change so this cannot happen again. i repeat, the general change, the safeguards, the protections that were not there apparently before so this cannot happen again. mr. attorney general, as we go through questioning, my question will be when is the primary investigative committee of the house going to have the same access that your own self-appointed inspector general has? the ig, if you will, the 12,000 people of the inspector general's office throughout the government are important and we expect them to be respected and we expect them to receive information. but the 70 men and women that worked for the majority and the 30 or so that work for the minority are very a very small fraction of that. we ask very little of government by comparison to what the internal controls historically

and always will ask for. our budget is less than 1/20 of what the inspector general's office is. we're not an agency that can ask for vast amounts of documents. we have asked you for documents. if you look at the totality of government, we've asked for very little compared to the ig's offices. we believe, and i think the ranking member will join me in this, that we deserve those answer s in at least as timely fashion as your own ig gets. it is our opinion that we haven't gotten that, that the need for overmanaging and redacting and careful looking by teams of lawyers have gotten in the way of the legitimate speed with which we should get that. we're going to ask you many things today. hopefully you came prepared to know a great deal about fast and furious. the important things that i'm going to ask today are what can you do to bring this to a close? what can you do before the ig

completes her investigation to allow the american people to see change that tells them this is no longer going on and won't go on in the future? lastly before i recognize the ranking member, it is this majority, at least, committees believe, that this is an operation that included reckless behavior at atf. failure to push harder and inform more by dea and the fbi, a u.s. attorney who clearly didn't do his job in a way that anyone should be proud of. we now have a justice department official who has taken the fifth. we've moved up a ways. all of those people should be ashamed that brian terry is dead because they didn't do as good a job as they could. kenneth nelson has said that publicly and privately that he bears a great deal of that

blame. the point here today is we want to know how justice will oversee every local operation, every state, every agency under your authority or in a joint exerc e exercise, joint task force that will come under your authority, how can you ensure the american people this won't happen again? or at least systems in place to give us confidence that it most likely won't happen. those are the items i ask you to come here today. i appreciate your being here voluntarily to answer. the committee's responsibility to ask. i hope we get the answers and commitments. recognize ranking member for his opening statement. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i want to welcome the attorney general today. mr. chairman when the committee started this investigation almost a year ago, you and i made pledges to the family of agent brian terry to find out

what led to release of hundreds of firearms to criminal networks on both sides of the border. we pledged to follow the facts wherever they may lead and provide the public with answers. mr. chairman, i want to acknowledge your efforts here. over the past year, we devoted incredible amounts of time, money, and energy to investigating this issue. we interviewed 22 witnesses, including senior officials at the department of justice and atf. we also reviewed thousands of pages of documents. we have four committee hearings on this very topic. because of our extensive work, we have had concrete results. the committee has exposed a five-year, five-year pattern of gun walking operations run by the phoenix division of atf and

arizona attorney's office. more importantly we put a stop to it. this is a significant accomplishment and i commend you for it. in addition we can now explain to the public how this series of reckless operations originated and evolved over the past five year. ask unanimous consent to place into the record a report i sent to members earlier this week. >> without objection, so ordered. >> thank you, mr. chairman. this 95-page report called fatally flawed five years of gun walking in arizona provides a detailed and comprehensive account of what we learned in our investigation. it documents how suspects in 2006 and 2007 trafficked more than 450 firearms during operation wide receiver as atf

agents who knew they had probable cause chose not to make arrests in order to build bigger cases. as one field agent said at the time, quote, we want it all, end quote. documents in this case in 2007 in which suspects purchased 200 firearms at atf failed repeatedly to coordinate interdiction with mexican officials. despite alerting then attorney general about these field operations, they continued. it documents the mad rano case in 2008 in which atf agents watched in realtime aspects, who were part of a trafficking ring that bought more than 100 firearms packed weapons into the back seat of a car and drove them across the border. it documents fast and furious

during which the same special agent in charge of the phoenix field division in all previous operations chafed against an order from the deputy director of atf to shut down the operation. as the agent stated, quote, i don't have like the agency driving our case. instead they encouraged firearms dealers to sell to suspects for months. there are several things our investigation did not find. we found no evidence that agents or prosecutors in arizona acted in bad faith. they simply wanted to put away gun traffickers and higher targets. they lost sight of collateral damage of letting guns walk. in addition contrary to many unsubstantiated allegations, the committee obtained no evidence

indicating that the attorney general authorized gun walking. none of the 22 witnesses we interviewed claimed to have spoken with the attorney general about the tactics used in operation fast and furious before this controversy broke. mr. chairman, although you deserve credit for exposing these operations over the last five years, we part ways in what we should do next. you now appear intent on escalating controversy and promoting unsubstantiated allegations in a campaign that looks more like an election year witch hunt that an even handed investigation. this is the sixth time -- the sixth time the attorney general has testified on these issues. in contrast, you've never once called the former head of the atf to testify at a public hearing, even though atf was the agency responsible for these

reckless programs. although attorney general holder has answered questions repeatedly, he refused to even interview former attorney general mccasey. when i was just starting as a lawyer 30 some years ago, the senior partner in the law firm said to me, young man, you have to take the facts as you find them. you cannot manufacture them. now that we have the facts, i hope we can put aside the politics and rhetoric and focus on concrete reforms to ensure this never, ever happens again. with that i yield back. >> i thank the gentleman. majority consent that memo and related materials be in the record. without objection so ordered. i'll now recognize myself for five minutes. i'm sorry, i'm a little off on that. to be honest, i just thought i'd

respond to a few of your things but that will wait. mr. attorney general, we're pleased to have you here. as the highest ranking law official in the land, we appreciate your commitment to the time both here and in the senate you've given. contrary to the ranking member, i believe today will be one of the first times in which you are fully briefed and prepared to answer in detail the questions exclusively about fast and furious. i would caution both sides of the aisle to stick to the subject. we are not -- we are not the judiciary committee. the attorney general is not here to answer a plethora of questions we may have about the conduct of his office. he is not here to generally tell us about law enforcement. i will assert the gavel if someone goes on a broad expedition beyond fast and furious, and as the ranking member said, related activities

including wide receiver and others. i think respect for the attorney general's time and the legitimate portion jurisdiction our committee has taken requires i ask all of you to please stick to that particularly since the attorney general's time is valuable. mr. attorney general, pursuant to the rules of the committee, i would ask that you rise and tat oath. mr. attorney general, do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth? >> i do. >> let the record represent an affirmative answer. thank you, mr. attorney general. in order to allow time for discussion, the committee like all committees will tell you to stay within five minutes. i, in fact, have no intention on picking up the gavel as long as you present what you have here today. i would ask to the greatest

extent possible you realize your opening statement is in written form. it's completely in the record, and that you certainly have our permission to include material not in the record in order to further delineate your prepared testimony today. with that, attorney general, you are recognized. >> thank you. i'm here today because i understand and appreciate the importance of congressional oversight and because i'm committed to ensuring the highest standards of integrity and professionalism at the united states department of justice. that's precisely what i pledged three years ago tomorrow when i was sworn in as attorney general and it is exactly what i have done over the last three years. my dedication to the department's mission is shared by an extraordinary group of colleagues, over 117,000 employees who each day in offices all around the world worked tirelessly to protect the american people from a range of urge enand unprecedented threats from global terrorism and financial fraud, violent crime,

human trafficking, civil rights abuses and more. over the last three years we've made a number of significant improvements including policy and personnel changes that address many changes that are the subject of this hearing today. today i'd like to discuss some of these improvements in specific terms and outline steps we've taken to ensure the flawed tactics in operation fast and furious and in earlier operations under the prior administration are never used again. in some of my comments today, if they sound familiar, it is because this marks the sixth time i've answered questions before a congressional committee in the last year. let me start with mongolia that cannot be said enough. allowing guns to walk, whether in this administration or the prior one is wholly unacceptable. i've been consistent on this. i've said this from day one. the tactic of not interdicting weapons despite having the ability and legal authority to

do so appears to have been adopted to stem the number of illegal firearms trafficked each year from the united states to mexico. to be sure stopping this dangerous flow of weapons is a laudable and critical goal, but attempting to achieve it by using such inappropriate tactics is neither acceptable nor excusable. that's why when i learned early last year about the allegations by atf agents involved with fast and furious, i took action. in addition to requesting a general investigation last february, i ordered that a directive be sent prohibiting the use of such tactics. there have will been important pernell changes in the department and violation reforms reflecting the lessons we have learned from operation fast and furious have been implemented. today i want to reaffirm my commitment to ensuring these flawed tactics are never used again. i reiterate willingness to work with congress generally and this

committee specifically to address this along the southwest board thaer has taken far too many lives. congress has legitimately sought answers to questions about law enforcement operations, wide receiver and fast and furious. my colleagues and i at the department of justice worked diligently to provide those answers. in addition to my frequent testimony before congress, i have answered and am continuing to answer questions that have been submitted for the record during previous hearings. the department has also responded to more than three deny letters from members of congress and facilitated witness interviews. we've also submitted or made available for review 6400 pages of documents to congressional investigators. this has been a significant undertaking for justice department employees. and our efforts in this regard remain ongoing. we've also provided congress with virtually unprecedented access to internal deliberative

documents to show what's relids] from grassley in 2007. documents provided information from supervisor in a position to know the facts. we now know some of the information was inaccurate. we understand that in subsequent issues with investigators they stated they did not at the time the information they provided was inaccurate. in producing internal communications regarding the drafting of the february 4th letter, the department made a rare, limited exception to long-standing executive branch policy. this decision reflected unusual circumstances and allowed us to respond in the most comprehensive way possible to congressional concerns where the department itself concluded information in the letter was inaccurate. the documents we provide have answered the a question of how that letter came to be drafted and put to rest questions of

intentional effort to mislead. all of our communication to congress should be accurate. that is the standard that i expect the department to meet. at my direction the deputy attorney general instituted new procedures to increase safeguards in this area. as i testified in a previous hearing, the department does not intend to produce additional deliberative materials, i want to emphasize deliberate tiff materials on congressional oversight for congressional review. this is consistent with the long-standing approach of the department under both democratic and republican administrations and reflects concerns for the constitutionality and constitutional protected separation of powers. prior administrations recognized robust communications would be chilled and the executive branch's ability to respond to oversight request there by impeding if our internal communications concerning our responses to congressional

oversight were disclosed to congress. for both branches this would be an undesirable outcome. the appropriate functioning of the separation of powers requires executive branch officials have the ability to communicate confidentially as they discuss how to. concerns here, because the committee sought information about open criminal investigations and prosecutions, this has required department officials on how to accommodate congressional oversight but also ensuring critical ongoing law enforcement decision making is never compromised and is free from the appearance of political influence. such candid internal is necessary for the effectiveness of law enforcement responsibilities and would be chilled by disclosure of materials. just as we worked to accommodate the committee's legitimate oversight needs, i trust the

committee will equally recognize the executive branch's constitutional interest and will work with us to avoid further conflict on this matter. the committee is also keenly interested in the policy changes that the department has undertaken in the wake of operation fast and furious. the atf, which is now under the leadership of acting director todd jones has implemented a number of key reforms and critical oversight procedures to prevent such a flawed operation from occurring again. these reforms are numerous and include a number of things. i'm also pleased to report under the leadership of the departmented criminal division we've bolstered crime fighting capacity on both sides of the u.s.-mexico border. we have done this by doing a number of important things as well. this is an important start but we have to do a lot more. no one knows this better than the members of our nation's law enforcement community including -- i want to emphasize this, including atf agents who testified before this committee last summer. not only did these brave agents bring the inappropriate and

misguided tactics of fast and furious to light, they also sounded the alarm for more effective laws to combat gun trafficking and improve public safety. these courageous agents explained that atfs ability to stem the flow of guns from the united states into mexico suffers from a lack of effective environment tools. unfortunately in 2011 a majority of house members, including all the members on the majority of this committee voted to keep them in the dark. they purchased multiple semiautomatic rifles and long guns, ak-47s in gun shops along southwest border states. in this new year the hope we can work together to provide law enforcement with tools they say they desperately need and have requested to protect our citizens and ensure their own safety. incidence of violence against law enforcement is higher than two decades even though violent

crime is down overall, that is simply unacceptable. the justice department is committed to turning back this rising tide and proeblgting those who serve on the front lines. we designed and implemented a training initiative to provide with information, analysis and tools they need to respond to a range of threats. let me be clear, nothing is more important than ensure the safety of brave law enforcement professionals who put their lives at risk for us each and every day. we can't make the progress we need and law enforcement partners we have deserve without your assistance and without your leadership. as i said before, i'm determined to ensure our shared concerns about these flawed law enforcement operations lead to more than just worn out washington gotcha games and cynical finger pointing. the department of justice stands ready to work with you, not only to correct the mistakes of the past but strengthen our law enforcement capacity in the

future. thank you. >> i thank the gentleman. before i begin my questioning, mr. attorney general would you agree to release to us legal opinions on the constitutionality of the material you have thus far refused to supply the committee frf to the extent there are legal opinions and to the extent they can be provided i have no objection to that. i don't know if these are opinions that olc would have an objection to provide them. to the extent i can, i will make those available to you. >> okay. i'll begin my question, i guess, by following up. mr. attorney general, you have the executive branch has executive privilege. it's narrow. it's well-defined. there's case law. if you do not find a legitimate basis to deny us the material we've asked for, we will seek the remedies necessary to compel. having said that, i appreciate your being here today, and i

don't want to waste any of yours or my time on this point. let's go through a couple of items here. first of all, reported through discovery we have received mr. monty wilkinson may have informed you of agent terry's murder in a timely fashion. is that true? >> he may v i know the murder occurred december 14th. i heard about it probably within 24 hours. i don't know if it came from monty wilkinson or somebody else from my staff. i knew about the murder within 24 hours of its occurrence. >> when you were informed about that within 24 hours, did anyone inform you or allude to the fact that weapons found at the scene were from fast and furious? >> no. i didn't know about operation fast and furious until the beginning parts of 2011 after i received that letter from senator grassley at the end of january. that was about operation gun runner. i learned about the fast and

furious operation in february of that year. >> would you make available to us, through whatever records can you find, the name of the person who informed you, so we can ascertain why that individual would not or did not tell you what was widely known almost immediately, that in fact law enforcement allowed weapons walked, that basically these were fast and furious weapons. e-mails we received through whistleblowers show us extensively law enforcement was aware and concerned about it. we would like to know why someone kept that from you? >> i'm not sure anybody kept it from me. i found about it in january or february of 2011. i'm not even sure how i found out about it. it might have been through a letter i received from senator grassley february 9th. i'm not sure if it was contained in there. there were certainly media reports in february. i'm not sure exactly how i found out about the term "fast and

furious." >> would it be fair from your own knowledge to say neither lenny brewer, as head of the criminal division nor jason winestein did anything to stop the program after they learned what it was about. >> stop the program. >> fast and furious prior to brian terry's debt? >> they both admitted they were aware of operation wide receiver and connected the techniques used in wide receiver to operation fast and furious and as a result did not take any action in that regard. both admitted that was a mistake. >> let's go through this, i think in my limited time i want to make sure we deal with wide receiver versus fast and furious. as of today, do your law enforcement authorities, such as the atf see a straw purchase,

rather than arrest them at the door with no evidence, follow them to the next location? >> see them -- >> in other words, does law enforcement have the ability to follow suspected gun traffickers with the weapons in their car from location to location? >> keep them under constant surveillance? >> yes. >> they certainly have that capacity. >> so as far as we've been reported every piece of evidence shows in gun walker -- i'm sorry, wide receiver every effort was made unsuccessfully in many cases, which is one of the things that concerns us, to follow the weapons. to your knowledge, was there ever an order under wide receiver to abandon following the weapons and let them walk? >> well, i'd say during the early -- as i've seen more on wide receiver as we have provided -- >> yes or no would be a good start, mr. attorney general. do you know of any time in which people were ordered to peel off

and let guns walk under wide receiver. >> i'm not sure whether they were ordered to or not. i do know during the early phases of investigation observations were made of people buying guns and decisions made not to surveil them after those purchases were made. as a result 100, 400, i'm not sure how many guns it is, the guns walked. there were objections about fact guns were walking in operation wide receiver. >> since it was never allowed to simply let known straw buyers, known guns fall into illicit criminal's hands, have you taken any action to fire anyone or discipline anyone from operation wide receiver? >> operation wide receiver occurred in the prior administration. >> we're not talking about political appointees. we're talking about people who would transcend the transition. have you, to your knowledge, disciplined anyone from wide receiver? >> no, i have not.

>> have you disciplined anyone from fast and furious? >> i have not as of yet. there have been personnel changes made at atf, a new attorney general in arizona, personnel switches at atf, people moved out of positions. i'm certainly going to wait for what i get from the attorney general. i don't know if the majority will produce a report. i will be taking all that into consideration. in addition all the things i'm finding out on my own and make personal change as i think are appropriate. >> my time is expired. i will say i don't think the minority report is going to do you a whole lot of good since it seems to say more or less nothing happened. with that i recognize the author of the minority report mr. cummings for his round of questions. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i respectfully disagree with what you just said. our staff worked very hard on

that report. by the way it is based on the evidence that the majority presented, that the majority presented. you all heard the same evidence we heard. basically looked at the fabts and presented them. mr. attorney general i want to thank you again. i'm sorry my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have made completely unsubstantiated allegations against dedicated and hardworking fbi agents, dea officials, and others. i want to thank all of them for what they do every day to protect the american public. to face a challenge, i have to ignore the political side show and keep my focus on the very real problems that led to these flawed operations. as our report explains, we have no evidence that you approved gun walking. we have no evidence that you knew about it. the same