[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
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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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