Investigators found that Holder didn’t know about the operation until the scandal emerged. 2 out at DOJ after 'Furious' report

An internal Justice Department investigation into the Operation Fast and Furious scandal released Wednesday singles out 14 federal officials for criticism and possible disciplinary action. But the report found no evidence that the department’s top leaders knew about the gun-walking aspect of the operation while it was under way.

The long-awaited, 471-page report from the DOJ’s inspector general finds misconduct or poor judgment on the part of officials at DOJ headquarters; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Washington and its field office in Arizona; and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona in connection with the operation that reportedly allowed as many as 2,000 weapons to flow from U.S. gun dealers to Mexican drug cartels.


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The report essentially clears Attorney General Eric Holder — who has become a lightning rod for Republican criticism of the operation — of any wrongdoing or errors in judgment.

The investigators found Holder didn’t know about the operation or its controversial tactics until after the scandal emerged in the wake of the discovery of two weapons linked to the operation at the scene of the shooting death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in December 2010.

However, GOP lawmakers point out that the report doesn’t address whether Holder moved swiftly or strongly enough to discipline those responsible for the operation.

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Fast and Furious has drawn outrage on Capitol Hill over the use of gun-walking, a practice that has no official definition but involves law enforcement failing to arrest armed suspects or interdict weapons when there was a legal basis to do so. ATF agents involved in Fast and Furious apparently did not step in as suspected traffickers bought the weapons involved.

As the report was being released Wednesday afternoon, Holder announced the departure of two officials criticized in the report: former ATF Director Kenneth Melson and Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Jason Weinstein.

Melson, who had previously been reassigned by Holder, retired. Weinstein resigned.

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Holder said lower-ranking officials at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona and ATF were being referred for discipline.

The attorney general announced no action against the head of the DOJ’s Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer, who was criticized in the report and whose firing has been demanded by Republican lawmakers. However, a senior DOJ official said Holder “admonished” Breuer over the episode.

“Our review of Operation Fast and Furious and related matters revealed a series of misguided strategies, tactics, errors in judgment, and management failures that permeated ATF headquarters and the Phoenix Field Division, as well as the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona,” Inspector General Michael Horowitz writes in the report. “Individuals ranging from line agents and prosecutors in Phoenix and Tucson to senior ATF officials in Washington, D.C. … bore a share of responsibility for ATF’s knowing failure … to interdict firearms illegally destined for Mexico, and for doing so without adequately taking into account the danger to public safety that flowed from this risky strategy.”

In a statement, Holder signaled that he views the inspector general’s report as a vindication, inasmuch as it contradicts the assertions of some Republicans and other critics who said top officials knew about the gun-walking as it was happening and authorized the tactic in an effort to justify tougher gun-control measures.

“It is unfortunate that some were so quick to make baseless accusations before they possessed the facts about these operations — accusations that turned out to be without foundation and that have caused a great deal of unnecessary harm and confusion. I hope today’s report acts as a reminder of the dangers of adopting as fact unsubstantiated conclusions before an investigation of the circumstances is completed,” Holder said.

However, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, who has headed a major congressional investigation into the issue, said the report did not resolve doubts about Holder’s conduct or leadership

“The fact is that just because you’re not convicted, doesn’t mean you’re vindicated,” Issa said Wednesday evening on Fox News. “Attorney General Holder didn’t ask the questions, didn’t read the memos … Eric Holder didn’t do his job.”

Issa faulted Holder Wednesday for doing too little to address the mistakes described in the report. The congressman said Weinstein “should have been gone a year and a half ago.”

“The inspector general’s report confirms findings by Congress’s investigation of a near total disregard for public safety in Operation Fast and Furious,” Issa said in a statement. “It’s time for President [Barack] Obama to step in and provide accountability for officials at both the Department of Justice and ATF who failed to do their jobs. Attorney General Holder has clearly known about these unacceptable failures yet has failed to take appropriate action for over a year and a half.”

While the report does not advance some claims the GOP has made about Fast and Furious, the inspector general does seem to agree with the department’s critics that wiretap applications sent to the DOJ headquarters contained indications of the dangerous tactics being used in the investigation.

“The affidavits [in Fast and Furious and a predecessor probe, Operation Wide Receiver] included information that would have caused a prosecutor who was focused on the question of investigative tactics, particularly one who was already sensitive to the issue of ‘gun walking’ to have questions about ATF’s conduct of the investigations,” Horowitz’s report says.

The wiretap applications themselves are under seal, though Issa obtained copies of at least some of them. The DOJ agreed to Horowitz’s request that officials ask a judge to unseal them.

Issa said the finding shows members of his committee were correct to fault DOJ officials for missing key clues in the wiretaps.

“Contrary to the denials of the attorney general and his political defenders in Congress, the investigation found that information in wiretap applications approved by senior Justice Department officials in Washington did contain red flags showing reckless tactics and faults Attorney General Eric Holder’s inner circle for their conduct,” Issa said.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said Wednesday afternoon he had not yet reviewed the report, but that he did not consider Holder absolved.

“The whole thing is a mess. It’s obvious it’s one of those things where either way, the attorney general can be blamed for what happened. Either he didn’t know and should have, or he did and he hasn’t ‘fessed up to Congress,” Kyl said. “It’s a mess, at least one person died because of that, and I hope that the administration would begin cooperating with Congress to provide all the details so the American people will really know one way or the other.”

“I’m concerned, because it’s everybody but Holder,” Oversight Committee member Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) said. “I don’t know enough about it, but you come up with 14 individuals [but] you don’t hold the individual who’s in charge of the whole mess accountable, there’s something wrong.”

However, Democrats said the big news in the report was the lack of evidence to support some of the GOP’s charges.

“The report released by the inspector general today should finally put to rest the unfounded claims that these wrongheaded on-the-ground tactics were conceived and directed from the ‘highest levels’ of the Department of Justice,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said. “It is what it always was, a badly conceived effort by law enforcement field agents to respond to difficult circumstances that went tragically wrong.”

The report concludes that some of the inaction was deliberate, in the hope that higher-ups in the guns-and-drugs network could be located and charged. However, some of the failures also stemmed from a lack of personnel needed to mount such an operation, agents losing track of suspects, and delays in carrying out plans to wrap up the operation.

Weinstein, in a resignation letter, sharply disagreed with the inspector general’s findings but suggested some scapegoats had to be found in a case of this political magnitude.

“It is so personally painful for me to read the completely false conclusion in the Inspector General’s Report on Fast and Furious that I knew about — but failed to act upon — guns going into the hands of criminals and being allowed to ‘walk’ into Mexico,” Weinstein wrote in the letter, released by a Washington public relations firm. “This accusation is not only illogical but demonstrably false….Nonetheless, I recognize that, in the dynamic of internal investigations of this nature, particularly when they become enmeshed in politicized Congressional hearings, it is virtually inevitable that someone be singled out for blame, whether the facts support it or not.”

Melson, the former ATF director who was reassigned to another post in the department in August 2011, also issued a statement Wednesday faulting the report for jumping to conclusions.

“While I firmly disagree with many of the speculative assumptions, conclusions and characterizations in the inspector general’s report, as the acting director of the agency I was ultimately responsible for the actions of each employee,” Melson said. “When I went to Congress [last year], I acknowledged that mistakes were made throughout the Department of Justice and that things could and should have been done differently. But going forward, I hope that the reports by Congress and the inspector general will be used constructively and that the focus can now shift from individuals to ways in which the laws of the United States can be more effectively enforced and ATF’s mission more fully supported.”

Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.