WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s inspector general recommended Wednesday that 14 federal officials face disciplinary reviews over the botched gun-trafficking investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious.
In a scathing report, the inspector general, Michael Horowitz, laid primary blame on what he portrayed as a dysfunctional and poorly supervised group of Arizona-based federal prosecutors and agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. As part of the operation, those officials did not act to seize illegal weapons in hopes of bringing a bigger case against a gunsmuggling network linked to a Mexican drug gang.
While it found no evidence that officials at the Justice Department in Washington had authorized or approved the tactics, it faulted several officials for related failures, including not recognizing red flags and failing to follow up on information about both Operation Fast and Furious and a similar, earlier investigation called Operation Wide Receiver, in which guns also reached drug gangs.
“In the course of our review, we identified individuals ranging from line agents and prosecutors in Phoenix and Tucson to senior ATF officials in Washington, D.C., who bore a share of responsibility for ATF’s knowing failure in both these operations to interdict firearms illegally destined for Mexico, and for doing so without adequately taking into account the danger to public safety that flowed from this risky strategy,” the report said.
The long-awaited 471-page report is likely to be the closest thing to a definitive historical accounting of an operation that has led to a continuing confrontation between congressional Republicans and President Barack Obama’s administration, which culminated in a vote by the House to cite Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for contempt.
For more than a year, some Republicans and commentators on conservative media outlets have floated theories that senior administration officials must have approved the operation — deliberately fostering gun violence to lay the groundwork for strengthening gun-control laws — and that they were covering up their knowledge of what was happening in Arizona.
It was the first major report for Horowitz, who previously served in the department in Republican and Democratic administrations, including as chief of staff to Michael Chertoff when he was assistant attorney general for the criminal division under President George W. Bush.
His office had access to tens of thousands of documents that congressional investigators did not, including grand jury information and internal e-mails that Obama, citing executive privilege, refused to hand over.
He also interviewed more than 130 officials, including several that Congress did not, from former Attorney General Michael Mukasey to several low-ranking prosecutors.
Many of the basic findings of the report dovetail with less extensive reports issued in January by Democratic staff members with the House Oversight Committee and in July by Republican staff members.
“The inspector general’s report confirms findings by Congress’ investigation of a near total disregard for public safety in Operation Fast and Furious,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the committee, which has been investigating Operation Fast and Furious since early 2011. Horowitz is to testify before Issa’s panel today.
Weaving together accounts from interviews and documents, it recounts how the investigation into an Arizonabased gunrunning network linked to a Mexican drug gang began in late 2009, how it unfolded, and how it was finally shut down in early 2011 after two guns linked to the case were found near a shootout where a Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, was killed.
During the operation, ATF agents — frustrated by legal obstacles to prosecuting “straw buyers” and seeking to build a case against ringleaders of the network — did not move quickly to intervene with low-level suspects and try to seize the guns.
ATF agents in Arizona allowed suspected straw buyers, believed to be working for Mexican drug gangs, to leave Phoenix-area gun stores with weapons in order to track them and bring charges against gunsmuggling kingpins who long had eluded prosecution, but they lost track of most of the guns.
Hundreds of guns bought by the network are presumed to have reached criminal gangs, and one buyer in particular purchased more than 700 weapons over many months without being arrested.
One of those criticized in the report, former ATF acting Director Kenneth Melson, who headed that agency during the Fast and Furious investigation, retired upon release of the report.
“Melson made too many assumptions about the case,” the report stated. “Melson should have asked basic questions about the investigation, including how public safety was being protected.”
Melson responded in a written statement: “While I firmly disagree with many of the speculative assumptions, conclusions and characterizations in the inspector general’s report, as the acting director of the agency I was ultimately responsible for the actions of each employee.”
Another of those criticized, Justice Department career attorney Jason Weinstein, resigned. Weinstein was a deputy assistant attorney general in the department’s criminal division in Washington.
“Weinstein was the most senior person in the department in April and May 2010 who was in a position to identify the similarity between the inappropriate tactics used in Operations Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious,” the report said. ATF agents in Arizona conducted Wide Receiver in 2006 and 2007 and began Fast and Furious in October 2009.
Weinstein’s lawyer, Michael Bromwich, called the report’s criticism “profoundly wrong” and “deeply flawed.”
The report said that a cover memo reviewed by Weinstein for a wiretap application in Fast and Furious “clearly suggests” that ATF agents had allowed a known illicit gun purchaser to continue his illegal activities for a gun-trafficking ring selling weapons to a Mexican drug cartel.
Weinstein’s review of the cover memo should have caused him to question operational details of Fast and Furious, the report stated.
In response, Weinstein’s lawyer said that before reviewing any Fast and Furious wiretaps, Weinstein had been assured by ATF Deputy Assistant Director William Mc-Mahon that guns were being aggressively interdicted.
Among others the report singled out for criticism were former acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler; Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who heads the criminal division; former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, who resigned last year; and Holder’s own former deputy chief of staff, Monty Wilkinson.
The report said:
Wilkinson should have promptly informed Holder of the fact that two guns found at the scene of Terry’s slaying were among the 2,000 illicitly acquired weapons in Operation Fast and Furious.
Grindler relied on the FBI to investigate the Terry killing. That reliance was misplaced, given that the bureau did not have the responsibility to determine whether errors in ATF’s investigation led to the weapons ending up at the murder scene.
Breuer should have promptly informed Deputy Attorney General James Cole or Holder about the problems in the earlier gun probe, Operation Wide Receiver.
Holder noted in a statement that the report confirmed his assertions that the flawed strategies were driven by field agents without his knowledge or approval and that the department did not set out to misinform Congress.
He said the report’s disciplinary recommendations are being pursued and “we now have two men in custody and we will continue to aggressively pursue the remaining fugitives to ensure justice for Agent Terry, his family and his fellow law enforcement agents.”
More than 100 House lawmakers have called for Holder’s resignation as a result of the operation, his work on terrorism policy and the department’s refusal to give certain documents to congressional investigators looking into the program. In June, the chamber voted to place Holder in contempt of Congress, a first for a sitting Cabinet member.
Holder criticized the lawmakers conducting their own investigation into the operation, calling it “unfortunate that some were so quick to make baseless allegations before they possessed the facts.”
“I hope today’s report acts as a reminder of the dangers of adopting as fact unsubstantiated conclusions before an investigation of the circumstances is completed,” Holder said.
Fast and Furious has produced charges against 20 gun traffickers, 14 of whom have pleaded guilty so far.
Information for this article was contributed by Charlie Savage of The New York Times; by Pete Yost and Jesse J. Holland of The Associated Press; and by Phil Mattingly and Jeff Bliss of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/20/2012