(Ken Silva, Headline USA) ATF Director Steven Dettelbach revealed during a Wednesday congressional hearing that he doesn’t know how many guns remain unaccounted for from the bureau’s Operation Fast and Furious—an Obama-era scandal where the ATF purposely allowed illegal gun purchases under the guise of tracking organized crime.
The U.S. government reportedly lost 2,000 firearms during Operation Fast and Furious, of which only 710 were recovered as of February 2012. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., asked Dettelbach how many more have been recovered since then, and the ATF boss said he didn’t know.
Biggs said one of the Fast and Furious guns has recently been used in a crime. Biggs didn’t provide details of this crime, but said the ATF is now questioning the firearms dealer from which the gun emanated.
“Now you’re asking [the gun dealer] who they sold it to. They sold it to an ATF agent,” Biggs said.
Dettelbach again professed ignorance of the situation.
The crime cited by Biggs would be the latest incident stemming from Fast and Furious, which became a national scandal when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed by a Fast and Furious firearm in 2010.
At least 150 Mexicans have been maimed or killed by guns that the ATF allowed to “walk.” One of the Fast and Furious guns was also likely used in the November 13, 2015, Paris terrorist attacks, which killed 130 people.
And those aren’t the only victims of Fast and Furious.
Headline USA is one of the few outlets to tell the story of Donald Reynolds Jr., a black businessman serving life plus 75 years on drug, weapon and money-laundering charges. The American Conservative first published an investigation in 2020 about the likelihood that the U.S. government retaliated against Reynolds after he refused to be a government informant in a Fast and Furious-like operation.
Reynolds is currently incarcerated in one of the country’s two maximum-security “Communication Management Units”— prison facilities designed to prevent terrorists and organized crime figures from communicating with their networks outside.
Another victim of the Fast and Furious scandal is the journalist who exposed the operation on a national stage: former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson.
Attkisson discovered while working on the ATF scandal that government agents hacked her computer in an attempt to discover her confidential sources. She also says the government threatened to plant child pornography on her husband’s computer.
Attkisson filed a lawsuit over this matter, which is still ongoing.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
