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tv   Hannity  FOX News  August 19, 2011 6:00pm-7:00pm PDT

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>> paula deen is probably the patriot in this food fight, but it is your call. >> tomorrow is the bolder, fresher tour. monday premium members get to see video from the show. >> again, thank you for watching. i'm monica crowley in for bill o'reilly. remember, the spin stops here because we are looking out for you. we weren't giving guns to people who were hunting bear. we were giving guns to people who were killing other humans. >> when first know about the program officially called fast and furious? >> i'm not sure of the exact date. i probably heard over the last few weeks. >> why did this obama administration purposely allow the illegal transfer of more than 2,000 weapons that they knew were going to mexico? >> guns we saw these individuals buy were turning
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up in crime scenes in the united states and mexico. >> who authorized this program that was so felony stupid that it got people killed? >> it was relayed they didn't have to explain anything to me. i was to do as i was told. >> are they lying or are you lying? >> sir, in this investigation, [ inaudible ] >> what we have here is a colossal failure in leadership from within atm, within the united states attorney's office and within doj. >> this is one of the most shameful moments in our government's history. >> this is the moe, curly and larry show and we are looking for larry. >> we will not rest until every person responsible, no matter where they are, are brought to justice.
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>> sean: welcome. tonight we investigate operation fast and furious the controversial program initiated by the justice department's bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms. it was called project gun runner. when the program began under the bush administration in 2006, its purpose was to "reduce firearms and explosives related to violent crime associated with mexican criminal organizations operating in the u.s. and mexico by preventing these organizations from unlawfully acquiring and trafficking firearms and explosives." the program that began with the best of intentions expanded dramatically after president obama took office and veered sharply off course empower the activity that it set out to suppress. in 2009 congress kwaeuf the atf, 21.9 million dollars to support and expand the program called project gun runner. one of the offshoots of the
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project was operation fast and furious which was run out of the atf's phoenix, arizona field division. it incorporated a new strategy which allowed suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns in the hope that the purchasers would lead law enforcement to bigger fish in the gun trafficking networks. >> it was then this thing turned ugly. we had a toxic and deadly combination of incompetence, bureaucratic malfeasance and an anti-gun agenda. >> this sense that they needed to do everything in their power to smear gun dealers and blame them for the problem. >> more than 90% of the guns recovered in mexico come if the united states, many from gun shops that line our shared border. >> what is most ironic, if the dealers themselves who were warning these top officials that things had gone wrong. >> it is obvious the largest
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suppliers mexican gun violence is not the dealers. they are using dealers as the scapegoat. >> sean: under the operation the atf allowed the sale of 2220 firearms to suspected smugglers. 1430 still on the streets and unaccounted for. 590 have been linked to criminal activity. including the december 2010 murder of border agent perry who was killed by suspected operatives of a mexican dug smuggling organization. internal atf e-mails confirm two of the weapons found at the scene had been purchased earlier that year as part of the fast and furiousévix$=jy >> there are dead americans as a result of this failed reckless program. >> i take exception to what you said. the notion this justice department is responsible for those deaths that you mention that assertion is offensive@2
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>> sean: charles grassley the ranking member of the sent a letter to the acting atf director writing: >> sean: assistant attorney general responded by calling grassley's allegation flat out false. in february, another innocent american loses his life. 32-year-old ice agent zapata was gunned down on a mexican highway by members of a dangerous cartel. atf officials traced one of the weapons used to a sale in texas that likely took place under the operation, although officials will not confirm it. later president obama was publicly asked about the operation for the first time by spanish tv network
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univison. >> the president: there may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made if that's the case we'll find out and hold somebody accountable. >> sean: may 3rd, attorney general holder testified before the house judiciary committee. >> when did you first know about the program? >> i'm not sure of the exact did it. i probably heard for the first time over the last few weeks. >> sean: rewind to a 2009 arms trafficking conference in mexico where holder delivered a speech not only acknowledging the project but bragging about its expansion. saying my department is committing 100 new atf personnel to the southwest boarder in the next 100 dayjqu to supplement our ongoing project gun runner. >> it is ironic when the dam first broker rick holder promised to get to the bottom of the problem. we know now that rick holder has been the source of thela6 problem all along. >> sean: june 13th, first hearing was
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oversight committee. chairman issa grilled assistant ag wyche. >> you made a statement in that letter that you signed on the 4th, that said atf makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to mexico. isn't that statement false? now with what you know? >> obviously, there have been allegations that call in serious question -- >> documents now provided made public that lets you know that statement was false? >> that's why you are investigating. >> sean: also testifying at the hearing three current atf agents involved with fast and furious. >> prior to my coming to if he anything i had never been involved in or heard of an operation which law enforcement officers let guns walk. the idea is unthinkable to most law enforcement. i and other field agents
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repeatedly raised concerns with our supervisors. we were told we did not understand the plan. >> sean: july 4th, facing mounting scrutiny over the botched operation and calls for his resignation e melson appeared secretly where he testified that mistakes were made by the atf and officials withheld information to protect political appointees. in a joint letter written following the meetings, issa and argued if his account is accurate, atf leadership appears to have been muzzled while the doj sent false denials and bury its head in the sand. >> more we are finding out. the more the american people will understand this administration is in endangering not just the people on the frontlines, but civilians as well. >> sean: the damning
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revelations keep coming. july 26th, the head of the atf's phoenix office told congress he discussed the case with a white house national security staffer as early as last september. an admission that once again directly calls into question president obama's repeated denials that neither he nor attorney general holder had any prior knowledge of operation fast and furious. >> what we need is answers from the very top. and we haven't had them yet. we haven't had a single official fall. we have no heads roll. >> sean: not only have they not rolled. the "l.a. times" report that the atf's depthy director of operations in the west are being transfered from arizona to washington to be, you guessed it, promoted. next, the disturbing details of what happened to border patrol agent terry the face behind the story. ng classic.
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it's so 2012. look at it! it's doing over a million different things right now. metamucil. ask more of your fiber. >> sean: the fast and furious story might have never come out had it not been for one major national tragedy. it started near the mexican border. mexican drug cartels crossing the border is the beginning. >> they got miles to walk before they get anywhere. >> sean: stepped up enforcement has pushed them into remote areas. like a notoriously dangerous smuggling corridor 14 miles north of the fence. >> the terrain is rough.
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it is not driveable by vehicle. not driveable by atv. the violence in that area is very high. >> sean: much of peck canyon looks more like afghanistan than the united states. >> there are numerous caves throughout these canyons and mountains this is extreme terrain. you can't get here to deploy except by air. >> sean: in this landscape the cartels wage war against each other on american soil. >> you got the mules that are packing the drugs. and they are armed. then you've got the people that are going to rip them off. >> sean: it has been called smuggler's paradise. the area is a hot spot for around cartel rip crews. >> rip crews are specifically aiming at ripping off drug loads from their competitors. they are the most dangerous kind of criminals one can encounter on the border. most have former military backgrounds from the mexican army.
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and sign up with the drug traffickers to do these kinds of remoter attack cal operations. >> they don't have any problem assaulting people, they don't have any problem shooting people. >> they go back to mexico without their merchandise, they are going to get killed that is making it tough for us to fight it on this side. it is getting very violent. >> violence against other groups in particular border patrol agents, and other law enforcement agencies. on the night of december 14th, 2010 border patrol agent terry was part of a small elite tactical teamworking to track rip crews in the darkness. >> the team infiltrated on foot into an area and they set up an interdiction zone of a known narcotics trafficking and rip crew trail. keep in mind, brian and his team of special operations operators were working in the
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dark of night this is truly rough terrain. >> sean: they encountered a group of five men each armed with automatic weapons. a fierce shootout ensued. >> in the end, one mexican national, a member of a rip crew, lay wounded and brian terry was dying. [ bagpipes ] >> last night border patrol agent brian a terry was shot and killed in the line of duty as he encountered several suspects. brian terry's life of service to god, family, country and corp, is a life well lived. >> our stronghold along that border was agent terry's final
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stand. >> it doesn't get easier. i do not relish as chief of the border patrol handing out folded american flags to surviving family members. >> sean: it was to have been agent terry's last night of work before going home to michigan for a christmas vacation. >> brian did come home that christmas. we buried him not far from the house that he was raised in prior to christmas day. >> there are times when you just can't hold back the tears, because it is like losing a son, losing a nephew. i truly felt like a true son of the united states of america was lost that night. >> sean: at the scene of the shooting agents arrested a man and recovered three ak-47 weapons w-2 purchased in arizona by a man who was under surveillance as part of the fast and pure operation.
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he was arrested the next day. >> when did you first here about the with weapons purchased through operation fast and furious? >> mostly tv, media, newspapers. i never got a call until it was brought out in the newspapers. i was flabbergasted. i didn't believe it at first. >> sean: ballistic tests could not identify the weapon but lawmakers were outraged. >> terry's lost was preventable, regrettable and preventable. >> what makes brian's death so shocking to his family is that he did not die on a foreign battlefield. he died not in iraq or afghanistan. but in the desert outside of arizona. some 18 miles inside of the u.s.-mexican border. his killers were not taliban or al-qaeda fighters. but a small group of mexican drug cartel bandits, heavily armed with ak-47 assault
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rifles. >> sean: the family is not just to grieve but also to look for answers. >> we have i one of the men and woman involved in fast and based on my experience are men and women of good faith who wanted to do the right thing. but they hadn't fully thought about the consequences of their actions. that inability to look into the future, to understand the risks they were taking, is their down fall. and maybe, although we don't yet know, the reason for brian terry's tragic death. >> sean: a very sad, very unnecessary story. if you would like to help the terry family and the families of other fallen border patrol agents go to borderpatrol foundation.org. >> next, inside mexico where those guns end up once they end up across the border.
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>> sean: welcome back. fox news correspondent william la jeunesse has been closely following this story since it broke. he uncovers who knew what, when and where the guns ended up, once they crossed into mexico. >> we weren't giving guns to people hunting bear.
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we were giving guns to people who were killing other humans. that is insane. inreceiveable. you would not ever think that because atf does not do that. if i had known that was in fact occurring, i would have called atf headquarters. >> reporter: most agents didn't know about fast and furious. those who did, followed orders. >> it was relayed to me they didn't have to explain anything to me. i was to do as i was told. >> reporter: agent dodd son blue -- dodd blew the whistle after the death of brian terry. it ended the program but not the carnage. the brother of a former attorney general tortured and kill, 21 dead in a shootout. helicopter down near mexico city. all crimes committed with guns sent to mexico with u.s. government consent. >> guns that we saw these individuals buy were turning up at crime scenes in the united states and mexico of the yet we still did nothing.
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>> reporter: nothing while fast and furious guns showed pup in the hands of cartels. -- showed up in the hands of cartels. >> it confirms what many mexicans believe there's this conspiracy from the united states to sell guns to mexico. >> reporter: conspiracy or poor judgment in letting guns walk? >> fast and furious was unique. in the past a suspected buyer would be arrested in the parking lot or down the street. in fast and furious they were recruited, multiple sales approved, no arrests and no surveillance outside the store. >> reporter: that allowed a handful of young thugs to buy thousands of guns. >> a straw buy a kid who is 18 to 25, maybe up to 30-years-old. who needs a couple hundred extra bucks and knows somebody that knows somebody that has a way to make a couple extra bucks. they walk into a store, fill out a form. buy a couple of rifles and
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walk out and give it to guy. he gives them a few hundred bucks and that's that. >> reporter: he represents manuel acosta who recruited a dozen straw buyers including an villa who bought the guns that killed terry. they alone purchased 290 guns. out of 20 fast and furious defendants, 19 were back on the street within hours of their arrest. alfredo, my name is william la jeunesse, i'm a correspondent with fox news. anything you want to say to the people who have been harmed by the guns that you bought? >> he's not going to say anything. you need to talk to his lawyer. >> reporter: together the group bought 2,000 weapons while agents watched cameras, installed by atf, inside gun stores. were they told go ahead with the sale? >> that's part of the problem. they were.
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do you want us to stop selling? oh no. continue to sell them. >> reporter: more than one gun shore panicked as boxes of assault rifles through off their shelves into trucks bound for mexico. i wanted to make sure none of the firearms sold per our conversation could or would end up south of the border or in the hands of the bad guys wrote the scots dale gun club. i'm looking for reassures republicans -- the guns are not going south or in the wrong hands in response the atf lied, assuring dealers their guns would not see mexico. >> how many hundreds or thousands of weapons did you allow to be purchased, knowing they were going to mexico? >> the purchase was being done by a criminal organization. >> you facilitated it. you allowed it, did you not? >> reporter: newell authorized the operation. he believed sending guns south would expose the network to the smugglers transporters and
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straw buyers. >> they purchased over 1,000 firearms. some of the purchases were procuring them at 10 to 20 at a time. approximately 200 firearms in the investigation were recovered in the united states and mexico. >> i could not believe someone in atf would let firearms wine up in the hands of criminals. >> reporter: police found guns at 122 crime scenes from tijuana to acapulco. involving cartels and their enemies, including police. how many in mexico were killed or injure as a result of fast and furious? hundreds officials say. the exact number is not known. why? because when mexico attempted to trace those guns the u.s. said the information did not exist. when it did. which is why many here feel betray. speaking spanish ] >> i feel violated. i feel my country's to have y was violated. >> reporter: he heads mexico's
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judicial committee. saying the u.s. broke international law by knowingly sending guns south. >> this program was a great mistake. it is absurd. especially because human lives were put in danger. >> how many weapons do we have in the united states or in mexico that are out there that are results of fast and furious that we do not know where they are? >> in the ballpark from 1,000 to 1500, 1800 guns. >> what is your best guess how many in mexico and how many in the united states? >> i'd say 2-1 mexico versus u.s.. >> reporter: mexico wants to extradite those responsible for facilitating fast and furious. >> it will be in important in the united states they are prosecuted or some repercussions in terms of not only those who were involved, but those who allowed this to happen. >> when did you first know about the program, officially
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called fast and furious, to the best of muir knowledge, what date? >> i'm not sure of the exact date -- i probably heard for the first time over the last few weeks. >> reporter: targets of the congressional investigation include atf agents mcallister, voth, gillette and newell, cunningham and hurley supervised in phoenix. in washington, acting atv director melson and assistant u.s. attorney general brewer are both believed to have approved the program. at the top attorney general holder and president obama obama claim they knew nothing. some investigators believe otherwise. >> you can take it to the bank that the united states attorney for arizona obviously was versed in it and told about it. but this is a decision made in washington and made at the highest levels of government. >> sean: we dive deeper into that issue. who knew what and when?
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could the scandal threaten holder's career? those answers and more, coming up.
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talk to your doctor about your risk a about lipitor. >> sean: to date president obama and eric holder have been able to an individual much of the failures for the gun running operation. as new details emerge the spotlight of the scandal is a light on the highest levels of the government, including the justice department and the white house. >> the american people deserve prompt and complete answers to the questions surrounding this operation. >> letting guns walk is not acceptable. >> this is one of the most government's history. >> this is one of the saddest days in my six months in congress? >> agent newell what were you thinking? >> this is the moe, curly and larry show. we are looking for rich >> are they lying or are you
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lying? >> sean: there are questions than answers on who should be held responsible for fast and furious. not only does the attorney general deny knowledge of this gun running scheme he denies the operation played any role in the deaths of agents terry anza pat >> notion that this justice department is responsible for those deaths that you mentioned that assertion is offensive. >> what if it is accurate? >> eric holder has a long history of scandalous decisions, mismanagement and deadly decisions. i think the people who put him in that appointment in the first place bear blame. they have to answer for their bad decisions. look, with eric holder the writing was on the wall. there was no question that you were going to get anything other than than an obstruction in the office. >> sean: under holder's the
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justice department has ignored subpoenas and refused to turnover key documents to congress throughout the investigation. >> sir, if you count pages like this as discovery, you should be ashamed of yourself. the pages go on like this forever. you have given us black paper instead of white paper. how dare you make an opening statement of cooperation. we've had to subpoena again and again. >> stonewalling is the obama way. it has been the eric holder way of dealing with this controversy. that's why republicans whistle-blowers, investigators, journalists have to continue to push. >> who authorized this program that was so felony stupid that it got people killed? >> sean: chairman of the house oversight committee california republican darrell issa has been one of eric holder owes most outspoken critics. >> the justice department continues to withhold key
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information and has inappropriately interfered with this investigation. let me be clear, the justice department is not our partner in this effort. they are the subject of this investigation. and their continued interference will not be allowed to derail the committee's work. >> sean: committee report describes in great detail the type of interference encountered. doj leadership denied allegations that gun walking occurred in fast and furious by adopting an overly narrow definition of the term. they argue gun walking is limited to cases in which atf slide the guns directly. >> no surprise that a former clinton official is getting clintonesque about his alibis and his rationalizations for how this program got out of control. but it is certainly a case of parsing definitions and trying to wiggle out of what the definition of is, is.
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>> sean: the question is whether holder's clinton-like evasion will help him survive this scandal as his former boss did in the 90s. >> there's a teflon coating around so many of the top obama officials. the question is for the american people, will you allow that coating to stand after you know what is going on? after you know the hell that brian terry and his family had to go through? when people decide in 2012, who they want running the white house, they will get to decide if they want somebody like president obama who putter rick holder in place. >> sean: we may not need -- need to wait until 2012. the white house's involvement is being exposed. july 26th, for the first time atf special agent in charge bill newell revealed he informed a top national security official at the white house, about the operation back in september 2010. >> isn't that unusual for a
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special agent to have direct e-mail contact with the national security staff at the white house? >> he's a friend of mine. >> how many times did you talk to him about in case? >> the specifics of this case? i don't think i -- i don't think i had one specific conversation with him about the specifics of this case. >> could you take the word specific out and answer the general. did you talk to him about this case? >> i might have talked to him about in case. >> sean: o'reilly is the first aide to president obama to publicly be accused of having knowledge to this operation. what remains unclear is whether he shared the information with anybody else inside the white house. one of the people most responsible for bringing this to the public's attention. congressman issa. he tells us one of the most shocking details, next. gas and bloating. with the strains of good bacteria to help balance your colon. you had me at "probiotic." [ female announcer ] phillips' colon health.
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>> sean: welcome back to this special edition of hannity. as you have seen we probably
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would not know much about fast and furious and the controversy if it were not for the tireless pursuit of the facts by senator grassley and congressman issa chairman of the house oversight and government reform committee. congressman issa joins us now. thanks for being with us. >> thanks for covering this story. it is important we get it right and behind us, meaning they don't do it again. >> sean: this is the point. all these guns on the street. i want to make sure our facts right 1600 unaccounted for, right? >> roughly 1600. they will turn up over the next decade, i'm sure. >> sean: we have two dead agents as a result. one of the things -- you and i discussed at one point, there would have been a very simple way, because of technology, to track this. i have a friend who has an 18-year-old son who got a speeding ticket. the way now he monitors his son's driving he puts a gps in
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the car and goes on every time he drives he's able to look at the gps data and see when the kid was driving, where he was driving, how fast he was driving. you would think they could put that in the guns and that would bring us to where they wanted to go, wouldn't it? >> absolutely. there's technology better than that which would be sat there dormant waiting for a signal for months. when you turned it on you could find out where it was. all of those things were not part of this plan. this plan was let them have the guns. see them at the scene of the crime. and then think you could connect the dots. clearly that was fallacy. and the arrests the limited amounts of arrests 19 out of 20 have been for the straw purchasers. they never rolled up the kind of people they said they were going to. because this program never could have lead to that >> sean: you interpret this to
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be a cover-up? >> i do. because they don't want us looking at the political appointees who were part of the decision-process. whether it was attorney general -- deputy attorney general brewer or the u.s. attorney locally or a policy that reversed what president job. he fired u.s. attorneys who would not enforce gun laws. this u.s. attorney in phoenix wasn't enforcing gun laws yet authorized and overseeing a program to let high powered weapons walk to mexico. >> sean: you did point out earlier, i read a comment that you had made, that the president, you feel is parsing his words, specifically and gave a children tonian answer, can you explain? >> -- children tonian answer, can you explain? >> did not authorize. i don't expect the president to have authorized the specific investigation or
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program. i don't expect the attorney general necessarily to authorize every aspect. i would be shocked that the attorney general was not briefed on how two u.s. agents died. on the day that gabby giffords was shot, there were e-mails flying around because people were concerned this was a fast and furious weapon that had shot her that kind of panic doesn't stay just at the local level. i goes up and down. it is one of the reasons that the stonewalling, they are doing the cover-up makes us believe this was more than it seems even now. it seems like enough that people's heads should roll and we should have new safeguards to make sure this could never happen again. >> sean: you are talking about a cover-up of this magnitude this is a crime, am i correct? >> no question. lying to congress is a crime. telling us things that aren't true which occurred are a crime. the biggest crime was breaking faith with the american people. now one of the biggest crimes
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is, if you will, new set of rules along the border. they are forcing additional gun databases for weapons sold. justifying it based on gun violence they helped create that's where you start looking and saying, i'm not going to promote a conspiracy. but you have to wonder, couldn't you find a better time to suggest that you need more gun reporting than when in fact we are looking at your helping so many guns promote gun violence including the loss of brian terry? >> sean: as they've stonewalled and delayed sending you documents, e-mails, correspondents, as they've sent you redacted things. you had back channel whistle-blowers so you know what they are up to. >> absolutely. >> sean: on the other hand, you have agents that are showing up that want to tell you the truth. they are not showing up with justice department attorneys, they are showing up with their own attorneys. do you feel like you have
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fully gotten to the both of this yet? >> no, but we wouldn't have gotten where we've gotten if it wasn't for very brave men who have come forward and risked their jobs, their careers to give us information as whistle-blowers. i'm very proud of all the people who have come forward without the justice department attorneys so they can tell us what they really believe. they've been pretty can -- pretty candid. atf for that party the other law enforcement agencies, involved, fbi, dea and others, they don't do business this way this was an anomaly created maybe locally but promoted by political appointees at a high level. that should have known better. right now we have no faith they wouldn't allow it to continue. >> sean: unbelievable. congressman, thank you for our time. >> any precedent for a scandal like the one in the justice
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. >> sean: the bureau of alcohol
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tobacco and fire arms is at the center of the fast and furious scandal. the organization is no stranger to controversy. its involvement with operations gone awry goes back to the days of president clinton. it may be the watergate scandal that is most similar to the events unfolding today. >> i know that all of you join with me in praying for a peaceful and sure and quick conclusion to the events. >> sean: the atf was involved in two clinton era controversies synonymous with botched operations. >> the agents involved at ruby ridge should have been immediately terminated. >> sean: the ruby ridge operation pitted the federal government against white separatist randy weaver on a remote mountaintop in idaho where he fled with his family after he was ancus ed of illegally selling shotguns to an undercover -- undercover atf agent.
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>> unappropriate -- inappropriate conduct by the atf. >> sean: in august of '92 federal agents laid siege to the weaver home. after a u.s. marshal doing surveillance on the prop was shot and killed in a gun battle that left weaver's 14-year-old son dead. days later a sharpshooter shot weaver's wife in the head as she cradled their 11-month-old baby. fbi agents engaged in an illegal cover up and the chief spent a year in prison for trying to destroy the in -- inter report. less than a year after ruby ridge in april of '93 came the raid on the branch davidian compound in waco, texas where members of an obscure religious cult led by david koresh were illegally hoarding fire s and explosives. >> allowing the status quo to remain was in the going to lead to an ultimate peaceful
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resolution and he limit risk to the safety of the children. the public at large, the government agents at the scene. >> sean: after an hour long shootout, four atf agents dead, 15 wounded, six cult members died as well. a standoff ensued lasting 51 days until janet reason know decided it needed to end. the cult members were told if they -- refused to come out tear gas would be inserted into the compound. >> we have what appears to be a fire. >> sean: both sides blamed the other for the fire which took the lives of dozens of branch davidians including innocent children. >> there are two stories about which side caused monday's inferno that taobs 86 lives. fbi insist cult members started the blaze. >> sean: many accused reno of
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negligence some calling for her resignation. >> surprise would be a mild word to say anyone to suggest that the attorney general should resign because some religious fanatics murdered themselves. >> sean: two atf agents were terminated. attorney general reno kept her job. in the scope of american politics, the fast and furious scandal may actually bear the most resemblance to watergate. >> what did the president know and when did he know it? >> sean: while watergate began with a small group inside nixon's reelection campaign it spread up to the president himself. >> i began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. >> people have got to know whether their president is a crook. i'm not a crook. >> sean: congressional hearings made it clear that the fast and furious scandal has spread quickly from the
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phoenix office to the top of the department of justice. >> when did you first know about the program officially called fast and furious? >> i heard about it for the first time over the last few weeks. this operation has gotten a great deal of publicity. >> there are dead americans as a result of this failed and wreckless program. i would say it hasn't gotten enough attention, has it mr. attorney general? >> there's an investigation that is underway. >> sean: 19 people involved in watergate wound up behind bars. so far 12 justice department officials have been implicated in the fast and furious scandal. it remains to be seen what the consequences will be for their actions. watergate may provide guidance for those on the ropes in the justice department today. it may be nixon who put it best. >> in any organization, the man at the top must bear the responsibility. that responsibility therefore

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