Talk:ATF gunwalking scandal

(Copied) Talk:Operation Wide Receiver

EDIT: Original doc stated no charges, however, the AP story cited in source #3 states nine were charged, and 2 plead guilty.

No source that the guns in Operation Wide Receiver ever made it to Mexico. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.12.74.131 (talk) 04:09, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

needs work

This needs work for a lot of reasons. Possibly one of the most important is that one of the sources cited, defending the Bush administration, is an editorial written by Katie Pavlich, who is a conservative political commentator and columnist. In other words, her job and the job of the cite is to advance a point of view rather than report factual information. Her column is used as evidence that claims regarding guns crossing the border are false, but she does not even source that info in her column. Maybe I'll try to work on this, because it could be an important piece of history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hazydan (talk • contribs) 19:52, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Actually, having done some more reading, there were a number of operations similar to this, fast and furious, etc between 2006 and 2011...there should probably be a new article covering all of them. maybe I'll work on that instead... Hazydan (talk) 22:25, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

It would be nice if you could give this article some work. There's a lot that still needs to be covered here. We would greatly appreciate it. I haven't had enough time as I wish I had to get this thing going. And, there's not a lot of (credible) info out there, so the work should be meticulous, unbiased, and carefully cited. In fact, you can check Project Gunrunner, which is the main project of all the operatives, like Operation Fast and Furious and this one as well. Any contribution would be useful, thanks! ComputerJA (talk) 00:38, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Agreed..Operation Fast and Furious doesn't look too great either actually (it's basically just a list of everything bad that happened)..how about a new article called ATF gunwalking scandal or something similar, that covers all gunwalking from 2006 in detail? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hazydan (talk • contribs) 04:14, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. As long as we redirect the articles of the OFF and OWR into it and make sections in the ATF gunwalking scandal regarding these two operations, to avoid any confusion. One article would make it a lot easier for people to have easy access to it and contribute to the growth of the article much faster. Good idea. ComputerJA (talk) 04:27, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

have at it...

I've done a lot of the work so far, but this could use a good exploration of the aftermath and investigations of gunwalking. I'm pretty busy so I encourage everyone to work on it. Hazydan (talk) 21:13, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

The following statement in the 1st section is not accurate:

The method of Operations Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious was questioned by the ATF field agents[10]

The [10] citation is the 1st house oversight hearing where agents testified about their objection to Fast and Furious methods. To my knowledge there was no discussion in the record on Operation Wide Receiver because they weren't questioning methods employed during that operation. Removing "Wide Receiver" from the sentence will make the statement accurate. I will change it tomorrow unless someone can show me testimony in that 1st House oversight hearing where agents questioned methods in Operation Wide Receiver.--Wigglesworth11 (talk) 18:11, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I added a citation documenting that Wide receiver was questioned at the headquarters level (Hoover) not the field agent level and further distinguished Wide Receiver from fast and Furious. Naaman Brown (talk) 16:42, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Re: Jaime Zapata

I've read some suggestions that his killing was related to Fast and Furious, but recent revelations seem to indicate that he wasn't. The gun came from Texas, from a source not linked to the operation...it sounds more like a simple illegal export of a weapon, which apparently happens often, rather than having ATF involvement. My Spanish isn't perfect, but I don't think the linked source says specifically that it was a F&F weapon. We should be careful on this issue. Hazydan (talk) 21:22, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

http://oversight.house.gov/images/stories/Letters/2011-10-25_DEI__Grassley_to_Holder-DOJ_-_Zapata_ATF_Fast_and_Furious_Osorio_Brothers_due_11-8.pdf Includes 28 Mar 2011 letter Sen. Charles Grassley to ATF Acting Director Melson. Unanswered questions on 15 Feb murder of Jaime Zapata. Grassley had sent a list of questions 4 Mar to Melson and received in reply a letter 8 Mar from DOJ Assistant Attorney Weich, which did not answer specific questions asked about the murder weapon. Otilio Osorio, brother Ranferi Osorio and their neighbor Kelvin Morrison were identifed as suspects at least by 9 Nov 2010 when they supplied 40 firearms to ATF informant as part of an investigation of Los Zetas. (The arrest of the 3 announced 1 Mar 2011 after death of Jaime Zapata.) One of 3 guns used in the assault on Jaime Zapata traced to purchase by Otilio Osorio 10 Oct 2010 in Dallas/Ft. Forth. A weapon recovered near the border Eagle Pass TX 7 Aug 2010 traced to purchase by Morrison 30 Jul 2010 with two weapons traced to Ranferi Osorio; the suspect vehicle was observed being loaded with weapons 29 Jul by ATF. The Grassley to Melson letter includes copies of ATF traces on Morrison and Ranferi weapons recovered 7 Aug (traces requested 9 Sep 2010 completed 15-17 Sep 2010; one noted the gun dealer had alerted ATF to multiple purchases by suspect.) In this Dallas/Ft. Worth operation (part of overall Project Gunrunner) we have ATF interdicting some of the guns before they cross the border (shades of "Wide Receiver"), obviously failing with others. The "Gunwalking" involved not immediately arresting the suspects in hopes of getting leads on Los Zetas cartel (shades of "Fast and Furious" but not part of the Phoenix operation). This was not a matter of petty illegal export: the Osorio brothers were allowed to walk guns as part of an ATF sting and several opportunities to arrest on good cause were missed (obliterated ser. num. alone is a felony). Naaman Brown (talk) 10:07, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

First, let me say I didn't mean to imply that there's ever anything "petty" about illegal weapons export; rather I was saying that there was no evidence that the ATF deliberately allowed a gun to .walk that later killed Zapata. Anyway, having read that letter, I don't think anything has changed there What I gather from the letter is an accusation of incompetence at the ATF (in that they should have been following Osorio more closely due to his record), and that Melson attempted to downplay that mistake in communications with Congress. This occurred during a Texas investigation under Gunrunner (but unrelated to Fast and Furious, Wide Receiver, etc.). If the ATF had done a better job, they may have had a chance at preventing the export of the weapon in question, but that's all - they didn't know it had been purchased at the time. You could say that about any illegal weapons export...it's not really a scandal. If you want to write in this article that Zapata was killed by a walked gun, you should find a couple of reliable media sources that say so explicitly...otherwise it's original research. Hazydan (talk) 04:34, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I would not say Zapata was killed with a walked gun. From about forty govt docs and media reports I have followed, under Project Gunrunner ATF agent Dodson and others stated the understood SOP was close surveillance and interdict ASAP, no walking onto the street much less across the border. "Gunwalking" in the sense of Operation Wide Receiver (guns across the border to be interdicted by Mexican LE) or Operation Fast and Furious (guns across the border to be followed by crime scene tracing) implies an ATF deliberate policy of no interdiction. The Dallas/Ft. Worth operation was allowing guns to "walk" onto the street but the goal was interdiction after intel gathering.

By "petty" I meant small time with neither ATF involvement nor cartel connection. Naaman Brown (talk) 15:17, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I think we are actually in complete agreement. My original point above was that the 2nd half of this sentence in the article: "In addition, government sources mention that more than 200 Mexicans were killed as a result of this operation,[27] along with the U.S. agent Jaime Zapata.[28]" is probably misleading and not supported by the cite. It should be either removed or reformatted to explain that in spite of some early suspicion, he was not killed by a F&F gun. I think some of your info about Gunrunner could work well as part of this article or at Project Gunrunner. Hazydan (talk) 21:39, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Replacing

Guys, you can all can replace the things I write on other places in this article where it is more relavent. Sometimes I feel that what I edit usually doesn't correlate with the rest of the paragraphs, and since I usually don't have time to read and re-read the article, I know I can trust you guys to take care of it. Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience.

P.S. - Is there any Spanish-speaking users and readers here? CNN Mexico has several good quality articles on the gunwalking scandal. I have two weeks for my break, so I'll take good care of it, but if you guys want to take a look at them, go for it. ComputerJA (talk) 04:45, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Sting

I'm surprised that posters here are insisting on keeping the "sting" designation which the media keeps repeating. There was no intended "sting".

By Wikipedia's own definition, a sting is "a deceptive operation designed to catch a person committing a crime". Exactly how many persons did ATF catch committing the crime? The ATF Gunwalking operation had no intention of catching persons committing the crimes. Look beyond parroting mass media. Computer Guy 2 (talk) 02:40, 20 December 2011 (UTC)