[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 55 (Thursday, April 14, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2474-S2476]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             WHISTLEBLOWERS

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Since January, I have been investigating allegations 
from whistleblowers at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. 
The allegations I have received are shocking, but sadly they appear to 
be true. Praise the Lord for the whistleblowers in this government 
because we don't know where the skeletons are buried, and they help us 
to do our constitutional role of oversight and the checks and balances 
of government.
  The ATF, which is supposed to stop criminals from trafficking guns to 
Mexican drug cartels, was actually making that trafficking of arms 
easier for them. That would be bad enough if it happened because of 
incompetence or turf battles, but it looks as if the agency was doing 
this on purpose. The government actually encouraged gun dealers to sell 
multiple firearms to known and suspected traffickers.
  Two of those guns ended up at the scene of a murder of a U.S. Border 
Patrol agent in Arizona. His name was Brian Terry. His family deserves 
answers from their very own government. I have been fighting for those 
answers. I have written eight letters to the Justice Department. I have 
asked for documents. I have asked that specific questions be answered.
  At first, the Justice Department simply denied the charges. Then one 
of the whistleblowers went on television. He risked his career to tell 
the truth on ``CBS Evening News.'' He had a sense of duty to Agent 
Terry's family and, in turn, to the entire population of this great 
country. He could not believe his own government refused to come clean 
and tell the truth when questioned by this U.S. Senator. He went public 
to set the record straight.
  Other whistleblowers have confirmed what this whistleblower said. In 
fact, I received internal government documents that confirmed what he 
said. Anonymous patriots tried to ensure that the truth would come out. 
You know, that is about the only crime whistleblowers commit--
committing truth. Isn't that sad?
  I forwarded many of those documents that I received clandestinely to 
Attorney General Holder and Acting Director Melson. I asked them how to 
square the denials from that Department with the evidence I have 
received both orally and on paper.
  At Attorney General Holder's confirmation hearing--now 2 years ago--I 
told him:

       I expect that you will be responsive to my oversight work 
     and that my questions and document requests will be taken 
     seriously. . . . I hope that I have your assurance that if 
     you are confirmed, you will assist me with oversight 
     activities, be responsive to my requests, and help me make 
     the Justice Department accountable.

  Now, the Attorney General, who was the nominee at that time, 
responded:

       I will try to do all that I can to make sure that we 
     respond fully and in a timely fashion to the very legitimate 
     questions that I know you have propounded to the Department.

  But now, ironically, I have provided more internal documents to the 
Justice Department in this investigation than the Justice Department 
has provided to me. Now, instead of issuing denials, do you know what 
happened? It happens all the time when you are doing oversight work, 
with almost any agency. But in this case, the Justice Department has 
circled the wagon. They have clammed up.
  The President of the United States admitted on Spanish language 
television that ``certain mistakes'' may have been made here in the 
instance of this investigation. He and Attorney General Holder say they 
didn't authorize a policy change that allowed criminals to walk away 
with guns. But there was a change in policy that went tragically wrong. 
The prophecy of a lot of whistleblowers turned out to be fact, sadly. 
So Congress needs to find out what did the highest senior officials 
know and when did they know it.
  The purpose of the policy change was to go after leaders high up in 
the chain of command and bring down a drug cartel. Nobody can find 
fault with that. But prosecutors didn't want to just go after criminals 
who just lie on Federal forms to buy guns for trafficking; they wanted 
to go after the really big fish. The problem is this: They let so many 
little fish keep operating that between 1,300 and 1,700 guns got away. 
That is just in this one case in Arizona that I can document. Hundreds 
of these guns have, in turn, turned up in crimes on both sides of the 
border--some in Mexico and some in the United States.
  Federal agents often have to walk a fine line in trying to catch the 
bad guys. They sometimes have to allow a crime to progress to make sure 
everyone involved in the conspiracy gets caught. I understand that. 
That can be

[[Page S2475]]

legitimate, but you have to look at it this way. It is very serious 
business. It is quite a gamble, you might say. There have to be careful 
controls in an operation like I just described. Law enforcement should 
not cross the line into actually assisting criminals just for the 
simple process of gathering information. Operations should be carefully 
focused on stopping crime without risking public safety. Seizing 
contraband and making arrests are the most important goals. Big, 
headline-grabbing cases to advance some prosecutor's career should take 
a backseat in any of these gambles.
  Yesterday, I sent a letter to Attorney General Holder with some more 
documents. So I am sending the Department documents I would like to 
have them send me. These are documents that maybe the Attorney General 
himself didn't know about.
  There are e-mails between a federally licensed firearms dealer and 
the supervisor in this Arizona case known as ``fast and furious.'' In 
one e-mail, the dealer raises, for a third time now, his concerns about 
how the case is being handled. This time, he was prompted by a story on 
FOX News about the growing firearms problem on our border with Mexico. 
The dealer wrote--and this is a long quote which I will start now:

       The segment is disturbing to me. I shared my concerns with 
     you guys that I wanted to make sure that none of the firearms 
     that were sold per our conversation with you and various ATF 
     agents could, or would ever, end up south of the border and 
     in the hands of the bad guys. I want to help ATF with its 
     investigation, but not at the risk of agents' safety, because 
     I have some very close friends that are U.S. Border Patrol 
     agents in southern Arizona.

  Now, maybe one of those friends, for all I know, was Agent Terry, and 
he got murdered--or at least we think he did--with one of these guns. 
These guns were at the scene, at least. That e-mail I quoted was sent 
to the supervisor of the case 6 months before guns from that case were 
found at the scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry's murder.
  The government put these firearms dealers in a completely unfair 
position. Let me explain that. On the one hand, these gun dealers rely 
upon the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms for their license to 
even be able to be in business. So of course these dealers want to 
cooperate with the government when they have this big club hanging over 
their head: Will you be licensed or not? On the other hand, the 
government asks these gun dealers to keep selling to the bad guys even 
after the dealers warned it might end in tragedy.
  I am going to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this. The 
House Oversight Committee has joined in my effort and issued a subpoena 
for documents because it might duplicate the process in the House.
  I have not sought any subpoenas or hearings in the Senate Judiciary 
Committee yet. I have not exercised my right to object to any unanimous 
consent request on nominations because of this issue yet. However, I 
want my colleagues and officials at the Justice Department to hear this 
loud and clear: If that is what it takes, then I will take those 
actions. I hope it doesn't have to come to that. I hope the Justice 
Department will decide to cooperate and provide the information we 
need, doing our constitutional responsibility of oversight, to make 
sure the checks and balances of the system of government under our 
Constitution is working. It has been nearly 3 months since I first 
raised this issue. It is past time for the Justice Department to come 
clean.
  I ask unanimous consent to printed in the Record a copy of this 
letter to Attorney General Holder.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                      U.S. Senate,


                                   Committee on the Judiciary,

                                   Washington, DC, April 13, 2011.
     Hon. Eric H. Holder, Jr.,
     Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, Pennsylvania 
         Avenue, NW., Washington, DC.
       Dear Attorney General Holder: At approximately 1:30 p.m. 
     yesterday, my staff learned that the Justice Department was 
     making four documents available at 2:00 p.m. for Chairman 
     Darrell Issa's staff to review regarding the controversy over 
     ATF's Project Gunrunner, Operation Fast and Furious, and the 
     death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. These documents are 
     among those I requested in February of this year. Yet, the 
     Justice Department refused to make them available for my 
     staff to review. In fact, the Justice Department has produced 
     not one single page of documents in response to my inquiries.
       Thus far, I have not requested that Chairman Leahy join in 
     any document requests, consider any subpoenas, or schedule 
     any hearings into this matter in the Senate Judiciary 
     Committee. Any such request would be unnecessary and 
     duplicative of the process on the House side, so long as any 
     documents provided there are also provided to the Senate 
     Judiciary Committee at the same time.
       The Department's failure to cooperate with my requests is 
     especially troubling in light of the February 4, 2011, reply 
     to my initial letter. In that reply, the Justice Department 
     took the position that those allegations were ``false'' and 
     specifically denied ``that ATF `sanctioned' or otherwise 
     knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons'' to straw 
     purchasers. The letter further claimed that ``ATF makes every 
     effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased 
     illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.''
       I already provided evidence contradicting that denial in my 
     February 9 and March 3 letters. In addition, attached you 
     will find further documentation undermining the Department's 
     assertion. Specifically, the documents are emails between ATF 
     officials and a Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) in Arizona. 
     These emails demonstrate that ATF instructed gun dealers to 
     engage in suspicious sales despite the dealers' concerns. The 
     emails refer to meetings between the FFL and the U.S. 
     Attorney's office to address the concerns being raised by the 
     FFL. ATF supervisor David Voth wrote on April 13, 2010:
       I understand that the frequency with which some individuals 
     under investigation by our office have been purchasing 
     firearms from your business has caused concerns for you. . . 
     . However, if it helps put you at ease we (ATF) are 
     continually monitoring these suspects using a variety of 
     investigative techniques which I cannot go into [in] detail.
       In response, the gun dealer expresses concern about 
     potential future liability and sought something in writing to 
     address the issue explicitly:
       For us, we were hoping to put together something like a 
     letter of understanding to alleviate concerns of some type of 
     recourse against us down the road for selling these items. We 
     just want to make sure we are cooperating with ATF and that 
     we are not viewed as selling to bad guys.
       Following this email, the ATF arranged a meeting between 
     the FFL and the U.S. Attorney's office. According to the FFL, 
     the U.S. Attorney's office scheduled a follow-up meeting with 
     the FFL, but asked that the FFL's attorney not be present.
       At the meeting on May 13, 2010, the U.S. Attorney's office 
     declined to provide anything in writing but assured the gun 
     dealer in even stronger terms that there were safeguards in 
     place to prevent further distribution of the weapons after 
     being purchased from his business. As we now know, those 
     assurances proved to be untrue. On June 17, 2010, the gun 
     dealer wrote to the ATF to again express concerns after 
     seeing a report on Fox News about firearms and the border:
       The segment, if the information was correct, is disturbing 
     to me. When you, [the Assistant U.S. Attorney], and I met on 
     May 13th, I shared my concerns with you guys that I wanted to 
     make sure that none of the firearms that were sold per our 
     conversation with you and various ATF agents could or would 
     ever end up south of the border or in the hands of the bad 
     guys. . . . I want to help ATF with its investigation but not 
     at the risk of agents' safety because I have some very close 
     friends that are U.S. Border Patrol agents in southern AZ[.]
       Incredibly, the FFL sent this email six months before guns 
     from the same ATF operation were found at the scene of Border 
     Patrol Agent Brian Terry's murder. So, not only were the ATF 
     agents who later blew the whistle predicting that this 
     operation would end in tragedy, so were the gun dealers--even 
     as ATF urged them to make the sales.
       Furthermore, according to the FFL, there were ``one or 
     two'' occasions on which his employees actually witnessed and 
     recorded with surveillance cameras an exchange of money 
     between the straw purchaser and another individual on the 
     premises. Despite this actual knowledge of a straw purchase, 
     the dealer said ATF officials wanted him to proceed with the 
     transaction. However, his employees refused to process the 
     sale.
       In light of this new evidence, the Justice Department's 
     claim that the ATF never knowingly sanctioned or allowed the 
     sale of assault weapons to straw purchasers is simply not 
     credible. As you know, I have multiple document and 
     information requests pending with various components of the 
     Justice Department. Unfortunately, however, it appears that 
     senior Department officials are not allowing the components 
     to respond fully and directly.
       Please provide written answers to the following questions 
     by no later than April 20, 2011:
       1. Do you stand by the assertion in the Department's reply 
     that the ATF whistleblower allegations are ``false'' and 
     specifically that ATF did not sanction or otherwise knowingly 
     allow the sale of assault weapons to straw purchasers? If so, 
     please explain why in light of the mounting evidence to the 
     contrary.
       2. Will you commit to providing the Senate Judiciary 
     Committee with documents, or access to documents, 
     simultaneously with the

[[Page S2476]]

     House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform? If not, 
     please explain why not.
       If you have any questions regarding this request, please 
     have your staff contact Jason Foster at (202) 224-5225. Thank 
     you for your prompt attention these important issues.
           Sincerely,
                                              Charles E. Grassley,
                                                   Ranking Member.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. How much time do I have?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 4 minutes remaining.

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