Deadly government gun program that put America at risk

Lifestyle

by Eric Spitznagel

On January 18, 2011, in Phoenix, Arizona, Special Agent Peter Forcelli of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) received a 911 call regarding a robbery in progress.

When he arrived on the scene, it was clear that something terrible had happened.

“As I walked through the doorway, the sharp sound of metal hit my nostrils,” he writes (along with co-author Keirin MacGregor) in his new true-crime memoir, “The Deadly Path: How Operation Fast & Furious and Bad Lawyers Howyed Mexican.” writing. Kartel” (Knox Press), on sale now. “A slippery sheen covered the floor. Blood. There's a lot of it.”

The former NYPD homicide detective was no stranger to crime scenes.

Given the large amount of fresh blood, those involved were either killed or seriously injured.

However, the house was empty and the only evidence left was the gun.

Mr. Forcelli, who specializes in federal crimes related to gun trafficking, and his team were recording serial numbers on weapons when they received a call from their superiors at the Justice Department. They were instructed not to proceed with the investigation, even if it might lead to the identification of the killer.

“I couldn't believe my ears,” Forcelli wrote. “We were standing in the middle of a disaster where guns were discovered and my team was (ordered) to retreat?”

Mr. Forcelli, who became an ATF agent in 2001, was transferred to Phoenix in 2007 to focus on stopping the illegal flow of American weapons to Mexican drug cartels. But, as he quickly discovered, his team was often “forced to release people who were blatantly involved in gun trafficking,” Forselli wrote. “It eclipsed everything I had ever experienced in law enforcement for the past 22 years.”

Much of the problem is thanks to Operation Fast and Furious, a program started by the ATF Phoenix Field Division in 2009, in which suspects walk away with illegally purchased guns in hopes of directing investigators. (also known as “gun walking”). A major figure in the Mexican drug cartel.

But the problem is, once these guns cross the border, it's no longer an ATF problem. Or, as the prosecutor explained to Forcelli, “The body of the crime is the gun, not the person. If the gun is in Mexico, the body of the crime is also in Mexico.”

ATF officers didn't just watch the famous smugglers drive off into the sunset. There was also fear that those guns would come back to haunt them. In December 2010, Customs and Border Protection Officer Brian Terry was shot and killed while patrolling the desert outside Nogales, Arizona, in what was later determined to be a Fast and Furious investigation.

“Fast and Furious” wasn't the only ointment that hindered Forcelli's work. corpus delictiseveral investigations into Forcelli that were supposed to end for good ended due to legal policy that says a person cannot be convicted unless there is concrete evidence that a crime actually occurred.

Once, after stopping a truck bound for the Mexican border, Forselli and his team discovered several AK-47 rifles and 12 7.62mm ammunition casings.

Everyone in the truck had Mexican identification. However, the Phoenix attorney's office declined to prosecute. Mr. Forcelli was told that arresting apparent drug smugglers “could be considered racial profiling.”

Then there was Forselli's months-long investigation into X Caliber, a gun store in the northern suburbs of Phoenix. An undercover ATF agent posed as a “straw buyer” (an intermediary hired to purchase firearms on behalf of a Mexican cartel) and attempted to purchase weapons from the store's owner, George Iknadossian, but he Unknowingly, he revealed the details of gun smuggling. .

“Friday is a bad day to move guns to the border,” Ikhnadosyan told an undercover agent, whose confession was intercepted. “Monday is much better. The police are busy following up on the weekend's activities.”

Mr. Iknadosyan was arrested and indicted on 21 charges, including conspiracy to commit arms trafficking, money laundering, and fraudulent schemes.

Almost a year later, drug lord Arturo Beltrán-Leyva was killed in a gunfight with Mexican Marines. More than a dozen firearms were found near the bullet-riddled body, all of them trafficked from X Caliber, “including an ornately bejeweled Colt .38 super semi-automatic pistol,” Forselli said. is writing. “Fitting…'' is dedicated to the man known as “the boss of bosses'' in Mexico's drug-trafficking world. ”

In June 2011, Mr. Forcelli testified before Congress, accusing the ATF and federal prosecutors of gun smuggling policies and enforcement failures that resulted in more than 2,000 guns disappearing across the Southwest border.

“What we have here is actually a major failure of leadership within the ATF,” Forcelli told Congress. “We weren't giving guns to people who hunted bears. We were giving guns to people who were killing other humans.”

Mr. Forcelli, who retired from the ATF several years ago, is not convinced that much has changed since the whistleblowing.

“The same policies and people remain in key positions of power, with no intrusive oversight,” he wrote.