Operation Fast and Furious

Fast and Furious was the code name for a 2009 and 2010 covert operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Justice . According to the agents, the operation was massively hindered by the Arizona office of the federal attorney's office or failed due to legal concerns and a lack of coordination, so that the operation did not achieve its goals until the press releases. Disputes between the agents of the working group were brought to the press in April 2011, which grossly distorted the context. Because of these media reports, the operation was branded a scandal by Republican politicians . The actual connections were only revealed a year later.

Background and process

The basis of the investigation was the suspicion that Mexican drug cartels are buying weapons on a large scale through innocent straw men in the United States, which are used in the drug war in Mexico . Since only the deliberate purchase of weapons for a third party is a criminal offense, the investigators must prove the intention to pass them on at the time of purchase. The federal prosecutor's office in Phoenix made unusually high demands on this document. The reason for the actions of the prosecutor is the political mood in Arizona , where gun ownership and trade are considered a right of freedom and any restrictions from conservative politicians and the gun lobby are responded to with massive pressure. It is disputed whether the public prosecutor's office deliberately and continuously prevented the ATF from confiscating weapons from straw men. In any case, the ATF agents came to the impression that they could neither pursue the straw men nor confiscate the weapons they had bought, and directed their investigations to those behind them. Operation Fast and Furious was supposed to expose the networks of the straw men and their backers. To this end, at the beginning of January 2010 they wanted to use longer telephone monitoring for the ATF for the first time ; GPS tracking devices were also used. A request by the investigators to tap the phone of the already identified organizer of the purchases in order to obtain evidence of the award of the contract to the straw men was delayed by the public prosecutor for months due to overload or legal or political concerns, so that it did not take effect until March could be. It lasted until August 2010, but did not produce the expected results. As early as April 2010, the agents considered an exit strategy and considered how they could secure evidence of the most serious charges possible in the time still available.

In an operation unrelated to Operation Fast and Furious, in which only one of the members of the Fast and Furious team was involved, as an undercover agent, he had bought weapons with taxes, sold them to an accomplice of the cartels and then planned to use the weapons to seize before the border. However, he went on vacation beforehand and had not adequately informed his staff about the planned transport, so that the weapons reached Mexico.

Two guns from a suspicious purchase on the Fast and Furious database, whose confiscation was expressly prohibited by the federal prosecutor, were found in the border area next to the body of a United States Border Patrol officer who was murdered by the cartels in December 2010 , leading to the The focus of press releases became. It was only after the murder, in mid-January 2011, that the first indictments came up.

The television broadcaster Columbia Broadcasting System claimed in a report that was only based on statements by some employees of the now divided Fast and Furious Team and cited documents in a falsifying way that with the approval of the ATF weapons shop in Arizona, weapons (including assault rifles based on the AK47 ) could have been legally sold to suspected straw men of Mexican drug cartels. This allegation was established and prosecuted for over a year.

examination

A US congressional committee took up the issue and investigated in July 2011 who in the US administration initiated this controversial fight against crime. Kenneth Melson, head of the ATF and responsible for "Operation Fast and Furious", resigned on August 30, 2011. US Attorney General Eric Holder said he did not find out about the covert operation until after it was canceled.

The alleged scandal was used by MPs of the Republicans against the authorities involved and calls for resignation were made against the heads of the authorities. The other management level of the ATF also resigned as a result. In mid-2012, Justice Minister Holder refused to hand over any further files to the congressional committee after handing over all files of the operation and stated that they had no connection with the subject of the investigation. In this refusal he was supported by President Barack Obama , who vetoed the doctrine of executive privilege . As a result, the Republican majority and some Democratic MPs in the House of Representatives voted that Attorney General Holder was in contempt of Congress , an offense of breach of statutory duty to cooperate. There had never been such a vote in the history of the United States.

Also in June 2012, the gun buyers who were believed to have worked for the Mexican drug cartels were found to be FBI informants who received US taxpayers' money for the purchases.

In September 2012, an investigation report by the independent Office of the Inspector General of the US Department of Justice was published . He worked through the processes of the various operations of the ATF Phoenix and came to the conclusion that the agents at no point deliberately let weapons get into the hands of the Mexican cartels, but could not stop the sales that the federal prosecutor had deemed legal. The authorities involved had shown insufficient supervision and cooperation. The responsible federal attorney was overwhelmed by the related and other proceedings, resulting in significant delays. However, he did not accept offers from superiors and colleagues to relieve him. In addition, the superiors in the ATF and the public prosecutor's office should have noticed that the processes in the overall picture could not be in the interests of public safety, so that other investigative and prosecution approaches should have been used.

literature

• United States Department of Justice - Office of the Inspector General: A Review of ATF's Operation Fast and Furious and Related Matters (PDF; 4.7 MB), September 2012

Individual evidence

1. ^ Matthias Rüb: Drug War in Mexico. The failed mission. FAZ, July 30, 2011, accessed October 8, 2011 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Fortune: The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal ( Memento of the original from January 22, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , June 26, 2012 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Review, pages 159 ff
4. ^ Review, page 150
5. ^ Review, page 154
6. ^ Review, page 186
7. ↑ Review, pages 191 ff
8. ↑ Bernd Pickert: Arms trade USA-Mexico. Investigations with a fatal outcome. TAZ, June 16, 2011, accessed October 8, 2011 . 
9. ↑ Peter Winkler: Head rolls after a failed operation on Mexico's border. NZZ Online, September 1, 2011, accessed on October 8, 2011 . 
10. ↑ Jonathan Mann: Arms smuggling campaign becomes a government scandal. news.ch, October 7, 2011, accessed on October 8, 2011 . 
11. ^ Associated Press: Republican-run House, in historic vote, holds attorney general Eric Holder in contempt , June 28, 2012
12. ↑ Review, pages 420 ff