still at the prayer breakfast and we were praying for you.. >> i can't complain about that. >> well let me tell you based on what i have seen i think my prayers have been answered because frankly i haven't seen anyone make a case about you not performing your duties in the way that you should. i want to go over that right now. you and senior justice department officials have repeatedly been accused of authorizing the gun walking tactics used in fast and furious. we already have the record about what my chairman has said. he said there's no question high-ranking officials of justice were briefed, rebriefed and many of them had direct contacts in authorizing the program. they now call it a failed program when in fact the very concept the way they wanted it to be executed was deadly and dangerous, unquote. none of the 22 witnesses in this committee interviewed supported

that claim. i want to look for the moment the department of justice organizational chart, which is relevant here. of course, the doj, you're at the top. atf reports to you through the deputy attorney general. the former head of the atf, and i emphasize the word former, kenneth nelson told us that the controversial tactics were never raised to my level. he said he was not aware of gun walking and never brought it to the attention of senior doj officials. now, mr. nelson's second in command, william hoover, also told the committee staff he did not know of the gun walking tactics in fast and furious. he said it was his firm belief, that's a quote "firm belief" that the strategic and tactical decisions in this decision" were born and raised in fee mphoenix. did the head of atf or his deputy ever warn you that gun

walking was occurring? >> no, i never got that from either mr. nelson or from mr. hoover. >> i want to, i want to go back over this chart again because it's really important for members to have an understanding here. you've got, you've got the u.s. attorney in arizona, the atf, i think with the atf, mr. hoover, mr. nelson, atf didn't report anything to the deputy attorney general, the u.s. attorney and for the district of arizona didn't put any information through to the deputy attorney general. so what i want to know is, all of this talk about resignation, what we're really devaluing the whole concept of asking a top

level official to resign, when you haven't reached the level of proof that something was right on his desk. no one's proved that at all. but we keep talking about resignation. if we cheapen this whole idea of ju ask them to resign, you don't like the administration, you ask people to quit, you cheapen that idea, it makes this whole committee process less significant, and i want this committee to be important. i chose to be on this committee when i first came to congress, because government oversight is a very important function. i want to support my chair's call for this hearing, even though it's the sixth hearing. you must feel like tom hanks in the movie "groundhog day" because we keep coming to the same point, but you no he what? you have an obligation to come to us, nevertheless.

so look at that chart. hold it up again, please. all this information, all of the assertions never got to the attorney general. whether you like them or not, you've got to be able to make the case and the case has not been made here, that the attorney general, eric holder, was in any way derelict in his dew poin duties and those on the other side know me well enough if i thought he was, i wouldn't hesitate to say it, so i think we've got to be very careful here with people's reputations, because reputations take a lifetime to build. they can't just be trashed in a minute without facts. after a while, this is starting to sound like "alice in wonderland" or "through the looking glass" where you've got the queen saying sentence first, verdict afterwards. the sentence is resignation, resign, but we haven't made a fact pattern that would suggest that we should have that

conclusion raised to the level of the president having to take the action, because you serve at the pleasure of the president. so i just want to say whatever disagreements that we may have on certain policies, i don't see anything that's been produced here today that should cause you to have to stop serving the people of the united states of america and i just want that on the record, having seen the facts, that would show otherwise. >> i thank the gentleman. we now go to the gentleman from idaho mr. labrador for five minutes. >> i'm glad the myjority made a point i've been trying to make for a long time. government is too big and has too many layers of bureaucracy but i'm one of the first people who asked for your resignation and i did it after thinking about it for a long time, and in my statement, when i asked for your resignation, i said in your testimony before congress you either lied or you were grossly

incompetent in your actions when it came to finding out about fast and furious and your handling of this matter. back to congress is we want ta know what you knew and when you knew it. it's a simple question, but the problem is that even though you have testified six times apparently on this matter, in different occasions, your story continues to evolve, and continues to change. in fact, today your story changed a little bit. so let's talk about the facts. everybody wants the facts. let's talk about the facts here. on may of 2011 you said in the senate judiciary you first heard about fast and furious a few weeks ago. in november of 2011, you said that a few weeks was inaccurate, and that you should have said a couple of months. e-mails released on january 28th show that you were informed by your deputy chief of staff of agent terry's death and you just testified today that yes, that,

on december 15th, 2011, and this is what i'm trying to get to right here, on that same date, and it's already been shown, your deputy chief of staff learned that the guns used to kill agent terry were from fast and furious. so what you want us to believe is that you were told about the death of agent terry but you chose not to ask any follow-up questions on that same day about what caused the death of agent terry and that in fact you didn't learn about the connection between the death of agent terry and fast and furious until a couple of months later. that's what you want us to believe and that's fine, that may be the truth, but you continue to come to congress -- that may be the truth, that's fine. i don't have a problem with i you continue to come to congress unprepared. don't you agree that this is a preside pattern you have of dealing with difficult questions and embarrassing issues in your

office coming to congress unprepared? >> it was interesting what you said "that may be the truth." what i said may be the truth. >> i'm not disputing it. you continue to come to congress unprepared. wouldn't you admit you continue to come to congress unprepared when you have to testify? where you have to change your statements, you have to change -- you have to withdraw memos from your office. isn't that a fact? >> no. >> okay, let's look at that. let's look at the facts. if we could go to the slides, please. when you came to congress on february 14th of 2001, you were being asked about mr. mark richards' pardon, and it said mr. richards' name was unfamiliar to me, i gained a passing familiarity with the underlying facts of the rich case. go to the next slide. i did not acquaint myself with his record. let's go to the next slide. i never actually saw that letter. there's a pattern here that we continue to hear in your testimony. let's go to the next slide.

>> mr. chairman, mr. chairman? >> the gentleman will success se suspend. >> you said this would be limited to fast and furious and i'm seeing something up there from 2001. >> i'm just showing a pattern of behavior. >> yeah, we've honored that, and i've been very strict with my people on this side to stay within the parameters the chairman set. as a matter of fact i thought we've done a pretty good job so far. >> the gentleman will suspend. i'll limit to what he can do anything he wants to say related to style. i don't a'see a question here. i have heard time and time again people talking about gun control and the need for it and a number of other items. expressing an opinion for five minutes in congress is something i have limited authority. i do not expect the attorney

general to answer although in defending himself in this case he may choose to and i would caution the gentleman from idaho to get to the management question quickly, because this is about fast and furious. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> okay. >> next slide, you're right, i didn't have the ability to look at all the materials. next slide, please. i have not had a chance on may 13th of 2010, when you were testifying about fast and furious, i've not had a chance to. i've glanced at it, i have not read it. next slide, please. i have no recollection of knowing about fast and furious, on october 7th, 2011. next slide, please. on october 7th of 2011, on a weekly basis my office typically receives over a hundred pages and weekly reports. next slide, please. i certainly never knew about the tactics employed in the operation. next slide, please. and this is on february 14th of 2001, and i think the one thing that would have changed this whole thing is if i'd said to the person on my staff, what's

the stat us of the rich matter?" i believe that's what would have changed and we would have avoided the six hearings we've had about this matter if you would have just asked a simple question of your staff before you came to testify in congress, what did we know about fast and furious and when did we know it. you failed to do that. you failed to do that under the mark rich investigation and you failed to do it in this case and this is why we continue to have these hearings. mr. attorney general, i believe the american people deserve better. i believe the american people deserve to have an attorney general they can trust and for that reason i have asked for your resignation and because you have been grossly incompetent in the way that you have prepared before coming to congress, i think you should resign. thank you very much. >> mr. chairman, i just want to note for the record, this gentleman could have had a whole pattern that begins with fast and furious, but he insisted

upon going back to ten years. it was a violation of the rule you yourself, mr. chairman, set, and i -- >> madam norton, the rules of the house severely limit my ability to impede your five minutes of opinion or his five minutes of opinion. i have cautioned members. i have made it very clear the witness will not be expected to answer any questions that are not on the narrow subject of fast and furious. staff will show you the rules that limit how much i can stop -- >> mr. chairman, if i may say, it seems to me that that interpretation of the rule was clearly not before us before and i am going to just have to ask, sure, if it's the right, it had been my view all along that a member may ask about what time it is on the wound in her five minutes.

i have never had a chairman before try to keep me from using my first amendment rights but since that had been your rule and this is the first time you have invoked it, i tried to honor it. this gentleman could have -- >> i thank the gentlelady for her comment. i have the ability to limit the scope of a hearing. i've tried to protect the attorney general from answering questions which were not within the scope of his preparation. i respect the gentlelady's right to use her five minutes to state opinions and i have never stopped somebody from it, although i've cautioned. it is the intent of this committee to keep this from being anything other than a legitimate investigation as to fast and furious and conditions that occurred around the investigation of a number of committees. so i appreciate the gentlelady's comment and would recognize for ten seconds the gentleman from ohio. >> i just want to correct the record. it was suggesting that it was bill murray, not tom hanks from

"groundhog day." so i just want to make sure that you know i thought you may have felt like bill murray in "groundhog day." >> for the record it was 38 days in a row in which it repeated it self for groundhog day. >> mr. chairman let me say one thing in response to mr. labrador. that was among one of the worst things i've seen in congress. you took a whole series of statements without context with no context. >> with all due respect the worst thing -- >> the gentleman's time hasek pird. >> you know, i was, the mark rich thing was considered my confirmation, talked about it then. there is a whole bunch of things that i could say about what you just did, and maybe this the way you do things in idaho or wherever you're from, but understand something. what i've done, i'm proud of the work that i've done, as attorney

general of the united states, and looked at fairly. i think that i've done a pretty good job. have i been perfect? no. have i made mistakes? yes. do i treat the members of this committee with respect? i always hope that i do, and what you have just done is, if nothing else, disrespectful, and if you don't like me that's one thing but you should respect the fact that i hold an office that is deserving of respect. and you know, maybe you're new to this committee, i don't know, i don't know how long you've been here, but my hope would be that, you know, we can get beyond that kind of interaction, that kind of treatment of a witness, whether it's me or somebody else, because i think in some ways what you did was fundamentally unfair, just not right. >> i thank the gentleman. we now go to the senior member of the committee from pennsylvania, mr. platts. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i certainly appreciate your efforts on this important issue.

mr. attorney general first i'd just comment, most of my line of questions or questions have been addressed, asked and answered and i'm not going to repeat what others addressed. to the last exchanges i guess i have two comments. for the most part i agree with what you just said and consider the gentleman from idaho a friend, and don't share the approach in this instance that he took, and i think your points of reminder of civility are important. along with that i also share the frustration i think that's coming through in his presentation or others on both sides of the aisle of, that what this is all about is a courageous american who died in the line of service to this country, and that the actions of others in service to the country may have played a role because of mismanagement of a program or outrageous conduct related to gun trafficking, and that we stay focused on that. the frustration is that apparently the attorney general or the inspector general has thousands of pages of documents

that this committee in trying to do legitimate oversight has not been privy to, ands sooner this committee on both sides of the aisle have access to the same information, the sooner the efforts of this committee can be achieved in a non-partisan, just good government fashion, so i think we all need to keep the focus. this is how to make sure the death of a servant of this nation never is repeated in the circumstances that we've seen here. so with my questions being asked and answered i'll yield. i know the gentleman from south carolina has some he didn't get to finish up so i'll yield the balance of my time. >> i thank the gentleman from pennsylvania. i want to circle back mr. attorney general with respect to the october 12, 2001 e-mail with mr. weinstein and mr. trusty, you would agree fast and furious is mentioned specifically in that e-mail exchange?

>> can i ask the clock be tolled? >> we'll suspend and give the gentleman the document again. >> this is october 17th? sorry, october 14th, october 17th and october 16th -- 18th. >> that's correct. familiarize yourself with it, take all the time you want. no, i'm okay. >> would you agree with me that fast and furious is mentioned specifically in that e-mail exchange? >> yes, on the, i guess this is the october 17th from jason weinstein to james trusty. >> and both of those gentlemen are main justice employees. >> that's correct. >> and would you agree gun walk something mentioned

specifically, correct? >> yes. in the second line. the number of guns that have walked. >> yes, sir, and it is actually mentioned in both the exchanges. guns that have walked and then somebody says gun walking. so that's two references to it. now, can you find the phrase "wide receiver" anywhere in that e-mail? >> i can't see this very well but i'm going to assume given the tenor of why you are question that the term "wide receiver" does not appear in here but mr. weinstein testified when he was talking about a tricky case, he was referring to wide receiver in the sunday october 17th e-mail. >> and i can't speak to that mr. attorney general. my point is this. leading up to february 4th, a letter was being drafted, and i'm much more concerned with the name at the top of that letter than i am the name at the bottom. that the name, department of justice, means something to me.

the name at the bottom of it, not so much. while that letter was being drafted, there there are people main justice that knew the body of that letter was incorrect, factually incorrect. while that letter was being drafted, the criminal chief lanny brewer was in mexico talking about gunwalking. do you know whether or not he alerted our mexican counterparts that fast and furious was something they needed to be prepared to deal with because of the number of weapons? did he mention to them be alerted, a lot of weapons went down there, a lot of your civilians are going to be killed? >> first, there were people in main justice who did have that knowledge of wide receiver and who admitted that they did not make the connection between wide receiver and fast and furious, and that should have happened and could have changed the february 4th letter. lanny brewer was not down there talking about gunwalking as we have used that term during the course of these last four hours

or so when he was dealing with people in mexico. the third question what? i don't remember that. >> i don't like interrupting witnesses, but i'm almost out of time. i'm going to read a sum friday a doj attache named tony garcia. he suggested allowing purchasers to cross into mexico so mexican police are arrest and prosecute and convict plchlt gar stee ya wrote a summary saying what a horrible idea that was for the very reasons we've been talking about for the last hours. that people were going to die, and that weapons were going to get away from us. my time is out. i want to ask one more question. >> he very, very briefly. >> very briefly. has there been discussion at main justice of either a grant of immunity to mr. cunningham so we can know what it is that he feels the need to invoke his fifth amendment right to not say? have you discussed granting him immunity, and thhas there been

discussion about the grant of immunity? >> we have not discussed immunity or a special prosecutor. that will be for you all to ask us, if that is something you want to have considered. i will say that, you know, i don't know exactly why he invoked his fifth amendment privilege, but i can say that in the preparation of that february 4th letter that he was involved in, i don't have any basis to believe he knowingly provided us with false information. again, i don't know why he invoked his privilege. he has a lawyer from a good law firm in d.c., and i'm not sure why he did that. >> the gentleman's time has expired. >> just five seconds. i wanted to say we've answered all your questions that you asked about winestein in our reports and it comes from document that were during the testimony and before our staffs. >> i thank the gentleman. we now go to the gentleman from oklahoma, mr. langford. >> mr. attorney general, thank you for being here. i know you also did not want to

see the death of brian terry. none of us did. this was a horrible incident that we're dealing with a lot of consequences over time because we want to make sure it doesn't happen again. we've heard you want to make sure of that, too. i want to talk briefly about atf and the structure there. this was an acting director. you have to have concerns extra there, extra attention to it in the management based on an acting director and all that's up happened with atf. the structure with the fbi and they're going for an undercover operation, the field office proposal that goes through the svr in charge goes through headquarters and legal and legal has to determine is this entrapment and within the bounds of that? the u.s. attorney may get involved and goes to headquarters with a certain amount of money and length of time and such. it has a lengthy process up to the department of justice on that. is that a similar process to approve an operation like this under cover. >> i'm not sure that it is as

robust as what you have just described with regard to the fbi. >> that's consistent with the fbi process, is that correct? >> i'm sorry? >> is that the right process for fbi that they go through? >> i think the fbi process is a good one. >> that's great. >> i think that we need to have not only with regard to atf but other investigative agencies within the justice department make sure we have similar procedures in place. that's one of the things i talked with about todd jones the acting director in the process of making changes at the atf. >> that is the concern to put in a system and structure to make sure this never, ever happens again. so it doesn't become such a bureaucrattic maze nothing happens, but make sure there's checks and balances, we're not doing entrapment. that it is getting up to your office. if it wasn't getting to your office or something like this before, let's make sure it does in the future days get up to doj. what is the time frame on that for a decision and shift on that

that's current? >> i would hope this will something we can do over a matter of short number of months. i think to do this right we need to have buy-in from people who are at atf headquarters, people in the field so they have an ability to express their views so they will accept these are things that will be changes in the way in which they have operated. so i think we're talking about a matter of months before we have those kinds of things in place. todd has made significant changes. he's working real hard at this, but i think the concern that you have expressed is one that i agree with. we should make sure that we have processes in place to minimize the possibility that what we are talking about today and legitimately talking about today before it happens again. >> the last thing i want to say to the terry family that this occurred and nothing has happened to make sure it doesn't occur again. let me make a quick side statement and yield back to the chairman as well. this is not something i up

expect you to answer. it's a comment i want to make. it's off-topic on it. yesterday this question had a hearing dealing with the constitutional issues and the repercussions of the president's appointments to the nlrb and cpb in january. obviously, your department is very involved in that in the constitutional statement. in 2010 deputy solicitor-general was before the supreme court, and chief justice roberts asked him specifically can the nlrb question be resolved with a recess appointment? neil cadele at that the point said -- >> it looks like there's another violation of your rule coming up. >> the gentlelady is out of order. >> i prefaced it by saying i'm making a sfwamt it. i do not expect the attorney general to respond to this. so neil cadele made this statement to the supreme court saying that no recess appointment could be done if less than three days. so there was an opinion by him on that before the supreme court

dealing with it. two years later the justice came back out and came out with a statement saying no, that is legal, so there was a transition. mr. chairman, what i would hope for at some point is to have some conversation to say what changed between 2010 and 2012 in justice that at one point they considered it not legal and two years later considered it legal and appropriate at that point? that's not in your preparation on that, but that is something we dealt with yesterday. i hope we would deal with it. >> i thank the question. there's no question there. are you yielding to me? >> i yield back. >> i'll give you time for a quick close. the evidence that you've given us through discovery that on february 4th lanny brewer was, in fact, talking about a program that included guns passing over the border in the hopes that they would be intercepted, well, in fact, on march 10th in the cole e-mail there's a statement i'll read verbatim here. as i said on the call, to avoid

any potential confusions i want to reiterate the department's policy, as though existing, we should not design or conduct undercover operations which include guns crossing the border. if we have knowledge that guns are about to cross the border, we must take immediate action to stop firearms from crossing the border, even if that permanently terminates or otherwise jeopardizes an investigation. that's a complete paragraph. can you, in fact, answer for this committee how you have counseled or changed lanny brewer from a man who flew to mexico and said, i want to have guns crossing the border, to this which says there's a policy and it's wrong and we have a month in between them? >> clearly what was proposed in february by lanny brewer was against the policy that i had

the deputy attorney general make clear to everybody at main justice and to the field. and to the extent that there is attention, the policy mr. cole laid out is the policy of the justice department and the thing that i support. >> i want to thank you, and i'm not going to ask any more questions. you've been very generous with your time. i want to reiterate one thing, and we can't undo everything said here. the effort was made for this to be narrowly fast and furious. i believe that two other committees, senate judiciary, house judiciary had each one time in which the primary reason for you being called was not normal oversight but related to fast and furious and the letter that followed. we believe we have one crack at it also, and we appreciate you coming three times to three separate committees. that we appreciate. in closing, i do believe there are people at main justice who ultimately do