Tag Archives: Fast and Furious

Is Jade Helm operation a casual exercise or prelude to martial law?

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OPINION
Updated: 4/2/2015, 9:10 a.m.

300-jade-helm

But in republics there is more vitality, greater hatred, and more desire for vengeance, which will never permit them to allow the memory of their former liberty to rest; so that the safest way is to destroy them or to reside there.—The Prince, Nicolo Machiavelli CHAPTER V

Since the Daily Mail news story on Operation Jade Helm (PDF), the blogosphere has exploded with every possibility of conspiracy.

Concerns in the southwest are not totally unfounded; particularly in light of the Bundy Ranch episode last year on March 27. One communist web site, relying heavily on reports from the Southern Enriched-By-Taxpayer-Dollars Law Center, was stressed that the militia was actually doing what it is supposed to do. Stopping national government encroachment. The government-approved Federalist papers as, well as those Federalist Papers not so well-known, make that clear.

One can certainly question the premise of “Master the Human Domain.”

According to the Mail, the operation scheduled from July 15 to September 15 will feature:

  • Operation Jade Helm will see 1,200 service members including Green Berets and SEALs and special forces from the Air Force and Marines in July
  • Soldiers armed with blank rounds will operate in and around towns in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado for 8 weeks
  • The so-called Realistic Military Training has some residents fearful the drill is a preparation for martial law

The premise of this operation is that Texas has been invaded by a “hostile force” and has to be retaken.

Lieutenant Colonel Mark Lastoria denounced this as a prelude to martial law in Stars and Stripes.

Army Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria, a USASOC spokesman, confirmed that there is an upcoming exercise called Jade Helm 15 which is scheduled to take place this summer at locations in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, California and Nevada. But he denied the event is preparation for some sort of military takeover.

A judge in Texas apparently agrees.
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Fast and Furious gun turns up after Mexican resort shootout

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Washington (CNN) — A dramatic shootout between authorities and suspected cartel gunmen at a Mexican seaside resort this month has ties to a botched U.S. gun operation.

A U.S. official said Tuesday that investigators have traced at least one firearm recovered at a December 18 gunfight in Puerto Peñasco, across from the Arizona border, to Operation Fast and Furious.

That’s the disastrous operation run by agents in the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Agents allowed suspected gun smugglers to buy about 2,000 firearms with the goal of trying to find and prosecute high-level traffickers. They couldn’t track the firearms and most are believed to have ended up with cartels and gangsters in Mexico.

Many have turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States, including at a shooting that killed a U.S. border agent in 2010.

The shootout in Puerto Peñasco, also called Rocky Point by Arizona tourists, two weeks ago left at least five suspected cartel gunmen dead, including possibly a high level Sinaloa cartel chief, according to Mexican authorities.

Read more at CNN

Fast and Furious movie star dies in car accident.

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enhanced-buzz-26543-1385868933-1040-year old Paul Walker known for the Fast and Furious movie franchise died in a single-vehicle accident that resulted in a fiery explosion. The accident occurred about 3:30 p.m. Pacific time Saturday in Santa Clarita, Calif.

The actor was a passenger in a Porsche GT in which the driver somehow lost control slamming into a tree. Both in the car were killed.

How the US gave guns to Mexican cartels

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The Border Gun ScandalBy John Dodson

In September 2009, John Dodson, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was assigned to the ATF’s Phoenix office. What he found there shocked him. The bureau was encouraging gun dealers to sell weapons in bulk to known straw buyers, who would funnel those guns to Mexican drug cartels. Known as Operation Fast and Furious, it ended with the death of at least one American law enforcement officer. Dodson became a congressional whistleblower, and the investigation into the operation is ongoing. In this exclusive excerpt from his new book, “The Unarmed Truth,” Dodson explains how tragically inept Fast and Furious was.

‘It’s like the underwear gnomes,” my ATF colleague Lee Casa told me one time as we recounted the latest bizarre goings-on in Phoenix.

“What?” I asked.

“You ever watch ‘South Park’? There’s this episode where all the boys get their underwear stolen by these underwear gnomes. They track them down to get it back and one of them asks why they are stealing everyone’s underwear. The gnomes break out this PowerPoint and reveal their master plan: Phase One: Collect underpants . . . Phase Two: ? . . . Phase Three: Profit.”

“We’re doing the same thing,” he explained. “We know Phase One is ‘Walk guns’ and Phase Three is ‘Take down a big cartel!’ ”

Both of us were laughing now; a more fitting and appropriate allegory could never be found. Casa concluded, “Just nobody can figure out what the f–k Phase Two is!”

What was happening did at times almost seem like a spoof. Letting guns “walk” was a tactic that I had never before seen or even contemplated. It simply wasn’t done.

I couldn’t understand how anyone could argue that allowing guns that ought to have been in law-enforcement custody to go to known or suspected criminals — people who shouldn’t have been near a gun, people who almost certainly would be passing them on to Mexico’s most brutal drug cartels — wasn’t madness.

Read more at the New York Post

Homeland agents failed to stop ATF, Fast & Furious guns from crossing border

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Fifteen months before the Fast & Furious gun scandal was unmasked in public, Homeland Security agents along the Arizona border recognized that their colleagues at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were allowing illegal guns to flow across the border to Mexican drug gangs in violation of federal policy.

The agents working for Homeland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raised objections internally to their bosses and to their ATF colleagues in late 2009 without success, but did not escalate their concerns to superiors in Washington, according to a new Homeland Security inspector general report that uncovered yet another missed opportunity inside government to stop the bungled gun trafficking investigation.

“Most Homeland Security Investigations personnel in Arizona who received information about the investigation recognized that the task force was using a flawed methodology, which was contrary to ICE policy and practices for weapons smuggling investigations,” the inspector general concluded in a little-noticed report issued late last month.

And the special agent in charge in the case for Homeland failed to appreciate that the flawed tactics in the investigation – allowing weapons to “walk” across the border – violated ICE policies, the report added.

Read more at The Washington Times

Lawmakers call for probe into ‘botched’ ATF sting in Milwaukee

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WASHINGTON ––  Several members of Congress are calling for an investigation into an embarrassing series of blunders made by the Milwaukee arm of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives after a newspaper reported this week that the agency conducted a months-long undercover operation that cost taxpayers thousands of dollars and netted very few results.

“I am intent on getting to the bottom of the botched ATF sting in Milwaukee,” Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told FoxNews.com Thursday night.

Sensenbrenner along with Sen. Charles Grassley, and Reps. Darrell Issa and Robert Goodlatte, have sent a letter to Acting ATF Director Todd Jones asking the agency to look into allegations reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The newspaper claims that the agency conducted a deeply flawed sting operation that resulted in a still-missing machine gun being taken from an agent’s car, thousands of taxpayer dollars being lost in merchandise and angry residents saying that ATF officials reintroduced crime into their neighborhood. The operation comes on the heels of the botched Operation Fast and Furious anti-gun trafficking program.

Read more at Fox News

“Drug cartels’ bank,” HSBC, to see no arrests

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(CBS News) As bank slogans go, they don’t come worse than this: “The preferred financial institution of drug cartels and money launderers.”

That’s a quote Tuesday in a U.S. Department of Justice report about HSBC Holdings, one of the largest banks in the world.

To avoid criminal prosecution, HSBC admitted Tuesday that it laundered more than $800 million for Mexican drug cartels, and covered up illegal transactions for Burma, Iran, Sudan, Cuba, and Libya.

Those nations were under banking sanctions because of human rights atrocities, terrorism, or — in Iran’s case — a nuclear program.

The British bank will pay $1.9 billion to the U.S. government, the largest such fine in history.

Read more at CBS News

Mexican hitman claims cartels bought guns from US Border Patrol

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By Robert Beckhusen / 09 November 12 for Wired

The testimony of a Mexican hitman turned US government witness has revealed some astonishing details of life inside Mexico’s criminal underworld. Most astonishing of all: claims that cartel assassins obtained guns from the US Border Patrol.

According to Mexican magazine Revista Contralinea, the testimony comes from a protected government witness and former hitman, who cooperated in the prosecution of a Sinaloa Cartel accountant by the Mexican Attorney General’s Office. The testimony details a series of battles fought by a group of cartel members attempting to drive out rival gangsters from territory in Mexico’s desert west. To do it, the group sought weapons from the US, including at least 30 WASR-10 rifles — a variant of the AK-47 — allegedly acquired from Border Patrol agents.

If true, it could reignite the debate over Operation Fast and Furious, the last time US authorities allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican gangsters. Two days after the election, Attorney General Eric Holder — who had been at the centre of allegations surrounding the scandal — is now talking like he might not stay with the administration for much longer. “That’s something I’m in the process now of trying to determine,” Holder said 8 November. ” I have to think about, can I contribute in a second term?”

Read more at Wired.co.UK

Obama is hiding his part in gunrunning and Mexican murders

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Univision reveals additional operations aside Eric Holder’s failed Fast and Furious.

Guest Editorial
BY ELENA LOPEZ | OCTOBER 10, 2012

Here Are Five Things You Didn’t Know About Operation Fast and Furious

The Spanish-language Univision News aired a “bombshell” hour-long report on their investigation into Operation Fast and Furious, revealing brand new evidence of international weapons smuggling by the U.S. government.

Univision News took on the job that the mainstream media in the U.S. has failed to do thus far.

They also displayed extremely disturbing images of the bloody carnage that occurred as a result of the misguided program.

Here are some things you didn’t know about Operation Fast and Furious and other gun-walking operations.

Read more at Sonoran News

Rep. Gosar Votes to Send Contempt Charges to House Floor

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Washington, D.C.—Today, U.S. Congressman Paul Gosar, D.D.S (R-AZ)—who is moving fast and furious out of CD-1—released the following statement regarding the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s vote to hold U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. These proceedings come after continuous delay by Holder and the Department of Justice to release subpoenaed documents from the reckless Operation Fast and Furious.

Gosar said today, “Mr. Holder continues in his latest actions to show his contempt for our constitutional rights, our border, Arizonans and all Americans by evading oversight. After months of stonewalling, excuses and half truths Mr. Holder has run out of time and second chances. I was pleased to cast my vote in committee to send to the floor of the motion to hold Mr. Holder in contempt for his actions and inaction with regard to Fast and Furious. 114 members of Congress have signed onto my Resolution of No Confidence (H.Res.490) in Mr. Holder. Now those same members and others will get to vote to hold him in contempt of Congress.”

As the only member from Arizona on the committee for Oversight and Government Reform, Congressman Gosar has been a leading advocate for the victims of this horrible operation by demanding answers and justice. Gosar is the lead sponsor of H. Res. 490, a Resolution of No Confidence in the Attorney General which currently has 114 cosponsors.

The oversight committee has videos concerning the failed Fast and Furious operation on their web site.

Fast and Furious is the failed Justice Department operation which they blamed on Arizona gun dealers. The fury reached new heights with the Obama administration revealing that it will evoke executive privilege on documents concerning the failure.