USA – The Mexican ambassador to the United States told a Capitol Hill forum that his government was “kept in the dark” about U.S. government-condoned and abetted “gunwalking” operations, and also questioned the intent behind Operation Fast and Furious, The Los Angeles Times is reporting today. Appearing before “the New Democrat Network…a center-left think tank and advocacy organization, and the New Policy Institute, one of its sister organizations,” Arturo Sarukhan’s claims raise questions as to why major news outlets like The Times are just now getting around to reporting on information raised in this column and on the Sipsey Street Irregulars blog back in January 2011.
“Sarukhan complained that his government had been left in the dark about operations to stop gun smuggling at the border,” the report confirms.
“Mexico was never apprised how the operation would be designed and implemented,” Sarukhan claimed. “Regardless of whether this was or was not the intent or the design of Fast and Furious, the thinking that you can let guns walk across the border…is really an outstanding lack of understanding of how these criminal organizations are operating on both sides of our common borders.”
That latter quote is significant, as it raises the possibility from a prominent official, one assigned credibility by two governments and the media, that the intent of “gunwalking” may not have been to “maintain operational control of those weapons.”
Also significant is the leftist bent of the groups hosting Sarukhan, as opposed to a neutral forum, and the fact that despite citing “poisoned…wellsprings” in transnational gun trafficking efforts directly resulting from the government’s role in criminal actions, the direction of “Authorized Journalist” Jamie Goldberg’s article predictably steers his readers down a familiar path.
“An ATF study found that 68,000 of 99,000 guns recovered by law enforcement agencies in Mexico could be traced to the United States,” Goldberg suddenly inserts into his narrative, with no further explanation. Long-time Gun Rights Examiner readers will recall the initial claims were 90% (and more) of all Mexican crime guns were somehow traceable to U.S. gunshops, and even factoring in the qualifiers of crime scene recovery and submission for tracing, a STRATFOR Global Intelligence analysis concludes “[G]uns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in Mexico in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing. This means that almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States.”
Goldberg and his editors also evidently felt compelled to remind readers that Democrat Congressman Adam Schiff introduced straw purchaser legislation (something Mike Vanderboegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars immediately pegged “More gasoline and matches for the arsonists of the Obama administration”), along with his self-serving party loyalist allegation that Republicans would oppose it for partisan ends rather than “to curb the problem at hand and focus on solutions.”
The paper’s ostensibly “straight news report,” with its clear editorial political objectives, is made all the more curious by reviewing what is now ancient history in the “Project Gunwalker” timeline, specifically early reports from Gun Rights Examiner and Sipsey Street Irregulars that “The ATF office in Mexico was denied permission to share this information with their Mexican counterparts.”
That The Los Angeles Times is just now getting around to paying attention to this, albeit while still running interference for the administration under the guise of objective reporting, is all the more curious considering Vanderboegh and this correspondent were in direct contact with one of their reporters in late January via email and by telephone (and have backup to prove it), sharing everything we’d managed to uncover by that time, including that information had been deliberately withheld from the Mexican government. The only things we did not share were the identities of our sources, as their protection was a paramount concern. We naively figured giant news organizations with major financial and investigative resources ought to be able to pick up on an investigation that two relatively obscure and minor figures with neither had so neatly laid out for anyone willing to take an honest look.
About David Codrea
David Codrea is a long-time gun rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He is a field editor for GUNS Magazine, and a blogger at The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance. Read more at www.DavidCodrea.com.
