ATF Acting Director Melson: Justice Department Obstructing Gunwalker Investigation

The Justice Department is obstructing the congressional investigation of a U.S. law enforcement operation intended to crack down on major weapons traffickers on the Southwest border, according to the embattled leader of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Ken Melson, the acting director of the ATF, lobbed the accusation when he sneaked in for an interview with congressional investigators on July 4, two days ahead of his scheduled interview with the inspector general about the operation known as "Fast and Furious," Fox News has learned.

"If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand," Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder. "That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation."

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Via avordvet, L&P

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UPDATE

Sipsey Street Irregulars

What my source said yesterday: "Melson was too cute by half. He tried to protect himself without giving up too much." That is consistent with what Solomon writes above. How did the investigators react? I asked. Were they pissed? "You don't pull in a big fish all at once, you take up every slack in the line he gives you until you're ready to gaff him. These are patient fishermen."

Still, I said, if the questioning was in any way competent, Melson had to have given up more than he wanted to. His reply?

"You bet your ass he did."

Leading to other agencies and higher ups? I asked.

"You bet your ass he did. Laterally and vertically. . . They're peeling back the onion."

If, as this story suggests, the straw buyers and smugglers were informants or operatives of the DEA and FBI, unbeknown to the ATF, the Gunwalker conspiracy just got broader, higher and more evil. What Melson is suggesting here, beyond embracing his own incompetence in favor of his own culpability, is that the ATF was the unwitting tool in a larger conspiracy. "Just shut up, let the guns walk and track them after they turn up in Mexico, and other people will handle what happens in the middle."

Melson's claim is nothing less than a declaration of war on the FBI and DEA, and they will defend themselves. Expect more revelations to come from that internecine process. If Melson is right, it also implicates DHS, the National Security Agency and the White House, for the larger operation would not, could not, have proceeded without authorization and coordination from the top.
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Text of Grassley/Issa Letter to the Arch-criminal Holder

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From the Mexican newspaper Excelsior: The U.S. sells us arms, admits Zeta kingpin.