"Our HIDTA (High Intensity Drug-Trafficking Area) personnel assigned to DEA assisted with Operation Fast and Furious," said Chris Acosta, a spokeswoman for the El Paso County Sheriff's Office.
However, Sheriff Richard Wiles said, the department was not told its support was for that particular ATF operation.
"We assisted the DEA with a request for surveillance of an individual at a hotel, because they had information that an exchange involving drugs for weapons and money was going to take place," Wiles said.
"This went on for six to eight months, but nothing happened. Later, we found out this operation was part of Fast and Furious," Wiles said. "I don't know if something came out of it later."
Wiles said he did not want to get into the politics of the operation, and he added that his office will continue to assist with requests for legitimate law enforcement activities.
"When the federal agencies ask us for help, they don't always tell us everything," Wiles said.
DEA officials at the national level previously acknowledged that their agents helped with the operation. El Paso's DEA office did not return a message about its role in Operation Fast and Furious. . .
Last year, the El Paso Police Department, acting on a tip, discovered a stash house in far East El Paso that contained 40 new AK-47s and seven military bulletproof vests. The weapons, which were in a vehicle with Chihuahua plates, were shipped from a business in Vermont.
They arrested a man identified as Arturo Sandoval in connection with the seizures. He was indicted on federal weapons charges. Sandoval, 25, pleaded guilty to a charge of receiving firearms while under indictment and was sentenced to 6å years in federal prison.
"We did not assist with Fast and Furious in any way," El Paso police Detective Mike Baranyay said. "Our investigators were able to connect the weapons they found at the stash house to Fast and Furious, and then they turned them over to the ATF."
Travis Kuykendall, director of the West Texas HIDTA, said HIDTA itself was not part of Operation Fast and Furious.
"It was probably a request for help from the ATF in Phoenix, because the ATF in El Paso had such a small staff," Kuykendall said.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Wednesday that he plans to question Attorney General Eric Holder about the gun-walking operations with Texas connections next Tuesday. . .
FBI officials in El Paso were not available for comment.
Tom Vinger, spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said he did not have any information on whether DPS helped in any of the operations.
"FBI officials in El Paso were not available for comment."
I'll bet they weren't.
3 comments:
How is this a surprise? Didn't the Brevard County Sheriff's Office, the Orange County Sheriff's Office, the Osceola County Sheriff's Office, and the Miami-Dade Police Department aid the Tampa Field Division of BATFE with their gun-running adventure to Honduras?
Did Representative Bilirakis ever get ANY response to his questions?
"and he added that his office will continue to assist with requests for legitimate law enforcement activities"
Before the Gulf of Tonkin fiasco and Watergate, Americans defaulted to implicit trust in their government officials. Now, many of us know better.
Perhaps the most important potential outcome of Fast and Furious could be to teach local law enforcement to demand proof from the Feds that what they're being asked to assist in is in fact a "legitimate law enforcement activity".
Isn't that one of the persistant underlying themes in "Absolved"?
It's his job to know what his deputies are doing. If he doesn't know what they are doing, he's not doing his job. If he's not doing his job, then he shouldn't be sheriff.
Pretty simple, really.
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