22 thoughts on “Operation “Wide Receiver””

  2. …remember WAAAAAAY back when, Fox got it right? It’s been slowly falling toward the MSM in the way they say things, and this ‘botched’ thing is a prime example.

  4. As an aside, it’s interesting how the same cliches get used repeatedly in describing big or long standing stories. I think it has to do with the peculiar demands of a journalist. They have to throw out so many words in short order. I think phrases like “botched operation” are mnemonic shortcuts, quick ways to drive up word count or occupy an audience so that there’s less effort put in per story reported written or spoken.

  5. So when guns walk during the Bush administration it’s a localized, compartmentalized, and all but rogue operation. But when it happens while Obama’s in office, it’s a fiendish plot to drum up support for gun control?

    Tellingly, at no point do the agents on the ground in Tucson or Phoenix, in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, or in the Obama Justice Department seem to have more than a cursory interest in the lives they’ve endangered and ends lost as a result of letting more than 400 weapons reach Mexican cartels through Operation Wide Receiver.

    Tens of thousands of other weapons sold in the US reached the cartels during the same period. Should there be cursory interest in the lives that they endangered? Or is the F&F scandal mostly an excuse to attack Holder and Obama?

    1. I know I’m arguing with a wall, but I’ll recite facts that aren’t even argued

      1) The Wide Receiver program involved trackers in every gun.
      2) There was typically -three- levels of surveillance – all the way to ‘helicopters and drones’.
      3) There was coordination with the Mexican authorities.
      4) There were a hell of a lot of arrests.

      F&F:
      1) There were no trackers.
      2) The surveillance was spotty – not involving helicopters, drones, redundancy, or even managing 24/7.
      3) There was no coordination with the Mexicans – the surveillance was just to make sure they made it across the border.
      4) The list of arrests is still very, very short. None of whom were caught by the operation, so far they’ve -all- been people caught for something else entirely that have been tied back to the op somehow.

      Even your quote highlights the main point:
      The goal of Wide Receiver was to catch the cartel guys. Not the idiots buying the guns in the border states, but the guys that end up with the guns in Mexico. So having the 400 guns reach the cartels actually -is- the plan, since the next (unmentioned) step is the Mexican authorities swooping in and arresting that cartel safehouse. Guns and all. Which -did- happen for the vast majority of the Wide Receiver guns.

      The Fast and Furious guns, however, weren’t being tracked in Mexico. No one told the freaking Mexicans about it. There were no safehouses discovered because of the guns – although F&F guns did turn up -in- safehouses raided for other reasons. There were no assaults interrupted because trackers managed to say “Hey, those guns we were tracking are all on the move again!.”

      There’s some ridiculously low number of “completely missing” Wide Receiver guns – like 6. And in Fast and Furious, involving an order of magnitude more guns, they’ve managed something like a 6% recovery rate.

      No. Not “We’ve recovered all but 6.” But “We’ve lost all but 6.”

      You’ll not that -no one- has come forward and said: “It was my plan, it was a good plan, things just went wrong.” Because the details of “the plan” are beyond moronic.

      You quote again:
      “WR’s means of recovering guns were evidently not reliable, since most of them were lost.”

      That is -not- the same thing as “Made it to the cartel.” They -did- make it to the cartel, and the cartel safehouses were rolled the hell up. The number of actual “completely missing” guns is not the same thing.

      They’re playing a farking game with people too stupid to see the missing key facts “edited for brevity” by our brave journalists.

      1. I’m not arguing that there weren’t any differences between WR and FF, just that the FF case against Obama and Holder is not based on those distinctions. For example, from the linked article:

        [The OIG report] further established that Operation Wide Receiver never came to the attention of DOJ officials during the Bush administration, and only came to the attention of Justice under the Obama administration.

        The case against Holder is that he had to know about FF, in fact that he had to have ordered it. But by that reasoning the Bush DOJ had to know about WR — and they didn’t.

        There is no way to hold both administrations to the same standard and conclude that only the Obama administration was guilty of terrible, criminal, “worse than Watergate” misdeeds.

        1. Ooops. When I saw “Wide Receiver,” I thought this was a post about Jim presenting himself to Obama. Never mind.

        2. There is no way to hold both administrations to the same standard and conclude that only the Obama administration was guilty of terrible, criminal, “worse than Watergate” misdeeds.

          This is precisely 180 degrees wrong. It is because of using the same standards that we can hold Obama and Holder guilty.

          Did Bush try to hide wide receiver behind executive privilege?

          You would ignore the differences in the two programs and let the media and admin get away with claiming that fast and furious started under Bush.

          The whole point of F&F was to get untracked guns into the hands of the bad guys. Forget everything else and that is already a heinous crime. We’ve already caught Holder lying about his knowledge of the program. The only question is how much he’s lying.

  6. Jim,

    A serious question. why do you repeat that bullshit here, on a site with a readership possessed of a well above average I.Q. and Education, do you keep repeating the same flawed, omitive bullshit that has already been refuted like 15 times prior when A) nobody is going to be swayed by it and B) Someone will be along shortly to refute it?

    Wide Receiver, though flawed, was more of a gun-tracing operation than a gun-walking program. Gun-tracing involves putting specific safeguards in place to track firearms, such as RFID chips perhaps with video or aerial surveillance. Gun-walking is what happened in Fast and Furious, where ATF agents sold thousands of guns without a reliable way to recover them, apparently just hoping for the best.

    Some of the guns from Wide Receiver were implanted with RFID chips and were actively tracked electronically. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in Phoenix also implemented aerial surveillance tactics in an attempt to follow the weapons.

    However, problems reportedly arose due to poorly implanted RFID chips which were forced into the guns, bending the antennas and decreasing their effectiveness. Cartels and straw purchasers also eventually came up with creative ways to shake tracking maneuvers and overhead surveillance, such as driving in loops for hours until surveillance planes had to refuel.

    Those in charge of Fast and Furious took no similar steps to strengthen their chances of recovering walked guns other than recording the serial numbers before watching them disappear in the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

    In fact, ATF agents involved in Fast and Furious have previously testified that they were ordered to stand down and not track the weapons even when interdiction was possible and instead “took notes” and let the guns walk across the Mexico border.

    1. Gun-walking is what happened in Fast and Furious, where ATF agents sold thousands of guns without a reliable way to recover them, apparently just hoping for the best.

      WR’s means of recovering guns were evidently not reliable, since most of them were lost. You can give the WR agents a gold star for effort, but the results were just as dismal. The only difference left is that WR involved hundreds of guns, while FF involved thousands, but both were dwarfed by the tens of thousands of completely unmonitored sales that continue to this day. Neither WR nor FF made a noticeable difference in the flow of guns to the cartels.

      Both operations were ineffective. Both were planned and executed by branch offices, without the knowledge of the AG or President. Neither one is evidence of a DOJ or White House plot to create support for stricter gun control laws.

      “Poorly-run organization tries, fails to accomplish task” is a dog-bites-man story, in government or the private sector; it isn’t Watergate.

    2. Wide receiver was run more like any other stakeout/sting operation where the people trafficking the guns were tailed. And both law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border were involved in the operation. When guns started getting lost it was determined that the RFID chips were not working as intended and they STOPPED willfully putting guns in the hands of cartel. The number of guns lost, while still disappointing, was far lower than the number of guns “lost” in Fast & Furious. With F&F the whole point was to track the guns by the crimes that were committed with them. One attempted to use technology and good old fashion detective work. The other tracked guns with the deaths of people that were considered to be statistically insignificant, “Oh, they’d been killed by the Cartel anyway….” Again, these are differences that I think most anybody can grasp. It’s just that some remain purposely obtuse and choose to ignore these “minor” distinctions. That is until a Republican gets back in office.

      1. “With F&F the whole point was to track the guns by the crimes that were committed with them.”

        And we still don’t know who the Grade A moron that came -up- with this plan was.

        The Inspector General focused on “Who could have stopped this once it ‘went bad’?” and “When did they know it went bad, and how did they react?”

        Fine questions. But nothing like “Who restarted gunrunning with even less controls?”

        1. But nothing like “Who restarted gunrunning with even less controls?”

          The IG gave a partial answer to that question: not Holder. And there goes the entire conspiracy theory that the right has been salivating over.

          2. Still holding out hope for a Whitewater prosecution of the Clintons? It’s about as likely as a FF prosecution of Obama and Holder.

          4. I don’t frankly give a damn about “the conspiracy”, but the fact that he -can’t- figure out who authorized it means -what- exactly Jim?

            If it’s a peon, we would know. Why? Because everyone would point at some shlub and say “He did it!” Just an ordinary screwup would have ended with whoever-it-was canned.

            But they still haven’t figured out “Who dun it?” Because everyone at -any- of the low-to-medium levels has been believably able to say “Orders.” and point higher up the chain.

            But still the whole thing originated out of the ether. And you accept this as reality.

      2. No, Josh, the only relevant difference between “Wide Receiver” and “Fast & Furious” is that ‘the black guy’s administration being responsible for the second one makes you racists think it’s the worse of the two’. That’s what Jim’s ultimately driving at with his structuring of the argument so that any other differences are equated, obscured, glossed over, minimized, or simply ignored.

        Paying attention to Fast & Furious, like noticing any of this pathetic administration’s numerous outbreaks of incompetence and/or corruption, is just racially-motivated partisanship.

        1. With all this talk about racially motivated partisanship, I wonder if Jim’s last name is Crow. After all, that was also a Democrat operation.

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