The government's gunrunners
The scandal surrounding the bizarre federal gun sting gone awry -- Opera tion Fast & Furious -- continues to mushroom.

A Phoenix TV station says its investigation of a local drug bust three months ago involving four illegal aliens turned up 43 weapons that had been sold legally to "straw purchasers" in Arizona but wound up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels -- all under the watchful eyes of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

And that's not all.

A search of court and ATF documents turned up at least four other local cases in which major drug busts also involved numerous assault rifles on the agency's Suspect Gun Database. ...

The Stimulation Of Murder
Clearly somebody is lying here. At a House oversight hearing last month, three federal firearms investigators testified they wanted to "intervene and interdict" the guns at the border, but were repeatedly ordered to step aside and let the traffickers proceed.

Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson, in closed-door testimony in front of Rep. Darrell Issa's committee, said administration officials sought to control and limit his communications with Congress, including withholding documents that made Melson "sick to his stomach" after he reviewed them.

On Dec. 14, Terry was fatally shot in the Arizona desert while patrolling one of the region's most dangerous drug- and human-smuggling corridors. He was shot in the back with an AK-47 assault rifle. Two weapons that were allowed to cross the border as part of Project Gunrunner were found at the scene.

The evidence suggests that Agent Terry's death was financed by the president's stimulus package with the full knowledge and support of Attorney General Holder....

Too bad to check: Project Gunrunner was funded by … the stimulus
...And to think, you guys say the stimulus didn’t produce anything. It produced guns for Mexican drug cartels, didn’t it? Says Ben Domenech, in a stroke of perfect black humor: “Shovel ready.”...

'Fast & Furious' gets hotter for Holder
Don't look now, but the real action in Washington this week isn't the parti san wrangling over the debt ceiling but something -- literally -- even more incendiary: Operation Fast and Furious, which seems about to explode right in the face of Attorney General Eric Holder -- and maybe other administration officials, too.

Also known as Project Gunrunner, the Arizona-based operation was supposed to be a sting, under which the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is part of the Justice Department, allowed "straw purchasers" to transfer weapons from gun shops in Arizona to Mexican drug cartels to trace and halt crossborder arms-trafficking.

That's the official version, anyway -- but it's crumbling, fast.

The ATF's acting director, Kenneth Melson, has been singing like a canary to congressional investigators as he pushes back against administration pressure for him to resign and take the fall for something that, at the very least, had to include the US Attorney's Office, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and possibly the Homeland Security Department. ...

ATF implicates FBI in Mexico gun-trafficking probe
The embattled head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has told congressional investigators that some Mexican drug cartel figures targeted by his agency in a gun-trafficking investigation were paid informants for the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration.

Kenneth E. Melson, the ATF's acting director, has been under pressure to resign after the agency allowed guns to be purchased in the United States in hopes they would be traced to cartel leaders. Under the gun-trafficking operation known as Fast and Furious, the ATF lost track of the guns, and many were found at the scenes of crimes in Mexico, as well as two that were recovered near Nogales, Ariz., where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed.

In two days of meetings with congressional investigators over the weekend, Melson said the FBI and DEA kept the ATF "in the dark" about their relationships with the cartel informants. If ATF agents had known of the relationships, the agency might have ended the investigation much earlier, he said....

Justice Department Obstructing 'Fast and Furious' Gun Probe, ATF Director Says
The Justice Department is obstructing the congressional investigation of a U.S. law enforcement operation intended to crack down on major weapons traffickers on the Southwest border, according to the embattled leader of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Ken Melson, the acting director of the ATF, lobbed the accusation when he sneaked in for an interview with congressional investigators on July 4, two days ahead of his scheduled interview with the inspector general about the operation known as "Fast and Furious," Fox News has learned....

Email Confirms ‘Gunwalker’ Known Throughout Justice Department
An email cited in Senator Charles Grassley’s testimony in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Operation Fast and Furious indicates that knowledge of the program was spread across the highest levels of the Justice Department. This lends even greater suspicion to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s claim that he knew nothing about the program until well after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed.

The October 27, 2009 email from ATF Phoenix Field Division Special Agent in Charge (SAC) William Newell regarded a Southwest Border Strategy Group meeting that focused on Fast and Furious. It contained a laundry list of high ranking Justice Department officials that attended the meeting...

Gunwalker: The ATF’s Kenneth Melson Blows the Whistle on the Justice Department
...Contrary to the Justice Department’s denials, according to Melson, ATF agents specifically witnessed transfers of weapons from straw purchasers to third parties without taking any further action. Melson claimed that it was not until the public disclosure of the operation that he personally reviewed the “hundreds of documents” related to the case. He said he became “sick to his stomach” when he learned the full story. Even more shocking is that some of the “gun trafficking ‘higher-ups’ that the ATF sought to identify were already known to other agencies and may even have been paid as informants” by agencies such as the FBI and the DEA....

U.S. Officials Behind 'Fast and Furious' Gun Sales Should Be Tried in Mexico, Lawmaker Says
While the investigation continues into the U.S. operation that helped send thousands of guns south of the border, Mexican lawmakers say they'll press for extradition and prosecution in Mexico of American officials who authorized and ran the operation.

"I obviously feel violated. I feel my country's sovereignty was violated," Mexico Sen. Rene Arce Islas told Fox News. "They should be tried in the United States and the Mexican government should also demand that they also be tried in Mexico since the incidents took place here. There should be trials in both places." ...