Are we essentially arming both sides in the drug wars in Mexico? What's the scale of the problem? Obviously the United States provides a lot of assistance to the Mexican government and the Mexican army. That was the intention of Fast and Furious, as I say, which was one of a number of these kinds of operations, which actually began under the Bush administration.ĬONAN: And gun walking, as opposed to gunrunning, one - the ATF does it, it's gun walking, and if it's done purely illegal, it's gunrunning. So instead of arresting somebody - talking about ATF right now - they would let the purchaser walk, and in this case take the guns, meaning gun walking, take the guns into Mexico in hopes of arresting the people who they gave the guns to, so leading them to bigger targets in the cartel operations. So what they would do, is instead of actually arresting a person who bought a gun, as a straw purchaser - bought a gun for somebody else, which is illegal in the United States - that's the way it works, and then they hand them over, and then they walk them into Mexico. And so it was part of I guess the umbrella would be Project Gunrunner, and it was supposed to stem the number of firearms that were leaving the United States and going into Mexico, into the hands of drug cartel members, largely because it is much easier to obtain guns in the United States than it is in Mexico, which has some fairly stringent at least legal, you know, ways to get guns, it's fairly stringent gun-control laws.
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ROBBINS: Because really these - it was only one program in a series of sting operations called gun walking, essentially, which began in 2006 and ended in 2011. ROBBINS: Well, Fast and Furious, let's go back even a little farther, if we might. TED ROBBINS, BYLINE: Hi, Neal, it's good to be with you. But first, NPR national desk correspondent Ted Robbins joins us from his office in Tucson, where he covers the Southwest, and nice to have you back on the program. Later in the program, Loving Prize-winner Reginald Daniel joins us to talk about teaching multiracial identity in a changing world. Email You can also join the conversation at our website. What was the intent? What's the scale of the problem? What went wrong? And what happens now? If you have questions about Fast and Furious or gunrunning to Mexico, give us a call, 80 is the phone number. weapons to Mexican gangs and drug cartels. But let's step back to 2009, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives created Fast and Furious as part of an effort to stem the flow of U.S.
Democrats say it's all election year politics. House Republicans say the attorney general and now the president are trying to cover up the fallout from a bungled gun sting on the Mexico, Arizona border. Yesterday, a House committee voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, and President Obama invoked executive privilege to protect disputed documents.
You've probably heard about the Washington side of Fast and Furious.
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