and i know some of my colleagues indicated today that we were beating you over the head we are not we are investigating this issue and we are certainly not investigating the good work that you guys do and i know some of your colleagues have been killed so been injured we know you lay your lives on the lines for us and so you have our respect and admiration for what you do now let me just say to mr hmcmahon and mr hnew investigation that we are talking about what is the name of it again what is it called chairman issa fast and furious mister burton fast and furious this just came from an agent in the field and that was it nobody else had to ask the chairman to talk to them about continuing this investigation to find out how involved everybody was and why it went on as long as it did when we knew in two thousand and nine that this kind of thing was going on and if there were irs agents read into this program with sufficient specificity that they would understand the details of how the gun following that you say is not gun walking occurred in other words we don't want to just have names of people on lists we want to have the names of people who were names dates times places that they were involved in this investigation so that we can trace it all the way back to its origin and see where we went see who was involved and how all these weapons two thousand weapons got down in there into mexico and whether or not somebody higher up in the justice department or the food chain might have been involved and the only way we can get that information is from you two or the other people who were involved in the investigation from these other agencies so i just want to say one more time this is very important that you understand that you are telling us right now that you will get us this information you can get us the names times dates and places that we need and you investigation the line agents told us that as part of operation fast and furious one they were instructed to cut off surveillance of suspected straw purchasers t they were ordered to forego arrests of straw purchasers and three they were prohibited from seizing or interdicting weapons from straw purchasers on several occasions when they believed they had the lawful authority to do so these are very serious allegations but in your transcribed interview with the committee you said you never heard these complaints before they became public in february of this year is that right  kucinich here is what you said you said to the best of my recollection i don't remember any time ever being advised that there was some discourse among amongst the agents i became aware of that when some of the documents were released that i saw and i want to say it was probably february early february something like that of this year isn't that information you would have expected to have received earlier mister newell i would have hoped to have received that earlier yes sir mister kucinich who would have been responsible for bringing these agents concerns to your attention it should have been brought to our attention earlier mister kucinich the line agents testified that they made their concerns known to their group supervisor david voth yet he too told the committee that he knew nothing about their allegations he said this  known about them yes mister kucinich the committee has apparently identified a conflict in the testimony either the line agents are having difficulty being able to communicate the truth or their supervisor is having that difficulty  w what steps mr hmcmahon did the atf's management take to ensure that line agents can make headquarters aware of their concerns if their direct supervisor is not responsive and can they do that without in effect bringing  themselves some kind of sanctions for going other the head of a line supervisor mister mcmahon i believe they can i think the processes that we have set up in atf headquarters allow that we have an ombudsman program we have obviously the chain of command anywhere in there i think  director every time he has actually been out to visit offices he has told people about his open door line of communication he receives emails from line agents i have tried do the same thing on my visits to the field divisions that i oversee that everyone at the agency has to carry out so i'm sure you can understand the questions that have been raised about the conduct of this particular operation that things don't fit and when they don't fit it makes it difficult for members of congress to be able to defend the kind of support that they want to maintain for the bureau so i want to thank you for being  we last left you were talking about law enforcement partners providing you information in december of nine that had given you concern about guns that had actually showed up in mexico isn't that correct mister leadmon they didn't provide it to me they provided it to the phoenix agents and it was routed to me mister meehan so when you say other law enforcement partners is this partners outside of that you believed was not being shared with you mister gil the only other agency that we worked with while in mexico would have been ice and we actually used them to a certain extent to conduct interviews either with us or on our of nine and we have testimony that by december of nine there was already concern about scores of weapons that were being recovered in mexico but what was the response of the assistant united states attorney to that continued monitoring the sales but were they aware and did they believe that guns ultimately thousands were continued to be trafficked with the approval of the assistant united states attorney mister newell i'm not sure exactly what they were aware of sir but i know they meehan mr hgil at any point in time did you get a visit from anybody and who was the highest person that visited you from the department of justice with respect to this matter mister gil to a certain i thank you for recognizing me and i am deeply concerned that while i was on the floor voting that the chairman for whom i have tremendous respect made derogatory anyone having any guns they're pretty straightforward about it they'll say they respect the second amendment but they've never seen a gun limitation they do not like i would like to say that i support the second boswell literally someone broke into his home and he thought his life was in danger his grandson took a legal registered gun and got the intruder out of the home i respect the right to own legal guns for selfdefense for other reasons but i do not support illegal guns that are fueling drug wars and putting lives at risk in testimony before this committee  it was told that forty thousand people have died in the last five years on the border of mexico what we have put forward is a simple statute that would prohibit gun trafficking in illegal guns to people who want to use them for illegal purposes i think that is respecting law enforcement helping law enforcement and protecting lives on both sides of the border and i must also say that the atf agents who testified and were called by the majority to testify they indicated that this would help them do their job and help them to protect innocent people in mexico and in the united states of america and i just really wanted to clarify that since i feel that m norton and myself were attacked unfairly and i do not think that legitimate debate or ideas or legislation should be attacked in this unfair way so i who said that my entire side of the aisle was owned by the nra in some of hers or somebody in the district of columbia continues to support basically this being a gunfree zone in violation of the second amendment but i take you at your over again the result of gun violence those of us who go to the funerals those of us who listen to the atf agents who beg to make sure that we help them because they're fighting weapons of war  made in the handling of operation fast and furious and we are legitimately trying to get answers and to look at this but the larger issue that i feel is in danger of possibly being overlooked is the flow of illegal weapons and we're not talking about regular guns in the testimony from the agents they called them militarystyle weapons they were aks very special deadly  rifles so these aren't normal guns these are our military guns and this is an even larger issue than fast and furious is to stop the flow of illegal guns and i believe that on both sides of the aisle we can agree chairman i'm going to kind of bring it more back to where we were going i think with the investigating operation fast and furious as opposed to discussing the merits of any proposed new gun regulations or gun laws better chance of stopping the attacks on the world trade center had the various organizations within our government been communicating with each other better we've spent millions of dollars on fusion centers for information sharing among agencies and then i'm troubled to find here that you're basically running an investigation covering some of the same suspects basically parallel investigations with the drug enforcement administration and there was an unwillingness to or a failure to coordinate among those agencies would that be a fair assessment of what happened there were multiple investigations and the dea didn't know what you  to and vice versa mister mcmahon sir as far as i'm concerned that is the complete opposite of that i think when we received funding to get our gunrunner groups up and running one of the first things we did was assign them to strike force groups so they could work hand in hand with the other agencies and i think this case is an example of how that was one of the positive things out of this case dea had some information that they shared with us that helped us in our investigation and actually helped foster it even more so  why weren't you all coordinating and there were two different investigations going on at the very least that seems wasteful of the taxpayers money mister mcmahon i don't think from what i've seen that there were two different investigations it was two parallel investigations arrests our guys have stumbled onto a drug traffickingh i mean a guntrafficking ring they're doing their due diligence and that's why so many guns have turned up in the suspect gun database so quickly and three i thought that our guys were just losing them on surveillance not being able to get to the gun store in time that's what i thought at that time you know i didn't know that we had cooperat congressman i think it's important to realize that guns were being recovered in mexico for quite a while and we were all concerned about that guns were coming from phoenix they were coming from texas they were coming from i mean that's what we did that was our main focus in mexico and obviously along the southwest border for the past four years that's where all of our resources our new resources have gone guns being recovered in crime scenes in mexico from the u s is something that atf has been putting everything we have into for the past quite a few years as long as i've been in headquarters mister farenthold all right well i see i once again have run out of time and i realize we are getting late as we go forward mcmahon since you're in supervisorytype positions you know i just hope this does not hurt the morale of the organization when i look at the emotions of special agent  priority for us right now is to get our people back on track not a lot of us can have or show the passion that carlos has but i guarantee you we all have that we might keep it inside a little bit more than carlos does but of what's part of the legal commerce and what's part of the illegal commerce and that's part of the challenge a challenge that we fully accept and that's something that we were drilled into us from early on while in the academy it's something we fully accept and it's something that we do every day and as i said in my statement i am very proud of the people that are out there now and have been out there in the past and the work that they're doing mister cummings i'm going to go back to a july twelve two thousand and eleven letter to the attorney general chairman issa and senator grassley wrote these words they said  there has been public speculation that gun control politics may have been a motivating factor behind approving the risky strategy used in operation fast and furious in other words by allowing straw purchasers to continue to operate and by encouraging gun dealers to go through with what were obviously suspicious sales the atf helped create a big case in order to justify additional regulatory authority the letter notes that the committee has seen no evidence to support this speculation but goes on to ask the department of justice to respond anyway mister newell you were the special agent in charge who oversaw this operation or do you know others that were deliberately attempting to send guns to mexico to justify additional firearms regulations people are clear that we have an atf which is operating and doing what it is supposed to do obviously some mistakes have been made very unfortunate mistakes  and i think the one thing we have to do is we have to learn from those mistakes and not let them happen again because they can have very very very tragic consequences and so with tha try to be brief in a couple of last questions first of all i ask to include some additional documents that were shared and partially redacted with justice so that we can keep them in the record and potentially ask you questions januaryh two thousand and ten you produced a memo that in line thirteen said currently our strategy is to allow the transfer of firearms to continue to take place albeit at a much slower pace in order to further the investigation and allow the identification of additional coconspirators who would continue to operate illegally trafficking firearms to mexico dtos now if i read that correctly in addition to later where it says dea has specifically requested that the asac and sac level at the atf continue the investigation if i read this memo of yours correctly at least by january or januaryh two thousand and ten you knew that these weapons were going toh specifically weapons that you were allowing to be sold were going to the drug cartels in mexico and that you lobbied in this memo the continuation partially because of dea's request is there anything in plain english that i don't understand here mister newell yes sir as i stated earlier in the testimony i think that sentence about who would that part of the sentence who would is who would continue is based on the fact that we believe that if we didn't take the necessary steps to disrupt the whole organization this group would continue to traffic in large quantities of firearms  agent we're not disagreeing that these are determined incredibly rich billionsofdollarsofdrugmoney groups that have the power to corrupt the mexican government at times corrupt u s officials to buy anything they want anywhere in the world in vast quantities certainly i don't think anyone on the dais fails to understand that we have a narcostate almost being formed in mexico the way we had in colombia and that they and we are fighting to push back on a terrible tragedy that has occurred in mexico but the question here is as of januaryhth i find this irrefutable evidence that you knew that weapons you continued to sell quote albeit at a slower paceh although actually the evidence is it didn't slow down right away but eventually it did were in fact going to mexico you knew it you knew that when you sold to particularly some of the specific individuals whose weapons had already been found you knew that the straw buyer was buying it you knew who they were transporting it to who was paying for it and where it was ending up isn't that true as of januaryh mister newell well we didn't sell the firearms sir chairman issa well you came pretty close you told the firearm dealer to go ahead and sell it you knew who the buyer was you knew there was a repeat buyer you knew who the intermediary was that go over these agents and they're going to make you look like a fool here if you don't answer this honestly you knew that a was going to b and b was going to the cartels you knew that outright so did the dea as of januaryhth and that's what this briefing says doesn't it answer me honestly just once clearly and simply mister newell sir with all due respect when it comes to the dea portion of that it was the fact that dea had an ongoing investigation from which  we gathered the information which led to the initiation of our case so that sentence there discusses the fact that dea said hey whatever you do don't do anything to compromise our case which we respected in response to your other question is absolutely the group that we were working we knew that that was their intention to funnel guns to mexico chairman issa wait a second intention not intention it was a pattern of success that had occurred for a year isn't that true you had watched straw buyers repeated straw buyers make purchases deliver them and those weapons had shown consistently in the hands of specific cartels and as you know you knew who was paying for them isn't that all true mister newell well you said a three months earlier i apologize the previous year mister newell three months chairman issa okay so three months into this program about one thousand weapons or less in you knew that the weapons you were telling gun dealers to go ahead and sell to the same straw buyers again and again you already had twenty the number twenty is here so i'm kind of going well you've indicted twenty nineteen of whom were the straw buyers so you knew the straw buyers and the repeats kept coming after you had the same people buying weapons repeatedly leading to the same cartel and you didn't quit because you hadn't made your case so we continued selling until we had a dead federal agent and a scandal that's pretty much what i've heard here today any of the agents that work in the field did any of you see something different then this thing kept going after everything was known except maybe if we keep doing it long enough we'll get better cases for the u s attorney and then it  began falling apart after brian terry was murdered does anyone in the first four see anything different correct me if i've missed something mister gil chairman i'm still sitting here listening to the conversation and it's still unbelievable to me to be quite honest with you i still don't know what to believe why this investigation was initiated and why it continued for so long i can't i know you look speechless i'm speechless i just don't know  escape me to try to do any better than you don't know why and i don't know why either the gentlelady from new york for an additional round misess maloney thank you i would like to follow up on the line of questioning of congressman  when he was talking about the lack of communication which after we had many commissions we had many studies and what came out of these commissions was that our intelligence wasn't working and we weren't communicating and we then overhauled our government the most major overhaul of our intelligence since one thousand nine hundred and forty eight and it seems to be a little bit of the same thing of what i am hearing about these hearings because people are saying they didn't know anything and people are saying they told people and it's not getting through so the communication is not taking place when you mention  the mayor of new york and we are about to come upon the th anniversary of that tragic day has been airing tv ads in new york where they use the words of an alqa'ida leader who is talking to his followers and saying go to america it's so easy to get a gun go to america get all the guns you need in our fight for the al this is an ad about how illegal people who want to hurt americans are being instructed literally to come to america and get guns in order to combat democracies and so i think this hearing is very very serious about the flow of illegal guns earlier we had a hearing and we had several agents who seemed very brave very frustrated and very courageous  and they testified that they were concerned about the sale of the guns to straw agents they were concerned about not having arrests about being ordered not to make arrests and not to conduct surveillance and i understand that you were asked mister newell and mr hmcmahon and you did not hear any of their frustrations they testified that they reported this to their supervisors and nothing happened and that's why they were so frustrated so i think we've got to figure out what happens when someone reports something they feel is illegal wrong dangerous or harmful to life  and i'm not just talking about what happened in fast and furious i'm talking about going forward agents on the ground who think that someone should be arrested and they're being told not to make an arrest or when they're being told not to make a surveillance a supervisor says don't do it and they're saying we should do it and they're complaining to someone else that information has got to go up the line in order to have proper law enforcement and proper protection for our  citizens so i ask anyone on the panel to comment but i see this as a very serious a very serious blockade or a very serious problem if people who feel something wrong and harmful to the safety of americans or mexicans is taking place then someone should be listening and if a chain of command is not listening maybe there should be an alternative chain of command put in place or something because this type of concern has got to get to the proper authorities in order to make proper decisions to make arrests continue the surveillance and do the proper things to stop illegal activity so i just would ask any of you to comment on what we've been hearing people say they asked for help and other people say they never heard anything so what's going on is there some you know black hole that complaints fall into  what is the chain of command why did not the complaints or concerns of the ontheline defenders of justice why didn't their concerns about what they thought was illegal and dangerous get to the proper communication breakdown that's very concerning to me one of the things i wrote down here the things that i would like to improve on is my access to people in the field maybe even just sitting down hey what can you tell me what's down the row as we often do here and just pose a single question for each of you to answer special agent newell answered it already if it was januaryhth you had just written that briefing you knew what special agent newell and special agent mcmahon knew about what had happened what was happening you knew about the dea's request but you also knew about where these guns were ending up mr hgil start with you if we put you in charge of the phoenix field office on that day what would you do mister gil mister chairman that investigation would have been closed come to a conclusion not a disposable product these weapons they're going to be out there for years decades and they're a durable good they're a marketable item and that's why historically atf my career my training officer educated us on this as i trained my you know we've met now a couple of times you can see i'm kind of passionate about what i do i don't want to give you the impression or the ranking member or the committee the impression that i never made mistakes i was a street agent for hyears very active street agent anybody who knows me knows my reputation they know i've made mistakes you know i respect bill and bill i consider them friends i know it's not easy for them to be here today  but hopefully this won't happen again and hopefully when the committee finally issues their report our agency will be the better for it and we can move on down the line  i agree i think the first order of business for our agency right now is to build the morale close ranks and move forward and support each other yes sir i would like to expand and say that i think congressman maloney kind of touched on what the underlying problem is for our agency in these major investigations she talked about the lessons we've learned the lack  of sharing of information the intel well from my perspective in my law enforcement career involved in major case investigations in the district of columbia i learned some things with my task forcing with other agencies f atf and one of the things that i see in atf that we're lacking we're lacking on the intelled investigative side of the house our intel structure within the atf is very limited our cartels in mexico we need to meet that challenge and that challenge is they're going out and they're taking off these guns in these seizure events we have to stop the flow because they can't win if they keep getting  that in mind we have to start taking some of the best practices of our other agencies and i e under an intelled investigation i'm not just talking about single investigations in atf we have silo systems we have divisions that work out of their divisions everything comes out of the division this has to stop there has to be headquarters not oversight get all in their business type thing but it has got to do like our other agencies are exchanges the information freely partners up with outside agencies at all levels not just in the divisions but all the way up into headquarters and to do that we have to build a structure an intelligence structure to support not only  agents in the field but our partners in mexico and our other federal agencies chairman issa i'm going to cut you off only because of time limitations we have a subcommittee coming in in a short time but first of all you're singing i think on a bipartisan basis to what we need to do and we probably will have you back as we get into the corrective phase the reorganization if appropriate let me just ask one closing question jaime a patino i'm sorry chambers and stewart they're all on the street today they have not been convicted of a crime as straw buyers if they walked into a gun shop today just because they've been arrested does that mean they can't buy would they be able to buy a weapon today mister mcmahon they wouldn't be able to buy the weapon because they're under indictment but i'm not sure if the nics system in phoenix would capture that if they did attempt to buy a weapon chairman issa so today you know that they shouldn't be able to buy they shouldn't be on the street but twenty straw buyers are on the street and you're not sure if all twenty are in fact presently in the system where any federally licensed gun store would stop them immediately is that have come back to state my true position and i wonder if i may be given a few minutes to do that chairman issa if you want to state your true position bearing in mind that you told us that all of us on this side of the aisle were owned by the nra ms norton if i could be heard from deserve indeed i indicated that the issues spread even into our cities as for the district of columbia laws which apparently raised the district of columbia barred guns in light of carnage over the decades those laws had been found to be constitutional and for decades every appellate court had so found for the district's laws and for the laws of other states until an activist and much more conservative supreme court overturn ed the findings of prior supreme courts for the first time the district of columbia proceeded to obey the new law and enacted a set of gun laws which have since been found constitutional and yet members of this body have filed bills seeking to overturn the laws of a local jurisdiction not their own simply because they disagree with the way they approach gun control you can approach gun control any way you like in arizona or california but you are not at liberty to tell the people of the district of columbia who have to live with the carnage how to approach it particularly when the laws have been declared constitutional yes i stand by the notion that the reason that the atf agents don't have the laws they need is laws and i have been bipartisan because there have been some in my own party who have stood with them mister chairman having taken the agents  order to do their job whether you would cosponsor the bill that has been introduced that would in fact give them a trafficking tool so that this would not happen again to them or to us and would you be willing to sponsor that b and with that gentlemen you bear witness to the other side of the aisle at work with that we stand