The head of the House oversight panel suggests the real reason for the administration's invoking executive privilege in the Fast and Furious case is to hide proof that the operation was part of a push for gun control.
Defenders of President Obama's use of executive privilege to provide cover for Attorney General Eric Holder in the gun-running fiasco that resulted in the deaths of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and ICE Agent Jaime Zapata may dismiss it as just another conspiracy theory. But the suggestion by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., that the deadly operation was conceived to advance the administration's gun-control agenda is quite plausible.
"Here's the real answer as to gun control," Issa said on ABC's "This Week": "We have email from people involved in this that are talking about using what they're finding here to support the — basically assault weapons — ban or greater reporting."
Issa was asked about the possible connection after comments he made at an NRA convention. "Could it be," he said on NRA News' "Cam & Company" program, "that what they really were thinking of was in fact to use this walking of guns in order to promote an assault weapons ban? Many think so. And they haven't come up with an explanation that would cause any of us not to agree."
Perhaps the answer is in the documents that Holder and Obama are risking much to hide. As we observed recently, the way Fast and Furious, the government's gun-running operation, was executed made no sense unless its intended purpose was to facilitate violence with U.S. weapons in the interests of pursuing the administration's gun-control agenda.
...... On July 14, 2010, roughly five months before Agent Terry's murder, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF's Phoenix special agent in charge of Fast and Furious. "Bill," the email read, "can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time? We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun sales. Thanks."
A Jan. 24, 2011, email showed Newell saw it as an opportunity "to address (the) Multiple Sales on Long Guns issue." Chait emailed Newell that "this case could be a strong supporting factor if we can determine how many multiple sales of long guns occurred during the course of the case."
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If there are other documents that show this scheme it would explain the otherwise inexplicable resistance to disclosure. The two emails mentioned above seem consistent with a pattern by the ATF and the DOJ of exaggerating the number of guns from the US found at Mexico crime scenes. Despite being exposed as misleading they kept on using the bogus statistics. They excluded from the weapons found guns the Mexicans knew were from their own arsenal or from other sources in order to make it look like a greater percentage of the weapons came from US gun dealers. What was interesting was how many in the media kept using the bogus stats even after they had been discredited.
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