Full Coverage: ATF’s Fast and Furious scandal
A federal operation dubbed Fast and Furious allowed weapons from the U.S. to pass into the hands of suspected gun smugglers so the arms could be traced to the higher echelons of Mexican drug cartels. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which ran the operation, has lost track of hundreds of firearms, many of which have been linked to crimes, including the fatal shooting of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.
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A jury has found two men guilty of murder in the killing of a U.S.
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Five years before he was shot to death in the failed terrorist attack in Garland, Texas, Nadir Soofi walked into a suburban Phoenix gun shop to buy a 9-millimeter pistol.
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TUCSON -- A federal judge sentenced a Mexican man to 30 years in prison Monday for the 2010 killing of Border Patrol Agent Brian A.
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WASHINGTON — The firearms dealer caught up in the Justice Department’s Fast and Furious scandal has won an early release from prison after a federal judge ruled that prosecutors overcharged him in alleging he sold high-powered weapons to smugglers working for a violent drug cartel in Mexico.
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A Mexican man accused of assembling the crew of drug robbers who killed a U.S.
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TUCSON -- A federal judge could sentence a Mexican national Monday to up to 30 years to life in prison for the 2010 killing of Border Patrol agent Brian A.
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The family of a slain border agent is blasting Atty. Gen. Eric H.
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In a stinging rebuke of the Obama administration and Attorney General Eric H.
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The Republican chairman of the House oversight committee contends Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. knew more about the failed ATF gun-tracking operation than he has admitted.
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Guns illegally purchased under the ATF operation were found in April hidden in violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, court records show.
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Atty. Gen. Eric Holder says in an angry letter that he knew nothing about secret tactics involved in the Fast and Furious gun-tracking mission.
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Obama says he and Holder didn’t know the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was allowing illegal gun purchases on the Southwest border as part of Operation Fast and Furious.
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Two top supervisors at ATF headquarters in Washington -- the deputy director and the assistant director for all field operations -- have been reassigned as the beleaguered agency attempts to remake itself amid the fallout from a failed gun-tracking operation along the Southwest border called Fast and Furious, according to two sources briefed on the changes.
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Memos from 2010 show some in senior positions were aware of tactics used in a surveillance operation in which firearms were allowed into Mexico in a failed effort to catch drug cartel leaders.
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They were being stored for shipment to Mexico, documents show. It’s the first case of vanished weapons from the surveillance program showing up on this side of the border outside the Phoenix area.
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Top Mexican officials say the U.S. kept them in the dark. One official was stunned to learn that the cartel hit men who killed her brother had assault rifles from Fast and Furious in their arsenal.
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When federal agents with Operation Fast and Furious told Andre Howard to sell weapons to illegal purchasers, he complied, but he feared someone would get hurt. Then a border agent was shot.
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Congressional investigators reviewing the failed gun-tracking program Operation Fast and Furious have formally asked the Obama administration to turn over copies of “all records” involving three key White House national security officials and the program, other ATF gun cases in Phoenix, and all communications between the White House and the ATF field office in Arizona.
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In the second violent crime in this country connected with the ATF’s failed Fast and Furious program, two Arizona undercover police officers were allegedly assaulted last year when they attempted to stop two men in a stolen vehicle with two of the program’s weapons in a confrontation south of Phoenix.
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Former officials say the agency, which ran a botched sting operation, needs a permanent director to guide it. But nominees to the post have met opposition from gun-rights groups.
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Three national security officials were given some details about the operation. But an administration official says the emails do not prove that anyone in the White House was aware of the covert tactics of the program.
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The agency says three officials involved in the guns scandal were moved laterally to jobs in its Washington headquarters.
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Guns from Operation Fast and Furious were found at scenes in Arizona and Texas, the Justice Department acknowledges, widening the scope of the danger posed by the program.
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The three, who have been criticized for pushing on with the border weapons sting even as it came apart, receive new management jobs in Washington.
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The head of the DEA says her agents helped gather evidence for cases involved with the ill-fated Operation Fast and Furious.
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A copy of the FBI document shows ballistics tests did not rule out the Fast and Furious guns in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry.
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Embassy officials raised concerns that U.S. guns were showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. But ATF officials kept the embassy in the dark about the operation to sell weapons to straw purchasers to trace smuggling routes.
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As Sen. Charles Grassley and congressional investigators looked into the Fast and Furious operation and the killing of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, ATF officials took steps to throw them off the trail.
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Kenneth Melson, the ATF’s acting director, claims Justice Department officials refuse to release a telling internal report on the Fast and Furious operation.
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Probe reveals that the U.S. agency running the ‘Fast and Furious’ anti-gun-trafficking operation didn’t know about the alleged FBI informants. Congressional investigators are looking into the matter.
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The Obama administration has taken a a small but significant step that could help federal authorities keep weapons sold in the U.S. out of the hands of Mexican gangs and drug cartels.
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Gun dealers in states bordering Mexico will have to report whenever they sell more than two semiautomatic rifles to someone in a five-day period.
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The head of the ATF says the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration never told him they had informant relationships with Mexican drug cartel figures targeted by Operation Fast and Furious.
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Reps. Elijah Cummings and Carolyn Maloney seek tighter restrictions to combat sales that supply Mexican drug cartels. Republicans say the move is meant to distract attention from the ATF’s troubled Fast and Furious operation.
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The agency failed in a border operation that let guns fall into criminals’ hands. But Congress has failed to adopt sensible laws to prevent mass ‘straw purchases’ of arms destined for use in crimes.
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Kenneth Melson of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms faces controversy over the agency’s surveillance program that allowed U.S. guns into Mexico. He is said to be eager to testify to Congress.
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A U.S. congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious, the controversial federal gun-running surveillance operation, moves to Mexico amid reports that two assault weapons sold in Arizona were found at the scene of a shootout with the suspects in a Mexican attorney’s slaying.
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Kenneth E. Melson’s exit would be the biggest response yet to the uproar over an operation that allowed the sale of weapons to suspected agents of Mexican drug cartels.
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A federal firearms investigation that allowed weapons from the U.S. to pass into the hands of Mexican smugglers was closely monitored by the very top leaders of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to internal emails released Wednesday by a congressional committee.
