“It’s the only thing that makes any sense,” LaPierre said of the gunrunning "sting" operation that resulted in thousands of U.S.-purchased firearms ending up in the hands of violent Mexican drug traffickers. LaPierre noted that "over a period of two or three years they were running thousands and thousands of guns to the most evil people on earth,” while government officials were claiming that 90 percent of the guns used by the Mexican cartels were coming from the United States. However, said LaPierre:
That [90 percent] was a phony figure from the very start. Even the Wikileaks cables from our own State Department prove they are coming from Central America; they are not coming from the U.S. Every police officer will tell you that they’re coming from Russia, they’re coming from China, most of them are coming from Central America and a lot of them are coming from defections from the Mexican Army.
The NRA president charged that President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted to make it appear that guns were coming from the United States, “so they could stick more gun [control] legislation on honest American gun owners of the United States.” LaPierre claimed it was only due to the killing last December of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry by armed Mexicans in Arizona that the government-sanctioned gunrunning operation ever came to light. Two assault rifles recovered at the scene of the shooting were reported to be linked to the Fast and Furious operation and a Fox News report last month claimed a third rifle used in the shootout might also have arrived in Mexico via the Fast and Furious scheme. According to unidentified sources cited in the report, information about the third rifle has been concealed by the FBI to protect an informant. “Sources close to the Terry case say the FBI informant works inside a major Mexican cartel and provided the money to obtain the weapons used to kill Terry,” Fox News disclosed. The FBI, which is investigating the Terry killing, declined comment.
“We wouldn’t know about this at all if [Terry] had not been killed and some of the good, honest, decent federal agents down the line had enough of the stench coming out of Washington and started to use the Whistleblower Act to go public and call the Justice Department out on this whole rotten, stinking scheme,” LaPierre told Newsmax. "Otherwise thousands of guns would still be going over the border into the Mexican drug cartels and the President and the Attorney General and the Secretary of State would all be running around going, '90 percent of the guns come from America' in an attempt to seek political advantage and in an attempt to enact more gun control laws on honest American citizens and use this whole issue politically against the Second Amendment of the United States.”
The government effort to conceal the truth about the Fast and Furious operation is the biggest cover-up since the Watergate scandal which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974, LaPierre declared, adding,
Look at what has happened. We had our Department of Justice under the Obama administration running thousands and thousands of guns over the border and watching them go directly into the hands of some of the most evil people on earth, the Mexican drug cartels.
At the same time they were letting the reputation of good, honest, decent Americans, law-abiding American gun dealers, be ruined.
They ordered these sales to be made — they even overrode the InstaCheck system and ordered the dealers to make the sales. Then, when it all starts coming out, there’s a massive cover-up.
The operation was conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (still known as ATF) in the Department of Justice. LaPierre added his voice to those of a number of Republican members of Congress who have called for the resignation of Attorney General Holder and the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the gunrunning operation.
“My gosh, Valerie Plame gets a special prosecutor,” LaPierre exclaimed, referring to the CIA agent whose name was leaked during the George W. Bush presidency. “And all we get on Fast and Furious — where people are dead, a federal agent is dead, hundreds of crimes are being committed — is an Eric Holder cover-up." He contended that the actions of the U.S. government resembled those of a banana republic: “Doesn’t that sound like something that would happen more from a South American dictatorship than what we expect in the Good Ol’ USA?” He continued,
This can’t be allowed to stand. What has happened in Fast and Furious is the equivalent of our Justice Department becoming willing co-conspirators with the Mexican drug cartels in their crimes. If any citizen in this country had sold [guns] to the Mexican drug cartels and then those cartels had used those guns to kill good, honest, decent people, any U.S. Attorney worth his salt would indict that citizen for accessory to murder. That’s what’s happened here.
In the same interview, the NRA president warned that a second term for the Obama administration would result in the appointment of Supreme Court justices who would “erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights and excise it from the Constitution of the U.S.” The 2012 election will be “the most dangerous election in our lifetime for the Second Amendment freedom that American citizens have,” LaPierre asserted. “A second term by President Obama will break the back of that freedom in this country.”
Photo: Wayne LaPierre
