Congress is Expanding Fast and Furious (Gunrunning) to the White House

Now we have an anonymous source from the White House saying they knew nothing about the details which I snipped out of the article because if there is not a second source, it is not news and not verifiable.  It is little more than cover-up by the White House IMHO.

It still makes no sense to sell guns to the drug cartels and expect to track those guns in Mexico -- this was a prescription for disaster.  Whoever had the idea in the first place needs to be charged as an accessory to murder of the Border Patrol agent.  Without this hair brain scheme, the guns from the US would not have been used to kill him.  That was some message the cartels sent use guns the ATF had sold them.  Then ATF tried to cover up the source of the gun.  Head of ATF gets another government job when he should have been fired and brought up on charges for the cover-up.  

Will we learn the truth about this operation orchestrated by this Administration to make gun dealers look bad and get more gun control or will they continue to cover up until after the election and then disburse to the wind when Obama loses?

If it was a Republican Administration the Obama media would be investigating everywhere to try and get the latest.  Only LA Times seems to break articles about this while we hear a deafening silence from some others.  Have any of the alphabet networks gone close to this except with a short mention?

We are getting closer with Cong Issa and Senator Grassley now asking for information from the White House.  Will they get that information?  We are not holding our breath!

Congress expands Fast and Furious probe to White House
By Richard A. SerranoSeptember 9, 2011, 12:47 p.m. 

Congressional investigators reviewing the failed gun-tracking program Operation Fast and Furious have formally asked the Obama administration to turn over copies of "all records" involving three key White House national security officials and the program, other ATF gun cases in Phoenix, and all communications between the White House and the ATF field office in Arizona. 

The letter signed Friday by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was sent to National Security Advisor Thomas E. Donilon, a top aide to President Obama. 

It marks a significant step in the committee's investigation into the failed gun-tracking operation, as the committee begins to broaden its investigation from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, 

Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and targets White House and Department of Justice officials.
This material, Issa and Grassley said, "will enable us to determine the extent of the involvement of White House staff in Operation Fast and Furious." 

White House officials, along with those at the Justice Department, said they have been cooperating in the widening probe, begun earlier this year when several ATF whistleblowers alerted Congress that Fast and Furious weapons were found at the scene of the slaying of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. 

(snip -- anonymous source from the White House) 

Under the program, ATF agents allowed illegal gun purchases and hoped to track the weapons to Mexican cartel leaders. But most of the more than 2,000 firearms were lost. Hundreds have reportedly turned up in Mexican crime scenes, two at the shooting where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed, and a semi-automatic was used in an altercation and assault with police in Maricopa, Ariz. 

The congressional letter comes after a series of emails surfaced last week showing that William D. Newell, the ATF field supervisor in Phoenix during Fast and Furious, was in routine contact with Kevin O'Reilly, then the White House director of North American Affairs for the National Security Council. The emails discussed a broad range of gun-trafficking investigations on the Southwest Border, and White House officials have since acknowledged that the cases were part of Fast and Furious. 

The White House has said that O'Reilly forwarded the emails to two other White House officials – Dan Restrepo, special assistant to the president and senior director for Western Hemisphere Affairs on the NSC, and Greg Gatjanis, director for Terrorist Finance and Counternarcotics, Counterterrorism Policy, also on the NSC. 

In their letter, Issa and Grassley discussed a new email in which Newell told O'Reilly about a specific case that ATF agents had been aware of for three months involving a 22-year-old illegal gun purchaser whom the ATF allowed to buy nearly 700 firearms. 

The purchaser was on food stamps and, Newell said in a follow-up email to O'Reilly, "when a 22-year-old kid on State financial assistance walks into a gun store and plops down $12,000 in cash to buy a tripod mounted .50 caliber rifle that's a clue (even for us) that he's involved in trafficking firearms for a Mexican DTO [cartel].' 

According to Issa and Grassley, that exchange of information makes it "clear that the case Mr. Newell and Mr. O'Reilly were communicating about was Fast and Furious." 

The letter requests all emails, documents, briefing papers and handwritten notes involving O'Reilly, Restrepo and Gatjanis during the Fast and Furious period, which ran for 15 months between fall 2009 and January 2011. The committee also wants to personally interview O'Reilly by the end of this month. 

Richard.Serrano@latimes.com
Excerpt:  Read More at the  LA Times