By David Codrea; March 8, 2011 Examiner.com

“Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, demanded Tuesday that an independent watchdog be used to investigate the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives decision to let hundreds of guns fall into the hands of straw buyers for suspected Mexican weapons traffickers in hopes of making a bigger criminal case,” Rick Solomon of the Center for Public integrity reports.

Grassley’s press release states:

Senator Chuck Grassley today said that he did not have confidence that the Justice Department Inspector General’s office could produce a report that the public would view as frank and unbiased in its investigation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) policy of letting guns “walk” along the Southwest border—a policy that may have contributed to the death of a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent.

In a letter written to Kevin L. Perkins, Chair Integrity Committee Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, and citing perceived conflicts of interest as well as past disinterest in the allegations, Grassley requests “that the Acting Inspector General  recuse her office and that a disinterested inspector general’s office be selected to conduct the review,” and makes two profound charges:

[T]he DOJ-OIG was aware of the allegations long before the Attorney General’s request and did nothing. Agent Dodson had already contacted the DOJ-OIG in December, just after Agent Terry’s death. He received no reply. After contacting my office, Agent Dodson contacted DOJ-OIG again, and still received no reply. No one from the office contacted him to gather information about his allegations until after my staff contacted the Acting Inspector General directly on February 1, 2011. Given that the DOJ-OIG initially failed to follow-up, it might have an incentive to minimize the significance of the allegations in order to avoid the appearance that its own inaction contributed to the problem in the last few months.

And:

The investigation should also carefully examine the circumstances surrounding false and misleading statements to Senate Judiciary Committee staff and to me in response to questions about these allegations over the past several weeks.

A United States Senator is saying he’s been lied to by top federal law enforcers. And he’s saying those tasked “to detect and deter waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct, and to promote integrity, economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in Department of Justice operations” have failed in that task through non-responsiveness and conflicted interests.

This is beyond huge.  There is no reason why every Representative and Senator who values the truth should not join Grassley’s call and sign on to his letter. There is no reason why the National Rifle Association should not issue an alert to its significant membership list informing them of this development and urging them to demand that their representatives do so immediately.

And there is no reason why other media outlets that have thus far dragged their feet on reporting the “Project Gunwalker”* story should not devote headline coverage to report this development as well as what has been reported to date to their audiences and readership about “the controversial program that was uncovered by the Center for Public Integrity and CBS News.”

Except there is one minor point of contention, Mr. Solomon…

Also see:

• Grassley asks for independent investigator to probe ATF! Plus more Gunwalker Scandal Items. It is getting hard to keep track of them these days.
• A journalist’s guide to ‘Project Gunwalker’ for a complete list with links of independent investigative reporting and commentary done to date by Sipsey Street Irregulars and Gun Rights Examiner.

*Note to newcomers to this story: “Project Gunrunner” is the name ATF assigned to its Southwest Border Initiative to interdict gun smuggling to Mexico. “Project Gunwalker” is the name I assigned to the scandal after allegations by agents that monitored guns were allowed to fall into criminal hands on both sides of the border through a surveillance process termed “walking” surfaced.
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