking organizations are now in possession of high-powered munitions in vast quantities that can’t be explained by the gun-show loophole.”

Those weapons, found in stashes seized by Mexican law enforcers and military over the past several years, include U.S.-military issued rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers and explosives. . .

But the State Department cables recently made public by WikiLeaks do seem to confirm that the U.S. government is very aware that much of the heavy firepower now in the hands of Mexican criminal organizations isn’t linked to mom-and-pop gun stores, but rather the result of blowback from U.S. arms-trading policies (both current and dating back to the Iran/Contra era) that put billions of dollars of deadly munitions into global trade stream annually.

As the death toll mounts in the drug war now raging in Mexico, it pays to remember that weapons trafficking, both government-sponsored and illegal, is a big business that feeds and profits off that carnage. Bellicose government policies, such as the U.S.-sponsored Merida Initiative, that are premised on further militarizing the effort to impose prohibition on civil society only serve to expand the profit margin on the bloodshed.

T.J. Bonner: Missing in Action in the Project Gunwalker Scandal and the cover-up of the circumstances of Brian Terry's murder.

Why is this man smiling?

One of the most curious aspects to me of the cover-up of the circumstances of the death of Customs and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry is the absolute silence of his union, the National Border Patrol Council and that organization's normally high-profile leader, T.J. Bonner.

It is not as if the NBPC didn't get the memo. They devote some space on their website in the section called In Memoriam to his death, which includes this icon of mourning:



Yet it is a curious mourning, is it not, that makes much of burying a man who died in service to his country while being deliberately mum upon the scandalous circumstances of his death?

According to our sources, CBP agents are seething with anger over Project Gunwalker and the death of their fellow agent. We also hear that the line agents are more than a little upset at Bonner's silence. He cannot plead ignorance. I have myself sent Senator Grassley's letters to Bonner via email asking for his comment. He has not responded. I have often suggested to reporters that they seek out Bonner for comment. Yet he has not commented.

Why not?

What accounts for his silence?

Is he, too, afraid of meeting the man upon the stair?

Does he not owe the family of Brian Terry at least the courtesy of the slender risk of his reputation to demand simple justice and a full accounting of the murder of one of his union's members? What is he afraid of, that Janet Napolitano won't invite him to tea?

If you would like an answer to this question and others, here is how you can send Bonner and the board of NBPC a message. Ask Bonner and his crew yourself.

If you get an answer it is more than the press, me or the ghost of Brian Terry have been able to get out of him up until now.

Mike Vanderboegh
III

Caveat Emptor: LaRue Tactical scope mount issues.

Received this from a Threeper I trust implicitly regarding LaRue Tactical quality control problems and service issues. He included a copy of a series of emails back and forth beginning in December of last year. Here's his latest to me:

Mike,

I'd like to warn people about buying scope mounts from LaRue Tactical since you may well not get the one you need, and then they won't do anything about it. When you spend $250.00 for a scope mount, it damn well be the one you needed, especially when you called and spoke to their rep before ordering.

If you could warn your readers, I think it would be a great service to them. Perhaps ask David to do the same. The story is in the below email stream.

The picture of my rife, scope mount and scope fitted and bore-sighted attached. As you can see, it has to go all the way up to the turret to get a decent eye relief. Also, I had to crank it all the way up to get it bore-sighted for 100 yards, leaving no more elevation for greater distances.

Before anyone buys a quick disconnect sight from LaRue Tactical, they better know exactly what they need to get because the reps at LaRue have no idea.

The shame is that I have previously purchased two other mounts for ACOGS for my other rifles from them. Still they have no interest in rectifying this situation.

Thanks,

WarriorClass
III

My son has been collecting the components to build himself a 7.62 NATO sniper platform on an Armalite receiver much like the one pictured. He was thinking, if memory serves me correctly, of getting a LaRue Tactical mount like the one pictured. I will discourage him from doing so.

Caveat emptor: Let the buyer beware.

Another Arizona News Outlet Finally Notices Project Gunwalker Scandal. "Senator to ATF: Come clean in Terry's slaying ."

This time it is Brady McCombs of the Arizona Daily Star Arizona:

"Grassley: Guns in shootout came from a smuggler."

Slowly but surely, the story that I helped break on 28 December is leaking in and the ATF's cover-up is sinking.