Defending Fast and Furious is a fools errrand

Katie Pavlich:

"A Fortune investigation reveals that the ATF never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. How the world came to believe just the opposite is a tale of rivalry, murder, and political bloodlust."

That's the subtitle of an "investigation" from Fortune Magazine today, or in other words, a full out distortion and dismissal of the facts in the Fact and Furious case. The article is long and I'm not going to take the time to debunk the entire thing, but just a few points.

First, the article gives a full defense of corrupt ATF Supervisor David Voth while smearing gun dealers as massive suppliers of drug cartels.

Customers can legally buy as many weapons as they want in Arizona as long as they're 18 or older and pass a criminal background check. There are no waiting periods and no need for permits, and buyers are allowed to resell the guns. "In Arizona," says Voth, "someone buying three guns is like someone buying a sandwich."

By 2009 the Sinaloa drug cartel had made Phoenix its gun supermarket and recruited young Americans as its designated shoppers or straw purchasers. Voth and his agents began investigating a group of buyers, some not even old enough to buy beer, whose members were plunking down as much as $20,000 in cash to purchase up to 20 semiautomatics at a time, and then delivering the weapons to others.

Fact: During Operation Fast and Furious, gun dealers repeatedly emailed Voth, asking whether guns they were selling under orders from ATF, were ending up in the wrong hands. Voth assured them they were not. More than two thousands guns trafficked into Mexico and hundreds of dead victims later, that turned out to be a lie. Gun dealers repeatedly raised concerns about ATF telling them to allow straw purchasers using false ID and loads of cash to buy weapons. In 2010, a gun dealer emailed Voth because a straw purchaser had placed a large order and the dealer wanted to know if he should order more stock. Once again, so he could comply with ATF's order to sell. Voth told him, go right ahead. Order the guns, sell to the bad guys.

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You can read more about Voth here.

Next, the Fortune article claims officials directly involved in Fast and Furious never intentionally trafficked guns into Mexico and and actually seized guns.

Quite simply, there's a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.

The guns sold during Fast and Furious didn't "eventually fall into criminal hands," they were put there intentionally as soon as ATF approved the sale of those guns to guys they knew were straw purchasers before they even walked through the door of the gun dealerships. Not to mention, weapons were never seized until they were found at violent crime scenes; 1400 remain missing. 

And of course, according to Fortune, this whole Fast and Furious scandal has been drummed up by...right wing bloggers!

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There is more.

Pavlich has written a book on Fast and Furious.  It is interesting to see how publications like fortune would try to defend what is truly a scandal of gigantic proportions.  Have they no shame?   As the House is closing in on requiring Holder to produce documents it appears that some in the media have joined the cover up rather than efforts to get to the bottom of the scandal.