AZMEX F&F EXTRA 20 SEP 2012
Note: Anyone else notice the news on these always come out at the
end of the week?
Updated Sep 29, 2012 - 9:12 am
Sentencing reset in Fast and Furious case
By Associated Press
Originally published: Sep 29, 2012 - 9:11 am
http://www.ktar.com/22/1578686/Sentencing-reset-in-Fast-and-Furious-
case-
PHOENIX — A judge has set a new sentencing date for a man who pleaded
guilty to participating in a gun smuggling ring that was monitored in
the government's botched investigation known as Operation Fast and
Furious.
U.S. District Judge James Teilborg set Alfredo Celis' new sentencing
date for Dec. 12.
Celis has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and admitted to
falsely claiming that more than 130 guns he bought were for him, when
they were actually purchased for the ring.
Three other people who pleaded guilty in the case also will be
sentenced on Dec. 12.
Federal investigators have faced criticism for allowing suspected
straw gun buyers to walk away from gun shops with weapons, rather
than arrest the suspects and seize the guns there.
Fast & Furious special on TV SUNDAY at 6:00 pm Arizona Time
Important for many of us who still have family and friends in Mexico.
Hundreds of Mexicans have been killed, directly attributed to arms
from BATFE
with their "fast & furious" fiasco.
Which many of us, familiar with many of the people involved, are
convinced that it was scheme to manufacture "evidence" that the ban
on semi auto firearms and more, had to be brought back.
Link the to the show scheduled for SUNDAY 6:00 pm AZ time on
Univision, the largest Spanish language broadcast TV network.
http://noticias.univision.com/aqui-y-ahora
In Phx Area is KTVW Ch. 33, 19 on cable.
This station happens to have the highest viewership in AZ
Tucson KUVE Ch. 46 ?
Do not have info on other stations in the network.
There may be English subtitles, but not sure
We don't have the capability to record the program, so hope those who
can, will.
The link again:
http://noticias.univision.com/aqui-y-ahora
We do not know the content of the program .
As Univision is owned by NBC:
A. We don't know if it will get to the truth of the hundreds of
Mexicans killed
B. We don't know if it will be a whitewash of the administration
C. We don't know if it will make it onto the air.
Univision: The untold story of what 'Fast and Furious' wrought in Mexico
Sunday evening, Univision airs an investigative report on how the
botched 'Fast and Furious' program resulted in a deadly toll in
Mexico when US authorities allowed guns to 'walk' across the border.
By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / September 29, 2012
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0929/Univision-The-untold-
story-of-what-Fast-and-Furious-wrought-in-Mexico
Part of a cache of seized weapons displayed at a news conference in
Phoenix. The ATF is under fire over a Phoenix-based gun-trafficking
investigation called "Fast and Furious," in which agents allowed
hundreds of guns into the hands of straw purchasers in hopes of
making a bigger case.
Matt York/AP
ATLANTA
When a journalist for Univision asked President Obama last week why
he hasn't fired Attorney General Eric Holder over the "Fast and
Furious" gun walking fiasco, the reporter, it turns out, had an
inside scoop that added urgency to the question.
At 7 p.m. on Sunday, Univision says it'll air a blockbuster
investigation detailing the impact of the deeply flawed gunrunning
investigation, which operated between Oct. 2009 and January 2011.
The Spanish-language channel says the "Aqui y Ahora" program will
expose the true deadly toll of a covert program where US officials
allowed over 2,000 high-powered rifles to "walk" into the hands of
violent Mexican cartels. Expecting American interest, Univision will
caption the program in English.
In the US, "Fast and Furious" is most noted for its ties to the death
of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and for political fallout over the
extent of involvement of the Obama administration, including Attorney
General Holder. But in Mexico, the program may reignite furor over
how a US government that had promised to try to halt the border gun
traffic instead covertly contributed to it.
"Americans have been getting a lot of information about the possible
cover-up in the Justice Department, the tragedy of Brian Terry
getting killed, but what about the Mexicans?" says Miami-based
Gerardo Reyes, Univision's director of investigative reporting, in an
interview Saturday with the Monitor.
"The sinister part of this, and I know it sounds very hard, is that
the success of this operation depended in part on the fact that the
guns were used in Mexico to kill," says Mr. Reyes. "In order to reach
the target of the operation, which was identifying the drug
traffickers who were using the guns, [ATF agents] were waiting for
the guns to be used. And how are guns used in Mexico? Killing people.
I talked to an ATF agent who said there was no other way to explain it."
ATF is the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
By cross referencing gun tracing data, Univision identified 57
weapons linked to murders and crimes in Mexico, and used that data to
highlight "the face of the tragedy in Mexico," says Mr. Reyes.
Reyes said the program will detail Fast and Furious ties to the
massacre of 16 teenage boys and girls in Ciudad Juarez, the nation-
shaking murder of Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez, the brother of the former
Chihuahua attorney general, the extent to which the Mexican
government knew about the program, and an interview with a drug
trafficker who says he heard from colleagues that the US government
was selling guns to the cartels.
The program comes two weeks after a long-awaited DOJ inspector
general report was met with bipartisan approval as it chided the
Justice Department and ATF for allowing Fast and Furious to ever
happen, identified 14 people who should be held responsible, and
suggested that the program was ultimately what Obama and Eric Holder
originally said after Agent Terry's murder: The product of an ill-
advised ATF gambit in Phoenix, where employees later tried to cover
up the fact that gunwalking was occurring.
The author of the report, Michael Horowitz, did note to the House
Oversight Committee that a person who could have possibly connected
Fast and Furious to the White House refused to be interviewed. Mr.
Horowitz also faulted the Department of Justice for failing to pick
up on what the program entailed, which could have been easily gleaned
from wiretap applications sent for approval to the department in
Washington.
Under the program, about 2,000 mostly AK-47s and some .50 caliber
guns were allowed to be purchased by known straw buyers and "walk"
without trace into Mexico. The gunwalking was at first denied by the
Justice Department, which then had to concede that the government did
indeed knowingly allow guns to cross the border.
President Obama has called the program a mistake, but it had an
honorable intent: Under intense pressure to stymie tens of thousands
of illegal guns flowing across the border, ATF, building on a smaller
Bush-era program that cooperated with Mexican authorities, hoped
agents could trace the guns beyond low-level straw buyers and to the
highest levels of cartel. Some 40 people were indicted on charges
brought using intelligence gleaned from Fast and Furious.
The question remains how far up in the Justice Department knowledge
of the program went. Some Republicans suspect that it was a ploy
brewed up at the highest levels, including Holder and President
Obama, to foment support for more domestic gun restrictions.
But Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, found only blame at the
lower reaches of justice, positing that it was the product of a
regional taskforce not a national subterfuge intended by the
administration to sway policy.
No matter how far up knowledge of Fast and Furious actually went,
exposure of its true toll in Mexico will likely raise new questions
about how such a fatally flawed operation could ever have happened.
In a press release for Sunday's program, Univision says, "Univision
News' Investigative Unit was also able to identify additional guns
that escaped the control of ATF agents and were used in different
types of crimes throughout Mexico. Furthermore, some of these guns –
none of which were reported by Congressional investigators – were put
in the hands of drug traffickers in Honduras, Puerto Rico, and
Colombia. A person familiar with the recent Congressional hearings
called Univision's findings 'the holy grail' that Congress had been
searching for."
No comments:
Post a Comment