by AWR Hawkins Houston, we have a problem.
On March 24, 2009, Deputy Attorney General David Ogden made the following announcement: “The President has directed us to take action to fight [Mexican] cartels…and Attorney General Holder and I are taking several new and aggressive steps as part of the administration’s comprehensive plan.”
Note: From the moment this announcement begins, “the President” and “Attorney General Holder” are both involved in some capacity.
The announcement continued by saying the DEA was going to increase its presence in Mexico and on the border, and that the ATF was using $10 million from the stimulus funds to add “37 new employees and 3 new offices” and “redeploying 100 personnel to the Southwest border in the next 45 days, to fortify its project gunrunner, which is aimed at disrupting arms trafficking between the United States and Mexico.”
Of course, this dovetails perfectly with Holder’s speech in Mexico on April 2, 2009, where he literally referred back to Ogden’s announcement in describing the focus on the southern border and project gunrunner:
Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels. My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion. DHS is making similar commitments, as Secretary Napolitano will detail. (emphasis mine)
To date, Holder & Co. have dodged questions on these speeches and announcements by saying Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious were two different things. Thus, his knowledge of one doesn’t necessitate knowledge of the other. Of course this isn’t plausible, because Gunrunner and Fast & Furious were both parts of the same overarching “comprehensive plan.” They were two sides of the same coin.
(In fact, to say you knew about one without knowing about the other would be like a football coach saying, “I have knowledge of the plays we run on first and ten, but not on third and long.” Such an excuse won’t work because first down plays and third down plays are part of an overarching game plan that the coaches win or lose by together.)
The attempt to split the two up, and thereby construct some some wall of ignorance that protects Holder from knowing about Fast and Furious, is exactly what’s making it so hard for the AG and Obama to keep their stories straight.
Thus, while Holder claims he only learned of Fast and Furious in the “few weeks” prior to May 3rd, in March 2011 Obama made a statement which at least alluded to a conversation about Fast and Furious and gun walking he’d had with Holder, whom Obama said “has been very clear that he knew nothing about this.”
Folks, there are serious problems here.
Number one, Holder had to know about Fast and Furious – he had to at least have been told about it – in order to deny involvement in it before Obama made his statement in March 2011.
Problem number two, Holder’s reason for distancing himself from Fast and Furious was the gun walking aspect of it. But we’ve all read Ogden’s announcement and Holders’ speech, where both men mention Gunrunner as part of the overarching comprehensive plan.
The bottom line: Holder knew about Fast and Furious before he didn’t know about it. And he bragged about the gun walking plan on April 2, 2009.
The lies surrounding this operation are so blatant, so bald, that even writing on the story can be infuriating.
Big Government
