Sipsey Street Irregulars: CBS: "ATF 'Fast and Furious' secret audio recordings reveal concerns about whistleblower." "FBI's got their own problems, trust me."

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

CBS: "ATF 'Fast and Furious' secret audio recordings reveal concerns about whistleblower." "FBI's got their own problems, trust me."

Eric Holder probably wishes there was an 18 minute gap in these tapes.

In a series of secretly recorded audio tapes believe to have been recorded last March and obtained by CBS News, an Arizona gun dealer and an ATF agent involved with ATF's "Fast and Furious" operation worried about the unraveling scandal.

The tapes were made just weeks after CBS News broke the story in February.

Secret recordings raise new questions in ATF 'Gunwalker' operation

The conversations were recorded by Andre Howard who ran the Lone Wolf Trading Company. Howard's gun dealership had been cooperating with the ATF in "Fast and Furious." At least two of his weapons were sold to a straw buyer before turning up later at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Hope MacAllister, the ATF agent heard in the conversations, was the lead case agent.

The ATF's controversial "Fast and Furious" operation allowed thousands of weapons to be smuggled into Mexico and into the hands of drug cartels. Agents involved describe it as "letting guns walk."

Among other things, Howard and MacAllister expressed concerns about ATF Special Agent John Dodson, who by that point had gone public about "Fast and Furious" in an exclusive interview with CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.

(Listen to the audio below)

They also spoke of their concerns that Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) was investigating, with Agent MacCallister saying of her superiors in Washington, DC, "they're gonna say have to say Grassley you're just gonna have to sit your a-- down."

These recordings are important because MacAllister has never spoken publicly about her involvement in the operation and its fallout and Howard's role as a gun dealer cooperating with the ATF placed him in position to see "Fast and Furious" firsthand . The audio recordings contain new revelations about the guns involved, and ATF's efforts to respond to the breaking scandal. The tapes were turned over to Congressional investigators and the Inspector General in connection with their probe into "Fast and Furious."

The excerpts below refer to whistleblower ATF special agent John Dodson, and a March 9 letter that Rep. Lamar Smith and 13 other House Judiciary Committee members sent to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding answers regarding "Fast and Furious."

(Read text of the audio excerpts below.)

The gun dealer is Andre Howard, the agent is ATF Agent Hope MacAllister.

Dealer: He's (Dodson) more toxic than you realize. I can tell you casue I asked him. How much of this f-----g file did you release?

Agent: Mmmhm

Dealer: He said basically the underlying case file. I said okay, who'd you release it to? F-----g Patrick Leahy! Ok? Wasn't just Grassley it was Leahy alright? Leahy as we both know has adjourned this inquiry right now okay with no plans to reconvene it. So your people were successful on that end.

Agent: Right.

Dealer: Obviously that's good. However these other idiots from

Agent: Yeah I saw that. The House?

Dealer: Yeah and that I don't know. What is troublesome with this I expected Darrell Issa's signature to be on this it wasn't. He's your biggest thorn, he hates Holder.

Agent: Yeah. Where's he out of?

Dealer: Darrell Issa?

Agent: Yeah.

Dealer: California.

Agent: California.

Dealer: Lamar Smith you know's out of Texas, I don't know. Holder has to respond to this tomorrow.

Agent: Yeah he's gonna respond.

Dealer: I know he is. And I can assure you the media isn't gonna like his response because basically it's gonna mirror what he's told Grassley.

Agent: Yeah.

Dealer: He can't deviate.

Agent: Well if, I mean I've seen a rough copy at least of what our US Attorney here has sent up. Whether or not he has the b---s to actually use it or not, I doubt it. But I mean it's pretty aggressive. Um. The way I see it our local US Attorney is extremely aggressive. When it gets to DC..

Dealer: Who Emory?

Agent: No...THE US Attorney.

Dealer: Burke, yeah, used to work under Clinton. Guy used to work under Clinton. Talking about Burke?

Agent: MMhmm.

Dealer: yeah well

Agent: But the problem is once it gets to dc it just gets... well you know

(unintell.)

Dealer: Discombobulated that's a good term for it yeah I get that.

Dealer: Let me tell you you got more people out there now talking about this f-----g thing than anything I've ever seen...(unintell.) ... they're not shutting the hell up

Agent: (unintell)

Dealer: and that goes from DHS to f-----g FBI to everybody...

Agent: Yeah.

Dealer: I'm hearing hypothetically on every fringe

Agent: Yeah.

Dealer: Thru third parties and I can assure you they're all like what the hell are they nuts?

EXCERPT 2

Dealer: But you have got to put the word out there to all the departments tell the f------g FBI shut the f--- up. (whispering)

Agent: FBI'S got their own problems, trust me.

Dealer: I know I hear.

Agent: They've got their own problems.

Dealer: Hypothetically.

Agent: If anybody's gonna get sued it's gonna be the FBI in my opinion.

EXCERPT 3

Dealer: What is it with the FBI they just have a h--- on for you guys or what?

Agent: The FBI's got their own problems. Like I said they're focusing on our problems they should probably turn it inward, cause they got their own problems right now.

Dealer: That ain't no lie.

Agent: So.. so hahaha.

EXCERPT 4

Dealer: What's Holders' office got to say about this?

Agent: Well like I said they're supposed to come out with little more um b----y statement than they have in the past, so...

Dealer: God they're (intell)

Agent: I mean at some point they're gonna say have to say Grassley you're just gonna have to sit your a-- down. I mean that or they're gonna have to (unintell). I mean like I said my understanding is he can't call a hearing. Somebody from the majority party has got to call a congressional hearing and as of right now...

Dealer: Patrick Leahy's an a----e, you know that. He gets ahold of something he's like a dog with a bone.

Agent: As of right now we don't have any info that's occurred. So...

Dealer: No, not now, but

Agent: I know there was a presentation given to Judiciary committee and everybody aside from Grassley is is satisfied. At least at this point.

Dealer: So they say you know I don't trust em...

Agent: No but I mean that's all I've got...it's all (unintell.)

4 comments:

David Codrea said...: "CBS News broke the story in February"...?

Really?; September 20, 2011 at 5:50 PM
Mickey Collins said...: Anybody else think these recordings show how much the dealer wants to bury the evidence and help with the cover-up? He seems a lot more into hiding facts from Congress than Hope does.; September 20, 2011 at 8:48 PM
Luke Milner said...: Why is a gun store owner helping the ATF with this? Did they blackmail him?; September 20, 2011 at 9:56 PM
David said...: Mr. Howard (the gun store owner), was playing Mrs. MacAllister. According to his attorney he was attempting to get her to admit to walking guns. Thus the statements he made in the tapes are not necessarily a reflection of his beliefs. A 9 min interview with his attorney can be found here: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/21/audio-tapes-reveal-more-details-in-fast-and-furious-gunrunner-scandal/; September 24, 2011 at 9:56 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

CBS: "ATF 'Fast and Furious' secret audio recordings reveal concerns about whistleblower." "FBI's got their own problems, trust me."

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