Hundreds of gun sales reported through Operation Wide Receiver
Tucson ATF sting exported weapons
Tim Steller Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Thursday, October 6, 2011
12:00 am
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/crime/article_b91080d8-0e03-5907-
b807-5317e1c473f9.html
It was early 2006 when a customer raised the suspicions of a Tucson
firearms dealer, Michael Detty, triggering a federal investigation
into guns bought here for criminals in Mexico.
Four years and hundreds of sales to gun smugglers later, nine people
were charged quietly in Tucson, in May and October 2010. Two have
pleaded guilty and two more are scheduled to admit their roles in
Tucson's federal court next Wednesday, while the other five cases are
pending.
Operation Wide Receiver, which The Associated Press revealed Tuesday,
now appears to have been a precursor to the controversial Operation
Fast and Furious. In that operation, federal agents in Phoenix
allowed thousands of guns to be smuggled into Mexico as they tried to
build cases against high-ranking criminals. In the Tucson operation,
the guns numbered in the hundreds, but many also slipped into Mexico
while agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives watched.
In a twist, the man who was U.S. attorney for Arizona when Operation
Wide Receiver started in 2006 is pursuing a lawsuit over Operation
Fast and Furious. Paul Charlton represents the parents of U.S. Border
Patrol Agent Brian Terry, slain near Rio Rico last year.
In an interview Wednesday, Charlton, who was U.S. attorney from 2001
to January 2007, said he couldn't remember the Tucson operation.
"We had hundreds of operations and hundreds of names," said Charlton,
now in private practice and planning to file a claim against the U.S.
government for letting the guns loose that may have been used to kill
Terry. "I don't think I would ever have approved letting guns walk,
and I don't know if that's what's happened."
He added, "If that happened on my watch, then I own it."
Attorney Kurt Altman, who represented defendant Jonathan Horowitz in
a Wide Receiver case, is a former federal prosecutor and could see
that something "much bigger" was going on than his client's
relatively narrow case, he said.
In addition, Altman said, "There was no doubt that guns were going to
Mexico."
Horowitz, his client, admitted last year that he bought 100 AR-15
rifle components from Detty's business for a man in Tijuana and that
he had smuggled some firearms himself.
A Tucson defense attorney representing another defendant, Ismael
Betancourt, who pleaded guilty July 13, said Wednesday that she was
puzzled by how the case proceeded.
"I did find it surprising that the investigation began in 2006 and
they did nothing about it until four years later," Laura Udall said.
Fellow Tucson defense attorney John D. Kaufmann has argued that the
case against his client, Ricardo Mendez Jr., should be dismissed
because federal prosecutors waited years after the end of the
investigation to pursue an indictment. He also has demanded any
material that might show that ATF agents encouraged dealers to make
illegal sales.
Udall and Altman noted that suddenly last year, the case was being
handled by an attorney at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C.,
not a federal prosecutor in Arizona, as usual.
The May 2010 indictment says Detty's home-based business, Mad Dawg
Global Marketing, sold 126 firearms or gun components to people who
exported weapons to Mexico for a man living in Tijuana. It doesn't
mention any firearm seizures by U.S. officers. Bear Arms Firearms in
Scottsdale also sold 43 firearms to the defendants, the indictment said.
The October 2010 indictment said the defendants bought 269 firearms
from Mad Dawg but refers to seizures by law enforcement of 47 of
them, leaving 222 that may have crossed the border. The indictment
does say firearms bought by defendant Carlos Armando Celaya "were
transported to or near the state of Sonora, Mexico."
In an interview with CBS News broadcast Wednesday, Detty said he
signed on as a confidential informant for the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2006. He said he sold about 450
firearms as part of Operation Wide Receiver but he wouldn't have done
that if he'd realized the guns would end up going to criminals in
Mexico.
"It really makes me sick," he said.
A man who answered the phone at a number for Mad Dawg Global
Marketing declined to comment for the Star on the case.
The House Government Oversight Committee has little information on
Operation Wide Receiver, said Becca Watkins, spokeswoman for chairman
Darrell Issa, the California congressman who has been pursuing an
investigation of Fast and Furious.
"We don't know much about it because the Justice Department has not
given us the documents we've asked for," Watkins said. "We'd love to
know more about it."
On StarNet: Read Tim Steller's blog, Señor Reporter, at
go.azstarnet.com/senorreporter
ATF Supervisors reassigned
Two top supervisors at the headquarters of the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives - the deputy director and the
assistant director for field operations - were reassigned as the
beleaguered agency attempts to remake itself in the fallout from the
failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation.
William J. Hoover, the No. 2 man at ATF, will become special agent-in-
charge of the agency's Washington, D.C., field office. Mark Chait,
who ran all of the field investigations around the country, will head
the Baltimore field office. As deputy director, Hoover had broad
supervision over Fast and Furious and was given routine updates on
the "gun walking" operation. As time went on, ATF emails indicate, he
grew concerned over the number of firearms reaching Mexico without
any U.S. indictments on this side of the border.
McClatchy Newspapers
Contact reporter Tim Steller at 807-8427 or at tsteller@azstarnet.com
Read more: http://azstarnet.com/news/local/crime/
article_b91080d8-0e03-5907-b807-5317e1c473f9.html#ixzz1a19M184M
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