Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Wow. More Fast & Furious worms rocketing out of that can.

Wow.  That's all you can say to this. Wow.

Former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in Arizona, who resigned in the wake of a congressional probe into the Fast and Furious undercover investigation his office oversaw, has admitted leaking a sensitive document about a federal agent who blew the whistle on the gunrunning operation, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican.

Mr. Grassley, in a statement late Tuesday, said the leaked document was "deemed so sensitive by the Justice Department that it was not provided to Congress, except in a secured room at department headquarters."

"Leaking sensitive documents to the press and retaliating against whistleblowers is not good faith cooperation with Congress," Mr. Grassley said.

Apparently although Burke has admitted providing a journalist with said "extremely sensitive" document, he was not the only one who had done so.

Mr. Burke's Phoenix attorney, Lee Stein, said in a Nov. 8 letter to the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General — which was posted on Politico — that his client had provided information to a reporter who was working on several stories involving Fast and Furious. The attorney said "it was clear" to Mr. Burke from their conversations that the reporter already was aware of a memo about Agent Dodson and he wanted "to give context to information the reporter already had."

Because hey, the horse is already out of the barn, right?  Why not open the other door too? Right?... Right?

John Dodson's lawyer was less than impressed, it seems.

Agent Dodson's attorney, Robert Driscoll, said in a statement: "Special Agent Dodson demonstrated both tremendous courage and fidelity to the mission of ATF when he came forward to discuss the misguided Fast and Furious investigation. It is unfortunate that his superiors at ATF and DOJ did not listen to his attempts to address the matter internally, and instead chose to attack him once he, out of necessity, stepped forward." 
 
Mr. Driscoll described Mr. Burke's public acknowledgment that he "participated in such misguided efforts to smear Agent Dodson is welcome, but unfortunately Burke did not act alone in attempting to ruin Special Agent Dodson's career."

If I were Agent John Dodson I'd be moving to Aruba right frickin' smartly.  On a non-US charter, oh yeah.

So if you're an ATF/FBI/Border Patrol/Homeland Security/CIA/ other Man in Black, and you have irrefutable evidence of officials in your agency acting in recklessly stupid and even criminal fashion, you now know that:
A) your superiors will not only ignore you, they will not only order you to shut up, they will not only use every legal and procedural means to punish you,  they will do their very best to crush and smear you publicly. And:
B) you won't even be able to find out how high the rot goes, because the government is rotting from the head down. It goes all the way to the top, baby.  The President himself may have ordered the hammer job on this Dodson guy.

Holy crap my friends.  Interesting times. Keep that powder dry, watch your six.

The Phantom

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