CNN, 8/2/12

ATF Deputy Director William Hoover has resigned, just days after a congressional report on Operation Fast and Furious sharply criticized him and four other ATF officials for the botched gun-trafficking operation…

Hoover and his boss, Ken Melson, who was acting director of the ATF at the time, were re-assigned last year in a shake-up ordered by Attorney General Eric Holder. Melson remains with the Justice Department.

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I just wanted to briefly and voluntarily address a subject I was asked about by the British media yesterday night.

As you may know, Bill Hoover, the former deputy director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives left the agency after the controversy over the alleged gun-smuggling probe, called by the media as Operation Fast and Furious.

Bill is an old friend of mine, and he is one of the finest public servants I have had the privilege to work with. Therefore I can convince you that any allegations linked to him are merely a misunderstanding to be corrected in time. Also, none of these allegations in any way are connected to my presidential campaign and its financing. I wanted you to be the first to know about this, since I believe it is the prerogative of American people to know the facts, and to know them right.

Now back to more topical issues. The Olympic games are again well under way, and today I shall visit numerous events including tennis and sailing. The medal ceremony for shot put winners will unfortunately not take place, since apparently the organizers were under the impression that they would actually get President Obama to give out the medals. Well I was not taken aback by this, there will be plenty of medal opportunities for me later on.

Meanwhile, let’s all cheer for those Fast and Furious who really deserve the limelight and put other things aside for a while.

as the Brits say, cheers

Richard M. Nixon

As of today, the number of people prosecuted is still stuck at zero.

From DC:

The man who served as the deputy director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives during Operation Fast and Furious resigned on Tuesday, an agency spokesman told The Associated Press on Thursday.

William Hoover was one of the five ATF officials House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley singled out as responsible for Operation Fast and Furious. ATF spokesman Drew Wade told the AP that Hoover resigned on Tuesday – the day Issa and Grassley released the congressional report in which they singled out Hoover and four of his colleagues.

Wade did not immediately responded to a request from The Daily Caller seeking confirmation that the GOP lawmakers’ report prompted Hoover’s resignation, and did not answer whether or not resignations are in the works for the other four officials.

The other four ATF officials Issa and Grassley blamed Fast and Furious on in this report are:

• William Newell, the special agent in charge of the phoenix field division
• William McMahon, Newell’s boss who was ATF’s deputy assistant director for field operations
• Mark Chait, McMahon’s boss who was ATF’s assistant director for field operations
• Kenneth Melson, former acting ATF director

Since Fast and Furious broke out as a major national scandal, all five of those ATF leaders have since been reassigned within ATF and the Justice Department.

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Now let’s see if Obama was serious about holding these individuals responsible.

WASHINGTON — Republican congressional investigators have concluded that five senior ATF officials — from the special agent-in-charge of the Phoenix field office to the top man in the bureau’s Washington headquarters — are collectively responsible for the failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation that was “marred by missteps, poor judgments and inherently reckless strategy.”

The investigators, in a final report likely to be released later this week, also unearthed new evidence that agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix initially sought to hide from the Mexican government the crucial information that two Fast and Furious firearms were recovered after the brother of a Mexican state attorney general was killed there.

According to a copy of the report obtained Monday by The Times, the investigators said their findings are “the best information available as of now” about the flawed gun operation that last month led to Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. being found in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over subpoenaed documents.

Two more final reports, they said, will deal with “the devastating failure of supervision and leadership” at the Department of Justice and an “unprecedented obstruction of the [congressional] investigation by the highest levels of theJustice Department, including the attorney general himself.”

The first report did allege some Justice Department involvement, however, notably that Kenneth E. Melson, then acting ATF director, was made into a “scapegoat” for Fast and Furious after he told congressional Republicans his Justice Department supervisors  “were doing more damage control than anything” else once Fast and Furious became public…

Cause it goes all the way up to Holder and potentially Obama. That’s why the executive privilege was used by Obama.

…They found that William Newell, the special agent-in-charge in Phoenix, exhibited “repeatedly risky” management and “consistently pushed the envelope of permissible investigative techniques.” The report said “he had been reprimanded … before for crossing the line, but under a new administration and a new attorney general he reverted back to the use of risky gunwalking tactics.”

His boss, Deputy Assistant Director for Field Operations William McMahon, “rubber stamped critical documents that came across his desk without reading them,” the report alleged. “In McMahon’s view it was not his job to ask any questions about what was going on in the field.”

They added that McMahon gave “false testimony” to Congress about signing applications for wiretap intercepts in Fast and Furious.

His supervisor, Mark Chait, assistant director for field operations, “played a surprisingly passive role during the operation,” the report said. “He failed to provide oversight that his experience should have dictated and his position required.”

Above Chait was Deputy Director William Hoover, who the report said ordered an exit strategy to scuttle Fast and Furious but never followed through: “Hoover was derelict in his duty to ensure that public safety was not jeopardized.”

And they said Melson, a longtime career Justice official, “often stayed above the fray” instead of bringing Fast and Furious to an “end sooner.”

But, the investigators said, ATF agents said that they were hamstrung by federal prosecutors in Arizona from  obtaining criminal charges for illegal gun sales, and that Melson “even offered to travel to Phoenix to write the indictments himself. Still, he never ordered it be shut down.”

Whose in charge of federal prosecutors? Eric Holder.

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