Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Buckle up: An agent testifies that surveillance stopped at the border, meaning the operation didn't actually trace guns to cartels to make arrests. The only conclusion? Law enforcement wasn't the point, orchestrated violence was, and that's a history-making scandal.
The most damning revelations coming out of the hearings on Operation Fast and Furious held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform are the unmistakable indications that the program was never designed to succeed as a law enforcement operation at all.
A quartet of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) agents and supervisors turned into whistleblowers to bring the operation down, but only after U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down in the Arizona desert. Two of the weapons recovered at the scene of Terry's murder were traced to the operation.