In light of the fact that the Obama Administration is pushing for civilian gun registration, this news becomes even more disturbing. So much for the “right to privacy”.
A recent solicitation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) reveals that the agency is seeking a “massive” online database capable of pulling up individuals’ personal information, connections and associates.
On March 28, ATF posted the notice on FedBizOpps.gov, entitled “Investigative System.” The solicitation was updated on April 5 with a few minor changes.
The document says that the system will be utilized by staff “to provide rapid searches on various entities for example; names, telephone numbers, utility data and reverse phone look-ups, as a means to assist with investigations, and background research on people, assets and businesses.”
The system is described as a “massive online data repository system that contains a wide variety of data sources both historically and current that can be utilized in support of investigations and backgrounds.”
The overview of the solicitation states:
Staff will utilize “a number of internal databases as well as external sources to provide timely and relevant information and intelligence products to law enforcement agencies at the federal, state and local levels.”
The system “provides a means to rapidly check records across the country” and is “necessary in assisting investigators, agents and analyst to find people, their assets, relatives, associates and more.”
The ATF says they will use this system to provide information to Intelligence Analysts, Special Agents, Inspectors, Financial Investigators and Law Enforcement.
The investigative system will allow ATF to “obtain exact matches from partial source data searches such as, incomplete social security numbers, address, VIN numbers, etc.”
The system will also have the ability to “link structured and unstructured data to find connection points between two or more individuals.”
CBS News Online: ATF Fast and Furious: New documents show Attorney General Eric Holder was briefed in July 2010 – LINK
ABC News Online: Fast and Furious: GOP Says Eric Holder is ‘Either Incompetent’ or ‘Misleading Congress’ – LINK
Fox News: House Republicans Request Special Counsel to Probe Holder on ‘Fast and Furious’ – LINK
Weekly Standard: CBS News Reporter Says White House Screamed, Swore at Her Over Fast and Furious – LINK
Investors Business Daily: Cash for Cartels – LINK – See more below.
CBS News Silences Fast and Furious Reporter – LINK
Arizona Sheriffs Association: Attorney General Holder Lied Under Oath. Special Prosecutor Needed – LINK
Video: Allen West asks for Eric Holder’s resignation – LINK
Obama: We’re working on gun control “under the radar” – LINK
***** Original Story*****
Bill Newell, the former Special Agent in Charge of the ATF’s Phoenix Field Office has said over and over again under oath, that at no point didn’t ATF allow guns to be trafficked into Mexico.
This map along with the other documents released today prove otherwise and now over 200 people are dead as a result. Remember this was all an effort to create an excuse to pass more sweeping gun control laws. Any administration capable of this is capable of anything.
WASHINGTON – Late Friday, the White House turned over new documents in the Congressional investigation into the ATF “Fast and Furious” gunwalking scandal.
The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell – who led Fast and Furious – and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O’Reilly are long time friends.
ATF agents say that in Fast and Furious, their agency allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to be sold to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels. At least two of the guns turned up at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.
The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. They discuss ATF’s gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O’Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office’s gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as “letting guns walk.”
A lawyer for the White House wrote Congressional investigators: “none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to allow guns to ‘walk.'”
Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF’s Newell sent the White House’s O’Reilly an “arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up.” The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.
In response, O’Reilly wrote on Sept. 3, 2010 “The arrow chart is really interesting – and – no surprise – implies at least that different (Drug Trafficking Organizations) in Mexico have very different and geographically distinct networks in the US for acquiring guns. Did last year’s TX effort develop a similar graphic?”
The White House counsel who produced the documents stated that some records were not included because of “significant confidentiality interests.”
Also included are email photographs including images of a .50 caliber rifle (left) that Newell tells O’Reilly “was purchased in Tucson, Arizona (part of another OCDTF case).” OCDTF is a joint task force that operates under the Department of Justice and includes the US Attorneys, ATF, DEA, FBI, ICE and IRS. Fast and Furious was an OCDTF case.
An administration source would not describe the Tucson OCDTF case. However, CBS News has learned that ATF’s Phoenix office led an operation out of Tucson called “Wide Receiver.” Sources claim ATF allowed guns to “walk” in that operation, much like Fast and Furious.
Congressional investigators for Republicans Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have asked to interview O’Reilly by September 30. But the Administration informed them that O’Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq and unavailable. [How convenient]
UPDATE II – Cash for Cartels
Investors Business Daily:
The funneling of thousands of American guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in the operation known as Fast and Furious was not a botched sting operation or the result of bureaucratic incompetence. It was not designed to interdict gun trafficking, but to facilitate it.
We now know that it involved not just the use of straw buyers, but also agents of the federal government purchasing weapons with taxpayer money, ordering the licensed dealers to conduct the sales off the books, then calling off surveillance of the gun traffickers and refusing to interdict the transfer of the weapon or arrest the people involved.
According to documents obtained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), agent John Dodson was ordered to buy semiautomatic Draco pistols and was provided a letter by ATF group supervisor David Voth authorizing FFLs (federal firearms licensees) to sell Dodson the guns without filling out the required form.
A copy of the letter obtained by David Codrea of the Gun Rights Examiner tells dealers to “accept this letter in lieu of completing an ATF Form 4473 for the purchase of four (4) CAI, Model Draco, 7.62X39 mm pistols, by Special Agent John Dodson” to be used “in the furtherance of the performance of his official duties.”
Scribbled on the letter is this note: “Picked up guns 6/10/10. Paid cash.”
According to Fox News, Dodson then sold the guns to known illegal buyers who took them to a stash house. Voth disapproved Dodson’s request for 24-hour surveillance and ordered the surveillance team to return to the office.
Dodson stayed behind, against orders. A week later, when a vehicle showed up to transfer the weapons to their ultimate destination, he called for an interdiction team to move in, seize the weapons and arrest the traffickers. Voth refused, and the guns disappeared without surveillance.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
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