by
Alex Newman
As if there were not already
enough scandals plaguing the Obama administration,
the federal “Fast and Furious” operation that armed Mexican drug
cartels is back in the news after the Justice Department Inspector
General released a
report
blasting a government leak intended to smear a key ATF whistleblower.
The leaked memorandum was apparently aimed at discrediting Special Agent
John Dodson and contradicting his explosive testimony before Congress,
which blew the lid off of a federal program that put thousands of
high-powered weapons into the hands of deadly criminals in Mexico.
The
latest twist in the scandal surrounds disgraced former U.S. Attorney
Dennis Burke, one of the officials at the center of the administration’s
lawless gun-trafficking scheme. The ex-prosecutor, who resigned in
August of 2011 along with acting ATF boss Kenneth Melson, was furious
after learning that brave whistleblowers had gone to Congress and the
media, documents show. He was particularly upset because Dodson, one of
the crucial figures in exposing Fast and Furious, had written a memo
outlining a plot to let guns “walk” across the border into Mexico — and
into the hands of known criminals.
Special Agent Dodson, however, said he had been alarmed about the idea
from the start, only putting the plot down on paper in an effort to show
superiors how preposterous it really was. When the ATF agent went to
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and CBS News to blow the whistle, Burke
wanted desperately to protect his reputation. The then-U.S. attorney,
who worked in Arizona, learned that Fox News reporter Mike Levine was
working on a story about the issue. Burke then leaked the Dodson memo to
Levine.
“We also concluded that Burke’s disclosure of the Dodson
memorandum to Levine was likely motivated by a desire to undermine
Dodson’s public criticisms of Operation Fast and Furious,” the Justice
Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) said in its report.
“Although Burke denied to congressional investigators that he had any
retaliatory motive for his actions, we found substantial evidence to the
contrary.”
Official sources, for example, told the OIG that
“Burke disclosed the document to help the U.S. Attorney’s Office defend
against what were considered hypocritical criticisms being made by
Dodson,” the report explains. “That disclosure occurred less than two
weeks after Dodson’s public testimony before Congress.” Others
interviewed during the investigation also confirmed that Burke was
“frustrated” with the whistleblower’s “highly critical” congressional
testimony about Fast and Furious.
Burke refused to be
interviewed for the investigation. However, he admitted in his own
account of the conversation with Levine that he believed the Fox
reporter was working on a story that would expose what Burke considered
to be Dodson’s “hypocrisy,” the OIG noted. As such, the former U.S.
Attorney claimed that he simply released the memo in question — a
violation of Justice Department policy at the very least — in an
innocent but misguided effort to provide “context” for the story.
Neither
Dodson nor the inspector general bought those excuses. “We believe that
this explanation, taken together with the other evidence cited above,
demonstrate that Burke’s conduct in disclosing the memorandum to Levine
was likely motivated by his desire to undermine Dodson’ public
criticisms,” the OIG report said, adding that the ATF whistleblower had
raised very serious concerns about Fast and Furious.
Among the most interesting findings in the Inspector General
investigation was Burke’s sense that he was being sacrificed by the
administration. Quoted in the OIG report, Burke explained that “several
U.S. Attorneys […] commented to me that the Department was throwing my
office under the bus.” The Inspector General report noted: “Burke’s
statements to the Department reflected a belief that he could not rely
on the Department to respond to criticism of his office’s handling of
the Fast and Furious investigation, and we found that he responded to
this belief by deciding to defend the office himself through, in part,
the unauthorized disclosure of information to the media.”
The
report savages the former U.S. attorney in its conclusions, stating that
Burke violated Justice Department policy by leaking the memo and that
his excuses “were not credible.” The OIG also “rejected” Burke’s
explanations, adding that the former U.S. attorney took “calculated
measures” to reduce the chances of being caught: sending the document
from a private e-mail account to a friend who passed it on to the Fox
reporter.
“First, regardless of whether Burke in fact believed
Levine or Congress already had the memorandum, that belief would not
excuse his failure to comply with Department policy,” the report said,
citing DOJ policies on media relations that were violated. “Second, we
found that Burke disclosed the Dodson memorandum despite knowing he was
under investigation at the very same time by OPR for virtually the same
alleged misconduct.”
The misconduct described in the report is
“particularly egregious,” the OIG continued, “because of Burke’s
apparent effort to undermine the credibility of Dodson’s significant
public disclosures about the failures in Operation Fast and Furious.” In
the end, the actions were found to be “inappropriate for a Department
employee and wholly unbefitting a U.S. Attorney.” As such, the problem
will be reported to state Bar associations where Burke is licensed to
practice law.
In an August 2011 memo to his staff at the U.S.
Attorney’s office about his resignation, Burke, who previously worked
for current Homeland Security boss Janet “Big Sis” Napolitano, claimed
that it was time to move on. "My long tenure in public service has been
intensely gratifying,” he said. “It has also been intensely demanding.
For me, it is the right time to move on to pursue other aspects of my
career and my life and allow the office to move ahead.”
The latest OIG report is not the first time Burke has come under fire
for his controversial handling of the press after the Fast and Furious
scandal emerged. In December of 2011, for example, the administration
was forced to release more than 1,300 pages of documents related to the
gun-trafficking program. The subpoenaed records
revealed
frantic e-mail communications between senior officials about how
vigorously to defend the operation, as well as concerns about the
veracity of some of the proposed defenses.
The documents showed
that DOJ officials were worried that if the administration were to
cooperate with the congressional investigation, Congress would press for
even more information. Others highlight the general fear among those
involved that exposure would damage the image of the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (still known as ATF).
One of the most explosive e-mails was actually from Burke, who recommended sending a “stern missive” to the
Arizona Republic
newspaper for exposing the scheme. "Just baffling that they refuse to
engage even just to protect the integrity of the agency,” he wrote in a
February 1 e-mail to Justice Department Criminal Division boss Lanny
Breuer, as if the media’s job were to protect government rather than
expose its shady dealings. In another e-mail, Burke complained that
congressional investigators were acting as “willing stooges” for
defenders of the right to keep and bear arms.
Burke, of course,
was also not the only top official who has been caught trying to
retaliate against the whistleblowers. After the scandal was publicly
exposed, the ATF
retaliated against the brave agents who told Congress and the media. The agency got caught, but its new acting chief subsequently
released a video threatening other agents not to blow the whistle again. Lawmakers were outraged, yet the lawlessness continues.
Meanwhile,
the establishment press has continued to ignore the most important
elements of the scandal, pretending that Fast and Furious was simply a
“botched” operation in which low-ranking administration bureaucrats
inadvertently “lost” the weapons. In reality, multiple White House
officials
had been briefed about the scheme, the supposed “targets” of the alleged "investigation"
were drug lords already on the FBI’s payroll, and top administration officials have
been caught lying repeatedly — resulting in
disgraced Attorney General Eric Holder being
held in criminal contempt of Congress for the
ongoing cover up.
Incredibly, the violence from Fast and Furious —
U.S. law enforcement officers killed, hundreds of Mexicans massacred, and more — was used to push more gun control in the United States,
official documents showed.
The e-mails exposing the administration’s scheme to use the bloodshed
to assault the Second Amendment backed up assertions made by the
numerous analysts and experts
including the National Rifle Association. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who led the investigation in the U.S. House,
was also proven correct.
Finally,
evidence continues to emerge that Fast and Furious was in fact much
bigger than the press and the administration have admitted. Mexican drug
lords, for example, have said that
the U.S. government was shipping weapons to their cartels and
allowing them to bring drugs across the border in exchange for information. The
CIA’s involvement also continued to be largely concealed. However, with Fast and Furious seemingly taking a back seat to
other major scandals — Benghazigate, spying on journalists, IRS abuse, and more — justice for the
Fast and Furious victims may never be truly served.
2011 photo of U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke standing before a cache of seized firearms: AP Images
by Joan Garrett McClane
