The FBI informant who was buying the guns for the cartels was actually an undercover DEA agent, reports CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson.
Quote:
According to Grassley and Issa, if the DEA and FBI had shared information with ATF, "then Operation Fast and Furious may have ended as many as ten months sooner than it did. This would have prevented hundreds of assault-type weapons from being illegally straw purchased on behalf of Mexican drug cartels."
The letter outlines an amazing alleged failure of DEA and FBI to share crucial investigative information with ATF.
It says while ATF was trying to identify the unnamed financier behind a gun trafficking ring leader named Manuel Celis-Acosta, the DEA and FBI already knew who the financier was - and had in fact turned him into a confidential informant. Yet, the letter states, the financier was allowed to continue to purchase weapons from Acosta over the course of a year, without ATF ever knowing that the man they were seeking to identify... was a government informant.
The letter also states that prior to becoming a confidential informant, the financier may have used $3,500 in taxpayer money, "official law enforcement funds," to finance weapons trafficking. He allegedly received the money - not knowing it came from the U.S. government -- by selling narcotics to another government confidential informant.
The Justice Department had no immediate comment.
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Who should be coordinating the activities of these agencies again? Eric Holder, who knew nothing about what his various agencies were doing and the laws they were breaking.