According to the Joint Staff Report issued in October 2012, on the failed gunrunning scheme by the DOJ, Lanny Breuer was the one who “decided to resurrect the prosecution of Operation Wide Receiver even though the case had used the reckless and misguided tactic of gunwalking.” Yesterday, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is calling the impending resignation of Breuer “long overdue.”
Chairman Issa said in a statement released on Wednesday about the departing Justice Department’s Criminal Division head, “Breuer was at the heart of several critical failures in Operation Fast and Furious: he knew about reckless tactics, failed to take seriously allegations that they were continuing, and only owned up to his failures once they were publicly exposed.”
According to Issa, the Inspector General’s report “admonished Breuer for failing to inform the Deputy Attorney General or the Attorney General when he learned, in April 2010, that the reckless tactic of gunwalking was used in a prior operation. Furthermore, several of Breuer’s top deputies authorized sensitive wiretap applications under Breuer’s authority that, according to the OIG report, contained stark, incontrovertible evidence of the exact same gunwalking tactic. Had Breuer taken any action whatsoever, Fast and Furious would have ended eight months sooner than it did. This resignation paves the way for needed new leadership in the Criminal Division.”
With Breuer’s resignation, the three highest ranking DOJ officials whom the DOJ Inspector General criticized in his September 2012 report on Operation Fast and Furious – former Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, and Breuer – have now left the Department in the wake of the report’s release.
Some report findings:
• Testimony from senior Justice Department officials about Operation Fast and Furious and the management problems it entailed. The report finds fault with five senior DOJ Officials for failing to supervise and for missing basic red flags. Those officials are Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein and Associate Deputy Attorney General Ed Siskel. Attorney General Holder’s Deputy Chief of Staff Robert “Monty” Wilkinson also bears some responsibility for the poor management that lead to Operation Fast and Furious.
• There was no evidence that during the time that Wide Receiver was being conducted, the case was ever raised to the level of Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Alice Fisher, who served from 2005 to 2008. In contrast, in early September 2009, ATF and the Criminal Division began “to talk about ways CRM [Criminal Division] and ATF can coordinate on gun trafficking and gang-related initiatives.” E-mails produced by the Justice Department reveal that around the same time, Breuer was “VERY interested in the Arizona gun trafficking case” known as Wide Receiver.
• For Operation Fast and Furious, each application for Fast and Furious included a memorandum from Assistant Attorney General Breuer to Paul O’Brien, Director of OEO, authorizing the interception application. AUSA Emory Hurley, the lead federal prosecutor on the case in Arizona, was also notified.
• During prior testimony before Congress, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and Attorney General Eric Holder had gone to great lengths to explain that the Criminal Division reviews wiretap applications only for legal sufficiency and not to evaluate the propriety of the tactics.
• The distinction made by Breuer—that those reviewing the wiretap applications do so only for legal sufficiency and not for tactics—ignores the fact that a review of the tactics is part of the review for legal sufficiency.
• Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler, Associate Deputy Attorney General Ed Siskel, and other officials from the Office of the Deputy Attorney General attended a detailed briefing on Operation Fast and Furious in March 2010. Despite the evidence presented at the briefing of illegally-purchased firearms being recovered in Mexico and in the U.S., Grindler and Siskel failed to ask probing questions or take any significant follow-up action to monitor and supervise the conduct of the case.
• ATF officials asked both the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and ODAG for assistance in speeding up the indictments in Fast and Furious. The Justice Department, however, took no action to intervene. Instead, officials at Department headquarters only showed concern about preparing for the press impact of the indictments.
• On April 19, 2010, the issue arose in a meeting with Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer. According to James Trusty, who was at the meeting, Breuer just wanted them to meet with ATF Acting Director Ken Melson and Deputy Director Billy Hoover “so they know the bad stuff that could come out”
• Deputy Chief of Staff to the Attorney General Monty Wilkinson discussed Attorney General Holder participating in the press conference announcing the take-down of Operation Fast and Furious prior to the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
• Both Monty Wilkinson and Gary Grindler were informed about the connection between Operation Fast and Furious and U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder. Grindler received detailed information about the connection. He took no additional action, however, to properly supervise the operation.
• During their respective transcribed interviews, Monty Wilkinson stated 38 times that he “did not recall” or “did not know.” In a similar fashion, Gary Grindler did so 29 times, and Ed Siskel 21 times. In two different transcribed interviews, Dennis Burke said he “did not recall” or “did not know” a combined total of 161 times.
• Breuer later expressed regret for failing to draw a connection between Operation Wide Receiver and Operation Fast and Furious.
According to the report, “The consequences of the actions they regret may have allowed hundreds of additional weapons to flow across the border into Mexico, leading to the deaths of countless innocent citizens.”
