i thank the gentleman for yielding i would like to follow up somewhat along the lines that the ranking member was on mr hpatino bought seven hundred and thirty weapons is our best count right now he worked through mr hacosta for both of special agent newell and mcmahon was there a time in which either one of you were aware that mr hacosta buying weapons the total of seven hundred and thirty from this particular straw buyer who was on food stamps who had no income was there a time that you became aware mr hacosta intended on transporting those weapons to the drug cartels to sell them you have charged nineteen straw purchasers who are all out on their own recognizance right now just waiting for trial sometime next year you have charged one person with trafficking was there  time you became aware that in fact you had a known group of buyers including mr hpatino at seven hundred and thirty weapons and you knew that the purchaser the specific they worry me was there ever a time did you get to an understanding that you had a known buyer buying from these people with an intent to traffic them to the cartels was there a time some of the straw purchasers they were buying from were in fact providing to these people for their purpose of transporting i ask you this question very simply now wait a second you have been here as a paid not answerer so far and i appreciate that you have been here as a paid not answerer but there comes a point where i go wait a second seven hundred and thirty weapons bought by man who had no money every penny he bought with he had to get from somebody you knew that at some point you knew who was buying them and you allowed it to continue now there comes a point where as we go through the rest of the investigationh and this was about mexico and i want to get back to that very quicklyh but there comes a point where we have to have more than just mistakes were made my understanding is you knew from credible information  fact you had a buyer providing the money to patino and others that he was taking possession of those weapons and you knew with specificity that those weapons some of them had already ended up in mexico is that correct  what was the first date nine what was the first date them to his intermediary which meant that both of them were very much a part you didn't have a buy and lie situation at this point you had an individual who could be charged with his participation in the actual trafficking of weapons you had somebody who was trafficking specifically for the intent of getting it to the drug cartels providing huge amounts of information i'm sorry huge amounts of money you had that early on we're now two years later and you've only charged eighteen other people with buy and lie and the one person you knew early on was doing this where quite frankly is any semblance of rollup or any semblance of going further it looks like you knowingly allowed these to be sold waiting to see if the other end in mexico would give you information it seems like you knowingly allowed these weapons to get out of your control knowingly to someone you knew was trafficking into mexico you saw the results you allowed it to continue and now you're telling us we don't let guns walk well i've got to tell you before this investigation ends i've got to have somebody in your position or at justice admit you knowingly let guns walk because right now your agents both the agents here today from mexico and the agents that were part of phoenix and part of this program who became whistleblowers had told us you were letting guns walk it's only you and mr hmcmahon and other people at justice who continue to come before this committee and say we don't let guns walk are they lying or are you lying before you were transferred to the atf field office in tijuana mexico you were in the phoenix office is that correct mister wall yes sir i was mister tierney and you said in your written testimony that you personally saw some of the aft's best trafficking cases languish in the tierney then you started to take extra actions to make sure that the weapons didn't get beyond a certain point all right and when would you exercise the seizure warrants in relation to this whole trafficking activity that was going on mister newell well sir i thank you for the question during the summer of ten  hmcmahon you told the committee that atf agents had secured confessions from straw purchasers to develop certain cases but that your agents presented those cases to the u s attorney's office in phoenix and the assistant u s attorney declined to prosecute and said there was no violation show our agents observed someone that looked suspicious pushing a baby carriage with a couple of long guns in it they followed her out to the parking lot where she actually transferred that to an individual and our agents saw a transfer of money we had other agents follow the car that had the guns now out of the parking lot pulled him over did a traffic stop identified him as a multiple convicted felon with not only the two guns this woman gave him but also a third gun  i want to go back to something the chairman asked you because i want to make i want us to be real clear and this is for the benefit of the entire committee i've got a i'm trying to figure out what your definition of walking guns is maybe that's part of the problem i think we because i think almost everybody up here has our opinion about this and i'm just wondering if there's a difference between your definition of walking allowing guns to walk and ours mister newell well thank you i appreciate the opportunity to answer that my definition of walking and i believe it's the common law enforcement term is when  newell one of my colleagues on the other side brought it up about new laws now i want to emphasize it wasn't the gun sales operator and let me emphasize that again it wasn't was it because they were alarmingly bring complicated firearmstrafficking cases are not complicated sir okay they're not complicated the reason this case was so big was because we didn't do anything plain and simple everybody wants to make this bigger than it is like i said earlier you don't have toh i spent hyears fifteen as a street agent four leading a street group okay you don't have the luxury or the right in my opinion as an atf agent to say i like this law i like that law okay that's you guys set the law we follow it now it's up to me as an atf agent how best to make up an investigative technique and best practices so i can make a case and present it to the u attorney i've done my job now it's up to the u s attorney if he wants to prosecute it or not i'm going to bring him the best case i can in this case like i said earlier we have the atf trafficking guidelines and best practices and we just threw it out the window nobody got stopped guys who i consider american heroes my friends who i never thought i would hear this who they've told me since this broke carlos i'm ashamed to carry an atf badge to me i have cried over that literally and i'm unashamed to say that  this is not a job to me it's a profession i don't have a hobby my hobby is being an atf agent i love this job i hit the lottery when i came on and i'm proud of what i do and i'm proud of the atf agents in this country we have heroes we really do but ath you know when we're doing medical procedures we look at what's our end game and what's all the processes in between and there's collateral damage and the problem is that collateral damages are crimes and there are going to be deaths like we just saw and there are going to be many more and they're on this side and they're on that side and do you know what that tells me that tells me that when you were in this planning stage we've got a problem it's not on the field it's right there in the office in the head office coming up with this this was absurd to even have this idea and to hear this merry go with this but this is absurd and the fact that we used people's lives and their and our friends from mexico as pawns in this without even discussing it how absurd i s reprehensible to even conceive of what's transpired here and i hope the buck stops and i hope you take accountability all the way through because this can't go on again today i guess i have a slightly different take on the subject i don't defend fast and furious and i don't defend the actions of the u s attorney's office at the time in phoenix and i certainly believe that it was a bo attempt that led to a tragedy perhaps many tragedies and i think this committee and this chairman are right to raise those issues and to try to assign blame but there's another part of the story i doubt very much the press will print in tomorrow's headlines because it's so much easier to print who screamed the loudest at atf and that you got beat up but what the press won't print tomorrow sadly is the fact that congress hands are hardly clean on this subject we have done everything to make sure that the f in atf is nullified we have made sure that you haven't got a permanent director for six years we laud the private sector what private company would think it's okay to lack a permanent ceo for six years we have done everything in our power in congress to try to defang the atf to make sure that it's toothless we've done everything we can to fight your budget and reduce it so that you don't have the resources to do the job we're not criticizing you for not doing well we had testimony before this committee by one of your colleagues called by the committee majority who said there are more new york police officers per square mile in new york than there are atf agents in all of the state of arizona and yet somehow we're going to stop the hemorrhaging of arms trafficking going into mexico with that kind of paltry set of resources but that won't be in the headline liquidate their inventories after having their arms dealer license revoked and would decriminalize gun sale recordkeeping violations even if they contributed to crossborder gun traffic how does that help atf and its mission where is the accountability here in congress on this subject it's easy to beat up on you it's easy to look for a scapegoat when the agenda really is to make sure that we make it harder not easier to enforce gun trafficking we had testimony from one of your colleagues before this committee who said there's more regulation on overthecounter sudafed than there is in arm trafficking going into mexico and he testified and was interrupted in this testimony because it wasn't welcome that he believed we needed to toughen enforcement laws as a tool for atf to be able to fulfill its mission along the border so i have no doubt that we can all pile on and correctly criticizing atf for a botched mission but what isn't said and sadly what the press isn't going to bother to write about but they should is the fact that congress for six long years and maybe longer has done everything in its power to make sure in fact you can't do your job and this set of hearings needs to explore that too with that i yield back the balance of my time to the ranking member a little more emphasis on international trafficking maybe we can tighten it up a little bit as far as going to drug cartels i too think that if you reach a certain amount of weapons that can even be a life offense mister cummings thank you very much cha gentleman we now go to the gentleman from texas mister farenthold also a member who went to mexico city mister farenthold thank you very much mister chairman i would like to take a moment to address something i heard before i asked the questions from the other side they were talking how much more difficult it is and how much more regulated the purchase of sudafed is i don't see anywhere in the constitution where we're guaranteed the right to bear sudafed but we are guaranteed the right to bear arms so i think that is an inappropriate  distinction mr hmcmahon when my friend the former prosecutor the gentleman from south carolina asked you what the goal of this was you said that it was to bring down a drug kingpin in mexico is that a fair time working with the mexican government as a former atf attache in mexico did they ever ask us to do anything like that you know you let guns come across the border so they could track them or find we're trying to bring down the drug kingpins or whatever the words were as far as stop the trafficking if you were put in charge of developing an investigation to do that how would you do that would your plan involve letting one number two you work the traffic investigations paint by the numbers it's frustrating to be an atf agent that comes with the badge okay trafficking investigations the laws like i said you have to be openminded i guess is the word i'm looking for i don't know if that's the best description but like i said it's paint by the numbers you have to workh it's like building a house you start and radio across to your colleagues in mexico and they move it up the line there it seems like common sense to me let me ask i want to ask this question to everybody on the panel because i think this is really important we've seen operation fast and furious we've recently heard about operation castaway a similar program in florida are any of you all aware at this time of any similar operations going on that allow guns to flow across the border to friendly countries now are let this committee know about it this is one of the most shameful moments i think in our government's history when we are letting guns go across the border to our friends in mexico let me just ask another i only have hseconds left i'm going to stick around for a second round of of detection plants and i don't want to get into sources and methods either but only three times we have been told that they tried to do any detection and one of these gps tracking was a radio shack makeityourself why in the world would the quality and the quantity of agents and time video cameras planted with internet connections et cetera why is it there wasn't some tracking to track the weapons mister newell we had trackers on vehicles sir we had the trackers you mentioned on weapons but  goes to resources i mean it's resources we have agents that are out there working sixteen eighteen hour days chairman issa unfortunately you have just made my case and time has expired eighteen hours of an agent's time is so much more money than one of these tracking devices that you were penny wise and pound foolish by not having sophisticated devices with that we go to the gentlelady from the district of columbia for her five minutes ms norton ms norton well suppose you had had a tracking device then what would have been newell well ma'am it depends on how long the firearms stayed in the area for instance many of the in many of the transactions here the firearms never left the phoenix area and trackers the battery life of a tracker is only good depending on it didn't leave the phoenix area what could you charge this socalled trafficker this lawabiding citizen who doesn't have a record but he's buying many many guns what could you charge beat up on the atf is very very interesting to me you sit in a congress where the gun lobby controls the congress of the united states on the republican side of the aisle they're totally controlling on my side of the aisle they are virtually controlling and the second amendment is cited as you try to do your job to keep guns from of the military and the police ms norton so here is mexico who does its job on its side of the border it says essentially it makes it very difficult for anyone except someone in law enforcement or the military to get a gun so they come to the united states where trafficking is wide open let me ask you this we are concentrating on mexico now let me ask you about trafficking to chicago let me ask you about trafficking to the district of columbia to baltimore let me ask you about trafficking to l a do these same traffickers operate as effectively in our country trafficking in the u s my experience anyway is a little bit different it's a little bit more associationrelated but obviously trafficking domestically is a major issue for us and i spent the majority of my career working those kind of cases  person let's say buys two hundred guns and here you made mistakes if i had a dollar for every mistake this congress has made when it came to guns i would be a very rich woman you made a mistake it was a fatal mistake it was a mistake for which you are being held accountable let's say you hadn't made a mistake that someone without a record bought guns that's me you f movement of guns from our country to mexico or did you feel you were equipped to in fact by law enforcement to do what was necessary mister mcmahon i think in my experience atf agents are very resilient you have to be to make the case and that's what our people do and they do that every day and they're out there doing that today ms norton and they may design tactics to try to make them to make themselves more effective on the ground mister mcmahon i think that's what we should always be doing yes ms norton could i ask each of you would you feel better able to stop this traffic if the congress passed a law that made it and added to our criminal code a section that prohibited the transfer of a gun when an individual knows that case then we would at least end up getting an abandonment from them for those weapons so they don't hit the streets so there are other avenues to approach versus that we could use under the current laws chairman issa thank you we now go to the most qualified firearm and you let it get in the hands of a suspect and you don't interdict that suspect in this case we had cooperators at the gun stores so they're acting as agents of the government so it didn't matter if those guns came into the hands of a suspect there's a distinction somehow between a straw purchaser getting it or atf putting it please explain to me what you talk what you meant by the distinction of atf putting it in the hands of meehan so you're suggesting here that the distinction is because you did not put the hand the gun in the hands of the purchaser here that somehow there's a distinction from allowing a gun fast and furious you are the special agent in charge of your area it emanated from your district mister newell right mister meehan who originated the concept for fast and furious mister newell sir it's not one person who did expect you understand that he expects seventy thousand dollars worth of weapons where does that get in that there was no part in the strategy to allow guns to be taken to mexico  during the beginning parts of this case we did not know who the plaza boss was we didn't knowhwho mister meehan that's not my question about who the plaza boss was the question is is there a plaza boss agent mcmahon just said he's in mexico mister newell right mister meehan and the plaza boss expects that mean with regard to ocdetf what kind of other participants were there as part of ocdetf mister newell well there are other agencies who are involved in this mister meehan other agencies what other agencies were involved in this mister newell in this investigation they were full partners in this case was the immigration and customs enforcement now known as homeland security special agent mcmahon talked about allowing seventy thousand dollars worth of guns to go to the plaza boss mister mcmahon sir i never said that we were allowing seventy thousand dollars worth of guns to go on mister meehan you said it was the expectation mister mcmahon i was giving a scenario of how it works there's a plaza boss in mexico that's requiring seventy thousand dollars worth of guns so if he's not getting it from the network we're investigating he's getting it from somewhere else it wasn't the seventy thousand dollars example i gave you wasn't specific to this investigation it was an overreal generalization of how trafficking to mexico uncertain as to where to start here because of what i've heard i think that i'll start with mr hcanino mr hcanino your comments were that it's inconceivable to let guns go it's not the way the atf does i hadh and i didn't believe them and i was very vocal about that i didn't become aware until it started coming out little by little talking to fellow agents and then midapril i saw some first one i've seen i would like to add something that the panel was asking earlier you asked when we first became aware that mr hacosta right was involved as the leader of the straw purchasing ring and some of the other issues as to mr hpatino that was in two thousand and nine and it was early on i briefed it to my senior directors january of two thousand  and we know this and one of the driving forces behind how we know that these were going to mexico and there were mexico people involved is because our other law enforcement partners provided us with information specific information that allowed us to know exactly what was going on and to what cartel it was going to this was not a mystery we knew this in december of two thousand and nine i briefed it in two thousand and ten january ms buerkle thank you sir so special agent newell and special agent mcmahon we'll get to you because you're his supervisor so at some point based on the ig's report and doj they said we're going t something different here i'm assuming because that's the way things work in government and maybe i'm wrong that someone said we need to have this operation and we're going to make a determination that for the first time a to conduct business this way we're going to let these guns walk now maybe he didn't say it but in essence that's really what happened because this is a different way of conducting business with atf where would that plan have come from somebodyh and i know you said you sat down with this group mister newell but somebody higher up than you made a determination that for the first time atf was going to run this we've heard from this panel we've heard from the panel prior to today that this originally in a draft in two thousand and nine october of two thousand and nine and january of two thousand and ten about how to combat southwest border drug trafficking by mexican drug cartels and one of them dealt with firearms trafficking which said through use of the ocdetf collocated strike forces groups that you talked about you sat down and you came up with a plan or did that plan come from up on high mister newell the plan figured into or the memo figured into how we were going to address this when we first looked at it in november  time in conjunction with the ocdetf strike force where this group vii was located that the best way to attack this organization was through the use of a multiagency conspiratorialtype investigation would dismantle the whole organization about consensual encounters where you just do a knock and talk where you walk up to somebody and ask them there's a reason dostoevsky wrote crime and punishment there's a reason edgar allen poe wrote the telltale heart sometimes people confess don't they sir there's several tools in the toolbox especially when you're faced with the fact that we know that these weapons are going to be used in such carnage down in mexico and the united states we should have pulled every tool out of that toolbox not just to make our case our case should not have been the priority here the stopping the flow of those firearms should have been the number one priority and we should have reached into that toolbox we should have conducted interviews or we should have done interviews to surrounding people we should have tracked these weapons better we should have followed everything by the letter to stop them i mean just where do we stop with the number of guns one five ten mister gowdy have you ever heard tell of a law enforcement officer stopping the purpose was to destroy and dismantle drug cartels so i'm going to ask you again how would this ever have succeeded what was your purpose how would we have known so when you found out the first gun went into mexico why did you not abort the investigation mister newell because we were still putting the facts together to be able to convict allh mister gowdy when is the very first time you knew or should have known that firearms were going to mexican department of justice in all my years of working with mexico i spent four years in bogota colombia representing atf in south america i am very very very key on the fact that we need to share information with our foreign law enforcement  that you were going to turn the information over to mexican prosecutors and let them prosecute because i asked you were you also going to allow u s law enforcement officers to be extradited to mexico for breaking their law and you said no so my question to you is this how in the world are you going to get our brothers and sisters in law enforcement to trusth why would you trust the prosecution if you don't trust them during the investigation to answer your question about the drug cartel the kingpin or in your words the kingpin that we're going to get the guns in mexico we did not have information until late in this case an ongoing part of this case who that individual was and i invited with mr sir i want to make it perfectly clear to you the american people the mexican government my family my friends at no time ever did i know that atf agent were following known suspected gun traffickers one of which bought seven hundred guns and we knew about his guns showing up in mexico six weeks after we opened up that investigation never ever would i imagine that we were letting that happen we have four thousand investigations plus or minus with a mexicou s nexus there are guns start any case you have toh you have a toolbox we have classes jose wall teaches those trafficking classes i've been to them it's like building a house you start from the bottom and you try to work your way up you know at one point you're only going to reach so far and then you come in and you have a meeting and you say okay how can we advance this you meet with the u s attorney from what i see here none of this was done or if it april i mean i was starting to lean that way and then i was at atf bureau headquarters in april for a meeting and i sat down with mister leadmon and he convinced me mister labrador did you come across any specific evidence to prove that atf had taken part in these this is not a special case this is just a trafficking case that we do this is what we do you know amongst other things but trafficking is what we do especially on the southwest border this wash this wasn't a newell i haven't communicated with him in a while but probably three or four times a year something like that or maybe more depending on him reaching out to me mister labrador isn't it a little bit unusual for a special agent in charge of an atf field division to have direct email contact with the national security staff at the white house this morning here for the actions of the agency and i appreciate that who at the highest levelsh i can't imagine that this is something that you decided to do on your own who did you communicate with at the highest levels about this okay this is a memorandum dated februaryh two thousand and five addressed to you from the group supervisor of phoenix grouphvii and the first line states this memorandum serves to request authorization to initiate a so let's go to slide nine then okay this is an affidavit prepared by special agent hope macallister in support of an application for authorization to intercept wire communications it is attached for your review  and having seen these documents now is there anything youh would you like to clarify any of your testimony or your interview at all mister mcmahon not at all no i know that we forwarded the application for the wiretap through the legal counsel process in the wiretap request your signature was part of a request process and yet when we asked you about your being involved in them you did not volunteer to tell us about this part you simply relied on you didn't actually sign the affidavit is that what you are saying the truth was you didn't sign the affidavit even though you signed this document and saw other documents and were sent other documents that you may not remember mister mcmahon i signed this document that transmitted the application for the wiretap to our counsel's office for them to review chairman issa but you never looked at it mister mcmahon no i did not again i think i said earlier on mistakes were made and one of the first questions you asked me sir is what mistakes and that mistake is not doing a thorough enough review of the ranking member for holding this hearing and all of you for your service to our country we appreciate it we have had a series of hearings i regret i was also in a hearing that we are having in financial services that i am ranking member on it testified that the enforcement was not strong enough that that was one of the problems on the border that there wasn't an express law against trafficking in guns and that a lot of times the penalties were to use the terms of one of the agents he called them toothless that you really couldn't do anything with it and they said that the penalties even in trafficking guns and very serious offenses and straw purchases and all equate either to deter illegal purchases and it wasn't strong enough to encourage the cooperation of suspects when they were cooperating  they had to have stronger laws so i put in a bill with other members of this committee to make trafficking in guns a federal crime and i would like to ask special agent mcmahon and newell whether or not you think this would help in combating violence drug trafficking illegal gun trafficking at the border  newell yes ma'am i believe as a matter of fact the congressional research service in july ofh published a report which said i believe the title of it was gun trafficking in the southwest border and in there they talked about the need for a specific statute to address  the trafficking of firearms by a group of individuals that would aid law enforcement a statute that would aid law enforcement in being able to address the specific activity that is currently not illegal so any tool that we would have to assist us in that obviously would be welcome misess maloney does everyone else on the panel agree if you disagree would you like to express why does everyone agree that this would be a tool that would be helpful orh mister gil i would somewhat disagree as i stated earlier i think the lying and buying the straw purchase is by definition itself you are buying a weapon or purchasing a weapon or obtaining a weapon for transfer to some other third party in and of itself is trafficking we have some personnel that give outstanding trafficking courses throughout my sessions now i would agree with you that by definition a straw purchaser has no criminal history therefore we would have to increase the penalty for those folks that are actually making the initial purchase misess maloney that is what the bill does and i think oftentimes i listen to the people that are in the combat that are on the streets trying to get the job done which is our special agents and in several panels including today they have said that a strong antiguntrafficking bill would help them do their jobs so i think we should listen to them one of the testimonies in our last hearing one of the agents said that they were militarytype weapons that it wasn'th no one wants to inhibit a hunter for getting a gun to go hunting with or someone to protect themselves but these were really the type of weapons like aks that are used in military combat and they were training and trading in these very deadly deadly guns and i understand even the protective equipment has to be reinforced for militarytype guns and the  that was put in place to report on rifles that are beingh long guns that are being sold was also they testified very helpful and i would like to hear what your view is from the front lines  save lives we are all for the second amendment for a lawful person to own a gun but for a criminal and a drug cartel to have easy access i think the number was when in the form of the not only formulation of this process but the approvals as well so it is my understanding that this was conceptualized in november of twenty nine is that progressed and i will say that in november about midnovember ofh when the special agents started looking into what appeared obviously to be some connected activity in terms of straw purchases she did a phenomenal job in putting a bunch of pieces  puzzle together if you will and noticed that one individual by the name of jacob chambers seemed to be at that time one of the more prolific straw purchasers at that time i think when she put all the pieces together she knew at that time it was something like three hundred and fifty guns that had been purchased by this group as the case other things isn't that correct one of the things that you do is try to take a global perspective on how guns may be moving in the united states and mexico and anywhere mister leadmon yes sir mister meehan okay so part of this is to follow the flow of guns your testimony was that within hweeks of the beginning of this other law enforcementh yeah other law enforcement providers provided us with information in december two thousand and nine because you were concerned about guns that were in mexico being found in mexico so in essence december two thousand and nine prior to really the beginning of fast and furious you as the analyst are already identifying for people that guns are being trafficked into mexico that you are concerned are coming from phoenix mister leadmon yes sir let me kind of explain that a little bit and bring things in perspective in novemberhth of two thousand and nine there was an interdiction by the mexican authorities in which there was approximately forty one forty two weapons firearms recovered meehan what was the plan then because you knew at this point in timeh before you testified that there was no part of any plan that guns would be known to be going to mexico now you are telling me that you are part of bringing in  because now you have confirmed that guns are going to mexico and things are going well so at some point in time i am trying to get clear when it was that you are now participating in helping to get authority from up higher for a broader meehan those are your words at what point in time are you aware that the deputy attorney general became aware of any aspect of this investigation mister newell i am not aware at what time he became aware sir mister meehan when do you believe that he became aware identified that this is from doj the deputy attorney general this is the conception phase mr hnewell the conception phase your words the deputy attorney general so newell yes sir agents in the field in pursuit of evidence in further of some investigation some sort of criminality be it a firearms case an explosives case an arson case will open up an investigation with their supervisor's concurrence into whatever they believe to be you know some sort of criminality by one or more individuals that's how a case is initiated and that's how this case was initiated it was initiated under the name of jacob chambers et al mister cummings okay and special agent canino you testified that you are a senior trainer and instructor for atf agents but have never heard of noninterdiction or gun walking as an approved tactic it is just not done mister canino no sir i've never heard of it doj policy i think what we got to realize is guns to mexico from the u s has been a problem for an awful long time we have been trying to make an impact and it is something that we are continuing to try to do that and that is it seems like we need to balance knowing guns are going into mexico and this grand plan to try to get to the cartel and the whole idea if we omith you know making sure that these guns don't go inh in other words we let them goh they go in let them go in and stand by and watch them where these guns end up and the harm that when they got in the wrong hands what they would do was there ever a balancing of that because that seems like what this boils down to i mean i think that is why these agents are so upset they are trying to figure out you know did anybody say okay this is going against the policy that we normally do our number one goal is to make sure weapons don't get into the hands of the wrong people but then they are trying to get their arms around it was there some greater greater cause that was worth it the risk to see these guns actually land in the hands of the wrong people can you comment on that do you understand the question  understand the question and one of the things i said in my opening statement sir was that one of the things i readily admit is that there should have been moreh it was incumbent upon me that there should have been more throughout the case risk assessments to determine where we were in the investigation because  are very emotional about this i mean and i appreciate these are honorable people who go out there and put their lives on the line every day and then they've got you who is more of a supervisor type and they use i guess some of sort of statement was i realize now in retrospect there should have been more risk assessments i realize that i acknowledge that and that was one of the mistakes that were made i should have had more risk assessments throughout the case mister gowdy i thank the gentleman from maryland special agent newell there am referring to your email to mr ho'reilly mister newell well obviously mr ho'reilly was a friend of mine and it'sh i shouldn't have been sending him that obviously i recognize that being a friend mister gowdy what do you mean you didn't get this from me does that mean you should not have been talking to him about it mister newell not that i shouldn't have been talking about it he is a friend of mine he asked for information and i provided it to him mister gowdy well then why wasn't it appropriate for you to give it to him why would you preface it by saying you didn't get this from me was it an improper you sent something to somebody because they were a friend that works in the white house on the national security team who requested something about a rather esoteric single investigation why do you think he asked you for that information that you didn't get these from me why do you think he asked for that information you said he didn't get from you mister newell well sir the way i am reading the email now and my recollection he wasn't asking about a specific investigation he was asking about our efforts during the gunrunner impact team over the summer ofh chairman issa why do you think he was asking mister newell if i recall that email he was asking for information to brief his boss i believe in preparation for a trip to mexico in questioning for you because i have got these atf agents who don't see the world the way you bogota and your other experience see it and i just want to understand the difference you saw this as necessary you saw that you had to i said earlier in my opening statements i would do several things differently if we were to do something like this again chairman issa but you would do a program in which you contact federally licensed gun sales organizations tell them in response to what they believe are suspected straw purchasers to go ahead and install video cameras watch these people buy and follow them to a location and  then wait to see where they turned up mister newell that would be one of the things in the risk assessments that i would seriously consider changing chairman issa what about the american people you said risk assessment you know that sounds like the doctor telling you that you have nonhodgkin and there is a zerohpercent chance but we think we can operate and get you an extra month risk assessment mrs hmaloney ms norton they are radically against the second amendment they absolutely positively do not want anyone having any guns they are pretty straightforward about it they will say they respect the second amendment but they have never seen a gun limitation they don't want in your case your agency has a special special obligation maintain the second amendment lawabiding citizens rights to keep and bear arms stop bad people from getting them now you said you need more laws i am going to go to some of the other agents for a moment mr hcan if the u s hattorney agreed to prosecute every case or in a state where there were strong gun laws if he or she only gave up that prosecution if the state agreed to prosecute would word i am looking forh i don't think federalizingh i don't think federalizing street crime is the answer i think there's plenty of gun laws now some of them are better than others some of them there's really no deterrence there's no significant you happen to be just south of the san diego border right now i am just north of it president bush fired carol lam to a great extent on my request i don't worry about the other eight u s attorneys that got fired i helped get her fired because she wouldn't prosecute trafficking in human beings and she wouldn't prosecute gun crimes she basically said turn them over to the state and then walked away knowing that in most cases they wouldn't prosecute does it make a difference if you have a hattorney at each of those border areas who takes trafficking in human beings trafficking in drugs and trafficking in guns seriously enough to basically not let anyone walk away not being prosecuted just because they might only get  opinion we have a tremendous effect on crime however when cases don't get prosecuted when they languish as i said in my opening statement and the cases are either declined or given the minimal sentence it doesn't send a message to the people engaged in this type of activity take for example gun trafficking when you have individuals that aren't prosecuted however maybe there was a search warrant served and guns were taken from them all they are going to do is tell the next guy hey watch out for these guys that do this because this is how i got caught but there is no deterrent we need to prosecute people we need to put them in prison for this and we need to put them there for a while chairman issa special agent can experience if you have got somebody dead to rights you have got them with the weapons let's just take our seven hundred and thirty man if you walked in and said look we've got you we know who you've been selling to we've got you if you don't give us testimony right now if you don't roll you're not leaving here and you're going away for a very long time in your experience is there a high likelihood that they're going to  essentially flip on the next guy up in return for essentially the minimum charge of simply buying and lying is that an effective tool when you have what we had in this case we knew that he had sold to a trafficker we had hundreds any jury is going to consider him part of the trafficking charge you can bring and we had evidence of exactly who he sold to so we could tell him we already know who you sold to but if you are not willing to testify we are going to put you away with him and by the way people have died in individual is different but if it is done correctly and respectfully and you treat the person like a human being and you honestly tell them hey you know these purchasers and the sinaloa cartel mister leadmon i identified the cartel and in the briefing i showed the links toward the seizures in mexico and how they moved from so justice was fully informed that guns were walking mister leadmon i don't think he is very high hanging fruit but he was there chairman issa did anyone express concern at this meeting that the number of weapons appearing in mexico or the number of weapons bought by straw purchasers seemed to be too high mister leadmon yes someone on the other end of theh in the video because we had a video conference i believe it was somebody out of the dallas field division voiced that concern and there was some discussion and we also have a memo that says we got to close this down basically at that same time so at a thousand it was too many let me ask our two defenders of this program and i am sorry but that does appear as how your role here today has been did it ever occur to either one of you after mr hleadmon's marchhth or before that you could let some of these walk and interdict others meaning quite frankly when somebody had already bought one hundred of them and transported them to him they weren't going to sell them to somebody different you knew it was a straw purchaser he basically usually had one customer he has made the sale once twice twenty times did it ever occur to you to go ahead and at least stop these guns a few times as you said mr hnewell make it expensive by intercepting some of them just blind dumb luck they had to figureh and this is just me talking but i  think i have lived this thing long enough the cartels had to realize at some point that you were helping them buy guns because they were having such a good batting average isn't that true the fact that these guys weren't interdicting the guns almost had to be conspicuous at some point couldn't you have at least stopped some of these guns to make it look more real mister newell well sir as i said in my opening statement that's one of the things i would do different chairman issa well we are going to take a short recess there will be a little bit of voting we will come back and i know you have been patient during the recess our restrooms are available to you i would suggest that on that side there is a restroom where you don't have to go out and be accosted by the do differently and special agent newell i would like your list because you're the one that has most said it special agent mcmahon i would like yours because you oversaw it and you said some things but each of the four of you from your experience would you each be willing to give me what would be done differently now i know the easy thing is i wouldn't have done the damn stupid thing but short of that casebycase breakdown what would have to be different if this would be done because this is the committee on oversight and reform the minority suggests that we pile on a bunch more gun laws and maybe that will happen someday but i am looking for answers that we can do to get effective work that you need to do effective prosecution and if it needs legislation we are happy to look at it and put it into the mix but i am looking for the kind of reform for the most part that doesn't just assume that a stronger gu selectively enforced by u s attorneys who lose interest in these cases is necessarily the only answer so with that we stand in recess until about hminutes after the last vote