BATFE Report
...3) Fast & Furious worked exactly as the ATF and the people holding its strings -- the Department of Justice and probably Homeland -- planned for it to work. That is, it put demonstrably made-in-America, sold-in-America guns at Mexican crime scenes, waiting for the largely inept, totally corrupt Mexican law enforcement to find them, submit them to the US for tracing and shout loudly that they had found the literal "smoking gun," that American gun shops/shows were flooding Mexico with arms. That's why supervisors were "jovial, if not giddy" when the first Gunwalker guns began turning up at Mexican crime scenes...it was working!

4) I think ATF believed it had enough regulatory juice to keep the gun stores involved from talking, or if not keeping them from talking demonizing them, and maybe driving them out of business, if they did....

Just so you don't forget what the left and ATF was trying to claim:

GUNS SOLD HERE KILL IN MEXICO / Plentiful shops, border proximity make Houston the go-to market for drug cartels

Gun dealers rarely charged in trafficking plots

Weapons sold in Houston kill in Mexico

As Mexico drug violence runs rampant, U.S. guns tied to crime south of border