ATF Director to Be Reassigned Amid Fast and Furious Uproar

By William Lajeunesse

Published August 30, 2011

FoxNews.com


Kenneth Melson has been acting director of the ATF since 2009.



The acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is being moved to an undisclosed position in the Department of Justice, sources told Fox News on Tuesday.

An announcement was expected as early as Tuesday about Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson, whose agency is caught up in a firearms trafficking scandal dubbed Operation Fast and Furious.

The purge of those responsible for the botched program continued as new documents reveal a deeper involvement of federal agencies beyond ATF.

In Phoenix, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley, who oversaw Fast and Furious on a day-to-day basis, was reassigned from the criminal to civil division. His boss, U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke, was on the hot seat last week and spoke to congressional investigators. According to multiple sources, he got physically sick during questioning and could not finish his session.

Also in Phoenix, three out of the four whistleblowers involved in the case have been reassigned to new positions outside Arizona. Two are headed to Florida, one to South Carolina.

Hurley's reassignment follows the promotions of three ATF supervisors responsible for the operation. William G. McMahon, a former deputy director of operations, took over the Office of Professional Responsibility. Field supervisors William D. Newell and David Voth, also moved up despite heavy criticism.

Their reassignments follows a series of reports on Fox News detailing the face-off between Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, whose investigators have recently broadened their probe. It now reportedly shows a deeper involvement of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.

Operation Fast and Furious, a program designed to track illegal gun sales, turned into an embarrassing scandal after weapons linked to it were found at the scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent's murder last year. Thousands of guns ended up in the hands of Mexican cartel members.

Melson has led the agency since April 2009 supplanting a Bush administration acting director who was also unable to get Senate confirmation over the objections of gun rights groups. It was during his tenure that the ATF Phoenix office began Operation Fast and Furious in the fall of 2009.

With Melson's reassignment, Holder will have to fill the top job at ATF. The likely replacement, ATF Chicago Office head Andrew Traver, was nominated last November by Holder. His nomination is opposed by the National Rifle Association.


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ATF's 'Fast and Furious' firearms tracked to at least 11 violent crimes

Bill Newell, special agent in charge of ATF Phoenix, speaks behind a cache of seized weapons in Phoenix. The ATF is under fire over a Phoenix-based gun-trafficking investigation called "Fast and Furious," in which agents allowed hundreds of guns into the hands of straw purchasers in hopes of making a bigger case. (Matt York / Associated Press / January 25, 2011)


Also
Full coverage: ATF's Fast and Furious scandal
ATF promotes supervisors in controversial gun operation
FBI report at odds with ATF claim on weapons
Fast and Furious: Embassy kept in dark as guns flooded Mexico


By Richard A. Serrano

August 16, 2011, 3:11 p.m.

Firearms illegally trafficked under the ATF’s Fast and Furious program turned up at the scenes of at least 11 “violent crimes” in this country in addition to being involved in the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in southern Arizona last year, the Justice Department has acknowledged to Congress.

Although Justice did not provide any details about those crime scenes, it has been learned that the additional violent crimes occurred in cities such as Phoenix, where Operation Fast and Furious was managed, and as far away as El Paso, Texas, where a total of 42 Fast and Furious weapons were seized in two separate crimes.

The new numbers, which vastly broaden the scope of the danger the program posed to U.S. citizens over a 14-month period, are contained in a letter Justice Department officials turned over last month to Senate Judiciary Committee members.

Documents: Fast and Furious paper trail

In the letter, obtained Tuesday by The Times, Justice officials also reported that ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson “likely became aware” of Fast and Furious as early as December 2009, a month after the program began, and not after January of this year, as he had said. The July 22 letter was signed by Assistant Atty. Gen. Ronald Weich and sent to Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the top members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was in response to questions posed to the Justice Department about Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder and Fast and Furious.

Justice officials were asked how many “violent crime” scenes turned up more Fast and Furious weapons besides the two semiautomatics found after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s slaying last December.

They responded that while the “ATF does not have complete information” on the whereabouts of all the lost guns, “it is our understanding that ATF is aware of 11 instances” where a Fast and Furious firearm “was recovered in connection with a crime of violence in the United States.”

Justice officials did not respond. But a source close to the unfolding controversy said that as early as January 2010, just after the operation was underway, Fast and Furious weapons turned up at crime scenes in Phoenix, Nogales, Douglas and Glendale in Arizona, and in El Paso. The largest haul was 40 Fast and Furious weapons at one crime scene in El Paso.


Documents: Fast and Furious paper trail

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ATF Chief Says He Didn't Approve Tactics

JULY 26, 2011, 4:24 P.M. ET.

By EVAN PEREZ

WASHINGTON—The acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told congressional investigators he did

n't approve the tactics of a federal operation that lost track of firearms purchased by suspected smugglers.

The testimony by acting ATF chief Kenneth Melson and other top officials, released Tuesday, rebutted suspicions voiced by Republican lawmakers that the tactics used in the ATF's Operation Fast and Furious received high-level approval.

But testimony by lower-level officials at a House hearing Tuesday pointed to mismanagement and lack of oversight in letting Fast and Furious move forward in 2009 and 2010. In some cases, senior officials appear not to have asked questions once signs of trouble emerged.

The operation was aimed at catching top smugglers who funnel weapons from the U.S. to drug-cartel gangs in Mexico. To do so, ATF agents let some gun purchases by suspected smugglers go forward.

GOP lawmakers argue the ATF should have known it couldn't keep track of those firearms. They released a report Monday saying that more than 1,000 of the weapons haven't been recovered or traced.

Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released their own report Tuesday with excerpts from interviews with Mr. Melson, his deputy, William Hoover, and others.

"I don't believe that I knew or that Billy Hoover knew ... that the strategy in the case was to watch people buy the guns and not interdict them at some point," the Democratic report quotes Mr. Melson as saying in a July 4 interview.

The interview with Mr. Melson was conducted without Justice Department lawyers present. The acting ATF chief has split with his bosses after reports in The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere that Justice officials wanted to oust him from his post.

According to the report, a congressional interviewer asked Mr. Melson: "Did anyone at the Department of Justice ever tell you or tell anyone else at headquarters and it got to you that those tactics were authorized as part of a new strategy in order to follow the guns, let the guns go, see where they might end up?"

Mr. Melson answered: "No."

However, Lorren Leadmon, an ATF intelligence agent, testified at Tuesday's House hearing that Mr. Melson and other senior officials received briefings in late 2009 and 2010 indicating trouble with the Fast and Furious operation.

Mr. Leadmon said he and others provided details at these briefings of weapons seizures in the U.S. and Mexico tied to Fast and Furious. In addition to the ATF leaders, an official from the criminal division at Justice Department headquarters received the briefings, Mr. Leadmon said.

Also at the hearing, Darren Gil, the ATF's attache in Mexico City during the operation, compared the Fast and Furious missteps to the ATF's performance in its 1993 raid of a religious sect in Waco, Texas, where a gunbattle left four ATF agents dead.

He said the operation exposed how "poor management, poor judgment and poor leadership resulted in disaster. Operation Fast and Furious, as I have come to understand it, is indeed a disaster."

Another ATF official, William McMahon, who led regional field operations, apologized at Tuesday's hearing for apparently not reading some of the documents that he approved, including wiretaps connected to the operation.

Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who is chairman of the House oversight committee, and Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa have led the congressional probe of the operation.

The hearing Tuesday led by Mr. Issa offered an unusual scene, as active ATF agents chastised their bosses, sitting a few seats away, for letting the operation continue.

William Newell, the chief of the ATF Phoenix office during the Fast and Furious operation, defended the way the operation was conceived, saying "it was not the purpose of the investigation to permit the transportation of firearms into Mexico, and to the best of my knowledge none of the suspects in this case was ever witnessed by our agents crossing the border with firearms."

Mr. Hoover told the congressional investigators that he raised concerns and asked in March 2010 that the operation be shut down. It wasn't ended until December 2010, after a border patrol agent was killed in a shootout in Arizona. An assault rifle found at the scene was traced back to a suspect in the Fast and Furious operation.

Mr. Issa scolded Mr. Newell and others who he said were being evasive. He said it remains his goal to have Mr. Newell or his bosses at the ATF and the Justice Department admit that "you knowingly let guns walk."

Tracy Schmaler, a Justice spokeswoman, said the House committee's report didn't include details and testimony that "makes clear that operational details relating to this investigation were unknown to senior Department of Justice officials." She noted that the department's inspector general is investigating the matter.

Write to Evan Perez at evan.perez@wsj.com

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