Issa: 'Fast and Furious' Was a Crime

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa says federal authorities could have prevented the gunrunning operation known as “Fast and Furious,”  and if the debacle was thwarted, the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and other fatal crimes might never have happened.
 

“Well, there’s no question: Lying to Congress is a crime — telling us things that aren’t true, which have occurred are a crime — but the biggest crime was breaking faith with the American people,” Issa told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an interview broadcast Monday. “Now one of the biggest crimes is, if you will, a new set of rules along the border — they are forcing additional gun databases for weapons sold — justifying it based on gun violence that they helped create and that’s where you start looking and saying: I’m not going to promote a conspiracy.
 

“But you have to wonder: Couldn’t you find a better time to suggest that you need more guns reporting than when in fact we are looking at your helping so many guns promote gun violence including the loss of Brian Terry?” Issa said.
 

Issa said the technology to monitor gun shipments had existed for months before “Fast and Furious” was uncovered but went unused because the plan was to let the guns flow into Mexico so they could be tracked during drug crimes.

“Clearly that was fallacy and the arrests — the limited amounts of arrests — 19 out of 20 have been for the straw purchasers,” the California Republican said. “They never rolled up the kind of people they said they were going to because this particular program never could have lead to that.

“The FBI, the DEA and others — they don’t do business this way — this was an anomaly created maybe locally, but promoted by political appointees at a high level,’ Issa said. “They should have known better and should have never have allowed this to happen. Right now we have no faith they wouldn’t allow it to continue.”