Letter to Kendrick Perkins, Chair, Integrity Committee of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency

Letter

Senator Chuck Grassley today said that he did not have confidence that the Justice Department Inspector General's office could produce a report that the public would view as frank and unbiased in its investigation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) policy of letting guns "walk" along the Southwest border--a policy that may have contributed to the death of a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent.

In a letter today to Kevin Perkins, the head of the Integrity Committee of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, Grassley cited several conflicts that lead him to believe that the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Justice cannot be seen as completely disinterested and independent.

"There are certainly better and more independent ways to conduct this investigation. To have an acting Inspector General's office lead an investigation like this one just won't pass the smell test," Grassley said. "The fact that the Inspector General did not take this whistleblower's allegations seriously enough to even call him back raises a lot of red flags for me."

Grassley's concerns outlined in his letter are:

1. The Inspector General position at the Justice Department is currently vacant. Any acting Inspector General is ill-equipped to take on an entrenched bureaucracy and challenge senior officials with tough questions.

2. The Justice Department Inspector General's office was made aware of the allegations brought forward by ATF Agent John Dodson shortly after Customs and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's death. The Inspector General failed to respond to Dodson's numerous attempts to contact the office until Grassley's staff notified the office.

3. ATF officials have cited an Office of the Inspector General report as one of the factors that prompted the shift to a riskier strategy of letting guns be trafficked rather than arresting straw buyers.

Grassley began looking into allegations brought forward by Dodson, and more than a dozen other ATF agents, after the Justice Department Inspector General failed to investigate. The agents indicated that their supervisors kept them from stopping gun traffickers with the normal techniques that had been successfully used for years. They instead were ordered to only watch and continue gathering information on traffickers instead of arresting them as soon as they could. In the meantime, the guns were allowed to fall into the hands of the bad guys even as agents told supervisors that it could not end well. Many of the guns have subsequently been found in firefights along the border, including a December 14, 2010 firefight where Terry was killed.

Grassley's requests for information have gone unanswered about what transpired at the ATF and the Department of Justice during the time when Terry was killed and the policies instituted during Project Gunrunner that allowed guns to be sold to known straw purchasers and moved across the border without intervention.

The full text of the letter is as follows:

VIA ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION

Kevin L. Perkins, Chair
Integrity Committee
Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency
935 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Room 3973
Washington, DC 20535-0001

Re: Whistleblower allegations involving Operation Fast and Furious, a
Project Gunrunner case at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms, and Explosives (ATF)

Dear Mr. Perkins:

Agent John Dodson and other whistleblowers have alleged that the ATF
intentionally allowed thousands of weapons to be illegally trafficked to Mexico.1 ATF
appears to have acted with the full knowledge and approval of the Justice Department.
Hundreds of these firearms later turned up at crime scenes on both sides of the border,
including at the murder scene of Customs and Border Protection Agent Brian Terry.

At first, ATF and the Justice Department repeatedly denied the allegations,
asserting that they were "false." However, now that I have presented extensive
documentary evidence supporting the claims, Attorney General Holder has asked the
Justice Department's Office of Inspector General (DOJ-OIG) to conduct a review.
Unfortunately, there are three reasons that the public may be unable to trust that the
DOJ-OIG is completely disinterested and independent.

First, the position of Justice Department Inspector General is currently vacant.
The Acting Inspector General just recently took over for Glenn Fine. Thus, the office is
without a Presidentially-appointed and Senate-confirmed leader. In my experience,
acting inspectors general tend to function as caretakers of the office. They are not
necessarily equipped to take on an entrenched bureaucracy and challenge senior
officials with the tough questions necessary to get to the bottom of a controversy as serious and far-reaching as this one. That would be especially true if the acting inspector general is seeking the nomination to fill the position on a long-term basis.

Second, the DOJ-OIG was aware of the allegations long before the Attorney
General's request and did nothing. Agent Dodson had already contacted the DOJ-OIG
in December, just after Agent Terry's death. He received no reply. After contacting my
office, Agent Dodson contacted DOJ-OIG again, and still received no reply. No one from
the office contacted him to gather information about his allegations until after my staff
contacted the Acting Inspector General directly on February 1, 2011. Given that the
DOJ-OIG initially failed to follow-up, it might have an incentive to minimize the
significance of the allegations in order to avoid the appearance that its own inaction
contributed to the problem in the last few months.

Third, I understand that ATF officials have cited a DOJ-OIG report critical of
Project Gunrunner2 as one of the factors that prompted the shift to a riskier strategy of
letting guns be trafficked rather than arresting straw buyers. DOJ-OIG may be
sensitive to the appearance that its previous criticism created the conditions under
which ATF and DOJ felt pressured to take risks in order to make a "big case" against the
cartels. Again, that could create an incentive to minimize the significance of the
allegations.

For these reasons, the DOJ-OIG does not appear to be completely disinterested
in the outcome of its review. Without a greater level of independence, it will be difficult
for the public to have faith in the impartiality and integrity of the result. Therefore, I
request that the Acting Inspector General recuse her office and that a disinterested
inspector general's office be selected to conduct the review.

In addition, I request that the scope of the inquiry be expanded beyond the
underlying decision to allow guns to "walk." The investigation should also carefully
examine the circumstances surrounding false and misleading statements to Senate
Judiciary Committee staff and to me in response to questions about these allegations
over the past several weeks.

Attached for your reference are copies of my correspondence with the ATF and
the Justice Department, beginning on January 27, 2011. Please provide a written reply
no later than March 15, 2011. Thank you for your prompt attention to this extremely
important matter.
Sincerely,
Charles E. Grassley
Ranking Member
Committee on the Judiciary

cc: Attorney General Eric Holder
U.S. Department of Jusice
Acting Inspector General Cynthia A. Schnedar
U.S. Department of Justice
Acting Director Kenneth Melson
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives

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