Lawyers, Guns, and Money :: 09/27/2011

Last December, U.S. border patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered in a firefight with three Mexican nationals in Arizona. Two guns recovered at the crime scene were traced back to an ongoing Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) investigation, informally known under the code names "Gunwalker" and "Fast and Furious."

As part of this investigation, ATF had allowed American firearms dealers to sell more than 2,000 guns to Mexican criminal gangs with no plan to interdict or recover the guns. Several ATF agents had expressed concern about the operation. One of the firearms dealers involved had even emailed the ATF agent in charge to express concern that the operation was putting the lives of border patrol agents at risk-six months before Terry's murder.

Thanks to some whistleblowers, there's now a congressional inquiry into the Gunwalker operation. But, closing in on a year after Terry's death, we still have no clear idea of what law enforcement goals Gunwalker was supposed to achieve. In a recent conference call with reporters, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Darrell Issa could only conclude, "This was dumb, it was useless, and it was lethal."

The Justice Department, meanwhile, continues to impede attempts to determine what happened. Brian Terry's mother Josephine has been blunt about her frustration. "Justice, to us, is not beating around the bush. If the government wants to hide something, that's what irritates us. If you made a mistake ...... say you did. Just say you did," she told the Associated Press earlier this year.

So we can only imagine the outrage Josephine Terry must have felt last week, when leaked audio hit the Internet in which one of the dealers involved in the operation-now a witness for Issa's committee-describes Brian Terry's murder as "collateral damage," while an ATF agent mumbles in agreement.