Thousands of high-powered firearms and other military grade weapons were shipped from the United States to Mexican drug cartels – with the support of federal agents during the Obama administration.
Those weapons have been responsible for hundreds of deaths on both sides of the border, including Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry, whose murder in December 2010 in the Arizona desert led to public exposure of this bizarre government operation.
But most Americans still have a limited knowledge of the Fast and Furious gunrunning operation, or other related programs which targeted U.S. gun dealers – while helping cartels gain enormous power.
Ann Vandersteel, host of Steel Truth, an hourly prime time news show, has recently been reporting on a wide array of victims of Fast and Furious.
Vandersteel has taken on an enormous task — to blow the cover off the coverup that has shrouded this insidious conspiracy for more than a decade.
“Fast and Furious is bigger than anyone knows,” said Vandersteel, who has been breaking stories on crimes of the Deep State since she began her podcast three years ago.
“I was approached by Wesley Felix and introduced to a group of individuals who were all victims of Fast and Furious — either they were a gun store owner or they were a family member of a Border Patrol agent who was killed like Brian Terry,” said Vandersteel, during a break from filming at a Phoenix area residence. “And then there was William Neil Anderson, who carried Brian Terry’s body out of the canyon after he was killed with a Fast and Furious weapon, but then died under very mysterious circumstances.”
With the help of a powerful new production team, Steel Truth is releasing a two-hour live documentary, Fast and Furious: Did it Ever End?, at 6 p.m Pacific Time, Monday, Oct. 26, which tells chilling stories of men who were killed under suspicious circumstances or imprisoned to advance the government’s interests.
Vandersteel recently traveled to Texas and Arizona to interview members of a unique group of people, all of whom have been impacted by the government’s operation.
She began delving into this massive conspiracy after Wesley Felix — whose family owned successful wholesale and retail firearms companies — told her stories of government attacks against their stores. Mark Felix, Wesley’s uncle and the owner of National Survival Store, Las Vegas, was sent to prison on false charges, after defending himself during a robbery.
Mark Felix was convicted of battery with a deadly weapon – while the attempted robber who threatened him with an AK-47 automatic rifle at his store got off scot-free. Mark Felix was later framed by ATF agents, who planted a .50 caliber bullet in his truck. He was charged with a federal felony in that case. Altogether he spent three years behind bars.
In a separate incident, ATF agents tried to persuade Mark Felix to sell firearms to straw buyers — which he refused, because it was illegal. This was the exact same tactic Arizona ATF agents used during the Fast and Furious operation, in which gun store owners were coerced to cooperate.
ATF agents and other law enforcement officers later allegedly raided his store, stole thousands of firearms, and sold them illegally out of a residence. The Felix family has many documents backing up their allegations – which have been vetted by Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog group.
“ATF agents forged a Federal Firearms License in order to claim ownership of our guns and purchase new ones,” said Wesley Felix, who was slated to serve as CEO of his family’s company after his uncle’s retirement. “They put that license under our store’s name, with an ATF agent owning it. They stole the store from us fraudulently.”
One of the most powerful stories included in the film is told by whistleblower who became friends with a successful actor while they were both inmates in a federal prison.
Matthew Meck, 57, a former Marine Corps major with 20 years of service, heard from his friend of an ongoing operation in which thousands of military grade weapons, including automatic rifles and grenade launchers, were being shipped to Mexican cartels from Arizona. Although Fast and Furious involved an estimated 2,000 firearms, the numbers of weapons involved that Meck discovered were about 17,000 – enough to equip a full Army Division.
This was in 2013, several years after Brian A. Terry was murdered north of Nogales, Arizona, which brought public attention to the Fast and Furious operation.
In the original Fast and Furious operation, which ran from 2009 through 2010, Congressional hearings and news reports revealed that hundreds of Mexican citizens – and at least two U.S. federal agents – were murdered with firearms shipped to the Sinaloa Cartel by straw buyers.
Meck, who has written extensively on the scandal for The Hill online magazine, tells the story of how he reported jailhouse information to the U.S. Department of Justice, House Oversight Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee.
During his interview for the documentary, Meck said he hopes this film will accomplish something new. He said that despite the efforts of many people, whenever information on government sponsored gun smuggling operations comes to the surface – it just dies. That includes the tremendous efforts of many people — Brian Terry’s family, the Felix family, and Victor Avila.
Avila was severely injured on Feb. 15, 2011, in an ambush by cartel operatives armed with Fast and Furious weapons, while serving as a special ICE agent in Mexico. His partner, 32-year-old Jaime Zapata, was murdered in that incident, in which at least 90 shots were fired. They were unarmed – due to a Mexican law prohibiting U.S. agents from carrying firearms – and unescorted, when they were attacked on a cartel-controlled highway, after the agents were directed to travel on that mission to pick up some equipment.
Avila, who is running for city council in Southlake, Texas, tells his story to Vandersteel for the film.
Meck said he hopes the documentary will be a game changer in bringing out the truth about government involvement in gun-smuggling schemes.
“The only time in 8 years President Obama exerted executive privilege was on Fast and Furious,” Meck said during his interview with Vandersteel. “Hopefully, with your show, what you are doing here, we now have hit critical mass and they can’t contain it anymore.”
Vandersteel said President Barack Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sold arms to Mexican cartels to make it look like the weapons coming from U.S. gun stores were killing people.
“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people,” Vandersteel said. “And if you are selling guns to Mexico and getting them into the hands of criminals, criminals are going to do criminal behavior.”
Vandersteel said she believes the main objective of Fast and Furious was to stop the sale of guns in America and disarm Americans.
“But in this country, we have the second amendment right to defend ourselves,” she said.
Fast and Furious was designed to arm terrorists, which would result in the killing of Americans and other nationals in countries all around the world. Wide Receiver, a similar smuggling operation conducted during the George W. Bush administration, became Fast and Furious after Obama and Biden took over.
Are weapons still being trafficked under the direction of federal agents? If they are, does this operation have a new name?
“This documentary is about exposing the government corruption, not only here but everywhere,” Vandersteel said.