today on face the nation, operation fast and furious. why would the government allow thousands of guns to walk across the border to mexico? it was an operation implemented by the bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms. to trace guns getting into the hands of the mexican drug cartel. but when border patrol agent brian terry was killed in arizona and two of the guns sent undercover by the u.s. government into mexico were found at the crime scene, the program exploded in controversy. could one of those walked guns be responsible for the death of a federal agent?

the head of the a.t.f. has step down. a u.s. attorney in arizona has resigned and lesser officials have been transferred or replaced. but questions remain. who instituted the program? what did attorney general eric holder know about it? and when? >> i'm not sure of the exact date but i probably heard about fast and furious for the first time over the last few weeks. >> schieffer: was there a cover-up, a scandal or is it all just politics? we'll talk to congressman darrell ice a, the congressional chairman investigating the justice department's role. and congressman elijah cummings, the ranking democrat on his committee. we'll also bring in cbs news investigative correspondent sheryl attkisson who first broke the story. and then we'll talk politics and get the latest on the republican presidential race from chief white house correspondent norah o'donnell, political analyst john

dickerson and bloom news's julianna gold. it's all ahead on face the nation. captioning sponsored by cbs "face the nation" with cbs news chief washington correspondent bob schieffer. good morning again. and welcome to face the nation. joining congressman darrell issa who took the red eye to get here and be with us here this morning from his district in san diego. also cbs news investigative correspondent sharyl attkisson who broke this story. mr. chairman, thank you so much. >> thank you for having me on, bob. >> schieffer: this whole business about this operation fast and furious really blew up last december as we said in the open. when border patrol agent brian terry was killed and two guns connected to this operation were found at the scene of the crime. the f.b.i. said the evidence was inconclusive as to whether those guns were the ones responsible for this murder.

but i understand you have learned there may have been another gun at the scene of the crime, and i understand you're writing to the f.b.i. director to ask for more information. are you suggesting, sir, that the f.b.i. may have tampered with evidence at the scene? >> we're not suggesting that, but when you have tickets that are numbered 2 and 3 and there's no ticket 1, in other words, the weapon, one weapon has a 2 and one has a three on it, there's no one, when agents who were at brian terry's funeral made statements to his mother indicating that there were three weapons, when the two weapons that they have tested don't conclusively match up, then you look and say, well, was there a third weapon at the scene? were there additional people who escaped with weapons? the terry family has suffered a great deal. it doesn't seem like the answers are coming. more importantly our investigation has never been about trying to get to the top of the prob problem.

we're trying to get to the bottom of the problem. see who thought it was a good idea, who allowed it to continue, sort of go up the chain to find out all the places that this should have been stopped but wasn't. >> schieffer: let me ask you, why would it be important to find a third gun? are you suggesting that maybe that might be the gun, that evidence shows was the murder weapon and for some reason the f.b.i. has not disclosed that? >> we certainly want to know in some cases as you know their investigations where there's materials that people feel are very sensitive. if that's the case, tell us that sensitive materials are being withheld but all along in this case there have been undercharging initially the people involved in these weapons trafficking at least one of them was undercharged. in other words, not charged in connection to brian terry's murder. so there's been that sort of an inconsistency. again we know that under the bush administration, there were similar operations but they were coordinated with mexico, they made ever effort

to keep their eyes on the weapons the whole time. so we're not per se saying that tracing weapons is a bad idea. >> schieffer: sharyl, what do you make of this? >> i was going to ask, could you explain why law enforcement would theoretically have to tamper with the evidence, what are the bigger implications beyond the terry family as to why there could be something going on at the scene that would be so important that we still wouldn't know what happened there ten months later? >> you know, when i asked the attorney general when he knew about the fast and furious, i expected any number of answers except the one that it had only been a couple of weeks. more than a month after the president had made a statement about eric holder not authorizing it. you get these inconsistencies in an investigation as you know because you are an investigative reporter, you follow the inconsistencies. some of them lead nowhere. in this case these inconsistencies and the fact that the family is still not getting the kind of treatment you would expect as crime victims and crime victims a law enforcement officer cause

us to say let's look at the f.b.i., you know, kenneth nelson and other cooperating witnesses have made it clear that there is a general pattern of play a shell game with congress, we'll take care of this ourselves. ands you know, the f.b.i. has a history in some cases of working with felons and criminals and hiding their other crimes in order to keep an investigation going. we thought that was behind us but it might not be. >> schieffer: what you're suggesting is if this other gun that was shown to be the murder weapon and it was one of these weapons tied to this program it would conclusively tie this program to the murder. that's what you're trying to find out. >> if weapon number one appears to be missing were blas i can tale matched we would have an absolute rather than the inconsistency.... >> or if this weapon were matched to a confidential informant that was being used by dea or f.b.i. or another agency, there are a lot of questions out there because other agencies were involved in this operation. we don't know what we don't

know. >> schieffer: all right. let me move on. you have subpoenaed hundreds, some say thousands of pages of documents relating to this from the justice department. the justice department says frankly they want to cooperate but they say you're just show boating when you launch a subpoena like that. >> well, bob, you know, when you get a black cow at midnight eating a licorice and they tell you they gave you a thousand pages i have countless pages that look like this. many of them when we actually get to some of the details there's clearly details that have been redacted that we should have. our subpoenas have been very narrow. in some cases it's because a whistle blower gives us a document. and sharyl has been very involved in these activities in her own way too. we have a document. it causes us to narrowly ask for a document. to get the same document but ensure it's authentic. often we get it redacted when the original one we look at under net should give it to us. we have tried to be narrow.

in some cases like emails we've asked for a window less than three days of one person's emails but again we haven't had the cooperation you would expect from the justice department when they know they've made a horrible mistake. >> schieffer: i understand that you already have some documents. but you're subpoenaing the original documents. >> that's correct. >> schieffer: are you suggesting then that maybe some of these documents have been tampered with? >> well, again, when you black out a document and there is responsive information underneath that's a form of tampering. we're not accusing any one of a criminal cover-up. but we have an obligation, a real obligation to the terry family and a real obligation to the constitution to follow this to ensure that justice department in all of... and all of its tent cals in law enforcement do the kind of jobs that witnesss who came from there said they want to do and always do. >> schieffer: are you going to ask the attorney general to resign? >> that's for the president to decide. many have called for it. what i've done is joined with

lamar smith who has invited the attorney general to come back to judiciary, the committee where he made his less than accurate statement.... >> schieffer: he said he was not aware of the details of all of this. you're suggesting he may have known? >> what he said was he first heard of this program a few weeks before. if he now wants to say that he knew a lot about it from the at least five briefings he had but he didn't know as much, we'd like him to come back and say, okay, that was an inaccurate statement. here's what i knew and when i knew it. because his chief of staff had intimate details, we have notes in his handwriting that shows that the number-two and eric holder's right hand had intimate details for long time. one of the questions is why wouldn't you tell your boss about a program that had gotten so out of control that it had all kinds of people scurrying to try to stop it? >> schieffer: all right. are you saying then that the attorney general knew a whole lot more about this than he testified to when he came before the congress?

>> he clearly knew more than he said when he said he only first heard of this program a few weeks before. i take him at the word, but only if we can have the kind of dialogue that allows us to ask, if you will, the 20 questions. it should done at judiciary. it should be done by chairman smith because, in fact, it's the counterpart to senator grassley in the senate. senator grassley has never been able to get a hearing which is inexplicable that senator leahy would not be just as interested as we are. >> schieffer: congressman, i want to thank you very much for coming. maryland democratic congressman elijah cummings who is the ranking democrat on the committee spoke with us this morning. here's what he said. >> congressman cummings, what do you make of all this? >> first of all, bob, when a few months ago i met with the brian terry family. brian terry, of course, was the young man border patrol who was killed.

two guns from fast and furious were found at the scene. i promised them two things. one, we would get answers for them. and two that we would make sure that this never happened again. i think basically what we have here is is a situation where we're not getting a responsible and balanced investigation. the attorney general, when he found out about it, the first thing he did was immediately order an investigation. the second thing he did is he sent out a memo to all of his staff saying, look, this is not the way we operate. we do not let guns walk. so basically you had an operation that started bottom up and not top down. it was hatched in the phoenix office of the a.t.f. and the sad part about it is that the superviseors in the phoenix office never communicated with people

higher up. and all the evidence that i've seen points to the fact that this was more of a local issue that never got to higher-ups. and certainly there is nothing, that nobody has said that the attorney general was briefed about it. >> schieffer: do you... some people have actually said that the chairman is on a witch hunt here. do you agree with that? >> i do. i think chairman issa has come up with some very unfortunate statements about the chief law enforcement officer in our country. he's come up with these statements and then he goes in search of the facts. we've seen this over and over again. for example, bob, the man in charge of the a.t.f.has told us, as told mr. issa that he never communicated the controversial tactics with regard to fast and furious to

attorney general holder. and as a matter of fact 15 folks in... because you know why he didn't do it? because he didn't know it. he didn't even know it. this is the head of a.t.f., and we've also interviewed 15 others in a.t.f.who said they didn't know it or it was not communicated ear. but yet and still, chairman issa goes out there and republicans accusing the highest law enforcement officer in the land of being an accessory to murder and things of that nature and calling for his resignation. all we want is what i said. we want a responsible and balanced investigation because we are the oversight and government reform committee. bob, you cannot reform anything unless you have all the information. just because if you don't like some facts you don't throw them out the door and say i'mate not going to look at those. you look at the entire picture. that simply has not happend here. >> schieffer: now you have condemned the attack itself. >> no doubt about it. >> schieffer: let me ask you this.

here we are this border agent was killed last year. we still don't know who exactly was responsible for this program. to move these guns into mexico. isn't it about time we found that out? >> and i think we're moving more and more towards that. keep in mind we do know that it was the phoenix office. we know it was hatched there. that's the all the testimony we have heard so far. and i know that we will get to the very bottom of it. but it is a bottom-up and not a top-down situation. we know that for a fact. >> schieffer: where do you see all this ending? >> you know, it's hard to say. i've said over and over again we must pursue the facts wherever they may lead. i have suitely no... absolutely no doubt that we'll accomplish that. >> schieffer: thank you so much for coming. >> thank you, bob. >> schieffer: when we come back, we'll talk a little presidential politics with our round table. ♪

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it? >> herman cain came across as very likable, authentic, compelling. but with his new frontrunner status comes the scrutiny of a frontrunner and questions about whether the 999 plan really adds up. rick perry really came to that debate needing to play. he didn't have an economic plan to put forth. this was a debate focused only on the economy. he also did not use the opportunity to really hit mitt romney very hard on health care. instead talking about the need to block grant medicaid dollars back to the states. mitt romney really did seem to be the most confident and comfortable on matters of the economy. at the debate. >> schieffer: it seems to me, john, to be a consensus in the political community that whether republicans are excited about him or not, it looks like mitt romney is headed to the nomination. >> well, that's right. i mean he has stayed a consistent level in the polls. he's gotten so much better as a candidate compared to the last time he ran. he's knowing when to stay out of the fight and then when to engage. at these debates he's a

competent person and he continues to win those questions about, can you beat barack obama? but the problem is there have been these candidates whether trump or perry or backman or now herman cain that suggest that they just don't love romney. he has to hope he can weather out all of those flavors of the week until he's the last man standing. >> schieffer: is herman cain for real? >> he is for real. he's gotten trouble on the 999 tax plan from conservatives who don't like the sales tax piece. when you talk to strategists on the political side who have business good fortunes in mind, they want him to do well. they say he's been on a book tour. he hasn't been to iowa in two months. he doesn't really have a he organization there. what he's got is liking in a bottle. when you're the flavor of the month. it's all lightning and no bottle. he needs an organization to capture that enthusiasm. that's the worry about his ability to go forward. >> schieffer: who do they think is going to be the person they're going the run against at the white house? >> i think there is a growing sense this week that mitt romney will likely be the republican nominee.

from the attacks from the obama campaign in chicago and also from the white house, which now wants to paint mitt romney as wall street's best friend. i heard from the president's senior advisor that there is of course growing anger at wall street amongst independents, republicans and of course democrats. they're going to paint mitt romney as a wall street sympathizer someone who wants to roll back wall street reform who in the debate this past week said that he is against a payroll tax calling it a little band-aid. that's going to be what is moving forward. i asked david pluf aring going to paint him as a wall street sympathizer or a flip flopper. he responded both. i think that's the way this campaign is going to bear out. >> schieffer: and what the tea party? is is the tea party still a factor out there? they're not all that happy about mitt romney. will they come around. >> that was one of the interesting back and forths during the debate. when we pushd mitt romney on whether or not if there's a financial meltdown, what he do what bush and paulson did? would he back another sort of wall street bailout or tarp?

after a lot of back and forth he essentially said yes. that's something that could really come back to hurt him in the primary with conservatives. >> schieffer: let me ask you all both. while y'all are concentrating on politics, a lot of people don't have a job out there. unemployment is still way up there at 9%. the president put his plan out there this week. congress couldn't even figure out how to vote on it. where does that all go now, john? >> we heard herman cain picking up on this similar attack to the one the white house is making on mitt romney. he said i'm the candidate of main street, romney is wall street. the large group out there that don't have jobs who are frustrated are frustrated with a politicians. the politicians with their sound bytes and even their 999 plan may not be talk to go the people who don't have jobs and are frustrated with a political system they look at and they think nothing that you do is going to actually affect my life or change it. >> schieffer: what is he going to do now, nor ah.

>> keep on this bus tour. the president is on a new bus tour to north carolina and virginia. two key battle ground states. obama was able to turn blue in this past election. they're going to start breaking up in pieces. the jobs plan and hope that republicans can sign on to some of the parts of the president's jobs plan. but the white house still firmly believes that the jobs plan is popular with the american people. >> schieffer: do you think it has any chance, any part of it, any chance of passing, julianna? >> probably the element that has the best chance is getting that payroll tax cut extended that expires at the end of the year. the white house would like to see that extended on the employer side and on the employee side. as well. making the argument if republicans push back against that, then the white house can come back and say, hey, we're for more tax cuts now than the republicans are. >> schieffer: john, where do you think it goes. >> you probably do get something in the end. the question is, you know, do people look at this and say, you know, this is the minimum amount you can do. we don't give you necessarily any credit for doing this. very little bit.

that doesn't affect us in our lives. >> schieffer: does anybody here think the election will be about anything but the me? >> that's the other problem with what's likely to get passed from the president's jobs plan. the payroll tax cut extension and some of the others they might help the economy prevent another going back into a recession but they don't necessarily create jobs. >> schieffer: we have just run out of time. i'll be back in a moment. every time a local business opens its doors or creates another laptop bag or hires another employee, it's not just good for business. it's good for the entire community. at bank of america, we know the impact that local businesses have on communities. that's why we extended $7.8 billion to small businesses across the country so far this year. because the more we help them, the more we help make opportunity possible.

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the hurricane blew through last month came back this weekend to do the honors. the complications seemed fitting somehow. i wonder if dr. king, with his sense of irony, might have smiled. complications were nothing unusual for him. everything he did was complicated and seemed impossible to many but him. the statue itself was and is controversial. some just don't like it. some saw one thing in it. others saw entirely different things. just as people sometimes saw only what they wanted to see in dr. king. just getting the memorial finished and getting the ceremony done was sometimes two steps forward, one step back. as it usually was with dr. king's work. some are still not happy with the memorial. but it is is there now for all to see. massive, imposing, but still only a reef minder of the man it honors. his great work is his real memorial. and it would outlast any

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