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White House fingerprints all over' final Fast and Furious report
Examiner
Anthony Martin, Conservative Examiner
8/2/2012
Excerpt:
"On Monday of this week the final congressional report on the Fast and Furious scandal was released to the public. The report is in three parts, two of which have not yet been released. Part One alone contains 211 pages of information.
Now that reporters have had the chance to sift through the information contained in the report, a central fact has come into clear focus today. To quote one of the original reporters who first broke the Fast and Furious story in December of 2010, Mike Vanderboegh, "...the fingerprints of the White House are certainly all over Part One of the report..."
The key piece of information leading to Vanderboegh's observation is the fact that in the congressional report it is clear that Kevin O'Reilly is a key figure in the entire fiasco that has implicated many of the top officials in the Obama administration in at least three Cabinet level agencies.
As previously reported, O'Reilly was the White House contact for Phoenix ATF Field Division Special Agent in Charge William Newell, the key figure on the ground in the scandal. O'Reilly also served as the White House point of contact for the U.S. Attorney's office in Phoenix. As a member of the National Security Council, which is headquartered in the White House and regularly briefs the president, O'Reilly looms large in the operation that resulted in 2,500 U.S. guns being placed into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
When it became known in 2011 that O'Reilly's testimony would be needed in the congressional investigation into the scandal, it was discovered by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that not only had O'Reilly suddenly been transferred from the White House to the State Department to work under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but he had been deployed to Iraq on a covert mission and was unavailable to provide testimony.
And when it became clear that Issa would push to charge Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt of Congress due to his failure to provide subpoenaed information, President Obama invoked executive privilege not only to protect Holder but to prevent O'Reilly from testifying before Congress.
The congressional report on Fast and Furious, however, names O'Reilly as a central figure in the scheme based upon information gleaned from investigators working for Issa and Grassley.
According to the report, Phoenix Special Agent in Charge Newell was the "man with the gunwalking plan" on the ground in Phoenix. But someone further up the chain of command had to have given the green light for Newell to proceed.
Part One of the report does not name that person, but Vanderboegh believes that the person in question is Kevin O'Reilly, who may be named in Parts Two and Three of the report as the one who gave the go ahead to Newell.
Although it is unclear as to the history of the relationship between O'Reilly and Newell, the record shows that the two had a most unusual relationship of information sharing, beginning in 2009. Unusual is an understatement when one considers that communication between a high level senior official on the National Security Council and a lowly ATF field office supervisor is a major breach of government protocol.
Further, it was discovered that O'Reilly, Newell, and other White House staffers met in the early days of the Obama administration, in March of 2009. The nature of that meeting and the issues discussed were withheld from congressional investigators due to Obama's assertion of executive privilege.
However, the report discloses a series of emails investigators obtained between O'Reilly and Newell which showed that Newell regularly briefed the White House on the Fast and Furious operation at the height of its implementation in 2010. From page 177 of the report:
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View the complete article at:
http://www.examiner.com/article/whit...furious-report
Examiner
Anthony Martin, Conservative Examiner
8/2/2012
Excerpt:
"On Monday of this week the final congressional report on the Fast and Furious scandal was released to the public. The report is in three parts, two of which have not yet been released. Part One alone contains 211 pages of information.
Now that reporters have had the chance to sift through the information contained in the report, a central fact has come into clear focus today. To quote one of the original reporters who first broke the Fast and Furious story in December of 2010, Mike Vanderboegh, "...the fingerprints of the White House are certainly all over Part One of the report..."
The key piece of information leading to Vanderboegh's observation is the fact that in the congressional report it is clear that Kevin O'Reilly is a key figure in the entire fiasco that has implicated many of the top officials in the Obama administration in at least three Cabinet level agencies.
As previously reported, O'Reilly was the White House contact for Phoenix ATF Field Division Special Agent in Charge William Newell, the key figure on the ground in the scandal. O'Reilly also served as the White House point of contact for the U.S. Attorney's office in Phoenix. As a member of the National Security Council, which is headquartered in the White House and regularly briefs the president, O'Reilly looms large in the operation that resulted in 2,500 U.S. guns being placed into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
When it became known in 2011 that O'Reilly's testimony would be needed in the congressional investigation into the scandal, it was discovered by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that not only had O'Reilly suddenly been transferred from the White House to the State Department to work under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but he had been deployed to Iraq on a covert mission and was unavailable to provide testimony.
And when it became clear that Issa would push to charge Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt of Congress due to his failure to provide subpoenaed information, President Obama invoked executive privilege not only to protect Holder but to prevent O'Reilly from testifying before Congress.
The congressional report on Fast and Furious, however, names O'Reilly as a central figure in the scheme based upon information gleaned from investigators working for Issa and Grassley.
According to the report, Phoenix Special Agent in Charge Newell was the "man with the gunwalking plan" on the ground in Phoenix. But someone further up the chain of command had to have given the green light for Newell to proceed.
Part One of the report does not name that person, but Vanderboegh believes that the person in question is Kevin O'Reilly, who may be named in Parts Two and Three of the report as the one who gave the go ahead to Newell.
Although it is unclear as to the history of the relationship between O'Reilly and Newell, the record shows that the two had a most unusual relationship of information sharing, beginning in 2009. Unusual is an understatement when one considers that communication between a high level senior official on the National Security Council and a lowly ATF field office supervisor is a major breach of government protocol.
Further, it was discovered that O'Reilly, Newell, and other White House staffers met in the early days of the Obama administration, in March of 2009. The nature of that meeting and the issues discussed were withheld from congressional investigators due to Obama's assertion of executive privilege.
However, the report discloses a series of emails investigators obtained between O'Reilly and Newell which showed that Newell regularly briefed the White House on the Fast and Furious operation at the height of its implementation in 2010. From page 177 of the report:
Newell was also updating the White House on the timeline. On August 9, 2010, he wrote to Director O’Reilly: “Got another one last week, a .50 caliber semi-auto. Headed for Sinaloa DTO. Part of the same ‘large OCDETF case’ I mentioned previously. We should be indicting in early October.” A few days later, in response to O’Reilly’s offer to involve Newell in an arms trafficking conference in Mexico City in late September or early October, Newell responded: “Timing would be good because we should indict our Phoenix case in late Sept/early Oct.”
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View the complete article at:
http://www.examiner.com/article/whit...furious-report