F. January 5, 2010 Briefing

74

Assistant Director Mark Chait, Deputy Assistant Director Bill McMahon, International Affairs Chief Daniel Kumor, Southwest Border Czar Ray Rowley, and Assistant Director James McDermond all attended the January 5, 2010, field-ops briefing led by Intelligence Operations Specialist Lorren Leadmon." At this briefing, the participants expressed concerns about Operation Fast and Furious. Though the briefing included the normal updates of weapons seizures linked to Operation Fast and Furious provided every Tuesday, the January 5, 2010, briefing also included a key addition.

OSII had compiled a summary of all of the weapons that could be linked to known straw purchasers under Operation Fast and Furious to date and presented this information to the group. The total number of guns purchased in just two months was 685.75

Steve Martin, an ATF Deputy Assistant Director for OSII, took extensive notes during the briefing. Examining the locations where the weapons ended up in Mexico, he outlined potential investigative steps that could be taken to address the problem." Due to the sheer volume of weapons that had already moved south to Mexico, he had a hunch that guns were being walked:

74 Transcribed Interview of Steve Martin, Transcript at 40, July 6, 2011 (on file with author) (hereinafter Martin Transcript].

75 Id. at 43.

76

Notes from Steve Martin, ATF Deputy Assistant Director for OSII, January 5, 2010 (HOGR ATF -001552-53) (produced in camera by the Department of Justice).

20

Hoping to draw from his experience as a former Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) and Special Agent in Charge (SAC), Martin wanted to offer suggestions on a plan for the case specifically, how to track weapons, conduct surveillance, and eventually bring Operation Fast and Furious to a close. Those in field operations - the chain of command responsible for overseeing and implementing Operation Fast and Furious - responded to his suggestions with complete silence. ATF personnel within field operations felt free to ignore OSII's suggestions and complaints because OSII's role was to support field operations:

A.

Q.

A.

From my notes, I asked Mr. Chait and Mr. McMahon, I said,
what's your plan? I said, what's your plan? And I said, hearing
none, and I don't know if they had one. I said... there are some
things that we can do. Ray Rowley, who was the southwest border
czar at the time, asked, how long are you going to let this go on?

This is in January 2010?

January 5th, that meeting, that's correct. Ray has since retired. So
I said, well, here are some things that... we might think of doing.
And we had talked about this before, we'd brainstormed stuff, too,
with Lorren. Lorren even talked about it. Kevin talked about it.
Kevin O'Keefe had done a lot of trafficking investigations in south
Florida - about identifying some weak straw purchasers, let's see
who the weak links are, maybe the super young ones, the super old
ones. Pole cameras. . . put them up to see who is coming and
going, to help you with surveillance.

Whether Mr. Chait or Mr. McMahon had a plan for Operation Fast and Furious is unclear. What is clear is that they did not take kindly to suggestions from OSII about the operation. They were not inclined to discuss the operation at all, choosing instead to excuse themselves from the conversation:

FINDING:

At a March 5, 2010 briefing, ATF intelligence analysts told ATF and DOJ leadership that the number of firearms bought by known straw purchasers had exceeded the 1,000 mark. The briefing also made clear these weapons were ending up in Mexico.

Two months after the January 5, 2010 briefing, ATF headquarters hosted a larger, more detailed briefing on Operation Fast and Furious. Not part of the normal Tuesday field ops briefings, this special briefing only covered Operation Fast and Furious. David Voth, the Phoenix Group VII Supervisor who oversaw Operation Fast and Furious, traveled from Phoenix to give the presentation. On videoconference were the four southwest border ATF SACS: Bill Newell in Phoenix, Robert Champion in Dallas, J. Dewey Webb in Houston, and John Torres in Los Angeles.

In addition to the usual attendees of the Tuesday morning field ops briefings (the Deputy Assistant Directors for Field Operations, including Bill McMahon, and Mark Chait, Assistant Director for Field Operations), Deputy Director William Hoover also attended. Joe Cooley, a trial attorney from the gang unit at Main Justice, also joined. After a suggestion from Acting ATF Director Ken Melson in December 2009, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer personally assigned Cooley as a DOJ representative for Operation Fast and Furious. Kevin Carwile, chief of the Capital Case Unit at Main Justice, may have also been present. According to Steve Martin, the inclusion of Main Justice representatives was unusual.

An extremely detailed synopsis of the current details of the investigation ensued, including the number of guns purchased, specific details of all Operation Fast and Furious weapons seizures to date, money spent by straw purchasers, and organizational charts of the straw purchasers and their relationship not only to each other, but also to members of the Sinaloa DTO. At that point, there had been 15 related weapons seizures over a four to five month period.81

79 Id. at 45-46.

Id. at 91 ("[Joe Cooley and Kevin Carwile] never sat in any of my briefings that I can recall.").

81

Id. at 97. See generally "Operation Fast and the Furious" Presentation, March 5, 2010.

23

Two of the first slides in the March 5, 2010 presentation detailed the number of weapons bought as of February 27, 2010-1,026 - and the amount of money spent, in cash, to purchase these weapons - nearly $650,000:2

82