Prepared Floor Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley

Justice Department Accountability Matters

More Fast and Furious Stonewalling

Thursday, February 9, 2012

For over a year now I have been investigating Fast and Furious, an operation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

This has been a complicated investigation.  It's been made even more difficult because of the Justice Department's lack of candor and transparency.  The Justice Department is stonewalling, interfering with Congress' constitutional responsibility of oversight.

For example, the Justice Department Office of Inspector General recently disclosed that it has received 80,000 pages of documents from the Department and over 100,000 emails.  That stands in stark contrast to the 6,000 pages of documents we've received from them.

Similarly, the Inspector General has been allowed to conduct 70 witness interviews.  By contrast, the Justice Department has only provided 9 witnesses to us.

Last week Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  The Justice Department did a document dump to Congress the Friday night before the hearing.

That has become a bad habit for the Department.

In fact, without giving us any advance notice that it was coming, they slid a CD of documents under our door after business hours when my office was already closed.  They managed to find time to leak the documents to the press during regular business hours.

Why would they be so mysterious, wanting to put a disk under our door on a Friday night, giving it to the press hours before?  What sort of attitude is that of the Justice Department towards the cooperation that you ought to have with our filling our constitutional role of oversight?

I'd say it's hardly any cooperation whatsoever.

Now, even though we get a dribble here and a dribble there, even though we get a c.d. under the door instead of very open face-to-face receiving documents, what we got last Friday did reveal further facts about a previously unknown proposal to allow these guns to cross the border.

We have long known that in March 2011, Deputy Attorney General James Cole had a conference call with all Southwest Border U.S. Attorneys.

In a follow-up email after the call, Mr. Cole wrote:

"As I said on the call, to avoid any potential confusion, I want to reiterate the Department's policy: We should not design or conduct undercover operations which include guns crossing the border. If we have knowledge that guns are about to cross the border, we must take immediate action to stop the firearms from crossing the border, even if that prematurely terminates or otherwise jeopardizes an investigation."

Attorney General Holder himself told us at a hearing in May that Mr. Cole was simply reiterating an existing Justice Department policy in his email, not communicating a new policy.

So imagine my surprise when I discover in the documents slid under my door late that Friday night that while in Mexico, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer proposed letting guns cross the border.

His proposal came at the same time the Department was preparing to send its letter to me denying that ATF ever does the very thing he was proposing.

In a February 4, 2011 email, the Justice Department attaché in Mexico City wrote to a number of officials at the Justice Department:

"AAG Breuer proposed allowing straw purchasers to cross into Mexico so [the Secretariat of Public Security] can arrest and [the Attorney General of Mexico] can prosecute and convict.  Such coordinated operations between the US and Mexico may send a strong message to arms traffickers."

So, we've got people here in Washington who say the program doesn't exist.  At the same time we've got people talking down in Mexico City of what we're trying to accomplish by the illegal sale of guns.

The recipients of this email included Mr. Breuer's deputy, Jason Weinstein, who was helping to write the Justice Department's letter to me that they would later withdraw for its inaccuracies.

Mr. Weinstein was sending updates about the draft letter to Mr. Breuer in Mexico.  Yet, during his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Breuer downplayed his involvement in reviewing the draft letter.

It is outrageous to me that the head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division proposed exactly what his Department was denying to me was happening.

The Justice Department's letter to me clearly said:

"ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico."

Yet as those words were being sent to Congress Mr. Breuer was advocating that a Justice Department operation allow weapons to be transported into Mexico.  Further, it directly contradicted what the Justice Department has said its policy was.

They can't have it both ways.

If they didn't have a policy against such operations, perhaps it is not a surprise that an operation like Fast and Furious sprang up.

After all, as that same Justice Department attaché wrote of a meeting a few days after his first email:

"I raised the issue that there is an inherent risk in allowing weapons to pass from the US to Mexico; the possibility of the [Government of Mexico] not seizing the weapons; and the weapons being used to commit a crime in Mexico."

The light bulb went on.   Of course, if you're selling guns illegally, 2,000 of them, then don't interdict them, they end up murdering people in Mexico and one person in the United States at least.

If the Justice Department did have a policy against such operations, this is a record of Mr. Breuer proposing to violate it.

That's not just my conclusion.  That's the Attorney General's conclusion as well.

At last week's hearing, the Attorney General was asked to explain the contradiction between his deputy's anti-gunwalking policy and the evidence of Mr. Breuer's proposed operation to let guns cross the border.

He couldn't.

The Attorney General answered: "Well, clearly what was proposed in, I guess, February by Lanny Breuer was in contravention of the policy that I had the Deputy Attorney General make clear to everybody at Main Justice and to the field..."

Perhaps this disconnect between Justice Department policy and Lanny Breuer's proposal explains Mr. Breuer's previous inaction to stop gunwalking.

When he found out about gunwalking in Operation Wide Receiver in April 2010, he failed to do anything to stop it or hold anyone accountable.  He simply had his deputy inform ATF leadership.

Regardless, Mr. Breuer's contravention of Justice Department policy is yet another reason why it is long past time for him to go.  Mr. Breuer has misled Congress about whether he was aware of the Department's false letter to me.

To this day, he is still the highest-ranking official in ANY administration that we know was aware of gunwalking in any federal program.

Yet he took no actions to stop gunwalking.  He failed to alert the Attorney General or the Inspector General.  Mr. Breuer has failed the Justice Department, and he has failed the American people.  This failure raises some important questions.

When did Attorney General Holder determine that Mr. Breuer was proposing allowing straw purchasers to reach Mexico with trafficked weapons?

What has he done about it?

Will Mr. Breuer be held accountable for hatching a plan to directly violate the Attorney General's anti-gunwalking policy?

The Attorney General clearly testified that the proposal was in "contravention" of the policy.

How does the Justice Department know other senior Criminal Division officials weren't proposing operations similar to Fast and Furious?

These are just a subset of some of the major questions remaining in our investigation of Operation Fast and Furious.

It has now been one year since the Justice Department sent its false letter to me.

How did the Justice Department move from its position of dismissing the complaints of whistleblowers to acknowledging that they were true?

What officials were internally dismissive of the whistleblowers' complaints, and who believed they could have merit and should be taken seriously?

To what extent did Justice Department officials seek to retaliate against whistleblowers?

Exactly how and when did Justice Department officials begin to learn the truth of what happened?

Former ATF Director Ken Melson has testified how and when he learned that guns had walked.

What about Attorney General Holder?

What about Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer?

A year after Operation Fast and Furious concluded, who will be held accountable?

Why didn't top Justice Department officials see the clear connections between Fast and Furious and previous flawed operations that they have admitted they knew about?

How has the Justice Department assessed the mistakes and culpability of these top officials?

It's time for the Justice Department to stop stonewalling and start providing answers.

It's time for them to share with Congress the other 74,000 pages of documents they've turned over to the Inspector General.  It's time for them to give us access to the dozens of other people the Inspector General has been allowed to interview.

In short, it's time for them to come clean with the American people.

As recently as January, the U.S. Supreme Court was debating whether TV networks should be fined for showing a bare body part - in this case, a woman's butt ? on an episode of ABC's "NYPD Blue."

A lawyer arguing for the networks noted enforcement could lead to complaints about the Summer Olympics in Beijing: During the opening ceremonies a statute of a bare-breasted, bare-bottomed woman was plainly visible.

A decision isn't expected until June, but no matter the result, the very fact this is a matter before the highest court in the land troubles historian Mike Foster.

America remains surprisingly prudish, or at least hypocritical, about nudity, says Foster, co-author with his wife, Barbara, of the biography, A Dangerous Woman: The Life, Loves, and Scandals of Adah Isaccs Menken (www.TheGreatBare.com). 

"Officially, we're uptight about nudity," he says, "but happy to watch it in the media. Advertisers use nudity to make a buck, publishers to sell product, and protesters take it off to make a point.

"Lindsay Lohan's nude spread for Playboy earned her a million dollars and was pirated on the Internet. Helen Mirren, at 64, posed topless for a puff promoting 'Love Ranch.' PETA women, who strip in public for attention to animal rights ? 'go naked instead of wearing fur' ? have been joined by their men.

The "ultimate fantasy commercial" for this year's Super Bowl featured a beautiful Colombian model looking stark naked. It was done with paint and 100 million viewers feasted their eyes on a nude illusion.

Foster says our nude hypocrisy stems from the Victorian era, when actress Adah Menken was dubbed "The Great Bare" by writer/admirer Mark Twain. The Civil War-era bombshell singer and actress became famous as The Naked Lady for her starring role in "Mazeppa," a drama in which she rode a stallion up a four-story stage mountain, apparently in the buff. She actually wore a flesh-colored body stocking, but the audience gasped ? yet another nude illusion.

It's mystifying that in Western Europe, the birthplace of many American traditions and values, billboards, TV shows and commercials featuring nudity are commonplace. Nude sunbathers enjoy their nations' beaches ? and don't go home with awkward tan lines.

One hopeful sign that America's easing up: At actress Betty White's televised 90th birthday tribute, Tina Fey claimed the older actress told her: "Never let anyone tell you that you are not good enough to pose nude."

Yes, our favorite "Golden Girl" did it, decades ago. Yet another "dangerous woman" ahead of her time?

About Michael & Barbara Foster

Michael Foster is a historian, novelist and biographer, acclaimed by the New York Times. He earned his Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. "A Dangerous Woman" is his fifth book. Barbara Foster is an associate professor of women's studies at City University of New York.

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SPRINGFIELD - February 8, 2012. Lt. Governor Sheila Simon commended state representatives today on their 116-2 passage of House Joint Resolution 29 and urged senators to approve the Constitutional amendment. The resolution amends the section of the Illinois Bill of Rights concerning crime victims.

Currently, the Bill of Rights outlines certain protections for crime victims, but fails to offer any sort remedy if a right is violated. The resolution permits crime victims to ask that their rights be enforced and requires the court to act promptly on such a request. For example, if a hearing is held without the victim being notified by the court, the victim could assert the right to timely notification and ask the hearing be held again. Illinois is the only state in the union that does not provide such a remedy for its crime victims.

"The criminal justice system affords many protections for crime victims, but without proper enforcement, the protections are barely of any use," Simon said. "By adopting this resolution, representatives have brought this critical issue to light and give Illinois residents the opportunity to make these changes to the state Constitution."

The resolution will now move to the Senate. If passed by a 3/5 majority in that chamber, the amendment will be placed on the November 2012 ballot where it will require a 3/5 vote of Illinois citizens to be accepted.

Simon, a former Jackson County prosecutor, founded the domestic violence legal clinic at Southern Illinois University School of Law in Carbondale.

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