Accountability for "Operation Fast and Furious"

Details about the Justice Department's horribly botched gun-tracking program, dubbed "Fast and Furious," reveal government incompetence at best and misconduct at worst. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been investigating this troubling case for months -- often with little cooperation from Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department.

The Fast and Furious program was implemented to prevent the transfer of U.S. guns to Mexican drug cartels. Conducted out of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) offices in Phoenix, the operation was designed with the approval of ATF's parent agency, the Department of Justice. In November 2009, ATF agents in Arizona began monitoring local gun traffickers who purchased hundreds of firearms that were then passed on to middlemen and ultimately to violent Mexican cartels. Rather than make arrests and confiscate the weapons, ATF agents were ordered to stand down and see where the weapons ended up.

Two years later, most of the weapons are missing. Of the 2,020 guns that were allowed by Operation Fast and Furious to hit the streets, a full 1,430 have not been recovered while 227 have been recovered in Mexico and 363 have been found in the United States. Two of these were recovered at the scene of a border confrontation in which five suspected illegal immigrants opened fire on U.S. officers, killing 40-year-old U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. After this tragedy in December 2010, frustrated agents contacted members of Congress -- after their repeated warnings about Operation Fast and Furious were ignored by their superiors at ATF and the Justice Department.

Congressional efforts to investigate the disastrous operation have met with little cooperation. After being instructed by the Justice Department to stay quiet, former ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson eventually told congressional investigators, "It appears thoroughly to us that the Department is really trying to figure out a way to push the information away from their political appointees at the [Justice] Department."

For months, the Department of Justice has issued incomplete and contradictory responses to the Oversight Committee's inquiries. In testimony before the committee, Attorney General Holder stated that he "probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks." However, a number of documents indicate that Holder and other top Justice Department officials were regularly briefed on the program as early as July 2010. As Committee Chairman Darrell Issa stated in a letter to Holder, the attorney general and his department have done little but "obfuscate, shift blame, berate, and attempt to change the topic away from the Department's responsibility in the creation, implementation, and authorization of this reckless program."

The Oversight Committee has now issued a subpoena to force the attorney general to cooperate and turn over the relevant documents. This scandal is just the latest example of the arrogance and irresponsibility that have brought public trust and confidence in the federal government to an all-time low. Regardless of where the investigation leads, those responsible must be held accountable so the mistakes of Operation Fast and Furious are not repeated.