Congress upset with false report on border agents

Houston Chronicle:

Republican congressmen's outrage over the imprisonment of two Border Patrol agents from Texas intensified Wednesday as the top Homeland Security investigative official apologized for his aides' misleading statements to lawmakers about the case.

The agents, sent to federal prison for wounding a fleeing Mexican drug trafficker and hiding evidence, never told investigators that they went on patrol intending to "shoot a Mexican," admitted Richard Skinner, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, under questioning during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing.

The misstatements occurred when aides briefed four Texas congressmen in September about the 2005 shooting near Fabens, southeast of El Paso.

"It was an unfortunate mischaracterization," Skinner told Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, whose district stretches to Harris County. "I apologize on behalf of our staff, and I just want to make perfectly clear this was not intentional."

But McCaul and several other House members from the Houston area who are involved in the Border Patrol agents' case said the misstatements never would have come to light had they not forced Skinner's office to release an investigative report on the shooting.

The report, released Wednesday with some sections deleted, does not substantiate what McCaul said were some of the more inflammatory claims made by the inspector general's office last fall. The claims included the alleged "shoot a Mexican" comment and an assertion that agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos had no fear for their lives when they fired 15 rounds at the trafficker as he ran back toward Mexico after ditching a van with 743 pounds of marijuana.

"Those representations became misrepresentations if not downright false statements to members of Congress," McCaul said, later suggesting that Skinner should consider disciplining or firing the staffers.

In an interview, Skinner questioned the push to punish his office for "an innocent, unintended characterization."

Other Republicans on Capitol Hill went further than McCaul in what has mushroomed into a growing political liability for President Bush and his administration — a vulnerability all the greater because some of the president's staunchest conservative allies have turned against him on this issue.

Reps. John Culberson of Houston and Sam Johnson of Plano said Skinner and his top aides should be forced to resign.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., demanded that the Bureau of Prisons chief, Harley Lappin, be fired after Saturday's beating of Ramos by six inmates at a Mississippi prison.

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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., granted a request Wednesday by Cornyn and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., for a committee investigation and hearing into the case. McCaul is asking the House Homeland Security Committee to conduct a hearing as well.

And Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, demanded a Justice Department investigation into the faulty statements made to lawmakers by the inspector general's staff last fall.

"It was a fabrication," Poe said flatly of the investigators' claims. Poe wouldn't hazard a guess as to why the investigators misspoke. But Culberson offered an opinion.

"There is no chance this was an innocent mistake," Culberson said. "Those statements made to us were designed to throw us off the scent and cover up what is obviously an unjust criminal prosecution of two officers who were protecting our borders from criminals and terrorists sneaking in."

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There is more in the Chronicle article and also in the Washington Times.

Clearly the administration has not convinced the jury in Congress of the agents guilt or necessity of punishment. The prosecutor has made his case and Congress for the most part is not persuaded. Nor should it be. At most these agents deserved to be disciplined. The drug smuggler should be the one in jail. The US attorney in this case got it completely backwards on giving immunity to a criminal to get a conviction of law enforcement officers. Congress sees it. The public understands it. He was able to persuade some jurors in a setting that ignored justice for these men and gave undeserved "justice" to a drug smuggler. It is not the only case where this US attorney has sided with alien law breakers over law enforcement. It is time for this guy to resign.