Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
For months, a mystery has engulfed the U.S. southern border and Mexico -what suddenly caused federal agents to abandon years of practice and knowingly let suspected straw buyers for Mexican drug gangs walk off with semiautomatic weapons from American gun shops?
The answer leads to previously undisclosed instructions given by higher-ups inside the Obama Justice Department, which originally denied any role in the burgeoning controversy, The Daily Beast has learned.
The U.S. government's Fast and Furious operation -which was designed to build criminal cases against Mexican gun traffickers but went awry-has stirred debate in two countries after revelations that frontline agents vehemently objected to their supervisors' order to knowingly let guns be trafficked by suspected straw buyers and that hundreds of the guns they were ordered to "let walk" ended up being used in subsequent crimes, including murders.