Wednesday, July 06, 2011

He's not going quietly

Acting ATF director Ken Melson is reported to have met on Monday, July 4 with congressional investigators and told them that the Justice Department is actively obstructing the probe into Project Gunwalker, the absolute disaster of a botched "sting" operation that has directly resulted in the deaths of two American law-enforcement officers as well as those of countless innocent Mexican citizens. 

Gee, no wonder Eric "Neutral, leaning towards favorable" Holder and the other top brass at Justice appear to have wanted Melson gone in the worst way.  Too bad for them the acting director has chosen not to be the fall guy for the ones who apparently really thought up and implemented this scheme and has decided to go down swinging. 

Oh, and get this - Melson is also said to have stated that the prime target of the scheme, a previously deported drug dealer, is an FBI informant.  Talk about a classic case of one hand at a massive government agency not knowing what the other is up to, mostly because of turf wars and other maddening intra-departmental squabbling.  As former senator Tom Daschle once famously stated, though, "You can't professionalize until you Federalize".  Right.

It's about time that someone has finally gone on record as stating that the obvious attempted coverup of this mess is coming from the highest levels of Justice, presumably because the authorization for and administration of the failed operation came from the very same offices.  It otherwise wouldn't make a lick of sense for those in charge to try to obstruct the investigation, since if it really were just some rogue subordinates who were responsible for Gunwalker the easiest and safest course of action would be full disclosure and punishment for those involved, leaving Holder, Lanny Breuer and others at the top of Justice smelling like a rose.  The fact that those higher-ups are making such a risky move does more than anything else to leave the blame arrow pointed directly at them.

Mr. Melson's official interview with the inspector general is today.  It will be interesting to see what other interesting nuggets of information are going to be shortly coming out.

1 comment:

Bike Bubba said...

Melson's testimony is why I've made a practice of taking a document home with me when I suspect my employer might be getting on the wrong side of ethics and the law. Put gently, if I get a subpoena, I want a little more evidence than "he said/she said."

Hopefully Melson has this in his pocket, and hopefully Congress has enough nuts to make this one stick and get the issue as high as it goes.

Given Comrade Obama's penchant for duplicity, I'd not be surprised if the blame goes to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.