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Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Wednesday that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will provide documents to Congress on the Obama-era program dubbed "Fast and Furious" that allowed criminals to purchase guns in Phoenix-based gun shops in order to track them into Mexico.
The Justice Department, then run by Eric Holder, declined to provide documents on the program to Congress in 2012 and was held in contempt of Congress. Today's decision ends six years of litigation with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
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“The Department of Justice under my watch is committed to transparency and the rule of law. This settlement agreement is an important step to make sure that the public finally receives all the facts related to Operation Fast and Furious," Sessions said in a press release.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) operation was discovered in 2010 after two of the guns were found at the scene of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry's murder.
ATF lost track of more than 1,400 guns during the course of the operation, which totaled 70 percent of the number sold.
Last April, a joint U.S.-Mexico task force apprehended Terry's suspected killer, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, at a ranch in northwestern Mexico. In a tweet Saturday, Terry's brother urged President Trump to reopen the investigation into the scandal, which dominated the Obama Justice Department for years.
"We need to find out the truth, exactly what happened, how it happened, why it happened. We need Mr. Trump, President Trump, to unseal the documents, reverse executive privilege so that we know what happened, and that we can hold the people accountable that are responsible," Kent Terry said on "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday.
In the
wake of the Parkland shooting, as in the wake of any mass shooting, there
has been a scramble by various political groups to place blame for the
violence. Everyone is looking for the source of the evil that causes these
events, to little avail. In most cases, at least when it comes to the
extreme Left, the blame is placed squarely on guns themselves. This is obviously
an absurd notion. Placing blame on the particular tool used in the crime
does not solve the problem of the criminal and what led him to the deed.
Whether or not the tool made his crime "easier" is irrelevant to
the greater problem at hand. After
years of debate and failed legislation, leftists have discovered that
resistance to the incremental destruction of the 2nd Amendment is
insurmountable, and a change in narrative has occurred. Finally, we are
talking more about mental health issues and less about guns. This is a win
for gun rights, however, there is a danger that needs to be addressed. First,
while mental health is being presented in the mainstream media more and
more as a central issue in active shooter, I find it interesting that the
problem of psychotropic pharmaceuticals has been conveniently ignored. In a
large number of non-terrorist related shooting incidents, assailants have
been subjected to long term psychotropic drug use. Why has this factor not
been addressed? Well,
consider the fact that Big Pharma has spent at least $2.5
billion over the past ten years lobbying in Washington D.C. Compare this to
the NRA lobbying budget, which in
comparison was a paltry $20 million over the past 10 years according to
OpenSecret. This
should put into perspective the idiocy of anti-gun advocates and their
obsession with the "nefarious" NRA. The influence of the
pharmaceutical industry is almost universally ignored when it comes to the
debate on gun violence, yet their lobbying efforts dwarf all others. All this
despite the fact that psychotropic drugs are proven to influence
violent and even homicidal behavior in people. Second,
the focus on mental health in terms of the Parkland shooting seems to be
glossing over the vast failings of the FBI and local law enforcement in
following up and investigating the dozens of warnings they received about
Nikolas Cruz. As I outlined in my recent article '"Mass shootings will never negate the
need for gun rights," gun grabbers love to trot out legislation on
increased background check restrictions and closing the "gun show
loophole," yet none of their suggested solutions would have stopped
the Parkland tragedy from taking place. The
success of Nikolas Cruz's attack was due to the abject failure of the FBI
and law enforcement, not the failure of background
checks. Had they done their jobs, Cruz never would have been able to
purchase a firearm to begin with. I find it rather ironic that gun grabbers
constantly argue that average citizens do not need guns for self defense
because they have law enforcement to rely on, yet it was exactly the
stupidity of law enforcement that opened the door wide for Cruz to kill. Clearly,
the so-called "authorities" are not trustworthy enough to carry
out the job of protecting us all from active shooters. The only people
capable of stopping an active shooter in a fast and practical manner are
armed citizens on the scene at the moment the attack begins. Third,
and most important, is the issue of mental health parameters and how they
will be used to restrict gun rights. The ATF already has rules regarding people
"adjudicated as mentally defective," which includes people ruled
a danger to themselves and others by a "court, board or commission or
other lawful authority." Now, these guidelines themselves can be
rather broad, but abuse by government so far has been limited (though some
instances have been egregious). If the Trump administration seeks to
broaden the guidelines even further, then we may have a problem. Take for
example the unacceptable abuse of military veterans and their 2nd Amendment
rights by the Bureau of Veterans Affairs. The VA has in recent years placed
restrictions on thousands of veterans in recent years, negating their gun rights without due
process and without oversight. And all of this has been predicated on
the claim that some veterans are "mentally defective" based on
dubious parameters, including whether or not they let their spouse handle
household finances. This is
what I am talking about when I bring up the dangers behind "mental
illness" and gun rights. WHO gets to decide who is mentally ill and
why they are mentally ill? Will this be done by a jury of our peers? Or, by
an unaccountable and faceless bureaucracy? Will the guidelines for mental
illness be strict and specific, or will the be broad and wide open to
interpretation? Once a person has been labeled mentally defective, will
they have the ability to appeal the decision, or will the label haunt them
for the rest of their lives? Gun
rights activists should not put blind faith in the Trump administration to
ensure that new mental health legislation will remain fair to the 2nd
Amendment. Unfortunately, Trump is on record as supporting the "No Fly List" gun control bill.
This bill is something liberty activists opposed vehemently under the Obama
administration because it allows the government to erase the gun rights of
almost anyone without due process merely by placing them on an arbitrary
watch list. A list, I will remind readers, that is a matter of national
security and not subject to public overview. Would a
list of "mentally defective people" fall under the same Orwellian
standards? What
about the new and disturbing designation by the psychiatric community of oppositional defiance disorder?
This absurd "illness" is being applied to people as young as
pre-school age and suggests that adults with the illness often display
resistance to authority figures and government. What if
your opposition is not to "authority" in general, but to corrupt
authority specifically? Is this mental illness or the very epitome of
sanity? In the
communist Soviet Union, it was all too common for the government to abuse
"mental illness" designations as a means to silence and imprison
political dissent. Anti-government agitation and propaganda were
criminalized under Soviet legal codes, and these codes were frequently
applied in conjunction with the psychiatric system. This was sometimes
referred to as "punitive medicine." The problem
with government and psychiatric institutions joining forces to determine
constitutional rights for individuals should be obvious. Government should
be as separate from the medical establishment as possible yet they are
often intertwined to terrible effect. If mental illness is not adjudicated
by a jury of ones peers and with extreme oversight by gun rights groups,
then abuse of such laws by government is almost guaranteed. The temptation
to use backdoor bureaucracy in a totalitarian manner to underhandedly
confiscate guns and sabotage the 2nd Amendment will be high.
It is also important to remember that even if you
have placed full and blind faith in the Trump administration, there are no
guarantees that the constitutional rules we allow him to bend today will
not be completely broken by the next president in line. Gun rights are
paramount to a free society. Without them, governments almost always revert
to increased socialism and "tyranny creep," while violent crime
continues or increases as the citizenry is left defenseless. Mental illness
and psychotropic drugs need to be taken seriously in
terms of gun violence, but it is also vital that we do not allow the issue
of mental health to be exploited as a subversive means to undermine our
freedoms.
Though
the media often attempts to twist the gun rights debate into a web of
complexity, gun rights is in fact a rather simple issue — either you
believe that people have an inherent right to self defense, or you don't.
All other arguments are a peripheral distraction. Firearms
are a powerful epoch changing development. Not because they necessarily
make killing "easier;" killing was always easy for certain groups
of people throughout history, including governments and organized thugs.
Instead, guns changed the world because for the first time in thousands of
years the common man or woman could realistically stop a more powerful and
more skilled attacker. Firearms are a miraculous equalizer in a world
otherwise dominated and enslaved by everyday psychopaths. The
Founding Fathers understood this dynamic very well. Despite arguments from
the extreme left falsely insinuating that the founders are essentially
barbarians from a defunct era that were too stupid to understand future
developments and technology, the fact is that they always knew the core
philosophical justification for an armed citizenry was always the most
important matter at hand. Today's debates try to muddle meaningful
discourse by swamping the public in the minutia of background checks, etc.
But the following quotes from the early days of the Republic outline what
we should all really be talking about: "The laws that forbid the carrying of
arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither
inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse
for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to
encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked
with greater confidence than an armed man."
- Thomas Jefferson, Commonplace Book (quoting 18th
century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774-1776 "To disarm the people...[i]s the most
effectual way to enslave them."
- George Mason, referencing advice given to the British Parliament by
Pennsylvania governor Sir William Keith, The Debates in the Several State Conventions
on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, June 14, 1788 "Before a standing army can rule, the
people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The
supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because
the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to
any band of regular troops."
- Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of
the Federal Constitution, October 10, 1787 "Guard with jealous attention the public
liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing
will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you
are ruined.... The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is
able might have a gun."
- Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778 "The right of the citizens to keep and
bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of
a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and
arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful
in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over
them."
- Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the
United States, 1833 "On every occasion [of Constitutional
interpretation] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the
Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates,
and instead of trying [to force] what meaning may be squeezed out of the
text, or invented against it, [instead let us] conform to the probable one
in which it was passed."
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 12 June 1823 The
inborn right to self defense and the ability of the people to maintain
individual liberties in the face of tyranny supersedes all other arguments
on gun rights. In fact, nothing else matters. This key point is so
unassailable that anti-gun lobbyists have in most cases given up trying to
defeat it. Instead of trying to confiscate firearms outright (which is
their ultimate goal), they attempt to chip away at gun rights a piece at a
time through endless flurries of legislation. This legislation is usually
implemented in the wake of a tragedy involving firearms, for gun grabbers
never let a good crisis go to waste. Exploiting the deaths of innocent
people to further an ideological agenda is a common strategy for them. This
leads us to the recent mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.
The narrative being constructed around this event is the same as
usual — that stronger "gun control and background checks"
are needed to prevent such things from ever happening again. Of
course, Nikolas Cruz, the alleged perpetrator of the shooting, obtained his
firearms legally and by passing existing background checks. Being that
these background checks have been highly effective in stopping the vast
majority of potential criminals from purchasing firearms through legal
channels, one wonders what more can be done to make these checks somehow
"foolproof." Around
1.5 million 4473 forms (background checks) have been rejected by the ATF in
the two decades since more stringent background checks were instituted. As many as 160,000 forms are denied each
year for multiple reasons, including mental health reasons. So, the
question is, did background checks fail in the case of Nikolas Cruz? And
would any suggested amendments to current 4473 methods have made any
difference whatsoever in stopping Cruz from purchasing a weapon? The answer
is no. No suggested changes to ATF background checks would have made a
difference. But there are stop-gaps to preventing mass shootings other than
the ATF. The FBI, for example, had been warned on
multiple occasions about Cruz, including his open threats to commit a
school shooting. Yet, the FBI did nothing. Could
the FBI have prevented the killings in Parkland by following up repeated
warnings on Nikolas Cruz? I would say yes, it is possible they could have
investigated Cruz's threats, verified them and prosecuted for conspiracy to
commit a violent crime, or at the very least, they could have frightened
him away from the idea. Was the
Parkland shooting then a failure of background checks or a failure of the
FBI? And, if it was a failure of the FBI, then shouldn't anti-gun advocates
focus on revamping the FBI instead of pushing the same background check and
gun show "loophole" rhetoric they always do? They
aren't interested in instituting changes at the FBI because this could help
solve the problem, and they do not care about solving the problem, they
only care about pursuing their ultimate goal of deconstructing the 2nd
Amendment for all time. Gun
control advocates will conjure up a host of arguments for diminishing gun
rights, but just like the background check issue and Nikolas Cruz, most of
them are nonsensical. They'll
make the claim that guns for self defense are fine, but that high capacity
military grade weapons were never protected under the Constitution.
"The founding fathers were talking about single shot muskets when they
wrote that..." is the commonly regurgitated propaganda meme. This is
false. High capacity "machine guns" (like the Puckle gun and the
Girandoni rifle) and even artillery were actually common during the time of
the founders and were indeed protected under the 2nd Amendment. In fact,
the 2nd Amendment applies to all firearms under common military usage
regardless of the era. They'll
claim that high capacity "assault weapons" are not needed and
that low capacity firearms are more practical for self defense. They
obviously are ignoring the circumstances surrounding any given self defense
scenario. What if you are facing off with multiple assailants? What if
those assailants are mass shooters themselves and obtained their weapons on
the black market as the ISIS terrorist in Paris did in 2015? What if the
assailant is a tyrannical government? Who is to say what capacity is
"practical" in those situations? They'll
claim that tougher gun laws and even confiscation will prevent mass
shootings in the future, yet multiple nations (including France) have
suffered horrific mass shootings despite having far more Orwellian gun laws
than the U.S. Criminals and terrorists do not follow laws. Laws are words
on paper backed up by perceived consequences that only law abiding people
care about. The vast
majority of successful mass shooting take place in "gun free
zones," places where average law abiding citizens are left unarmed and
easy prey. So, what
is the solution that gun grabbers don't want to talk about? What could have
stopped the shooting in Parkland? What is the one thing that the mainstream
media actively seeks to avoid any dialogue about? The
solution is simple — abolish all gun free zones. If teachers at the high school in Parkland
had been armed the day Nikolas Cruz showed up with the intent to
murder, then the entire event could have gone far differently. Instead of
acting helplessly as human shields against a spray of bullets, teachers and
coaches could have been shooting back, actually stopping the threat instead
of just slowing it down for a few seconds. Or, knowing that he might be
immediately shot and killed before accomplishing his attack, Cruz may have
abandoned the attempt altogether. There is no way to calculate how many
crimes and mass shootings have been prevented exactly because private gun
ownership acted as a deterrent.
Most gun grabbers are oblivious to this kind of logic
because they are blinded by ideological biases. Some of them, however,
understand the truth of this completely, and they don't care. They are not
in the business of saving lives; they are in the business of exploiting
death. They want something entirely different from what they claim they
want. They are not interested in life, they are interested in control.
A.T.F. Filled Secret Bank Account With Millions From Shadowy Cigarette Sales
Photo
Charlie Batten, a fifth-generation tobacco farmer and U.S. Tobacco Cooperative Inc. board member, at his farm in Four Oaks, N.C. The co-op negotiated a deal to buy a tobacco distribution company whose owners had secret ties to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.CreditJeremy M. Lange for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Working from an office suite behind a Burger King in southern Virginia, operatives used a web of shadowy cigarette sales to funnel tens of millions of dollars into a secret bank account. They weren’t known smugglers, but rather agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The operation, not authorized under Justice Department rules, gave agents an off-the-books way to finance undercover investigations and pay informants without the usual cumbersome paperwork and close oversight, according to court records and people close to the operation.
The secret account is at the heart of a federal racketeering lawsuit brought by a collective of tobacco farmers who say they were swindled out of $24 million. A pair of A.T.F. informants received at least $1 million each from that sum, records show.
The scheme relied on phony shipments of snack food disguised as tobacco. The agents were experts: Their job was to catch cigarette smugglers, so they knew exactly how it was done.
Government records and interviews with people involved reveal an operation that existed on a murky frontier — between investigating smuggling and being complicit in it. After The New York Times began asking about the operation last summer, the Justice Department disclosed it to the department’s inspector general’s office, which is investigating. The inspector general “expressed serious concerns,” court records show.
It is unclear how broadly the A.T.F. adopted this practice, at what level it was approved, and whether it continues. Nearly all references to the A.T.F. have been blacked out of public court records, and most documents are entirely sealed.
The investigation and the looming racketeering trial will bring renewed scrutiny to the A.T.F., which has been buffeted in recent years by the botched gun-tracking operation known as Fast and Furious and its mismanagement of undercover investigations. Members of Congress, particularly Republicans, have heaped criticism on the agency for decades, and the National Rifle Association has lobbied to limit the agency’s authority and funding.
While government auditors have previously cited problems with A.T.F.’s tobacco investigations, this operation went beyond what was identified in that audit, released in 2013. The A.T.F. and the Justice Department declined to comment.
Documents in the racketeering lawsuit outline the A.T.F. operation. The tobacco cooperative is suing a former employee and a consultant who, according to court documents, both worked as A.T.F. informants. The informants have denied all wrongdoing.
Photo
Discarded cigarettes at a U.S. Tobacco manufacturing plant in Timberlake, N.C. The U.S. Tobacco co-op is made up of about 700 tobacco farmers who pool their crops and share the profits.CreditJeremy M. Lange for The New York Times
Part of their defense, records show, is that they acted on behalf of the government. In response, a judge recently added the United States government as a defendant.
Since last summer, The Times has fought to make all the documents public, but the Justice Department has argued successfully in court to keep them secret. Crucial details, however, have been revealed through poor redaction, documents that were filed publicly by mistake and the sheer difficulty of keeping so much a secret for so long.
Buying Into an Operation
In spring 2011, U.S. Tobacco Cooperative was looking to expand its distribution network. The co-op is made up of about 700 tobacco farmers — from Virginia to Florida — who pool their crops and share the profits. Based in Raleigh, N.C., the company is a major exporter to China and produces discount-brand cigarettes including Wildhorse, Traffic and 1839.
“These are really, really good people,” said Stuart D. Thompson, the cooperative’s chief executive. “Every year, they take all their chips. They put them on the table, and they hope they get them all back.”
The company began negotiating to buy a tobacco distributor in Bristol, Va., Big South Wholesale. Big South’s owners, Jason Carpenter and Christopher Small, had a network of customers and owned a warehouse.
They also had an existing secret relationship with the A.T.F., records show.
The two men have filed court documents acknowledging “participation in undercover law enforcement activities.” And a judge’s sealed order, which is publicly available online, revealed that the two men worked “on behalf of various government agencies, primarily the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.”
Photo
Jason Carpenter and Christopher Small, who owned Big South Wholesale in Bristol, Va., have acknowledged participating in undercover law enforcement operations.
The basics of cigarette smuggling are simple. Each state sets its tobacco taxes. Buying cigarettes in low-tax states, like Virginia, and secretly selling them in higher-tax states, like New York, generates large profits. More complicated schemes have shipped cigarettes to Indian reservations, where they are not taxed, then rerouted them for sale on the black market.
A.T.F. agents try to disrupt these networks. Often that means working with informants to buy and sell tobacco on the black market, much the way agents pose as drug dealers to investigate cartels.
Because so much of the case remains sealed, Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Small are prohibited from answering questions about nearly every aspect of the case. “Everything we did that is being attacked now in litigation, we did in good faith,” they said in a statement.
Photo
Stuart D. Thompson, chief executive of U.S. Tobacco, on the manufacturing floor of the plant in Timberlake, N.C.CreditJeremy M. Lange for The New York Times
Exactly who at U.S. Tobacco knew about their A.T.F. ties and what they knew are a matter of dispute. But there were signs that Big South was not a simple tobacco distributor. Its assets included more than two dozen vehicles, including expensive S.U.V.s and a fleet of Mercedes, B.M.W., Audi, Lexus and Jaguar sports cars.
Early 2011 was a time of intense pressure inside the A.T.F. The agency was under fire from Congress over the Fast and Furious operation, in which agents allowed gun traffickers to buy weapons and ship them to Mexico, hoping the shipments could lead them to major weapons dealers. Justice Department auditors began scrutinizing how A.T.F. agents managed their tobacco smuggling investigations.
With that audit continuing, the A.T.F. issued new rules to tightly monitor undercover investigations. Soon after those rules went into effect, U.S. Tobacco completed its purchase of Big South for $5.5 million, a deal that gave Big South the authority to buy and sell cigarettes on behalf of the cooperative. Almost immediately, the farmers say, Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Small began defrauding them.
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It worked like this: An export company working with the A.T.F. placed an order for cigarettes to be shipped internationally — thus not subject to American taxes. Big South would instead ship bottled water and potato chips, making it look as if cigarettes had been exported. Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Small would then buy the tobacco at a slight markup through a private bank account. Lastly, they would sell the tobacco to Big South, again at a markup.
Because they had the authority to buy on behalf of the tobacco cooperative, “Carpenter and Small simply sold products to themselves,” the farmers wrote in court documents. All of these transactions occurred on paper. The cigarettes never left the Virginia warehouse.
“It’s what I saw with my own eyes,” said Brandon Moore, the warehouse manager and one of the people who discussed the transactions in the case. Their accounts fit with descriptions in court records.
Mr. Moore said he was aware of the A.T.F. operation but became troubled by it as he learned more. “It shouldn’t be going on, even if it is the A.T.F.,” he said.
In one deal described in the lawsuit, the informants bought tobacco at $15 a carton and sold it to U.S. Tobacco at $17.50. The profit, about $519,000, went into what was known as a “management account.” That account, while controlled by Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Small, helped pay for A.T.F. investigations.
Mr. Moore, the warehouse manager, said agents often told him what to buy on the company’s credit card. For instance, he recalled spending tens of thousands of dollars at Best Buy on iPads, televisions and other gifts to curry favor with potential criminal targets.
Photo
A testing room at U.S. Tobacco’s Timberlake facilities, where buyers can sample types of tobacco.CreditJeremy M. Lange for The New York Times
Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Small have also acknowledged in court documents receiving more than $1 million each, though it is not clear from public documents whether that was profit or reimbursement for expenses paid on behalf of the government.
How that arrangement began is unclear. Ryan Kaye, an A.T.F. supervisor, testified that the management account was created “as a result of verbal directives from the A.T.F. program office and other headquarters officials.” Mr. Kaye’s full statement is sealed, but excerpts are cited in one publicly available document.
The defendants in the lawsuit contend that U.S. Tobacco got a good deal on the cigarettes, even at the prices they paid. The farmers tell a different story, saying they never would have purchased Big South if they understood that Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Small had a side arrangement that involved selling them tobacco at inflated values.
Thomas Lesnak, a retired A.T.F. agent who was involved in the operation, dismissed suggestions that anything was done improperly. He said he could not discuss Big South because the Justice Department was still conducting investigations based on information developed during operations based at the warehouse.
The arrangement began to break down in late 2012, when Mr. Thompson joined U.S. Tobacco as the chief financial officer. He was curious why his warehouse was placing so many orders for a brand of cigarette that competes against U.S. Tobacco. He could not get a straight answer, the company said in court documents.
In March 2013, Mr. Moore picked up the phone, called Mr. Thompson and explained what was happening. “I did what I did because of the ethics of it,” Mr. Moore said recently. “What was happening there was wrong.”
Once U.S. Tobacco discovered the bookkeeping irregularities, it reported them to the Justice Department, which investigates white-collar crime and government misconduct. Records show that the Justice Department, which includes the A.T.F., investigated some aspects of the case but no charges were filed.
“We voted unanimously to give everything we had to the government,” said Charlie Batten, a U.S. Tobacco board member whose family has worked the same North Carolina soil for generations. “We thought they would take it and run with it. What happened was, they’ve fought us tooth and nail.”
Because of the sealing order, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Batten and others are prohibited from discussing what happened to the money — even with their own farmers.
Three years into its lawsuit, U.S. Tobacco still cannot disentangle itself from the government. The cooperative recently told a judge that it was under investigation by the Treasury Department.
All those secret tobacco sales, it turns out, should have been taxed. And the government wants its money.
