Did Fast & Furious violate the Arms Export Control Act?...- Here is th

[John Adams]

Did Fast & Furious violate the Arms Export Control Act?...- Here is the Law

Did Fast & Furious violate the Arms Export Control Act?
Posted by David Hardy · 12 July 2011 07:51 PM
 
First, the Arms Export Control Act, 22 USC §2778.. It authorizes the President to define defense articles and regulate their export. In so doing, he must consider the possibility that export could "support international terrorism, increase the possibility of outbreak or escalation of conflict..."
 
Those defense articles may not be exported without a permit, issued by the Secretary of State ( Department of State guidelines here), "except that no license shall be required for exports or imports made by or for an agency of the United States Government
 (A) for official use by a department or agency of the United States Government, or
 
(B) for carrying out any foreign assistance or sales program authorized by law and subject to the control of the President by other means."
 

The firearms involved here were not being exported for official use by an agency, nor as part of foreign aid. This a lot narrower than the GCA exception for acts by a government agency, and for good reason: the purpose of this statute is to control executive agency actions. No gun running to foreign governments or persons without a paper trail (and in cases of large transactions, a prior request for Congressional approval).
 
Any person who willfully violates these provisions "shall upon conviction be fined for each violation not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."
 
There have been some reports of agents having directly transferred firearms to drug cartel buyers, in order to boost their "street creds." That'd clearly be a violation. In other situations, the person who actually exported the firearms would be in clear violation. But what of those government supervisors who allowed the arms to flow -- especially the cases where a protesting FFL was told to sell the guns anyway?
 
18 U.S. Code §2 provides:
 
"§ 2. Principals
 
(a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.
 
(b) Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal."
 
 
http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2011/07/did_fast_furiou.php

[hoosier_daddy]

a sting operation.  go look that up and then shut the hell up.  nobody cares. 

[sweetwater5s9]

It violated the National Firearms Act and the Arms Export Control Act.
 
There is indeed illegality involved for knowledgeable individuals (the executive branch of the government cannot willingly violate laws legitimately enacted by Congress any more than can I).  So there is a lot at stake to protect information and identities.  It will be some time before everything is uncovered in this scandal.
 
 
 
Gunwalker was a deliberate conspiracy to subvert the Second Amendment by using the ATF to facilitate the smuggling of American civilian market firearms to the Mexican drug cartels. There was no "sting," just supervised straw-buying and then the collection of murder statistics from Mexico to make a political point that we needed more restrictions on American firearm owners.

But by focusing on the ATF, the tool in this conspiracy, many have missed the larger point:

While the ATF, and by extension the United States government, did not formally sell (or provide) weapons to straw purchases and physically deliver these weapons across the border to criminals in a foreign sovereign nation, the ATF and the federal government was/were the intellectual author(s) of a comprehensive plan to facilitate the sale and illegal export of weapons to a foreign country. As such, the ATF and the administration are the intellectual authors of a conspiracy to illegally export weapons to a foreign country.

Those exports were a clear violation of US weapons export laws -- ITAR chief among them -- and the government knowingly conspired and allowed those weapons to leave the United States without:

(1) A valid US Department of State Export License,

(2) a valid End Use statement signed by an appropriate Mexican GOV authority attesting as to the use and end destination of the weapons, and

(3) a valid Import License issued by the GOV of Mexico documenting approval for the weapons to enter Mexican sovereign territory.

Thus, given the facts in front of us already from the whistleblower agents and leaked documents, those who originated this program at the highest levels of the administration and the DOJ and ATF senior executive service employees who carried it out were:

(a) complicit in illegal arms trafficking in violation of US weapons export law as codified by ITAR (DOS export regulations), and

(b) complicit in a violation of Mexican law by knowingly allowing the weapons to transit into Mexican sovereign territory.


The real issue is that the federal government of the United States of America, through the ATF, was the intellectual author of an illegal arms trafficking operation that violated both US law and Mexican law – and perhaps international law. That is institutional and governmental corruption of the worst kind, above and beyond a few AKs crossing a border.


 

[hoosier_daddy]

if it did, it did.  so what?  prosecute whichever ATF guy is responsible and move on.  big fucking deal.

[sweetwater5s9]

Focusing on the ATF, the tool in this conspiracy, many have missed the larger point:

 The federal government was the intellectual author of a comprehensive plan to facilitate the sale and illegal export of weapons to a foreign country. As such, the ATF and the administration are the intellectual authors of a conspiracy to illegally export weapons to a foreign country.

Those exports were a clear violation of US weapons export laws -- ITAR chief among them -- and the government knowingly conspired and allowed those weapons to leave the United States without:

(1) A valid US Department of State Export License,

(2) a valid End Use statement signed by an appropriate Mexican GOV authority attesting as to the use and end destination of the weapons, and

(3) a valid Import License issued by the GOV of Mexico documenting approval for the weapons to enter Mexican sovereign territory.

Thus, given the facts in front of us already from the whistleblower agents and leaked documents, those who originated this program at the highest levels of the administration and the DOJ and ATF senior executive service employees who carried it out were:

(a) complicit in illegal arms trafficking in violation of US weapons export law as codified by ITAR (DOS export regulations), and

(b) complicit in a violation of Mexican law by knowingly allowing the weapons to transit into Mexican sovereign territory.


The real issue is that the federal government of the United States of America, through the ATF, was the intellectual author of an illegal arms trafficking operation that violated both US law and Mexican law – and perhaps international law.

[hoosier_daddy]

that was not the purpose of this sting, you stupid shit...why the fuck would we want to arm drug gangs, you clownish goon?  how do you believe this preposterous shit?  we were trying to set up mexican gang lords that BUY GUNS WE HAVE UNDER SURVEILLANCE...DUMBSHIT...THAT'S WHY IT IS CALLED A STING...how can you be so wrong about something so simple?

[sweetwater5s9]

A Special Prosecuter has to be assigned to the "Gunwalker" case and most likely will be in time, to answer your questions, Hooty.
 
Remember: No one died during Watergate, yet Nixon had to resign. Federal Agent Brian Terry is gone due to “Fast and Furious” – it’s time for someone to lose their job, if not go to jail or face impeachment charges in the House of Representatives.

[hoosier_daddy]

there you go blaming the gun for his death, idiot.  the mexican drug gangs have outgunned the mexican police for decades, in sheer numbers and in lethality...idiot.  if he had not used that PARTICULAR GUN he could have used one of the thousands more they have on hand, clownish lying idiot.  THAT WAS WHY THE STING WAS CONSIDERED...TO TRY AND TRACK DOWN AND BRING DOWN THE BIG GUN BUYERS IN MEXICO, YOU PARTISAN IDIOT....
 
from 2009-
 
U.S. Moves Against Top Mexican Drug Cartel (February 26, 2009)
U.S. Is Arms Bazaar for Mexican Cartels (February 26, 2009)
 
Associated Press
Roberto Orduña Cruz, left, was escorted by a police officer after resigning on Feb. 20 as police chief of Ciudad Juárez. Drug cartels vowed to kill an officer every 48 hours until he resigned.
It was drug traffickers who decided that Chief Roberto Orduña Cruz, a retired army major who had been on the job since May, should go. To make clear their insistence, they vowed to kill a police officer every 48 hours until he resigned.
They first killed Mr. Orduña’s deputy, Operations Director Sacramento Pérez Serrano, together with three of his men. Then another police officer and a prison guard turned up dead. As the body count grew, Mr. Orduña eventually did as the traffickers had demanded, resigning his post on Feb. 20 and fleeing the city.
Replacing Mr. Orduña will also fall outside the mayor’s purview, although this time the criminals will not have a say. With Ciudad Juárez and the surrounding state of Chihuahua under siege by heavily armed drug lords, the federal government last week ordered the deployment of 5,000 soldiers to take over the Juárez Police Department. With the embattled mayor’s full support, the country’s defense secretary will pick the next chief.
Chihuahua, which already has about 2,500 soldiers and federal police on patrol, had almost half the 6,000 drug-related killings in all of Mexico in 2008 and is on pace for an even bloodier 2009. Juárez’s strategic location at the busy El Paso border crossing and its large population of local drug users have prompted a fierce battle among rival cartels for control of the city.
“Day after day, there are so many horrible things taking place there,” said Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the University of Texas at El Paso who studies Mexico’s drug war. “The cartels are trying to control everything.”

[hoosier_daddy]

from November, 2010-
 
Posted on Fri, Nov. 19, 2010
BY TIM JOHNSON
McClatchy Newspapers
MEXICO CITY — As recently as a year or two ago, commandos fighting for the Mexican drug cartels often would rather flee than confront security forces.
But an influx of combat weapons — purchased at U.S. gun shops and shows or stolen from Central American munitions stockpiles — and a vast supply of ammunition now enables them to fight, and sometimes outgun, army and federal police units.
Cartel squads toss hand grenades, fire rockets and spray security forces with high-caliber gunfire. They sometimes have 10 times the ammunition of federal forces.
The arsenals give them a greater ability to threaten the state. The resulting mayhem steadily ripples northward as civilian "narco refugees" flee areas of extreme violence.
A sample of the growing firepower of Mexico's seven major drug cartels is on display at the military warehouse on the outskirts of the capital, where seized assault rifles, machine guns, high-caliber weapons and anti-tank rockets are stored.
"As you can see," Gen. Antonio Erasto Monsivais said as he led a visitor around, "they have weapons capable of high destruction. They can confront the armed forces, whereas before they used to flee."
Monsivais cradled a menacing weapon with a bulbous chamber, a South African-made multiple grenade launcher that fires explosive rounds at rat-a-tat speed. The device empties its chamber as fast as the trigger is pulled.
"It's designed to level an area," the general said, "not to hit a specific target."
Security forces also have seized tens of thousands of venerable assault rifles such as the AK-47 and its American cousin, the AR-15. U.S. and Mexican experts say 90 percent of such semi-automatic rifles are smuggled from the United States.
The vast majority of U.S. states permit sales of semi-automatic assault rifles. Only the District of Columbia and a handful of states — notably California, New Jersey and Connecticut — ban or sharply restrict sales of such weapons. There's almost no restriction on sales of ammunition.
More exotic weapons such as Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifles and a Belgian-made "cop-killer" handgun known as the FN Five-seveN, whose Teflon bullets can pierce body armor, are finding a bigger place in criminal arsenals.
"The .50-calibers are of growing concern. The cartels are looking at them as an anti-personnel weapon. We've actually seen them mounted on the backs of pickup trucks," said William G. McMahon, deputy assistant director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in charge of the Southwest border.
High-caliber tactics
Drug gangs deploy the high-caliber weapons from bridges to disable vehicles in military or police convoys, firing into the engine block of the lead vehicle, then attacking the fleeing occupants with grenades and smaller-caliber assault rifles.
The powerful .50-caliber rifle is a fearful addition to the criminal arsenal.
"It fires a very big round, as big as your hand. The bullet is half an inch across," said Tom Diaz, senior analyst at the Violence Policy Center in Washington, which advocates stricter gun laws. "If you just fire it out the window, the bullet would go about four miles."
"We know it's one of the top guns that are smuggled into Mexico."
McMahon said cartels were snapping up a certain kind of weapon from U.S. suppliers. "They are looking for the highest caliber, highest capacity weapon they can, because they are at war with the military," he said.

[hoosier_daddy]

here's one from 2005-
 
 
By JAMES PINKERTON and IOAN GRILLO Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
May 8, 2005,
NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO - On a recent Saturday night, well-heeled patrons at a fashionable restaurant in this embattled border city shared part of an evening with one of Mexico's most notorious drug lords.
Accompanied by a phalanx of heavily armed bodyguards, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, head of a cartel of traffickers operating along the Mexican border, swept into the restaurant, shocking its 40 customers.
After his gunmen locked the doors, the drug kingpin warned the diners against leaving the restaurant or using their cell phones until he had finished eating. But to atone for the inconvenience, Guzman picked up the tab for everyone in the house.
"He was there to prove a point," said FBI agent Arturo Fontes, commenting about the separate accounts by two Nuevo Laredo residents about the visit to the lavish beef and seafood eatery.
"He was there to let people know he's in town," the agent said, "that he's here to stay and he is controlling part of the (territory) in Nuevo Laredo."
The restaurant visit, which came in the midst of a nationwide dragnet for the drug-gang leader, who escaped from prison in 2001, highlights the challenge faced by the Mexican government as it attempts to put down a two-year turf war between Guzman and another powerful trafficker. Their gangs, each commanding hundreds of gunmen, are struggling for control of this border city of 500,000 people and the narcotics-trafficking routes that run through it.
Despite President Vicente Fox's deployment in March of about 800 troops and federal paramilitary police, gang gunmen armed with military-grade assault rifles, grenades and even rocket launchers continue to wage an urban street war.
Since Jan. 1, 45 people linked to organized crime have been killed here, Mexican authorities say. In addition, five police officers have been assassinated in the same period. The latest slaying of a policeman occurred Thursday when gunmen killed a 36-year-old police commander, shooting him at least 20 times, seven in the face.

[Local5th]

why the fuck would we want to arm drug gangs

We don't. But Holder & Obama did for political gain. Our government supplies them with high grade weapons, then forced the border patrol to defend themselves against those weapons with bean bags. Stupid, but it would provide the body count Obama wanted.

[sweetwater5s9]

It is the Obama's administrations scandal that is the cause of the deaths not the guns.   Everyone knows the administration caused the dath of two of our government employees.
 
Let the special prosecutor sort it out as to who should resign, be held in prison, etc with facts not ass kissing from idiots.