Conference call by Darrell Issa with bloggers on the state of the Gunwalker investigation

Yup. First, as did many bloggers who have written on Gunwalker, I received this email message from the Issa Committee yesterday:

Update on Fast & Furious Investigation

WHO: Chairman Darrell Issa, Oversight & Government Reform Committee.

WHAT: Please join Chairman Issa to discuss the latest developments in the Justice Department's failed Operation Fast and Furious, a program which allowed guns to walk into the hands of drug cartels resulting in the death of border patrol agent Brian Terry and countless Mexican citizens.

WHEN: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 10:15AM EDT – 11:00AM EDT

It included a call-in number and access code.

Now this, to me, was a stunning development in and of itself. As I have been gleefully paraphrasing Bill Clinton recently, "The era of Big media is over." Nothing proves that more so than Darrell Issa's reaching out to bloggers in this way. Of course, it is understandable that he might be more than a little frustrated in the "authorized media." FOX runs a story last week about a "third gun" which was "disappeared" by the FBI at the Terry murder scene and no one followed up on it. I mean, c'mon, it was like finding a second rifle at the Kennedy assassination, but did anybody cover it? No, save one, and that was Sharyl Attkisson at CBS who gave us the ATF-FFL tapes this week verifying the third gun. And did CBS see fit to feature this on the Evening News? Oh, hell no. Sharyl, who was the first of the "mainstream media" to break this story, can't get out of the blog ghetto they have her in. Her Gunwalker stories are not apparently "important enough" to waste valuable broadcast electrons on. Right.

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Dave Workman

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley told this column late Monday that he “never had the slightest idea” when he began looking into Operation Fast and Furious that it would become a huge scandal that has generated three investigations and hearings before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

“It keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” Grassley said in an exclusive telephone interview with Examiner and Gun Week. “It’s much bigger than I anticipated.”

Fast and Furious is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ operation that, according to revelations so far, allowed thousands of guns to be purchased by low-level straw buyers and then moved into the illegal gun pipeline to Mexican drug cartel gunmen. Grassley started asking questions about the operation in late January, as this column reported here and here. In addition to his own probe, there is a House investigation and the Justice Department's Inspector General is also investigating.

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