www.globalexchange.org<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The House Government Oversight and Reform Committee held a hearing yesterday, hammering officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) about the growing scandal over operation Fast and Furious. An estimated 1000 firearms were trafficked to Mexican drug cartels under the watch of the ATF, as part of a failed anti-gun tracking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/1\/1a\/Houston_Gun_Show_at_the_George_R._Brown_Convention_Center.jpg\/800px-Houston_Gun_Show_at_the_George_R._Brown_Convention_Center.jpg\")
The House Government Oversight and Reform Committee held a hearing yesterday, hammering officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) about the growing scandal over operation Fast and Furious. An estimated 1000 firearms were trafficked to Mexican drug cartels under the watch of the ATF, as part of a failed anti-gun tracking program. Firearms trafficked under Fast and Furious have been found at multiple bloody sites. Last December, a gun traced back to Fast and Furious was found at the scene of a gun battle where US border patrol agent Brian Terry was killed. Yesterday William Newell, former special agent in charge of the Pheonix ATF office, testified, “It was not the purpose of the investigation to permit the transportation of firearms into Mexico.” ATF officials acknowledge their goal was to track US guns trafficked by low level “straw buyers” to leaders of Mexican cartels. At issue is whether ATF agents allowed guns to be “walked” across the border to then disappear into cartel weapons caches. ATF whistleblower and Mexico City attache Jose Canino says he repeatedly warned his colleagues that the program had backfired, arming cartels instead of disrupting them. Canino eventually blew the whistle to Mexican Attorney General Marciela Morales. The Oversight Committee is also digging deep into how much the Department of Justice knew about the ATF’s operations, and how close the information came to the White House. The DOJ has denied any wrongdoing. In the word of one Republican congressman, “Both sides of the aisle and the American people are furious.” However, the investigation is spearheaded by GOP Committee Chairman Darryll Issa, who vowed to overwhelm the Obama administration with investigations after his party regained control of the House early this year. Politico reports the ATF has also been a target of the NRA, which has played a major role in keeping the agency without a permanent director since 2006.<\/p>\n