Fast and Furious

Fast and Furious: AG Holder’s Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Let’s get a few things settled.

If you look closely, you can see Eric Holder in his engineer cap.

Fast and Furious is a true scandal, not a trumped-up distraction, just as Watergate wasn’t a “third-rate burglary.” When the U.S. government intentionally allows laws to be broken, secretly seeds violent crime in a neighboring country and gets both foreigners and Americans killed as a result, that’s a scandal any way you cut it. The U.S. Congress has an oversight role to play after such a fiasco, and getting to the bottom of what went sour is its duty, regardless of how much enjoyment partisan Congressmen appear to have making Administration officials sweat. Any politician or member of the media who suggests otherwise is trying to manufacture a cover-up and intentionally misleading the public. The mantra that “this is a waste of time when Congress should be doing the nation’s business” was used by Republicans during Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Valerie Plame affair, and by Democrats during Whitewater, Lewinsky, and now, as Fast and Furious is finally bursting out of the hole of obscurity where the biased media tried to stuff it. A badly managed, law-breaking Justice Department isn’t trivial, and when utterly stupid, reckless operations like Fast and Furious come to light, it is essential that there be full disclosure and accountability. The voices trying to bury this scandal do not have the best interests of the United States or the public at heart. Let’s start with that.

Fast and Furious was so jaw-droppingly dumb that its very stupidity is almost a boon to defenders of Attorney General Holder’s department, since the normal reaction to such facts is that some crazy Republican must have made up the whole thing. Unfortunately, this really happened.  In 2009, the US government allowed Arizona gun sellers to illegally sell automatic weapons to suspected criminals. Then ATF agents (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives)  were directed to  allow the guns to “walk” across the border and be delivered to the Mexican drug cartels. The House Oversight Committee’s report explains, “The purpose was to wait and watch, in hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case…. [The ATF] initially began using the new gun-walking tactics in one of its investigations to further the Department’s strategy.”

Gee. What a great plan! What could possibly go wrong?

Oh, only everything.

1,608 weapons ended up in the bloody hands of Mexican criminals. The ATF lost track of them, until they turned up at shootings and crime scenes. Many Mexicans, though we don’t know how many, died from being shot by the planted guns, and when a US federal agent, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, was killed by one of them in battle with drug-runners, the fiasco became public. (ATF whistle-blower also helped.) In a sensible, fair, ethical system, the next steps would follow like Summer follows Spring:

  • The news media would give the story major coverage  and do its own, unbiased, competent investigation.
  • The Administration would express horror and regret, and set about its own internal investigation.
  • Both parties of Congress would aggressively seek answers, and make certain that systemic failures were exposed and responsible individuals were identified.
  • Those responsible would resign or would be fired.

But we do not have a sensible, fair, ethical system, at least as it is currently functioning. As a result, the Fact and Furious mess has become an ethics train wreck that appears to be gathering steam. The evidence so far: Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Washington Sports Writer Sally Jenkins

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

“Overreaching by government is far more harmful than any of the alleged offenses. It has poured more poison into the system than is contained in any needle.”

—-Sally Jenkins, writing in the Washington Post sports pages about the Roger Clemens prosecution.

Elsewhere in her column, Jenkins writes:

“Someone in authority at the Justice Department should have said to the federal investigators who pursued Clemens since 2007 on perjury charges, “You don’t have the evidence that can win a conviction.” The government never had a case, and knew it didn’t have a case (or at least should have), and brought the case anyway.”

Bringing a case when a prosecutor doesn’t have sufficient evidence is the epitome of unethical prosecution, and the Clemens case certainly qualifies. I can’t write much about this now, because I am preparing to give an ethics seminar to Washington D.C. government attorneys about legal ethics in government practice. I always find the government attorneys to be extraordinarily informed regarding ethical standards, and to have excellent ethical instincts. I will be talking about the Clemens case, and the Ted Stevens prosecution that went so horribly wrong, and the Fast and Furious investigation, in which a Federal Prosecutor announced his intention to take the Fifth Amendment if he was called before Congress. I will be talking about a lot of things.

There is obviously a problem.

___________________________

Spark: Ron Sarro

Source: Washington Post

Graphic: The Cell Phone Junkie

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Should Black Journalists Be Promoting Race Loyalty As a Virtue?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Go Team!

On Sunday’s “Washington Watch with Roland Martin” on TVOne, host Martin questioned several black journalists about the support shown by the Obama administration and black leaders for Attorney General Eric Holder, currently stonewalling Congress regarding a full accounting of what occurred in the “Fast and Furious” debacle.

“Many Republicans are calling on him to resign by demanding he release more documents, also in the Fast and Furious case,” Martin said.  “So, I want to ask the panel, is this White House doing enough to protect the attorney general? And also, where is black leadership? I mean, here you have Eric Holder, who has been — first of all, he was a high-ranking official in the Justice Department under President Bill Clinton. He becomes the black, first African-American attorney general. He has been very aggressive on many issues. But some folks are saying that look, he’s been taken to the woodshed and he is not getting the kind of support that you would think he would be getting.”

This is a disgraceful question that assumes that unethical conduct—racial bias— is somehow admirable. What difference does it make that Holder is the first black attorney general? How could that justify the media, the White House, black leaders or Congress treating  a black Attorney General any differently than they would treat a white, Asian or Cherokee Attorney General? Isn’t the issue whether he is a competent and effective Attorney General? Shouldn’t that judgment be race blind? Aren’t black journalists, like white journalists, obligated to keep race out of their assessments of how public officials behave? Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Florida Governor Rick Scott

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Less worthy of integrity than cashing a check or renting a car, according to the Justice Department.

I should add to the heroes list the governors of the states that are challenging the Justice Department over blocking their voter ID requirements as well, but Scott is a worthy representative. His law suit is a little different than theirs, but the principle is the same, the target—Eric Holder’s politicized and incompetent Justice Department—is the same, and the objective, ensuring the integrity of elections, is also the same.

The Department of Justice, of all institutions, shouldn’t be adopting the sadly popular phisosophy, growing like mold on a large segment of progressive America, that it is wrong to enforce legitimate laws if doing so risks having disparate impact on particular groups. It certainly shouldn’t be using its power to join in the desperate race-baiting that seems to be part of the desperate Democratic game plan for President Obama’s re-election. Attorney General Holder has been making the rounds of African-American groups, rattling the civil rights sabers and proclaiming that requiring voters to show proof of identity and citizenship is a racist plot. This is either cynical politics or proof of intellectual deficiency, and since it is Holder, telling which is difficult. Holder, after all, requires identification to get into his building, his office, and his public appearances, but presumably nobody would accuse the first black and most race-conscious Attorney General in the nation’s history of being anti-black. Yet I  submit that the importance of ensuring the integrity of  elections in a democracy is rather more important than ensuring that only citizens get to hear Holder make speeches accusing states of racism and voter-suppression for attempting to enforce the law. Continue reading →

The GSA Spending Scandal, Panetta, Biden, the Obama Administration Culture

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Outrageous! Why would the GSA have to hire this clown? Talk about “carrying coals to Newcastle…”

That the GSA’s spending 0ver $800,000 on a Vegas staff fling masquerading as a working conference was unethical and an example of government agency arrogance at its worst seemed so obvious to me that I was going to eschew commentary entirely. When Newt Gingrich, Eric Holder and Kim Kardashian would likely understand what is wrong with any conduct, my analysis is superfluous. However, here are a few observations regarding the more critical issue of what this episode teaches us about the Obama Administration, the culture it has fostered and its leadership:

  • I do not think it is unfair to consider whether  the General Services Administration scandal might be a direct result of the culture in the Obama Administration generally. The overwhelming  impression left by the entire administration from the top down is that austerity is for everyone else. The message sent by continued unnecessary and profligate spending at all levels of the government was bound to be taken as a general green light to be abused by someone, and that someone happened to be at the GSA. Of course, there may be other someones who haven’t been found out yet. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: Attorney General Eric Holder

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him, both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

—-Attorney General Eric Holder, explaining what he believes to be the motives of “extreme factions” in their efforts to hold him accountable for the Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” debacle in an interview with the New York Times.

That's right, Eric. It's not because you've been a pathetic Attorney General---heck, aren't they all?

Ah, the race card! What a versatile, powerful weapon in the arsenal of public figures under scrutiny, criticism and attack who happen to be African-American! How comforting it must be to know that when it gets really difficult, even impossible, to talk your way out of a mess of your own making, there us always this last ditch, accountability-ducking tactic that will cause reporters to recoil, accusers to quail, public sympathy to shift, and Al Sharpton and Tavis Smiley to leap to attention. Play the race card! Jesse and Al have made a career doing it. Clarence Thomas, Barry Bonds, Marion Barry, Armstrong Williams, Herman Cain, and so many others resorted to it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s always worth a try…unless, of course, you have sufficient dignity, honesty and integrity to resist the impulse. Say what you will about Charlie Rangel, and I’ve said plenty, but he never claimed that his ethics problems were due to his race. It’s strange to praise someone for not resorting to dishonest and unconscionable tactics, but so automatic is the race card ploy among prominent African Americans in peril that I think Rangel deserves more credit than I gave him. Continue reading →

Voting Reform Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

It is interesting that Attorney General Eric Holder would choose to become the point man for a  partisan effort by the Obama administration to demonize new voter qualification measures in 14 states. Holder is an embarrassment, credibly accused of lying to Congress in its efforts to get to the bottom of the Fast and Furious fiasco, and justifiably regarded by objective observers as incompetent even before his claim that the botched and deadly gun-smuggling operation went on under his nose without his cognizance, because, you know, he doesn’t read his e-mails. There are many viable theories why President Obama hasn’t yet asked Holder to leave, all plausible, all disturbing: Obama really thinks he’s doing a good job; Obama is being loyal to a loyal employee to the detriment of the nation; Obama is too passive an executive to fire anybody; Obama is afraid of backlash if he fires his highest-ranking black appointee; and my personal favorite, Holder may be horrible, but he’s not as horrible as the last Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, whom Bush refused to fire. Also inexcusably.

It is possible that Holder’s speech equating reasonable reforms to limit the opportunities for voter fraud with voter suppression was calculated as a way to ingratiate himself to left-leaning media critics whose support he will surely need as the Fast and Furious noose tightens. It is possible that his argument that the measures are aimed at minorities and the poor is part of Team Obama’s electoral strategy to divide the country—further—along lines of economic status, race and ethnicity. It is even possible that he is sincere. No matter: it is an unjustifiable argument. Continue reading →

Attorney General Holder, Fast and Furious, and Congressional Perjury

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

"Oh, NOW I see where the confusion is...AG Holder thought the Congressman was asking about when he saw the MOVIE called 'The Fast and Furious.' It's an honest mistake. The Attorney General loves his Netflix!"

It is looking increasingly likely that Attorney General Holder lied to Congress on May 2, 2011, when he was asked by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa about when he knew about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Fast and Furious gun-running fiasco. In this he is following a grand tradition among U.S. Attorney Generals: the last one, Bush crony Alberto Gonzalez, almost certainly lied under oath to Congress too.

Fast and Furious was a botched gunrunning enforcement operation in which illegal guns that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives intentionally allowed to be smuggled into Mexico ended up being used to kill an Immigration Customs Enforcement agent and a U.S. border patrol guard.  Holder was called before Issa’s committee in a typical “what did the top guy know and when did he know it?” inquiry. In response to the latter part of that question, Holder told the Committee that he was “not sure of the exact date, but I probably learned about Fast and Furious over the last few weeks.”

CBS and Fox News have uncovered a series of e-mails and memos that show unequivocally that this was not true. Continue reading →