John Richardson: "Electronic Tracking Revisited."

Writing at No Lawyers -- Just Guns and Money, John asks some excellent questions about tracking the Gunwalker weapons electronically.

Univision's Jorge Ramos reports on John Dodson's statement that they weren't:

While carrying out this initiative, dubbed "Operation Fast and Furious," federal agents allowed more than 1,700 illegal firearms to pass into Mexico from the U.S., and without notifying President Felipe Calderon's administration. The operation commenced in late 2009.

According to John Dodson, a Phoenix-based agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the plan was to funnel the firearms into Mexico so that agents in the U.S. could track their movements, in hopes that the guns would lead authorities to criminal gangs and drug traffickers. The problem, Dodson told me in an interview, was that the arms were not specially marked or microchipped, so keeping track of them proved to be extremely difficult. These guns -- many of which were particularly destructive types of semiautomatic handguns and rifles -- may have already been used to kill innocent people in Mexico. It's impossible to know if, and how many, of these guns are being used to commit crimes.

But while the bureau is now reviewing its gun-tracking strategies, "controlled delivery" of firearms into Mexico has not ceased. "None of these people have said this activity is going to stop," Dodson said. "No one has said we've suspended the policy pending these reviews."

Which leaves us with one of John's questions: "If they stopped the electronic tracking, this leads to the question why? Was it too expensive, too unreliable, or what? Did someone in the Obama Administration make the decision to discontinue the electronic tagging and tracking? Again, why?"

All good questions to ask some administration scofflaws under oath.