would cooperate with the committee's investigation. the department has now produced over 6,000 pages of documents and made 18 witnesses available for transcribed interviews. and, of course, you have testified on matters relating to this issue six times. is the department cooperating with congress? >> i think we are. i think that we are trying to meet the legitimate requests that have been made by this committee. this is a legitimate hearing. this is a legitimate concern that congress is raising. and i think that what we have tried to do is respond as best we can to the requests that we have made as quickly as we can. while at the same time making sure that we don't do things that will have a negative impact on our ability to do our jobs. and that is with regard to that small amount of information that deals with deliberative

materials. >> what categories of information are being held? and why? >> the -- the material being held, and i think things we're going to have to try to work our way through are, as i described, deliberative materials where we are trying -- we have people within the justice department talking to one another about how we're going to respond to a congressional request or a media request. that kind of -- that's the kind of material that we are talking about. we have made available huge amounts of other material. we're still in the process of processing other things that we will make available. we are acting in a way that executive branch agencies have always acted. now, again, we could have -- continue to have conversations about even this deliberative material and see if there are ways in which we can -- we can share it. one of the things i think that we have to take into account, and i'm not sure anybody's ever done this, we made deliberative

material, wholesale deliberative material available with regard to that february 4th letter, as you say, about 1,300 pages of material. i'm not sure i know any attorney general who's ever done that before to that degree. and i thought it was the appropriate thing given the inaccuracies that were contained in that letter. >> well, thank you very much. and i appreciate, mr. chairman, that we are dealing with fast and furious. but i also think we've got to make sure that we're fast and accurate. as accurate as we can possibly be. i yield back. >> i thank the gentleman. i might note, for the record, that the -- the delivery of the february 4th occurred only after i threatened a criminal referral for its inaccuracy. it was at that point that we began getting some cooperation and not before. with that we recognize the -- >> mr. chairman, our view i dis. we think the provision of that

february 4th material was done voluntarily. not under coercion. >> threat of criminal prosecution isn't coercion. it's the fact that we were given false information. >> that was not -- >> and it was subject already to a subpoena. cooperation subject to a subpoena by this committee's standards, we asked for things long before we issued a subpoena. we were told no. we issued at a subpoena and we were at the level of going next before we got there. so i appreciate that everyone on both sides of the aisle has a different opinion, but the timeline is undeniable that we have never received voluntary cooperation until we had elevated it considerably in any case here. certainly senator grassley would say the same thing when, in fact, he was told he didn't have subpoena authority, he wasn't the chairman. it's the reason he originally came to this committee, so that we could begin the process of getting what he was denied in the senate. >> well, i can say this. i was the one who made the determination that we were going to release that february 4th material, the deliberative material. and it was never brought to my

attention that we had the things that you just said. the decision i made was based solely on what i thought was the right thing to do and without any notion in my mind that there was coercion -- not even coercion in a negative way. that there was the threat of criminal prosecution or anything like that. my determination was made only on what i thought was right given the provision -- the regrettable provision of inaccurate information. others might have known about that. i did not. and i was the one who made the call. >> i don't want to belabor this point, but i do want to make a point. i signed a subpoena october 12th. it was to you. so the cooperation came after your office in your name as you as the recipient received a subpoena. i hope that you read the subpoenas that come with your name on it. >> but the subpoena would not -- we would not have replied -- in response to that subpoena we would not have given you the deliberative information. that would not be something -- >> we're entitled to it. we're not going to debate that any further.

case law is on our side. with that we go to the gentleman from south carolina, another constitutional officer in this branch of government for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. holder, it is provable beyond a reasonable doubt in my judgment that maine justice had actual or constructive knowledge of gun walking. both in fast and furious and beforehand. and i'm going to prove it to you. march of 2010 doj. not u.s. attorney's office in arizona. doj assigned a prosecutor to fast and furious. march 2010, gary grenler, who i believe is your chief of staff, knew about straw purchases in fast and furious and seizures in mexico. and it doesn't take a very good prosecutor to ask how weapons got from phoenix to mexico. july 2010, a memo to you through the acting deputy ag. that memo specifically mentioned fast and furious. it specifically mentioned straw purchasers. it specifically mentioned 1,500 firearms supplied to mexican

drug dealers. that's july of 2010. 1,500 firearms. april 30th, 2010, a memo from maine justice employee winesteen to andy brewer. atf let a bunch of guns walk. then the rest of e-mail is worrying about the negative press connotations that may have come from that. not how to fix the policy, but how to mitigate negative press consequences. october of 2010, jason winesteen and james trusty swapped e-mails and specifically mentioned gun walking. and mr. attorney general, that e-mail is so illustrative of our frustration with the notion that maine justice did not know about this. i'm assuming that james trusty's a maine justice employee, am i correct? >> i believe that's correct. >> all right. this is the e-mail. and they're specifically talking about fast and furious and, in fairness, they also mention laura's tucson case. they say it's a tricky case

given the number of guns that have walked. but it's a significant set of prosecutions. the e-mail back to that is, i'm not sure how much grief we're going to get from gun walking. it may be more like people are finally going to say, we went after the people who sent guns down there. now, lay aside the merits of that argument. how can you deny that people in maine justice knew gun walking was going on before that february 4th letter was sent to a member of congress? that doesn't even get into the wiretap applications. that doesn't get to the factual predicate that a member of maine justice would have had to have read -- all of this is before february 4th. that whole series of evidence predates mr. white sending a letter to congress denying the tactic. so my question to you is this. who participated in the drafting of the letter? >> well, first, the -- you know, this is going to be one of those

rare instances. you're right. there was knowledge within the justice department of gun walking. it was related to wide receiver. >> mr. attorney, with respect, i don't like interrupting people. but with respect, several of these e-mails specifically mention fast and furious. i'm not talking about wide receiver. love to have that conversation some other time. this e-mails and memos specifically mentioned fast and furious. >> they mentioned fast and furious, but do they mention gun walking and fast and furious? >> yes, they do. that's my point. >> i would like to see those. those i would like to see. >> we got them from you. we got this from maine justice. >> let's do this. i promised to give you all some information. i would really like to see a memo that says gun walking and fast and furious. i would like to see that. >> well, if you're looking for a videotaped confession, i probably can't give you that. but what i can give you is an e-mail from two maine justice employees back and forth specifically mentioning fast and

furious. it's a tricky case given the number of guns that have walked. i don't know how it can be any clearer than that, mr. attorney general. my point is this. the february 4th letter -- >> the gentleman will suspend. in order to get to the truth, we're going to take a five-minute recess and have the documents given to the attorney general. i've got too many people behind him trying to give him instructions on what it was and what it wasn't. we will -- nobody leave. please, get the documents to the attorney general. take what time you need. use my conference room if you need it. >> i can stay here. i can stay here.

as we reconvene, i understand that the attorney general's people are comfortable with what the document is and the source. i'd ask for an additional one minute for the gentlemen to go through, restate the document, the source and so on. this is important that all sides know what is being asked, whether they're assumptions of validity, truth and so on and testimony that may accompany it. so with that, the gentleman from south carolina may resume. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and in keeping with my open file discovery policy, i gave him my documents. they have my notes on them. i'll go back through the list again. and i would also point out, mr. attorney general, there are several memos and e-mails i did not include because reasonably it could be argued that they

dealt with something other than fast and furious. although keep in mind, my question, what i said i was going to prove, is that doj knew fast and furious and beforehand that gun walking was a tactic. because the letter mr. wish wrote was not specific with respect to gun walking. true or false, doj assigned a prosecutor to fast and furious? >> i believe that that's right. that there were people who went down, one or two, i'm not sure, who went down to help with regard to that prosecution, that matter. >> true or false that mr. grenler attended a debriefing on fast and furious where his own notes indicate the seizure of weapons in mexico? >> that -- if you're talking about -- i don't know debriefing. if you're talking about the meeting that he had with the folks from atf, i guess, in march of '10, 2010 -- >> yes, sir, it's march. and there's a note in cursive

handwriting, fast and fours yur. and there was a map attached to that of seizures of guns in mexico. my point is it doesn't take a very good prosecutor to ask how the guns got from phoenix to moex koe. >> mr. grenler has testified and indicated what happened in that meeting was that he was briefed on operation -- on the operation, was told that it was essentially a successful operation and no mention of tactics came out of that meeting. >> all right. there was a memo to you through the ag from the national drug intelligence -- i can't call his name, because i don't have my copy of it. fast and furious is mentioned specifically. straw purchasers are mentioned specifically. 1,500 firearms are mentioned specifically. >> this is a -- what we call a weekly report. i've testified about this i don't know how many times. i've gotten -- there are a number of these that come from ndic. just for the record it's from

michael walther. these things just talk about what's going on with regard to operations. again, there's no mention of tactics in any of these. there's no indication that inappropriate tactics are being used in connection with the underlying investigation. and that's why these things were not brought to my attention by my staff. >> well, it mentions 1,500 firearms and it mentions straw purchasers. mr. holder, despite the protestations of some of your staff behind you that you're being treated unfairly, i never once said that you were aware of it. i said maine justice was aware of it. i suspect you didn't draft the letter on february 4th. my question is, who participated in the drafting of it? and i'm out of time so i'll go ahead and ask the second question. after that, i would hope, perhaps, at some point, mr. chairman, i could ask the rest of the questions i have. here are my two questions. who participated in the drafting of it? because the criminal chief head, lonny brewer, was in mexico contemporaneous with the drafting of the february 4th letter advocating gun walking.

get that image. that visual image of a letter being drafted denying gun walking while the criminal chief at maine justice is in mexico advocating for gun walking. >> the gentleman's time is expired. the attorney general may answer. >> in terms of who drafted the february 4th letter, i mean, that is obvious from the materials that we shared with you, those 1,300 pages or so. i can't recall all the names. but you will really see, i think, virtually everybody if not everybody who is involved at the justice department in creation of the february 4th letter. you could review that. i don't think it's correct to say that while the letter was being drafted that mr. brewer was in mexico advocating for gun walking. he was in mexico. i think you're talking about a february 2nd e-mail or report, i guess, from the state department that indicated that what he was talking about was the possibility of a surveilled delivery of weapons to people who would take them to the

border and an arrest made at the border. interestingly, on the mexican side of the border, because the penalties that exist in mexico for gun trafficking, for straw purchasing, are higher than they are here in the united states. and that's what he was proposing. not gun walking, but something very, very different. it was something that was raised, but ultimately never carried out. >> i thank the gentleman. i apologize. there's no additional time at this time. we now go to the gentleman from vermont, mr. walsh, for five minutes. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. two things, number one, i want to express appreciation for the hard work of the people of the atf. this is an incredible challenge that they have. we lost a revered officer, officer terry, in this -- in this service of his country. and it's because there is a huge problem with guns going from the southwest into mexico. in the past five years, 94,000 guns recovered in mexico, over

64,000 are traced to the u.s. every year thousands are -- are transported across the border. you have very few tools at justice to try to deal with that. you've spoken about that, so i won't ask you. but i think it's important for us to ask the question whether the point of this hearing is to try to do something that's going to help the men and women of law enforcement deal with a major problem or it's going to be something that is going to run into one dead end after another without any good outcome. second, we get in our own way a little bit here with the investigation, because it goes off into many different directions. largely because we make some allegations that as we investigate them and take up staff time, they don't go anywhere. and i have great affection for my chairman, who's a hard charging man, but my experience, sometimes you get ahead of yourself on some of the allegations you make. i'll just mention a few.

you had indicated -- let me get -- that -- one of your allegations was that, and i quote, you said that folks made a crisis and they were using this crisis to somehow take away or eliminate people's second amendment rights. that this hearing has nothing to do with that. this whole investigation has nothing to do with that. >> would the gentleman yield? >> i would be glad to yield. >> i'll be very brief. when the atf began asking and justice began asking for additional directly related enforcement, including the idea that every second, every two rifle purchase, in fact, build to a database that congress has repeatedly limited in statute on request, it did seem and does still seem to this member as though a crisis created by gun

walking and brian terry's death was, in fact, being personally justified by this new requirement at a very inappropriate time. at least the optics least the o. >> i will reclaim my time, and i would disagree. some of the instantiated allegations were, for instance, the allegations that your office and you made -- accused mr. holder of "authorizing every aspect of this." there is no shred of evidence to back that up. last october, an allegation was made that there was a third gun, an item of evidence, marked number two and number three, those were two guns, and item 11 was not a gun, it was a blood sample. any time any one of us makes an allegation that is theory and conjecture, but not based on any solid foundation it creates a lot of consternation among the public, takes staff time, and

ends us in blind alleys. the real question is what did the attorney general know, when did he know it? in the six investigations we've had, of the six that have been ongoing, the answer is the attorney general was unaware of this activity at atf. mr. gotti raised a good question, and i want to give you a good chance to answer that my understanding about mr. weinstein, the discussion there was about activities that were -- that were taking place during the bush administration. not during this administration. and they -- the fact that something in this tactic may have been used in the bush administration, doesn't mean that you knew that it was an ongoing tactic that was used in fast and furious. so i want to give you an opportunity to try and elaborate whatever answer you want to give to the question that's been

raised by mr. gotti. >> the e-mail i had from mr. gotti, and i'll give it back, is an -- it's from jason weinstein, and he has indicated that the reference that he makes in there is not to fast and furious, but it is to wide receiver. he testified to that. it is his e-mail. you know, i think in some ways he's the best person to determine what his own words meant and so that was -- i mean, i look at it, and i appreciate the chairman giving us the opportunity to look at it over the course of a couple of minutes. the e-mail as said, jason's e-mail, jason weinstein's e-mail, he was talking about wide receiver and not fast and furious. >> thank you before holder. i yield back my time. >> i would like to explain something. the third -- i'm out of time, but the chairman as i understand has some prerogatives. >> in the case of an accusation of false statement, i will

briefly -- brian terry's mother and father were told by a law enforcement official that they believed it was the third gun. the missing number that was later explained seemed to corroborate it. ultimately, though, three people have reported that they were told that there was a third weapon. now, we don't know if there was or wasn't. justice has not infirmed whether or not there is a ballistic match on the two fast and furious weapons, nor have they confirmed that they are looking for an additional weapon or additional shooter. i take very seriously getting the facts right. the fact is, we report in a limited basis, things which in this case, the press would weigh ahead of, and you said, yes, we're looking into it. we did, and i will admit -- we did and do get things wrong during an investigation. we do go down blind alleys, regularly. certainly that's the case.

today aers hearing in the 1,300 pages that were directly as a result of a false statement made to us in writing on february 4th is an example of a lot of time spent going down a false thing. the chairman will admit, this there are times when we did not get the information right. and while correcting you, i won't say we get it all right. our goal is to get it all right before we publish and hopefully each publication, minority and majority is where we substantiate only what we can with footnotes. >> thank you before chair. >> we now go to the gentleman from florida, mr. ross. >> thank you, mr. want to make sure i understand your testimony today and the facts as well. you have indicated today that you were not aware of any gun walking at all until you were briefed it looks like 2001.

january or february of 2011. >> january or february of 2011. >> and you are specifically speaking of gun walking. >> and i didn't know about fast and furious until the same time period. >> and prior to the end of january of 2011. >> i learned of wide receiver later on. i became aware of that as we were preparing documents to be submitted to the committee. >> without regard to the memo, which you were not aware of, you did not know anything about wide receiver. >> and you are not aware of the term, fast and furious, fast and furious being used, at the time of mr. terry's death. and it was going on as a result of his death. >> as a result of his death. i certainly was affair of the fact that there was an investigation into who killed him, there was a criminal investigation, that started december -- right at the time of his death.

>> and from our agent has passed away. and dennis burke, then forwarded that to monte will conson, acting as deputy attorney chief of staff at the time. >> deputy chief of staff. on december 15, 9:41 a.m., mr. burke said not good. 18 miles within. thereafter, at 10:04, deputy chief of staff, monte wilkinson said, in an e-mail to mr. burke, tragic, i've alerted the a.g., acting dag, lisa, et cetera would it be correct to assume that the way you learned of brian terry's death was mr. mr. wilkinson himself of his

statement that he notified you. >> it's entirely possible i knew about it before monte told me. >> you have no reason to dispute that monte told you about it. >> i suppose he did, but i'm saying when it comes to -- when a law enforcement death, especially involving law enforcement that information gets to me very quickly. >> and it should. >> and to follow up on that, in the e-mail exchange, later at 11:15 a.m. that morning, another e-mail to dennis burke, saying please provide additional details as they become available to you, asking the u.s. attorney in arizona, please tell us, mr. attorney, u.s. attorney, we want to know more. later that day, in an e-mail from mr. burke, the u.s. attorney in arizona, to mr. wilkinson, your deputy chief, the guns found in the desert connect back to the investigation, we were going to talk about. they were ak-47s purchased at a phoenix gun store. my question to you, mr. attorney general, were you aware of this

e-mail exchange? were you aware of an investigation ongoing that involved a phoenix gun store and specifically ak-47s at the time? >> no, i wasn't. listen to what you just said. he said we were going to talk abo about. we were going to talk about. which implies they did not. >> subsequent to the death. mr. wilkinson has told you about brian terry's death. now he's being informed about an investigation involving the slain officer, involving a gun store in phoenix. did that not raise any sense of awareness, raise any sense of intrigue, if not mr. wilkinson, from you to say what investigation is ongoing? >> i was not told about this. i was unaware of this, and unless there is some indication -- >> you testified today are you a hands-on manager. >> what i was saying, unless there is some indication that the tactics that we are so

against were employed there, what we know is this was something -- this was a tragic event connected to an ongoing investigation. we don't have -- >> involving a gun store and an ak-7 4 7. what else do we have to say? involving a cartel. december 15 to the end of january, you don't learn about a gun walking operation ongoing in your department and i'm supposed to go home and tell my constituency that's the facts? mr. attorney general, i have a haanimd if you are responsible those underneath your direction, i would assume those ld make su are you fully informed of all facts of an investigation that resulted after an agent's death. >> what i would say is that in the absence of an indication that these inappropriate tactics were used you have here a tragic death connected toan