this flawed decision was made by local officials. it didn't take long that we learned that, in fact, was there a significant information on officials in washington about the conception and execution of this operation and what the president's recent executive privilege letter, it appears that it may go into the white house. this is what attorney general holder's team infers as part of the evolving truth. that's a troublesome comment. the obama administration and the justice department cannot continue to stonewall any longer. the american people want answers. agent terry's family deserves answers. the gentle lady from new york mentioned earlier that this is all occurring because it's an election year. i don't think agent terry's family cares that it's an election year. i don't think the families of

over 200 slain mexican citizens care that this is an election year. it's past time for the attorney general to produce the documents, and i made clear in a recent statement that we have given the attorney general ample opportunity to come forward and present the facts surrounding fast and furious, yet the department has refused to cooperate. i'm a freshman in congress and when i came here, i didn't know that if you started and if you dropped a bill and you wanted to get it passed it had to be done during the congress, so if it's not done by the end of this year it goes away and you start over and the same holds true for what we're trying to bring to light here and i don't think that's lost on the attorney general's office. it starts to feel like they're just trying to run out the clock. so mr. chairman, i think that the contempt report before us is thorough and accurate. i urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the committee's efforts to hold the justice department accountable.

thank you, and i yield back. >> the chairman yields back. who else seeks recognition? the gentleman from vermont is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. a couple of things to begin with. number one, the attorney general or any other subject of the subpoena cannot demand to have an agreement in exchange for a legitimate request from the commity. so i think that many -- all of us probably agree with you on that. there were two different versions of what was discussed or how that meeting went, mr. cummings, has a different understanding of it than -- >> would the gentleman yield very quickly? >> i have today gotten the -- from the attorney general's office noted that all he's referring to is trying to have a good faith effort to resolve the subpoena and contempt issue only. i yield back. >> i would respect the chairman

for standing up for committee prerogatives. second, i agree with the chairman that we do owe it to the terry family to get to the bottom of this, but the third point, this is the challenge that we always have in congress. everything that we do when it ends up on a partisan vote leaves the american public with the view that essentially it's a political deal going down in washington once again and the hope i would have is that the member of the committee who strongly believes in oversight and legitimate access that congress should have to all of the information needs in order to make a determination about accountability and how it happened is that we lay that foundation in this committee that would justify in the minds of most of us including on both sides of the aisle that contempt, the very major power is appropriate at this time and the two questions that trouble me toing is that we haven't reached that foundation at least as far as i'm concerned is that

elements in the investigation that would include things that happened when fast and furious or operation wide receiver was being started that happened during the bush administration with the then atf head, it would seem to me very reasonable in pursuit of a full investigation that we would want to have those folks in and ask them what happened and get the complete picture, allow us then to have that as part of our investigation. we're not doing that at least to my satisfaction, and i think many on our side of the aisle. the second thing is that the initial subpoena that has been revised since friday does demonstrate that what i would say is a little overbroad approach to try to get information out of the a.g. when we started asking for things that the law clearly prohibits the attorney general from turning over, the grand jury transcripts from the federal rules and civil procedure 6c says that that can't be turned over and the wiretap information that cannot,

by the u.s. code be turned over and the subpoena was adjusted on friday, but friday is only a couple of days ago. so we're in a situation now where no matter how we vote on this there are many of us who while we strongly support oversight and strongly support the necessity of this committee having access to the information broadly that it needs, many of us feel the foundation for this contempt has not been laid because of my view of the inadequate investigation that would go to when this process began and secondly, a somewhat very overbroad subpoena that was just restrained last friday that was literally asking the a.g. to turn over documents that legally he's not able to do. so that's where i'm coming from. i mean, there's a lot of us on this side that would have votes on a contempt against any public

official who is illegitimately holding foundation. we need to have credibility among the public that it's just not the usual roadshow in washington with us saying one thing and you guys saying the other and here we go again. so, thank you. >> if the gentleman would yield. >> i yield. >> i may make note that nothing stops the administration from giving us as they have the delivery of information and other information from the previous administration, a large amount of those 7600 documents are about wide receiver. so this administration and this attorney general has attorney general mukasey's and gonzalez's records and they have the e-mails and operational plans and they've given a great many of them to us and we take note that the genesis for the failed fast and furious, albeit smaller and albeit different appeared to come from the same unit with the

same bad ideas early on, and i think there's no argument on either side and in fact, i think if the attorney general -- any of the previous attorneys general came in here they would agree that in several of these cases they poorly executed on what would otherwise be follow the guns. the reason that we have narrowed or moved the goalpost easier from the attorney general to get a field goal here is in fact that we've had discovery and we've limited it. on may 18th is when the speaker took the extraordinary measure of narrowing the request in a letter to the attorney general. i might note he also spoke to the president on that. last friday, what we did as a result of our becoming aware of the ranking member and the ranking member also becoming aware of the details inside seven wiretaps is that we felt from the standpoint of contempt although we still need additional information about the

people in the chain that it really didn't need to be included in contempt so we narrowed contempt. we have not narrowed our need to get this information and i'm not trying to lecture anyone because i'm not a lawyer, but in fact, the vast majority of material we have not gotten, we believe, we totally believe is not protected because of some compromising of ongoing criminal investigations, but, of course, to know that we would need a privileged law that we have not received an offer of. i yield back time. >> there has been some narrowing and you adjusted the subpoena after friday and the things he couldn't give us was withdrawn and then i think it is reasonable if there's going to be withholding of information because of the claim of privilege to get a privilege log. i agree with that, but the sense

i have right now is we may be able to resolve this if we just take a half-step back because there's disagreement between you and the ranking member of how you heard what the attorney general said and if it was your version i support you, by the way, but i think that the way that mr. cummings heard it makes you sound like the attorney general's making it sound like we can make some progress. i would support a privileged log, if it's turning over these other items then that would be progress for us. i don't know if the committee can have some discussions about us doing our work, to bring in some of these people in the bush administration where it would at least give many of us peace of mind that we're doing our full job, so do we really need to do this today? at some point we may need to, but i don't feel like we need to do it today in order to be true to our neutral obligation to get

to the bottom of it and not take no for an answer when it comes to getting documents that we're entitled to have. who else seeks recognition, the gentleman from south carolina is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. the department of justice is not just another agency with the federal government. the department of justice is responsible for safeguarding the fundamental found dagdz of this republic which was respect for the rule of law. the department has symbolized mr. chairman by nothing more than a blindfolded woman holding a set of scales and a sword. she doesn't care about political agendas. she doesn't care about whether her decisions helped or hurt people's re-election bids. she doesn't care about race, gender, socioeconomic status, just the equal application of the law so all citizens can have confidence and the decisions that she makes. so it is against that backdrop, mr. chairman, that we look at

the facts surrounding this investigation. fast and furious was fundamentally flawed in its conception, flawed in its execution and flawed in its explanation afterward. and this is not, mr. chairman as was initially the administration mantra, an arizona investigation. senior-level officials within the department of justice in washington knew about fast and furious, well before special agent brian terry was murdered. senior level doj officials were briefed, they discussed press conference opportunities. they discussed the unsealing of indictments, and they traded e-mails about the status of the case. they approved wiretap applications and most significantly, mr. chairman, they actively discussed the tactic of gun walking well in advance of special agent brian terry's murder and well in advance of a demonstrably false letter being written to a member

of congress that was calculated to deceive and mislead and here's the proof. here, mr. chairman, is the proof that the department of justice in washington, not arizona, in washington, knew about the tactic of gun walking well before brian terry was murder. so we have a fundamentally flawed investigation. we have a dead border patrol agent, hundreds of dead mexican citizens, hundreds of weapons with americans' finger prints on both sides of the border unaccounted for and a false letter being written to a committee of congress and yet we're being asked for more time. please wait. give it more time. it's been over a year, mr. chairman. if congress has time to look into major league baseball, the bcs and invite stephen colbert to come to a committee hearing, surely to goodness we have time to get answers on a fundamentally flawed, lethal

investigation like fast and furious. and thus, we have, mr. chairman, we embarked on an investigation to get answers to some pretty fundamental questions that i still cannot answer when i'm asked back in south carolina who approved this investigation? i can't give them an answer. when i'm asked who knew about gun walking and did nothing to stop it, i can give them this, but this is part of the answer because it's part of the documents. how did a demonstrably false letter get written to a department of justice letterhead and delivered to a united states senator? i can't tell you how that letter got drafted. why was it withdrawn after ten months? why did it take ten months to withdraw the letter? why was the criminal chief to my friend pat me han's point, why was the criminal chief of the department of justice in mexico advocating for gun walking on exactly the same day that this demonstrably false letter was

delivered to a committee of congress? can anyone answer that question? can you tell me with lenny brewer was in mexico advocating for a tactic that we all acknowledge is flawed on the very same day the department of justice was denying the tactic to senator chuck grassley? not only does congress have a right to ask these questions, we have a fundamental duty to ask these questions. our fellow citizens, the ones we're supposed to work for, when they get a jury summons, do you think they have a choice on whether or not to comply? when they get a subpoena from a law enforcement agency do you think our fellow citizens get to offer an extraordinary accommodation in lieu of providing documents? either congress has the authority to send a subpoena and require full compliance or what we have been doing for the past 12 months is a fool's errand and we should have never discussed contempt of congress. either we have the right to the documents and we should get all of them or we have no business here. and with respect to executive

privilege, mr. chairman, i'm going to resist the temptation to contrast senator obama's decision on executive privilege with president obama's position on executive privilege, but i would note the juxtaposition is stark. if he was not part of the drafting of the february 4th letter, if he did not know about fast and furious before brian terry was murdered, if he did not approve of the wiretap applications then what in the world is he asserting executive privilege for? he's either part of it or he's not. if he's part of it then we've had a series of witnesses that have misled this committee. if he's not part of it then he's got no business asserting executive business and i would yield back. >> the gentleman's time has expired. >> thank you, mr. chairman. y want to continue along the road that my friend from vermont started. i'm very concerned about the public perception about what

we're proposing to do here today. we've seen throughout this discussion for the last almost two hours a serious dispute and percent all dispute over a lot of the information that the committee and only the committee has seen. we talked about yesterday's meeting with the attorney general and a difference in perspective or perception between the chairman and the ranking member. none of us was there so we have no way of judging and certainly the public doesn't have any way of judging exactly what with the attorney general was asking for and what he was willing to do. we've talked about the nelson testimony and the nelson testimony or lack of it in front of the public, we think is a very important element of this entire issue. the fact that mr. nelson testified before a closed

interview, the transcript of which is not available to the public, again, allows those who don't agree with the attorney general to selectively quote the transcript in support of your argument and allows us to selectively quote from the transcript to support the fact that you don't believe that any senior members of the administration were aware of many of these activities. the public has no way of judging that. my friends from south carolina referenced the wiretap applications. i read through them yesterday and i would say, without -- since we can't talk about what was in them that my perception of what they would imply was far different than my friend from south carolina's perception. the whole point being that what the public is left with is nothing but a default position.

those who tend to be republicans or oppose the administration are going to default in support of the contempt action. those who support the president of the administration are going to tend to default to support -- to the opposition of the citation and those who are independent are going just say this is another partisan activity on both of you. the vote on the meyer's and bolton contempt citation was, and there were three republicans that voted for the contempt sightation and every other vote cast on the house floor was a partisan vote. so i'm very much concerned about the impact of this action that is proposed today on the perception of the public that everything in this body has to be partisan and as my good friend from vermont said, there are those of us who believe strongly in the oversight

function and strongly in separation of powers and the quality of the congress and the obligation of congress to pursue these avenues of investigation, some of you remembered my first term and i was on the oversight committee and i wore a button that was article 1 and i was strongly supported of the prerogatives of this institution, but i'm afraid, again, as my friend from vermont said without the background that the public needs to have to determine whether we are acting in anything other than a partisan fashion, i think we are falling short. so i hate to be put in the position of voting for a contempt citation where much of the information like the discussion yesterday afternoon with the attorney general is beyond my possession and i would just say that this activity, this endeavor is something that is only going enhance partisanship in the country, i would be forced to oppose it

when i think equally committed to making sure that this body has all of the information it needs to carry out its out its constitutional responsibilities. >> will the gentleman yield? >> briefly. the wiretaps and all of the testimony of people like kenneth and others are include sensitive information. every one of those documents is available to you. you may selectively use it as you see fit. there are democrats and republicans able to take that source material and glean from it. it is one of the great challenges is that that which comes to us from which we should not make public, we still have to act on and vote on and i share with the gentleman that this is one of the difficulties the former atf director talked

for two days about sensitive information, much of which the public will be happy not to have made public. those who want to go through his testimony will find i want to thank the members. i know we are nearing the end of our time here. this committee has kept secret everything that should be kept secret. there have been no leaks of sensitive information from this committee and many of you have read the most sensitive information. so often we don't thank ourselves or other members. >> i ask the gentleman have an

additional 20 seconds. >> thank you. i yield that to miss norton. >> i thank the gentleman. i just want since it was said that there had been no communication with the president under republican and democratic administrations. the executive has often invoked executive privilege with respect to predecisional deliberative communications. and i thank the gentleman for yielding. >> i thank the gentle lady. >> i yield back. >> does anyone else seek recognition? the gentleman from florida. >> thank you, mr. chairman. accountability. that's what the american people expect. that's what the american people crave.

they understand that everyone makes mistakes and everyone has r errors. acountability is one of the key corner stones of our system of checks and balances. and yet today we are here because we have an attorney general who has failed to be accountable for the actions that his department has taken that has resulted in the death of not only a border patrol agent and countless others in mexico. and so did the family of brian terry, i wish to say on behalf of the american people, i truly apologize for what has happened to your son and to your family and for what you have had to endure as a result of this. i ap niz that we have an attorney general who has failed to delegate responsibility.

we have an obligation to find out who is accountable and who is responsible for these actions. yes we see the red herrings. an operation that happened under the bush administration. an operation that is different than fast and furious. an operation that was started and yet stopped once it was foupd out by president bush. more importantly it did have the knowledge of the mexican government. but yet when we send a subpoena to this administration including with it not only the documents that we see and seek under fast and furious, we also seek the documents from wide receiver. and why is it that we receive a plethora of information about fast and furious and just a smij

onof documents regarding fast and furious? this administration can'ts to want to blame and hold responsible the previous administration for this current administration's irresponsible behavior. when are we going to stop the blame and look for accountability? i will tell you that accountability starts here with this resolution. i will tell you that the american public are tired of the evolving truth that is trickling from the department of justice. with that i will yield the balance of my team. >> i would just simply say this. there has been a lot of discussion this morning about wide receiver, about previous administrations. let me be very clear. bring them all. bring everybody before this committee. anyone who has information about gun walking, bring the information before the committee because gun walking is wrong no

matter what administration does it. so bring the republicans and bring the democrats and bring the bull moose party and the whigs, bring them all. that does not mitigate this attorney general's responsibility to come ply with a subpoena from congress. those are two separate issues. what happened? let's get all the information to all of our colleagues who want to blame the bush administration for everything that has gone wrong in this country. give them their day, but that does not mitigate this attorney general's responsibility to comply with the law. and isay this in conclusion. like my friend pat from pennsylvania, as a former prosecutor, this is a sad day. for someone who worked for the department of justice, i hasten to add in a democrat administration this is a sad day.

but it is a necessary day. the notion that you can with hold documents whether you are the party in power or not in power is wrong. respect for the rule of law must mean something irrespective of the vicissitudes of political cycles. i yield back. >> i yield back the balance of my time, mr. chairman. >> the gentleman yields back. does anyone else seek recognition? >> mr. chairman, thank you. i want to apologize to the american people for yet another show of gotcha politics. i would associate my comments with mr. gaudy because i, too, am deeply concerned with gun walking and the fact that this activity went on under both

administrations. the atf thought it had the power to make that decision without running it up the flag pole to the highest officer of law enforcement in this country. there needs to be an entire investigation of how the atf operates in this government. under any administration. they are cowboys who think they can just do what they do without getting prior approval. i am freightened to think what would be going on today had agent brian terry not been murdered. would we even know about fast and furious or wide receiver? that is the seminole question that we should be asking ourselves. how things can go on in any

department in this government of the nature that fast and furious and wide receiver were. as outrageous as that was and not have it known at the highest levels of government. and i associate myself with the comments by mr. quigley. for all the chest pounding going on in this room today, gun walking is going on right now. we are continuing to aid and abet the cartels in mexico because we don't have the guts to do anything about the loopholes that exist in terms of gun ownership. no one needs an aka