(IBD) Fast And Furious Whitewash - Eric Holder Exonerated In Murders of Brian Terry And Jaime Zapata

[Daniel John Sobieski]

Scandal: The report our attorney general used to justify withholding evidence of who was responsible for the administration program that led to the deaths of two U.S. agents is out. It delivers more scapegoats than answers.

The release by the Department of Justice's inspector general of a 400-page report on the administration's gun-walking operation, Fast and Furious, is no big surprise.

As Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) Committee, Fast and Furious represented a "pattern of serious failures" by various agencies.

But he let the buck stop short of where it belongs — Attorney General Eric Holder's desk.

Horowitz mysteriously chose to lump Fast and Furious, as Team Obama does, with a Bush-era program, Wide Receiver. That operation was run out of Tucson between 2006 and 2007, ending before Bush left office and before Fast and Furious began in 2009.

Both Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious were part of a bigger effort called Project Gunrunner, which began in 2006. Even so, the differences between the two are vast, starting with the fact that Wide Receiver produced no dead bodies. It was run in close cooperation with Mexican authorities, as Fast and Furious wasn't, and involved gun-tracing and not gun-walking.

The report was repeatedly invoked by Holder as a reason for withholding answers and documents on Fast and Furious from OGR Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Along with Sen. Charles Grassley, D-Iowa, Issa led the investigation of the operation that saw Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and ICE Agent Jaime Zapata murdered with guns supplied by the program. Holder, held in contempt by the House, still isn't very forthcoming.

Read more at: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/092012-626507-doj-fast-and...