Justice, House GOP tangle over Fast and Furious documents

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Eric Holder lashed out Thursday at Republican members of a House panel investigating a botched federal gun-trafficking inquiry that allowed hundreds of firearms to flow to Mexico, refusing at one point to answer a New York congresswoman who asked Holder how many more federal agents would have to "die" before the attorney general took action.

Two weapons traced to the gun operation, known as "Fast and Furious," were recovered at the scene of the 2010 murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. The agent's death brought an end of the gun-trafficking operation.

"That kind of question is beneath a member of Congress," Holder told Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle.

The hearing, marking the sixth time Holder has been questioned about the flawed gun operation by Congress, was contentious from the start. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mi., compared the actions of another Justice Department official in the case to the limited steps taken by now-deceased former Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno after learning of sex abuse allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

In that case, Paterno passed the information to his superiors, but did not report the alleged activity to police.

Holder, clearly irritated, described some of the Republicans' comments akin to "character assassination."

"I am the attorney general of the United States, okay," Holder said, before launching into a defense of his actions in the gun inquiry and his management of the Justice Department.

Earlier, committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., openly threatened Holder with a contempt citation if the Justice Department did not provide the panel with additional documents for its inquiry.

Holder said Justice already has turned over more than 6,000 documents related to the case, again assserting that the tactics used in gun investigation were "misguided" and "wholly unacceptable." Two of the weapons found at the scene of Agent Brian Terry's murder were traced to the gun case. The gun used in the murder has not yet been identified..

"I think you are hiding behind something here," Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., told Holder, adding the department had given its inspector general more than 80,000 documents to assist a separate investigation of the matter. "You should give us the documents. There are things in those documents that you don't want us to see."

On Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the department will provide material created after Feb. 4, 2011, the day the department gave incorrect information to Congress about Fast and Furious.

Cole said the department had made an exception to longstanding policy in order to provide material on how the erroneous Feb. 4 letter was created, but other documents about the congressional inquiries on Fast and Furious would not be turned over.

A committee spokesman, Frederick Hill, said the department is under investigation for Fast and Furious but also for its response to whistle-blowers and investigators who expressed concern about the operation.

"If the Justice Department cannot provide assurances that it will meet its legal obligations" and provide the documents, "the committee has no other option than moving to hold Attorney General Holder in contempt," Hill said.

In his testimony prepared for Thursday's hearing, the attorney general said prior administrations have recognized that robust internal communications would be chilled, and the executive branch's ability to respond to oversight requests impeded, if internal communications concerning responses to congressional oversight were disclosed to Congress.

In a Feb. 4, 2011, letter to Congress, the department said federal agents made every effort to intercept illegally purchased weapons. Instead, agents in the Phoenix-based Fast and Furious investigation employed a risky strategy called "gun-walking" in an effort to track the weapons after purchase. The purpose was to make cases against gun-smuggling ring leaders who had long escaped prosecution.

"Allowing guns to 'walk' — whether in this administration or in the prior one — is wholly unacceptable," Holder stated. "This tactic of not interdicting weapons, despite having the ability and legal authority to do so, appears to have been adopted in a misguided effort to stem the alarming number of illegal firearms that are trafficked each year from the United States to Mexico."

Fast and Furious was one of at least four gun-smuggling probes that involved gun-walking, all undertaken by the Phoenix division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Three of the gun-walking investigations began under President George W. Bush, one under President Obama. The first started in 2006.

In Fast and Furious, the federal agency lost track of almost 1,400 of the more than 2,000 weapons whose purchase attracted the suspicion of the Fast and Furious investigators. Some 700 guns connected to suspects in the operation have been recovered in Mexico and the U.S., some of them at crime scenes, including the scene near Nogales, Ariz., where border agent Brian Terry was murdered in December 2010. A month after Terry's death, Congress began hearing of problems with the probe.

Issa's allegation of a cover-up was fueled by documents turned over Friday by the Justice Department that contained new information about the events of early February 2011.

Two days before Justice told Congress that federal agents made every effort to intercept illegally purchased weapons, the department's criminal division chief, Lanny Breuer, suggested letting some "straw," or illicit, weapons buyers in the U.S. transport their guns across the Mexican border so Mexican law enforcement could arrest them there.

According to emails turned over to the committee, Breuer made the suggestion to Mexican officials because it "may send a strong message to arms traffickers" because Mexican laws contain far stiffer penalties against straw gun buyers than U.S. laws do.

Cole said Breuer's suggestion, which was not implemented, would have been less risky than the earlier investigations because he intended for Mexican agents to arrest the smugglers at the border rather than let the guns loose in Mexico.