“Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up” by Katie Pavlich
Anne Vinnola 05.30.12
Occasionally injustice hits you right in the face and you can stay quiet no longer. Such is the case of Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up by author Katie Pavlich.
If you have followed even a minute of the Fast and Furious “gunwalking” case, it is obvious that something terribly wrong happened, from some of the lowest ranking ATF agents, straight up the ladder of the current administration. No one is quite sure where it will end, but for ATF agent Brian Terry and ICE agent Jaime Zapata and many Mexican citizens, it ended with the ultimate cost; their lives.
Fast and Furious is not just about a few misplaced guns, it is a mega-scandal that involves our Justice Department (DOJ) under the Obama administration. The secretive and alarming way they have conducted business during the ensuing investigation and hearings is appalling. This is not how a “transparent” administration behaves. The Obama administration and the DOJ have much to come clean about. Blatant stonewalling is taking place and the frustrating part is that it is obvious to many but not enough is being done to hold them accountable.
In my interview with Pavlich about why she decided to write about Fast and Furious, she told me “there are a lot of reasons why I wanted to write this book, but the main reason I wrote it is simply because this is a scandal that involves the murders of two of our federal agents, Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata, at the hands of the federal government, not to mention the murders of hundreds of Mexican citizens. The way this Justice Department under the Obama administration has conducted themselves in response to this scandal is absolutely appalling and disgusting. Anyone who believes the President of the United States and the Attorney General are not above the law, need to know about this scandal and help hold federal officials accountable for their actions.” She went on, “members of the ‘mainstream’ press aren’t covering it like they should, despite the scandal being worse than Iran-Contra and Watergate.”
This book is an in-depth look into brazen misuse of power; the intent to destroy our Second Amendment Rights which is at the center of this scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. Fast and Furious encompasses many issues that we find ourselves examining, and takes a stand against illegal aliens, drug cartels and corrupt politicians.
Fast and Furious is also a detailed look into the cover up and deceit used by those in the DOJ, ATF and Obama administration, beginning with Attorney General Eric Holder and continuing through the ranks of the Obama Administration. It tarnishes the good name of the ATF and its many upstanding agents.
Does this case affect more than just those people within that sphere of influence? Does this case have any far reaching consequences to our American way of life? Ms. Pavlich believes so and describes it well.
“I do not fear death, for I have been close enough to it on enough occasions that it no longer concerns me. What I do fear is the loss of my honor, and would rather die fighting than to have it said that I was without courage.” This poem by Colonel Watt was found on the desk of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. This was an honest man of honor and courage who died at the hand of a fouled-up system as much as the hand of the man who pulled the trigger, and so was ICE Agent Jaime Zapata.
The small towns along southern Arizona’s Interstate 10 and 8 between Yuma and Phoenix-Casa Grande, Arizona City, Maricopa, Hidden Valley, Eloy and Stanfield used to be ranching and farming communities. Now they are the stash houses and their small access roads are the smuggling routes for the Mexican drug cartels. The cartels operate with something close to impunity, and the Arizona farmers who remain in the area must carry weapons and some wear bulletproof vests to protect themselves.
This is an America we don’t know anymore! It is the primary responsibility of the government to protect its citizens, or at the very least allow and enable them to protect themselves.
In June 2010, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu declared flatly that parts of Arizona were under the cartels’ control. The Department of Homeland Security responded by posting signs along desert routes that stated. ‘Travel Caution: Smuggling and Illegal Immigration May Be Encountered in This Area.’
These signs were on the US side of the border!
There is so much more documented by Pavlich, who describes the life and tragic death of Brian Terry and how it came to be:
What Brian Terry’s family did not know, as they tried to cope with the loss of their son during Christmas 2010, was that the AK-47 that had fired the round that killed Brian had been sold to the Mexican drug cartels under the supervision of the United States government, and that the weapon sale was only one deadly part of a terrible scandal overseen by the Obama administration itself, which had intentionally funneled arms to the drug cartels’ borderland killers. Joesphine Terry and millions of bewildered Americans who followed the story in the news were left with one haunting question: Why?
Yes, we want to know why…and it doesn’t take a long dig to figure it out.
Even before he sought public office, Barack Obama was on a mission to subvert the Second Amendment and deprive gun owners of their constitutional rights. In law school he was mentored by liberal legal scholar Laurence H. Tribe, who at the time was a fervent opponent of gun rights. Obama, Tribe recalled, was ‘the best student I ever had.’
Pavlich goes on to give example after well documented example of Barack Obama and his administration’s anti-gun views and deliberate assault on the Second Amendment.
Pavlich outlines Attorney General Eric Holder’s anti gun stance and twisted view of the Second Amendment:
In a 1999 interview, ABC News asked Mr. Holder whether the Second Amendment recognizes that ‘that citizens have a right to bear arms,’ including the right to buy a firearm. Holder responded, ‘No court has ever said that the Second Amendment actually says that. I think, if you look at it, it talks about bearing guns in a well regulated militia. And I don’t think anywhere it talks about an individual.’
Attorney General Eric Holder’s views on the Second Amendment were troubling enough that twenty-one Republican senators voted against his confirmation.
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano also made her views public when she issued a nine-page report on the dangers of “right-wing extremism,” targeting veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, abortion opponents and gun owners.
It is soon after Holder and his gang are sworn in that things take a drastic and nasty turn.
In February 2009, days after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Holder appeared at a press conference to claim credit for a crackdown on Mexican drug cartels through an operation overseen by the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Agency. ‘The Department of Justice under my leadership will continue to work with our counterparts in Mexico through information sharing, training and mutual cooperation to jointly fight these cartels, both in Mexico and the United States,’ Holder said.
The new attorney general also announced plans to re-instate the assault weapons ban. Holder claimed the re-instatement of the ban would, at a minimum, have a positive impact in Mexico. ‘As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make,’ Holder said. Unbeknownst to the country, a plot to implement these ‘few changes’ was already in it’s early stages.
Pavlich goes on to outline the Fast and Furious scandal in detail and the attitude of the Obama administration toward it.
Obama reiterated that he had personally ordered an overhaul of all operations targeting Mexican cartel weapons and drug trafficking: ‘In fact, I’ve asked Eric Holder to do a complete review of how our current enforcement operations are working and make sure we are working and make sure we are cutting down on the loopholes that are causing some of these drug trafficking problems,’ the president said.
The Department of Justice under the Obama administration decided that the scapegoats for gun trafficking would be American gun shop owners and ‘If in the process the bureau could prove that U.S. guns were fueling the violence, and that the vast majority of guns found at the grisly cartel-related crime scenes could be traced to American gun shops all the better.’
With careful research and interviews of whistle-blowers and many of those involved, Pavlich has done a remarkable job covering this scandal, the strong-arming and the cover-up by those in the Department of Justice and other departments.
Several Phoenix gun shop owners and Arizona ATF agents voiced concern and were told things would turn out right and not to worry. Some were also threatened if they said anything 0r discontinued the program.
The facts presented in Fast and Furious by Ms.Pavlich are astonishing, unconscionable and the far-reaching consequences to our freedom are incredibly important. The American public needs to know just what they are dealing with and the measures to which the anti-gun left is wiling to go to to take that freedom away. Katie Pavlich does a remarkable job of laying out the entire sordid mess beginning with the background and mentality of those working hard to remove our Second Amendment rights as underlined in the U.S. Constitution.
Finally, I highly recommend this book to anyone following the Fast and Furious scandal and anyone who wants to see justice exercised for those involved in the murders of Agent Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata from the person responsible for pulling the trigger on the actual murder weapon to the persons at the top of the governmental agencies who authorized and then covered up this atrocity. If you are committed to seeing the Second Amendment and our American freedoms protected, you also need to read this book to inform yourself of the depths this government will take to remove those freedoms from you.
Click here to read my interview with Katie Pavlich for more info about the author and her motivation behind writing the book.
