WASHINGTON - May 4, 2011 - It is the closest thing to a smoking gun congressional investigators have in their probe of Project Gunrunner - a program that was intended to stop the flow of guns to criminals in Mexico but allowed those guns to be smuggled to Mexico instead.
An internal memo from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shows that U.S. officials allowed criminals to buy 1,318 guns, worth nearly $1 million, even after they suspected the buyers were working for Mexican drug cartels, and that the agency's effort to stop the guns had "yielded little or no results."
That memo came to light Wednesday at a Senate Judiciary Hearing; it was provided by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). The ATF memo shows a list of 15 suspects, all later indicted, who bought guns on behalf of Mexican cartels.
Those suspects are known in the trade as straw buyers, or people who legally purchase guns and illegally resell them, in many cases to Mexican cartel members across the border.
After buying 407 guns, they became suspects in Operation Fast & Furious, an offshoot of Project Gunrunner operated from the Phoenix ATF office.
In a companion memo dated June 15, 2010, field agents say they recovered “179 crime guns in Mexico… and 130” in the U.S., but roughly 1,300 were unaccounted for and "due to the proximity to the border, bank subpoenas and financial investigations have yielded little or no results."
In a second, equally explosive disclosure, a law enforcement source tells Fox News, that ATF undercover agents were acting as the straw buyers and purchasing guns using government issued false identifications,.and then providing those guns to cartel traffickers to gain credibility in their undercover roles. In that capacity, the ATF "provided two 50-cal. machine guns to traffickers, which are loose and unaccounted for in Mexico," the source said.
Despite all this, the ATF and Department of Justice did not shut down the operation.
