St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner





Some in the gun rights advocacy community don't buy the official story, that "Project Gunwalker" was intended, through some "underpants gnome"-like magical mechanism, to "bring down a drug cartel." We believe instead that the real motive was to pad statistics which would then be used to bolster the foundering "U.S. commercial gun market is arming Mexican drug cartels" myth. In taking that position, we have opened ourselves up to the ridicule of such journalistic luminaries as Media Matters and Jon Stewart, who apparently really do believe both that senior government officials are stupidly incompetent enough to take such a harebrained approach to combating drug war violence, and that such massive incompetence isn't a pretty dire indictment of the current government.

In light of some new evidence released by Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), Media Matters and Stewart would seem to have some serious new work to do in patching up the "underpants gnome" defense. That new evidence comes in the form of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) emails related to Operation Fast and Furious, that Congressmen Issa and Grassley have obtained in their "Gunwalker" investigation, and attached to a letter (thank you, Bob Owens) they sent to Attorney General Holder Tuesday.

We'll look at a couple of those emails, both from BATFE Assistant Director for Field Operations Mark Chait, to William "Gunwalker Bill" Newell (at that time Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix field division, where Operation Fast and Furious was implemented). First, this one, sent one year ago today:

Read here: http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-st-louis/gunwalking-to-forcib...