"Fast and Furious" was intended to gather information on how Mexican drug cartels use operatives in the U.S. to buy and smuggle guns across the border. Federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents were instructed to watch — but not to stop — the illegal sales in the hope of gathering intelligence on how the smugglers worked. But in the process, hundreds of guns wound up in the hands of Mexican drug gangs. Two of the weapons turned up at the scene where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed in a shootout but it hasn't even been determined that those guns were used to fire the fatal shots.
Attorney General Eric Holder first became aware of the operation earlier this year, after its details were publicly reported in media accounts. Attorney General Holder took "decisive action" earlier this year when he learned about the gun investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious, by referring it to the inspector general, and later overhauling the leadership at the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, which oversaw the investigation, and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix, which helped manage the inquiry.
"It has become clear that the flawed tactics employed in Fast and Furious were not limited to that operation and were actually employed in an investigation conducted during the prior administration," Holder said, referring to a separate initiative known as Operation Wide Receiver managed by federal authorities during the Bush administration.
"Regardless, those tactics should never again be adopted in any investigation," he said.
The United States was funneling guns to the drug cartels during the Bush administration in an operation based in Tucson called Operation Wide Receiver, years before Fast and Furious began in Arizona. Further, a cartel member now in custody in Chicago says the United States and Sinaloa drug cartel have been working together.
Although the news media has focused on the ATF’s Fast and Furious, another operation, Operation Wide Receiver, allowed guns to “walk” into Mexico during the Bush administration, 2006 -- 2007, according to a Tucson gun seller who kept a lengthy journal.
While the news media and Congressmen focus on the Obama administration, the fact is that Project Gunrunner actually began in Laredo, Texas, as a pilot project in 2005, according to the Department of Justice. It was this same area -- the Texas border area, and south along the Gulf in Mexico, where the most deaths, massacres and tortures have been carried out.
Back in Tucson, Mike Detty told CBS News that he began as a confidential informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2006. At first Detty reported a suspected gun smuggler to the ATF after a gun show. Then, the ATF asked him to work as a confidential informant. After that, he sold about 450 firearms as part of Operation Wide Receiver, from his home business Mad Dawg. Detty said he did not realize in the beginning that the US was allowing the weapons to “walk” to criminals in Mexico.
Back in Washington, Republican Congressmen had no idea that their probe, and demands for the truth about gunrunning to Mexico’s drug cartels would lead back to the Bush administration. The US Attorney General, appointed by Bush in Feb. 2005, was Alberto Gonzales.
As revealed in Wikileaks, the e-trace program for weapons had too many technical problems to be functional in Mexico. In Wikileaks, US diplomats state that the level of mistrust between agencies within Mexico, and the amount of corruption within law enforcement in Mexico, results in few weapons being traced through the e-trace program.
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