[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 192 (Wednesday, December 14, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8570-S8573]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            FAST AND FURIOUS

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, the reason I came to the Senate floor is 
to give my colleagues an update on the Fast and Furious investigation 
that I have been conducting since last January 31.
  For almost 11 months now, I have been investigating Fast and Furious, 
an operation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, ATF. On 
December 2, the Justice Department finally came clean about who helped 
draft its February 4 letter to Congress. That was a letter I wrote that 
they responded to since I opened the investigation on January 31. It 
only took them a few days to get a letter to me that had a tremendous 
number of falsehoods in it.
  That letter falsely denied ATF whistleblower allegations that ATF 
walked guns. The revelation in the December 2 documents of this year 
were the last straw for me. They admitted the February 4 letter had 
falsehoods in it. I called for Assistant Attorney General Breuer to 
step down, and I don't do that lightly.
  Earlier documents had already shown Mr. Breuer displayed a stunning 
lack of judgment in failing to respond adequately when told guns had 
walked in Operation Wide Receiver in the years 2006-07. The December 2 
document showed that Mr. Breuer was far more informed during the 
drafting of the February 4 letter than he admitted before the Judiciary 
Committee just 1 month earlier. These two issues led me to call for the 
resignation of Mr. Breuer, the highest ranking official in the Justice 
Department who knew about gunwalking in Operation Wide Receiver.
  The December 2 documents also established a number of other key 
points. The first is that the Justice Department has a flawed process 
for responding to letters from Congress that involve whistleblowers. So 
any of my colleagues, any of the 99 other Senators who are writing 
letters to the Justice Department, understand they have a flawed 
process if it involved whistleblowers responding to us. I will show

[[Page S8571]]

that to you. In the cover letter that accompanied the documents, the 
Justice Department wrote that, in drafting their February 4 response, 
which had these falsehoods in it:

       Department personnel . . . relied on information provided 
     by supervisors from the components in the best position to 
     know the relevant facts.

  They were listening to supervisors because they only listen to 
supervisors. That is the problem with not answering the letters in a 
truthful way, to me, 5 days later after I handed them to the Attorney 
General. I will show that in just a minute.
  Clearly, the Justice Department did not rely on those in the best 
position to know the facts, since the letter was withdrawn on December 
2 due to its inaccuracies.
  I don't know how they can withdraw a letter that is in the public 
domain, but they just somehow withdraw the letter.
  The whistleblowers were in the best position to know the facts. 
Frontline personnel--not supervisors--were in the best position to know 
the facts, not these senior bureaucrats or political appointees. Yet 
the Department failed to provide a credible process for whistleblowers, 
people who know what is happening on a day-to-day basis, and other 
frontline personnel to provide information without fear of retaliation.
  Employees simply do not believe they are free to report misconduct 
because they see what happens to those who speak out. They know it is a 
career killer because the ATF and the Justice Department culture 
protects those who retaliate against whistleblowers. Yet whistleblowers 
in this case spoke out anyway.
  In other words, these whistleblowers were speaking out, taking a 
chance on their professional future in Federal Government because they 
knew something wasn't right about the walking of guns. So they risked 
their career to make sure the truth was known.

  The only crime committed by whistleblowers, generally, is the crime 
of committing truth. But when the Office of Legislative Affairs sought 
information to respond to my inquiries, it didn't ask these brave 
whistleblowers what happened. Instead, it simply relied on self-serving 
denials of senior officials at ATF headquarters or the criminal 
division here in DC or the U.S. attorneys in Arizona.
  In other words, the Department took the word of the very officials 
the whistleblowers alleged had mismanaged the situation in the very 
first place, without getting both sides of the story.
  The U.S. attorney has since admitted in testimony to congressional 
investigators he was too strident when he first heard these 
accusations. He claimed he didn't know all the facts.
  We can't rely on the chain of command when we have a whistleblower. 
By definition, whistleblowers emerge because the chain of command is 
broken. Whistleblowers come to Congress because they are unsuccessful 
in getting their supervisors to address fraud, waste, and abuse. 
Sometimes those supervisors attempt to cover tracks and paper over the 
problem. That is why we have to get the story straight from the horse's 
mouth. We can't let the facts be filtered through multiple layers of 
bureaucracy. After all, the bureaucracy is filled with the same 
supervisors who should have done something about the problem in the 
very first place before whistleblowers even come forward.
  These problems are particularly prevalent in the Federal Government 
that is so very large it is virtually impossible for anyone to ever be 
held accountable for anything. So it is crucial those investigating 
whistleblower allegations go straight to those on the ground level with 
firsthand knowledge of the facts. Their goal should be to understand 
the underlying facts of the whistleblower allegations, not to 
intimidate whistleblowers into silence. Instead, inquiries all too 
often focus on the whistleblowers themselves and what skeletons they 
have in their closet. That approach is exactly what is wrong with the 
Federal Government and why it doesn't function as efficiently as it 
can. Because if more whistleblowers were listened to and wrongs were 
brought to the surface and transparency ruled, there would be more 
accountability.
  The focus should be on whether the accusations are true so the 
problems can be corrected. Too often, however, the focus is on finding 
out what information the whistleblower disclosed so the agency can 
circle the wagons and build a defense. That needs to change. If the 
department is going to regain its credibility, it needs to provide 
straight answers, not talking points and spin.
  The only way to provide straight answers is to make sure we get 
straight answers in the first place. That is one reason we have pushed 
in our investigation to be able to interview frontline personnel.
  The Justice Department objected in a letter Tuesday night. In that 
letter, the Justice Department also objected to us talking to first- or 
second-level supervisors. This is exactly the sort of approach that 
prevents key information from getting to senior officials and to 
Congress and impedes Congress's constitutional responsibilities to see 
that the laws are faithfully executed. In other words, we don't just 
pass laws and say that is the end of it. We have to pass laws to make 
sure we are a check on the executive branch of government and that 
means to do the constitutional job of oversight. That means ask 
questions. That means we are entitled to answers--unless somebody is 
trying to cover up something. When they are trying to cover up 
something in the bureaucracy, I always tell them: If you get 
stonewalled, eventually the truth is going to come out. The more truth 
that comes out, the more egg you are going to have on your face. Mr. 
Breuer is one of those who has tremendous egg on his face.
  Justice cites the so-called line personnel policy for refusing to 
provide officials for voluntary interviews. The policy is based purely 
on nothing but the Department's own preferences. This isn't any law or 
statute or even case law. The Department has frequently set aside the 
policy and made exceptions.
  For example, line attorneys gave transcribed interviews under oath to 
Congress in the 1992 Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Facility 
investigation. As recently as October, assistant U.S. attorney Rachel 
Lieber, the line attorney responsible for the anthrax investigations, 
participated in an interview with PBS's ``Frontline.''
  How can the Justice Department tell me or argue to Congress that 
Congress should not be allowed access to line attorneys when they give 
that same kind of access to the press? Those are the kinds of line 
personnel and individuals who have the actual answers. I kind of 
surmise that the reason the Justice Department will let a U.S. attorney 
or some FBI agents be interviewed on television is that some public 
affairs officer has looked at it and said: This is a good story. This 
is going to make us look good. But when Congress wants to interview 
line people, no, and we have a constitutional responsibility to do 
that.
  I would like to suggest that the Justice Department let the public 
affairs people make a decision of who can talk to Congress because it 
might make them look a little better if they will let them talk to 
Congress or are they afraid we might find out something? It is 
irritating as heck.
  In this case, had the Justice Department gone to the horse's mouth 
before sending an inaccurate letter to me on February 4, they would 
have been able to get the story straight. The memo I have here I am not 
going to read, but I want to hold it up.
  The memo is from an ATF line agent who substantiated the claims of 
the first ATF whistleblowers.
  I ask unanimous consent a copy be printed in the Record immediately 
after my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. GRASSLEY. It is dated February 3, 2011, the day before the 
Justice Department sent their letter to me. The memo was passed up his 
chain in response to investigators on my staff talking to him about 
Operation Fast and Furious. He accurately described the problems with 
Fast and Furious. What he said was consistent with the claims I had 
already heard from other whistleblowers. Information such as this is 
why I was skeptical days later when the Department sent its February 4 
letter to me, denying the allegations. In other words, I had proof they 
were lying to us.
  The agent wrote in the memo about being ordered by a Fast and Furious

[[Page S8572]]

case agent to hold back in their surveillance, so that they did not 
``burn the operation.''
  While watching straw purchasers hand off weapons to traffickers--
violating the laws of this country but encouraged to do it by their own 
Justice Department--the case agent ``told all the agents to leave the 
immediate area.''
  While a crime was being committed the agent said to the agents to 
leave the area immediately. The memo explicitly says:

       The transaction between the suspects took place and the 
     vehicle that took possession of the firearms eventually left 
     the area without agents following it.

  A crime is committed, U.S. agents there let them move on.
  After the phone call to my staff, the ATF agent's supervisor 
requested that he write this memo documenting what he had told my 
investigators. This passed up the chain all the way to the ATF 
leadership. We know that because there are e-mails attaching the memo 
sent to senior headquarter officials. However, the Justice Department 
has refused to provide copies of those e-mails and will only allow them 
to be reviewed at Justice Department headquarters.
  The Department has also refused to provide a copy of this memo. My 
staff had to obtain it from confidential sources.
  One of the questions yet to be answered is who in the Justice 
Department saw the memo and when. Either way, once the Justice 
Department got hold of it they tried to keep it under wraps by refusing 
to give me a copy. They made my staff go to the Justice Department to 
view it, even though the entire memo simply recounts information that 
was already provided to my staff. It is embarrassing to the Department 
because it shows that the truth was easily knowable before the false 
denial was sent to Congress on February 4. If they had asked for 
firsthand documentation such as this memo when they first got my letter 
in January, we would not be where we are today.
  The second point these documents establish is that main Justice had 
problems of its own. It was not all the fault of the ATF or the U.S. 
attorney. Mr. Breuer's deputy, Deputy Attorney General Jason Weinstein, 
participated in drafting a false statement. The Justice Department's 
February 4 letter read:

       ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been 
     purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to 
     Mexico.

  Documents show that line originated in a phone conversation, February 
1, 2011, between Justice Department legislative affairs assistant 
director Billy Hoover from ATF and Jason Weinstein from main Justice's 
criminal division.
  Like Assistant Attorney General Breuer, Mr. Weinstein knew that ATF 
had let hundreds of weapons walk in Operation Wide Receiver, which was 
an earlier, smaller scale case than Fast and Furious. In fact, in April 
2010, he brought that fact to the attention of Mr. Breuer, his boss. 
April 2010 is 8 months before I got involved in this investigation. His 
e-mail to Mr. Breuer about Wide Receiver said:

       As you'll recall from Jim's briefing, ATF let a bunch of 
     guns walk in efforts to get upstream conspirators but only 
     got straws, and didn't recover many guns. Some were recovered 
     in [Mexico] after being used in crimes.

  It is ironic that is how Mr. Weinstein described Wide Receiver. He 
was one of the officials who authorized wiretaps in Fast and Furious. 
Therefore, he was in a position to know that exact same description 
applied to Fast and Furious. Yet he allowed the myth to be perpetrated 
that ATF would never do such a thing. Mr. Weinstein saw the Justice 
Department's very first draft of the letter to Congress. In fact, as 
one of his Justice Department colleagues in the Deputy Attorney 
General's office said, ``CRM,'' which happens to be the criminal 
division, and OLA, which is the Office of Legislative Affairs--``CRM 
and OLA basically drafted it.''
  Mr. Weinstein knew the letter contained a blatantly false line. Yet 
he did nothing to correct it and that line thus remained in every 
successive draft of the letter.
  On December 2 this year, the Justice Department's latest spin was 
that its statement that ``ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons'' 
was ``aspirational.'' Nevertheless, that did not stop them from 
withdrawing the letter for inaccuracies. Perhaps the ``aspirational'' 
language should be saved for mission statements. Responses to specific 
and serious allegations ought to, in a commonsense way, stick to the 
facts, right? This was an oversight letter. I was not asking for some 
``feel good'' fuzzy message about what ATF aspired to. I was asking for 
simple facts.
  A U.S. Border Patrol agent had died, and at the scene of his death 
were two guns from Fast and Furious. So his death was connected to the 
ATF operation. Whistleblowers were reaching outside of the chain of 
command because supervisors would not listen. Instead of treating these 
allegations with the kind of seriousness they deserved, the Justice 
Department resorted to damage control.
  I do not know what else my investigation is going to uncover, but we 
are going to pursue it until we get to the end of it because my goal is 
to find out who at the highest level of government, in Justice or the 
White House, approved this, and get them fired; make sure that the 
Terry family gets all of the information about the death of their son--
to this point they have had hardly anything--and, No. 3, to make sure a 
stupid program like walking guns, Fast and Furious, et cetera, never 
happens again.
  This week the investigation revealed that shortly after the February 
4 letter, Lanny Breuer asked Mr. Weinstein to write up an analytical 
memo of Fast and Furious. This suggests that Mr. Breuer and his deputy 
Mr. Weinstein were down in the weeds on Operation Fast and Furious a 
lot earlier than previously admitted. Mr. Weinstein was in an excellent 
position to write such a memo, since Mr. Breuer has acknowledged that 
Mr. Weinstein was one of the individuals who approved wiretaps in the 
summer of 2010 as part of Operation Fast and Furious. However, we had 
to learn of this memo from sources not from the Justice Department but 
from outside of the Justice Department. The Justice Department has not 
provided it to us, even though it is clearly responsive to a House 
Oversight Government Reform Committee October 25 subpoena.
  This type of maneuvering is what got the Justice Department in 
trouble to begin with. The Justice Department should produce this 
document immediately, along with all the other responsive documents.
  This investigation will continue. People must be held accountable. 
The Justice Department must stop stonewalling today.

                               Exhibit 1

         U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, 
           Firearms and Explosives,
                                 Washington, DC, February 3, 2011.
     Memorandum To: Special Agent in Charge, Dallas Field Division
     Thru: Resident Agent in Charge, Lubbock Field Office
     From: Gary M. Styers, Special Agent, Lubbock Field Office
     Subject: Contact with Congressional Investigators
       On February 2, 2011, at approximately 1500 hours, ATF 
     Special Agent Gary Styers was contacted telephonically by 
     Robert Donovan and Brian Downey, representing United States 
     Senator Chuck Grassley and the Senate Judiciary Committee. 
     Downey and Donovan after identifying themselves asked Special 
     Agent Styers if he would be willing to answer some questions 
     regarding the time Special Agent Styers spent on a detail to 
     the Phoenix Field Division, Phoenix Group VII Office. Special 
     Agent Styers said he would be willing to answer questions to 
     the best of his knowledge.
       Special Agent Styers was asked if he was familiar with the 
     large firearms trafficking case in Phoenix Group VII and 
     Special Agent Styers said he was. Downey and Donovan asked if 
     Special Agent Styers knew the name of the case and he 
     responded that it was ``Fast and Furious.'' Downey and 
     Donovan then asked if Special Agent Styers knew who the case 
     agent was and Special Agent Styers said it was Special Agent 
     Hope McAllister. Special Agent Styers was also asked who the 
     supervisor of the group was and Special Agent Styers said it 
     was Group Supervisor David Voth. Downey and Donovan also 
     asked who helped Special Agent McAllister, Special Agent 
     Styers said that Special Agent McAllister had a Co-Case Agent 
     from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well as an 
     agent from Group VII. Downey and Donovan asked who was the 
     Agent from ICE and Special Agent Styers told them it was Lane 
     France.
       Downey and Donovan asked Special Agent Styers if he knew 
     what the agents were assigned to do on the investigation. 
     Special Agent Styers explained that a group of agents were 
     assigned to the case and that since the case was in the stage 
     of an active

[[Page S8573]]

     wiretap, some agents were working within the group and 
     Special Agent Styers was then asked about his general 
     impression of the Fast and Furious case. Special Agent Styers 
     stated that the case had systematically divided and isolated 
     agents from the group. The case agent had solicited the 
     advice of numerous experienced agents, including Special 
     Agent Styers, regarding how to conduct and end the wiretap 
     operations and case overall. Special Agent Styers gave the 
     case agent his honest opinion and advice since Special Agent 
     Styers had worked two wiretap investigations in his career. 
     Special Agent Styers felt that his advice and opinions, as 
     well as other agents' advice and opinions were widely 
     disregarded. Along with other agents within the group, 
     Special Agent Styers explained that he was no longer asked to 
     assist with Fast and Furious and concentrated on his assigned 
     cases and provided necessary assistance to fellow agents 
     within the detail and group.
       Downey and Donovan asked Special Agent Styers what he felt 
     was incorrect about the way the Fast and Furious case was 
     conducted. Special Agent Styers explained that first and 
     foremost, it is unheard of to have an active wiretap 
     investigation without full time dedicated surveillance units 
     on the ground. Special Agent Styers relayed that no agents in 
     the group were assigned to surveillance on the Fast and 
     Furious case. Special Agent Styers said that other agencies 
     or task force officers may have been used to conduct 
     surveillance and respond to calls of FFLs, but it seemed that 
     either the case agent or Group Supervisor would poll the 
     office for agents who were available to respond at short 
     notice.
       Secondly, Special Agent Styers said that it appeared odd to 
     have a majority of ATF Agents working on a wiretap 
     investigation, who had never worked such a case. Especially, 
     when numerous, permanent Group VII agents and detailers had 
     previous wiretap experience.
       Special Agent Styers was provided with contact information 
     for Downey and Donovan and the conversation was ended. 
     Special Agent Styers contacted the Lubbock Resident Agent in 
     Charge, Jim Luera at 1545 hours after the conversation with 
     Downey and Donovan ended, to inform him of the contact. 
     Special Agent Styers was later asked to document the 
     conversation herein and attempted to do so to the fullest 
     extent possible.
           Respectfully,
                                                   Gary M. Styers.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I do not see another Member on the 
floor. Unless some staff person among the Republicans or Democrats 
tells me somebody is coming, I wish to take another 5 minutes, if I 
could.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, more like 7 or 8 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________