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UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

DECEMBER 8, 2011 

Serial No. 112–123 

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://judiciary.house.gov 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

LAMAR SMITH, Texas, Chairman 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

TED POE, Texas 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

TREY GOWDY, South Carolina 

DENNIS ROSS, Florida 

SANDY ADAMS, Florida 

BEN QUAYLE, Arizona 

MARK AMODEI, Nevada 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ROBERT C. ‘‘BOBBY’’ SCOTT, Virginia 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., 

Georgia 

PEDRO R. PIERLUISI, Puerto Rico 

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois 

JUDY CHU, California 

TED DEUTCH, Florida 

LINDA T. SA ́ NCHEZ, California 

JARED POLIS, Colorado 

SEAN MCLAUGHLIN, Majority Chief of Staff and General Counsel 

PERRY APELBAUM, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

DECEMBER 8, 2011 

Page 

OPENING STATEMENTS 

The Honorable Lamar Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Texas, and Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary ..................................... 1 

The Honorable John Conyers, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Michigan, and Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary ......... 3 

The Honorable Darrell E. Issa, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of California, and Member, Committee on the Judiciary ................................. 4 

The Honorable Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, a Representative in Congress from 

the State of Virginia, and Member, Committee on the Judiciary .................... 9 

WITNESSES 

The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr., Attorney General, U.S. Department of 

Justice 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 11 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 15 

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Material submitted by the Honorable Darrell E. Issa, a Representative in 

Congress from the State of California, and Member, Committee on the 

Judiciary ............................................................................................................... 5 

Material submitted by the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Representative 

in Congress from the State of Texas, and Member, Committee on the 

Judiciary 

List of opposition to H.R. 822, the ‘‘National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity 

Act of 2011’’ ....................................................................................................... 34 

Articles from the Washington Examiner and the Los Angeles Times ............. 54 

APPENDIX 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

Prepared Statement of the Honorable Lamar Smith, a Representative in 

Congress from the State of Texas, and Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary ......................................................................................................................... 101 

Response to Post-Hearing Questions from Judith C. Appelbaum, Acting Assistant Attorney, General, Office of Legislative Affairs, U.S. Department 

of Justice ............................................................................................................... 103 

(1) 

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE 

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2011 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:37 a.m., in room 2141, 

Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Lamar Smith 

(Chairman of the Committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Smith, Sensenbrenner, Coble, Gallegly, 

Goodlatte, Lungren, Chabot, Issa, Pence, King, Franks, Gohmert, 

Jordan, Poe, Chaffetz, Griffin, Marino, Gowdy, Ross, Adams, 

Quayle, Amodei, Conyers, Berman, Scott, Watt, Lofgren, Jackson 

Lee, Waters, Cohen, Johnson, Pierluisi, Quigley, Chu, Deutch, 

Sa ́nchez and Polis. 

Also present: Representatives Schiff and Farenthold. 

Staff Present: (Majority) Crystal Jezierski, Counsel; Travis Norton, Counsel; Dave Lazar, Clerk; (Minority) Perry H. Apelbaum, 

Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel; and Joe 

Graupensperger, Counsel. 

Mr. SMITH. The Judiciary Committee will come to order. Without 

objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses of the Committee at any time. 

I am going to recognize myself for an opening statement; and 

then the Ranking Member, the gentleman from Michigan; then the 

gentleman from California Mr. Issa; then the gentleman from Virginia Mr. Scott, and we will proceed to hearing from the Attorney 

General. 

Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Judiciary Committee last May, and we appreciate his willingness to appear today to address many issues, including questions about his 

previous testimony. 

While I am pleased to welcome back Attorney General Holder, I 

am disappointed in the Department’s repeated refusal to cooperate 

with this Committee’s oversight request. This lack of cooperation is 

evident in the Department’s handling of inquiries related to the 

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Operation 

Fast and Furious; and the death of Border Patrol agent Brian 

Terry in December 2010. And inconsistent statements from the Department officials about who knew what and when have only raised 

more concerns. 

I am also disappointed in how the Department has responded to 

my oversight request regarding Justice Kagan’s involvement in 

health care legislation and related litigation while she served as 

2 

United States Solicitor General. Despite claims from Obama administration officials that then-Solicitor General Kagan was walled 

off from discussions regarding the President’s health care law, recently released e-mails indicate there may be more to the story. 

On March 21, 2010, an e-mail from the Deputy Solicitor General 

forwarded to Solicitor General Kagan contained information about 

a meeting at the White House on the health care law and asked, 

‘‘I think you should go, No. I will regardless, but feel this is litigation of singular importance.’’ Solicitor General Kagan responded by 

asking him for his phone number. 

We also know from the e-mails that she personally supported the 

legislation’s passage. In a March 21, 2010, exchange with a Justice 

Department colleague discussing the health care legislation, Ms. 

Kagan exclaims, ‘‘I hear they have the votes, Larry. Simply amazing.’’ These e-mails reveal inconsistencies with the Administration’s 

claims that then-Solicitor General Kagan was walled off from the 

issue. 

To help clear up any confusion, I wrote the Justice Department 

to get additional documents and conduct staff interviews. It took 

nearly 4 months before the Department sent a one-page response 

that denied my request. The Department did not assert any legal 

privilege over the requested information, but simply refused to 

comply with the request. That is not a sufficient answer. 

Health care legislation was passed by the Senate on December 

24, 2009. On January 8, 2010, Ms. Kagan told the Deputy Solicitor 

General that she definitely would like the Office of the Solicitor 

General to be involved in preparations to defend against challenges 

to the pending health care proposals. Ms. Kagan found out she was 

being considered for a potential Supreme Court vacancy on March 

5, 2010. So the issue is how involved was she in health care discussions between January 8 and March 5. Just as President Nixon 

had an 18 and a half minute gap, does Ms. Kagan have a 2-month 

gap? 

The Office of the Solicitor General is responsible for defending 

the positions of the Federal Government in litigation before the Supreme Court. So it was the duty of then-Solicitor General Kagan 

to participate in meetings and discussions regarding the legal defense strategy for the President’s health care proposal. It would 

have been a surprising departure from her responsibilities for Solicitor General Kagan not to advise the Administration on the 

health care bill. The law clearly states that Justices must recuse 

themselves if they ‘‘participated as counsel, advisor or material witness concerning the proceeding, or expressed an opinion concerning 

the merits of the particular case’’ while they worked in a government capacity. 

The public has a right to know the extent of Justice Kagan’s involvement with the legislation as well as any previously stated 

legal opinions about the legislation while she served as Solicitor 

General. The NFL would not allow a team to officiate its own 

game. If Justice Kagan was part of the Administration’s team that 

put the health care mandate into play, she should not officiate 

when it comes before the Supreme Court. 

If the Department has nothing to hide, why not provide Congress 

with the requested information? The continued refusal to cooperate 

3 

with legitimate oversight inquiries only heightens concerns that 

she may, in fact, have a conflict of interest. 

President Obama has promised an open and transparent government. Unfortunately we often see a closed and secretive Justice Department. 

I know all Members of the Committee look forward to asking 

questions on these and other issues. 

I now recognize the gentleman from Michigan, the Ranking 

Member of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Conyers. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you, Chairman Smith, and a hearty welcome to not only the Attorney General of the United States Eric 

Holder, but as well to a—well, this is the most numerous number 

of police chiefs and Department of Justice officials that I have seen 

in this room at one time in quite awhile. All of them, but particularly to the Detroit police chief Ralph Godbee who is here, I send 

a special welcome. 

Now, Chairman Smith, would it be appropriate that our colleague, a former Member of the Committee, Adam Schiff of California sit on the dais with us? 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Conyers, we normally don’t do that, but in this 

case we would be very pleased to have the gentleman from California Mr. Schiff sit up at the dais with us. We do have a policy 

that non-Members of the Committee will not be able to ask questions, but we certainly welcome his presence up here. 

Mr. CONYERS. I thank you for that courtesy. 

Adam, come on up. 

Mr. SMITH. If he can find room. 

Mr. CONYERS. There are two parts to my comments this morning, 

Members of the Committee. The first deals with what are the problems underlying the reason for the hearing, and the second deals 

more specifically with the career and contributions of the Attorney 

General of the United States. And I have the privilege of putting 

these solutions that I would like to you consider in my opening 

statement. We can go over the details ad nauseam if you would 

like, but I would refer everyone to the November 8, 2011, hearings 

in the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary in which 

Chairman Pat Leahy with more than a dozen Senators on that 

Committee have plowed through this. And I have been going over 

and over it for the last couple days, but I think you want to have 

that as a basis for anybody that is particularly interested. 

Now, the problem of gun trafficking in the Southwest is a serious 

problem, and I recommend to my Judiciary Committee colleagues, 

with whom this whole subject matter is the jurisdiction of this 

Committee, that we commit to maintaining the new rule requiring 

the reporting of multiple sales of semiautomatic weapons and shotguns, rifles by individuals in the Southwest Border States. There 

have been a number of programs that have dealt with this subject, 

but I think that that is probably number one on my recommended 

list. 

Secondly, we must see to it that we confirm a Director of Alcohol, 

Tobacco & Firearms. It has been operating under Acting Directors 

for the last 51⁄2 years. The Senate has failed to act on the nominations not only of the current President, but of President Bush as 

well. So if we are going to criticize ATF, I think we must work to 

4 

revitalize it, not to tear it down, because it is too important a 

source of protection and a way of ending violence in this important 

part of our country. 

And last, we must enact some legislation to prohibit gun trafficking. The transfer of multiple guns when we know they will be 

transferred to those who are legally prohibited from carrying a gun 

or people who intend to use guns illegally must be further prohibited by legislative and congressional action. I commend our New 

York colleague Carolyn Maloney, who has sponsored a very good 

idea in this regard. 

And so I conclude, Mr. Chairman and Members, by telling you 

I have never encountered an Attorney General more dedicated and 

more professionally effective than the current occupant of that 

chair, Eric Holder, who has achieved impressive results across the 

full range of his mission, especially what has happened in the Civil 

Rights Division. And I think that the questions today here are appropriate. I think the hearing is fair. I think we have a Chairman 

that will make sure we proceed in a manner that will make us all 

proud that we attended and participated in this hearing today. 

But we also know that letting guns roam around this country is 

something that all of us have a great responsibility to make sure 

that that is diminished or comes to an end as soon as possible. And 

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Conyers, for those comments. 

The gentleman from California, Chairman of the Oversight and 

Government Reform Committee, is recognized for an opening statement. 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would first like to ask 

unanimous consent that the following document be placed in the 

record. December 7, an article by Sharyl Attkisson entitled ‘‘Documents: ATF used ‘Fast and Furious’ to make the case for gun regulations.’’ 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, it will be made a part of the 

record. 

[The information referred to follows:] 

5 


71602A-1.eps
6 


71602A-2.eps
7 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for holding this 

hearing. It is deja vu all over again. We are beginning the process 

of getting to the bottom, to the truth of Fast and Furious. 

I take exception to my colleague on the other side of the aisle Mr. 

Conyers. What is too important is the Second Amendment. The 

idea that regulations without any approval of Congress had been 

added to create databases in the Southern Southwestern States, including California, Arizona, Mexico—New Mexico—Texas and New 

Mexico, clearly shows, in fact, this Administration is more interested in building databases, more interested in talking about gun 


71602A-3.eps
8 

control than actually controlling the drugs and guns that they had 

control over. Whether it is money laundering, or, in fact, it is the 

flow of guns knowingly, just one individual was allowed to buy, 

under the auspices of the Justice Department, 700 weapons, knowing exactly who they were going to before they ever went. 

Our discovery, with the help of Senator Grassley, has shown that 

this was not an accident, and that this project was failed and 

flawed from the beginning. It is not just ATF, it is not just DEA; 

in fact, it includes the Department of Homeland Security in a task 

force that obviously did not respect the safeguards of the American 

people. 

Brian Terry is dead today, in my opinion, because of this failed 

program. But even today we will not hear Justice taking responsibility. They will instead talk about the two guns that were recovered. Yes, they were from Fast and Furious, but ballistics are inconclusive. And yet this Justice Department is not looking for a 

third weapon. They are not looking for who killed Brian Terry 

while they try to have the plausible deniability that Fast and Furious may not have been responsible. That is reprehensible to the 

family suffering under Brian Terry’s needless murder. 

Mr. Chairman, Fast and Furious began in November 2009. It 

was a new operation building on a failed operation under the previous Administration. The difference in the previous Administration is there was coordination with the Mexican Government. They 

made a real effort under Wide Receiver to pass off a small amount 

of weapons and track them. This program, just the opposite; even 

knowing the drug cartels are going to receive them, they simply allowed them to go to the stash house. 

Mr. Attorney General, today I hope you will not point fingers and 

say that somehow this is not organic. There is nothing more organic that a law enforcement officer being gunned down because of 

a failure to protect within the Department of Justice. There is 

nothing more organic in Congress’s responsibility than, in fact, following up on Congress being lied to. My Committee just next door 

was systematically lied to by your own representatives. There is a 

highly likelihood an individual was deliberately duped, but he was 

duped by people who still work for you today, still work for you 

today. 

The President has said he has full confidence in this Attorney 

General. I have no confidence in a President who has full confidence in an Attorney General who has, in fact, not terminated or 

dealt with the individuals, including key lieutenants, who from the 

very beginning had some knowledge and long before Brian Terry 

was gunned down knew enough to stop this program. 

There has been recrimination. There has been an attempt to find 

scapegoats. Many of the people who have been pointed to do share 

in the blame. But, Mr. Attorney General, the blame must go to 

your desk, and you must today take the real responsibility. Why 

haven’t you terminated the many people involved? Why is it that 

we are still hearing about inconsistencies that don’t even take the 

correct responsibility for Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s death? 

Those are the things we want to hear today. 

Mr. Attorney General, I respect the fact that you said in the Senate that you gave truthful testimony, but I would like to hear 

9 

what—when a few days becomes a few weeks, or a few weeks becomes a few months, are we to have the confidence that the President says he has in you and the many people up and down the 

chain of command at Justice who saw this program, this operation 

and let it happen? And the many people who called your legislative 

affairs representative, who is sitting right behind you, caused him 

to bring false testimony to the Committee. It is unheard of for testimony—or for letters or testimony to be taken back. They have 

had to be taken back because of people who still worked for Justice. 

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your indulgence, and I appreciate 

the opportunity to speak here and would ask that Blake 

Farenthold, a member of my Committee who has been intimately 

involved in the investigation, also be allowed to sit on the dais 

under the same terms as Mr. Schiff. 

Mr. CONYERS. Is he a Member of Congress? 

Mr. ISSA. He is a Member of Congress. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Issa, thank you. 

Mr. ISSA. He is a freshman from Texas. He is impacted by these 

gun control regulations. He is an attorney. 

Mr. SMITH. I understand there is no room right now, but we will 

consider that request in just a minute. As much as I would like to 

have a Texas colleague up at the podium—— 

Mr. ISSA. You got a few, but he is a good one. 

Mr. SMITH. He is not a former Member of the Judiciary Committee, though. We certainly appreciate his expertise on this subject. So let us wait until we have room, and we will take it up at 

that point. 

Mr. ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from Virginia Mr. Scott, the Ranking 

Member of the Crime Subcommittee, is recognized for an opening 

statement. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I join my colleagues 

in welcoming the Attorney General this morning. I understand that 

the invitation to the Attorney General to appear this morning specifically referenced gun trafficking in the southwest border, so 

today we have an opportunity to discuss with him the positive 

steps we must take to protect our citizens from illegal firearms. 

I am heartened that this Attorney General recognizes that the 

smartest and most effective way to protect ourselves from crime is 

to prevent it from occurring in the first place. With respect to preventing firearm violence, there are steps that we can take to reduce 

the toll of the injured and murdered. And there are steps that we 

must take in order to enhance the ability of law enforcement to effectively investigate gun crimes that have already occurred. 

I note, as it is often said around here, that the best strategy to 

use when you are in a hole is to stop digging. Unfortunately this 

Committee approved and the House passed a dangerous bill that 

would override the laws of almost every State by requiring each 

State to accept concealed handgun carry permits—concealed handgun carry permits from other States, even if the permit holder 

would not be allowed to carry or even posses a handgun in his 

home State or the State where he is traveling. Actions like this 

make the hole deeper and do not make us safer. We in Congress 

10 

can best take the steps to help law enforcement prevent and investigate gun violence. 

Specifically with reference to the problem of gun trafficking on 

the southwest border, we know that the rule that went into effect 

in August requiring the reporting of multiple sales of certain assault weapons is an important tool to help law enforcement fight 

the straw purchasing that fuels gun trafficking. Unfortunately, 

while that rule was under consideration, 21 members of this Committee voted last February to prevent funds from being used to implement this important reporting requirement. If that measure had 

been included in the final version, the prohibition against that reporting requirement had been included in the final version of the 

bill, the ATF would not be receiving these reports today, and they 

would be denied information which is helping them investigate suspected straw purchasing. 

The ATF has an important role in protecting us from the dangers 

of illegal use and trafficking of firearms, the illegal use and storing 

of explosives, and acts of arson and bombing. We must make sure 

this agency is capable of fulfilling its important mission, and it 

needs strong leadership. In that light we need to encourage our 

Senate colleagues to confirm the President’s nominee to be Director 

of the ATF. 

Finally, we have learned that we need to give prosecutors a critical additional tool to fight gun trafficking. For example, we need 

a statute that specifically prohibits the transfer of multiple firearms into the hands of those legally ineligible to possess them and 

to those who intend to use them to commit crimes. I hope this 

Committee will take action on legislation in this area in the near 

future. 

These are things we need to do to address the real problem, and 

those who want to focus on Operation Fast and Furious and gunwalking tactics that it employed, I will just note that these tactics 

originated in the ATF investigations under the Bush administration. And a November 16, 2007, memo refers to the fact that socalled gun walking was already occurring in the Bush administration. In contrast, there is no evidence that Attorney General Holder 

knew of these tactics while they were being used, and he should 

be praised for consistently saying that they were unacceptable and 

referring this matter to the inspector general soon after he learned 

about them. 

So I thank the Attorney General for appearing here today, and 

I look forward to his testimony. 

I yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Scott. 

We are pleased to welcome today’s witness, United States Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. On February 3, 2009, Attorney 

General Holder was sworn in as the 82nd Attorney General of the 

United States. 

Attorney General Holder has enjoyed a long and distinguished 

career in public service. First joining the Department through the 

Attorney General’s Honors Program in 1976, he became one the 

Department’s first attorneys to serve in the newly formed Public 

Integrity Section. He went on to serve as a judge of the Superior 

11 

Court of the District of Columbia and a U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. 

In 1997, Mr. Holder was named by President Clinton to be the 

Deputy Attorney General. Prior to becoming Attorney General, Mr. 

Holder was a litigation partner at Covington & Burling, LLP, in 

Washington, D.C. 

Mr. Holder, a native of New York City, is a graduate of Columbia 

University and Columbia Law School. 

Again, we welcome you and look forward to your testimony. 

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman? I would move that the 

witness be sworn. 

Mr. SMITH. I am going to ask that the gentleman withdraw that 

for two reasons. First of all, the Attorney General did receive a letter from the Committee reminding him of the need and, in effect, 

that he is testifying under oath. And two, we don’t need to go 

through that necessarily because that is assumed by anybody who 

does testify before the Committee. 

Mr. ISSA. Point of inquiry, Mr. Chairman. Isn’t it true that a 

false statement to Congress bears a different criminal violation 

than a sworn statement? 

Mr. SMITH. I believe the answer to that is yes. 

Mr. ISSA. Then I would once again ask, since this Committee has 

at times sworn witnesses, as have all the Committees, that in light 

of—— 

Mr. SMITH. If the gentleman would yield. 

Mr. ISSA. Of course. 

Mr. SMITH. I misunderstood the question, and the answer was 

no. So it is deemed as if he is under oath right now, any witness. 

Mr. ISSA. So he is exactly the same as if he swears under our 

rules. 

Mr. SMITH. That is correct. 

Mr. ISSA. Then I withdraw. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. I thank the gentleman. 

If the Attorney General will proceed. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., 

ATTORNEY GENERAL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE 

Attorney General HOLDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Conyers and Members of the 

Committee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today 

to describe the decisive action that we have taken to ensure that 

the flawed tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious and in earlier operations under the prior Administration are never repeated. 

For nearly 3 years I have been privileged to work with this Committee to strengthen national security and to strengthen law enforcement, and I am extremely proud of our record of achievement. 

In offices around the world, the Department’s 117,000 employees 

have made historic progress in protecting the American people 

from a range of unprecedented threats, from global terrorism and 

violent crime to financial fraud, human trafficking and more. We 

have disrupted numerous, potentially devastating terrorist plots 

and successfully prosecuted scores of dangerous terrorists. 

The Department’s efforts on behalf of the most vulnerable among 

us, including victims of civil rights abuses and hate crimes, have 

12 

never been more effective. The partnerships that we have built 

with State, local and tribal law enforcement officials have never 

been stronger. 

Today it is a privilege to be joined by several of our key public 

safety partners. These five police executives, Chief Fred Bealefeld 

of Baltimore, Commissioner Ed Davis of Boston, Chief Rodney 

Monroe of Charlotte, Chief Ralph Godbee of Detroit, and Commissioner Charles Ramsey of Philadelphia, have been leaders in developing and implementing innovative and effective crime-prevention 

strategies. They have also worked closely with the Department in 

advancing critical efforts to reverse the alarming rise in law enforcement fatalities in recent years. 

The work that we do along the southwest border is influenced by 

the efforts that they have undertaken in their own cities. In the cities that they serve and in communities across the country, this 

work is a priority. And in our ongoing efforts to protect the American people and our brave law enforcement personnel, a critical 

area of focus will continue to be our battle against gun violence on 

the southwest border. 

Now, in recent years the Department has devoted significant resources to this fight, and specifically to addressing the unacceptable rate of illegal firearms trafficking from the United States to 

Mexico. Unfortunately, in the pursuit of that laudable goal, unacceptable tactics were adopted as part of Operation Fast and Furious. 

Now, as I have repeatedly stated, allowing guns to walk, whether 

in this Administration or the prior one, is wholly unacceptable. The 

use of this misguided tactic is inexcusable, and it must never happen again. 

Soon after learning about the allegations raised by ATF agents 

involved with Fast and Furious, I took action designed to ensure 

accountability. In February, I asked the Department’s acting inspector general to investigate the matter, and in early March I ordered that a directive be sent to law enforcement agents and prosecutors prohibiting such tactics. More recently the new Acting Director of ATF Todd Jones implemented reforms to prevent these 

tactics from being used in the future, including training and stricter oversight procedures for all significant investigations. 

Now, although the Department has taken steps to ensure that 

such tactics are never used again, it is an unfortunate reality that 

we will continue to feel the effects of this flawed operation for years 

to come. Guns lost during this operation will continue to show up 

at crime scenes on both sides of the border. 

As we work to identify where errors occurred and to ensure that 

these mistakes never happen again, we must not lose sight of the 

critical challenge that this flawed operation has highlighted, and 

that is the battle to stop the flow of guns to Mexico. Of the nearly 

94,000 guns that have been recovered and traced in Mexico in the 

last 5 years, more than 64,000 were sourced to the United States. 

During this time the trafficking of firearms across our southwest 

border has contributed to approximately 40,00 deaths in Mexico. 

Now, the reforms that we have undertaken do not make any of 

the losses of life more bearable for grieving families. These tragedies do, however, portray in very stark terms the exceptionally difVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:08 Sep 11, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\120811\71602.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
13 

ficult challenges that law enforcement agencies confront every day 

in working to disrupt illegal firearms transfers. Operation Fast and 

Furious appears to have been a deeply flawed effort to respond to 

these very challenges. 

As we work to avoid future losses and further mistakes, it is unfortunate that some have used inflammatory and inappropriate 

rhetoric about one particular tragedy that occurred near the southwest border in an effort to score political points. Nearly 1 year ago, 

while working to protect his fellow citizens, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent Brian Terry was violently murdered in Arizona. We all should feel outrage about his death. And as I have 

communicated directly to Agent Terry’s family, we are dedicated to 

pursuing justice on his behalf. 

The Department is also working to answer questions that the 

Terry family has raised, including whether and how firearms connected to Fast and Furious end up with Mexican drug cartels. In 

her independent review I expect the Department’s acting inspector 

general to answer these questions. 

I understand that Congress also wants answers. Justice Department employees have been working tirelessly to identify, to locate 

and to provide relevant information to this Committee and to the 

two other Committees that are investigating Fast and Furious, all 

while preserving the integrity of our ongoing criminal investigations and prosecutions. 

The Department has been fully cooperative and responsive in its 

dealings with this Congress. I have answered questions in the 

House and the Senate on four occasions concerning this matter. To 

date we have provided almost 5,000 pages of documents for congressional investigators to review. We have scheduled numerous 

witness interviews and testified at public hearings. Just last week 

we provided an unprecedented access to internal deliberative documents to explain how inaccurate information was initially conveyed 

to Congress. 

Now, these documents demonstrate Justice Department personnel relied on information provided by supervisors from the components in the best position to know the relevant facts. We now 

know that some information provided by those supervisors was inaccurate. I understand that in subsequent interviews with congressional investigators, these supervisors have stated that they did 

not know at the time that information provided in the letter to congressional leaders earlier this year was inaccurate. 

The documents produced to date also belie the remarkable notion 

that this operation was conceived by Department leaders, as some 

have claimed. It is my understanding that Department leaders 

were not informed about the in appropriate tactics employed in this 

operation until those tactics were made public and, as is customary, turned to those with supervisory responsibility over the operation in an effort to learn facts. 

But what is clear is that disrupting the dangerous flow of firearms along the southwest border and putting an end to the violence that has claimed far too many lives is, and will continue to 

be, a top priority for this Department of Justice. This year alone 

we have led successful investigation into the murders of United 

States citizens in Mexico, created new cartel-targeting prosecuVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:08 Sep 11, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\120811\71602.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
14 

torial units, and secured the extradition of more than 100 defendants wanted by the United States law enforcement, including the 

former head of the Tijuana cartel. 

We have also built crime-fighting capacity on both sides of the 

border by developing new procedures. We are using evidence gathered in Mexico to prosecute gun traffickers in U.S. courts by training thousands of Mexican prosecutors and investigators, by successfully fighting to enhancing sentencing guidelines for convicted traffickers and straw purchasers, and by pursuing coordinated multidistrict investigations of gun-trafficking rings. 

Now, despite this progress we have more to do. Each of us has 

a duty to act and to rise above partisan divisions and politically 

motivated ‘‘gotcha’’ games. The American people deserve better. It 

is time for a new dialog about these important issues, one that is 

respectful, responsible and factual. This will require us to apply the 

lessons that we have learned from law enforcement officers like the 

ones who sit behind me today, who protect public safety and our 

national security every day. 

In that regard not only did ATF agents bring the inappropriate 

and misguided tactics of Operation Fast and Furious to light, they 

also sounded the alarm for more effective laws to combat gun trafficking and improve public safety. The ATF agents who testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 

this summer explained that the agency’s ability to stem the flow 

of guns from the United States into Mexico suffers from a lack of 

effective enforcement tools. 

One critical first step should be for Congress to provide ATF with 

the tools and the authorities that it needs. Unfortunately, earlier 

this year the majority of House Members voted to keep law enforcement in the dark when individuals purchase multiple semiautomatic rifles, shotguns and long guns like AK-47s in gun shops in 

four Southwest Border States. 

Going forward, I hope that we can work together to provide law 

enforcement agents with the tools that they desperately need to 

protect the country and to ensure their own safety. And for their 

sake we cannot afford to allow the tragic mistakes of Operation 

Fast and Furious to become a political sideshow or a series of 

media opportunities. Instead we must move forward and recommit 

ourselves to shared public safety obligations. I am willing to work 

with you in this effort. 

I look forward to your questions. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Attorney General. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Holder follows:] 

15 


Holder-1.eps
16 


Holder-2.eps
17 


Holder-3.eps
18 

Mr. SMITH. Other Members are going to ask you about Fast and 

Furious, so I am going to pick a different subject and ask you about 

the extent of Justice Kagan’s involvement with the health care legislation. 


Holder-4.eps
19 

My first question is this: To your knowledge, did then-Solicitor 

General Kagan ever give advice or express an opinion on legal or 

constitutional issues involving the health care legislation? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I do not believe so. In fact, as I testified in the Senate last month, I guess, we took steps to physically 

exclude or have her remove what conversations—— 

Mr. SMITH. What month did that take place? When did you start 

excluding her from those types of meetings? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am not sure when that started, but 

my memory is that whenever we had conversations about the 

health care bill, then-Solicitor General Kagan was not present. 

Mr. SMITH. And the reason for excluding her was because of her 

possible consideration for the Supreme Court? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yeah, I think that is right. We understood that that was a possibility. 

Mr. SMITH. She testified that she first became aware of that possibility that she might be considered in early March, so you would 

not have excluded her prior to early March. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Again, I don’t know exactly when 

these events occurred, but I do feel comfortable in saying that in 

terms of conversations that occurred in my conference room about 

the health care legislation—— 

Mr. SMITH. Right, right. But would you have had any reason to 

exclude her, any reason to wall her off in the words that you were 

told by a deputy prior to the time that she was considered for the 

Supreme Court? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I can tell you that with regard 

to, as I said, the conversations that occurred in my conference room 

about the health care bill, I do not remember her being present for 

any of them. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. Would you be able to check your records to 

find out what the date would have been when you started telling 

her that she should either excuse or recuse herself from those discussions? 

Attorney General HOLDER. We will attempt to do that. I am not 

sure that that information exists anyplace, but to the extent that 

it does, I will provide it to you. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. And would you have a record of any meetings, 

because of your schedule, that she attended? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Would I have a record? 

Mr. SMITH. Right, of any meeting that she attended. Because if 

you went back and looked at your schedule, I assume that that 

would be on your schedule. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yeah. The schedule for what is our 9/ 

15 meeting lists the people who are expected to be there. I am not 

sure if we actually keep track of who actually does come. 

Mr. SMITH. If you will give me the dates when you started telling 

her that. Again, I don’t believe you would have any reason to exclude her before she was being considered for the Supreme Court 

vacancy. And as I mentioned in my opening statement, she would 

actually have a duty to be involved in conversations regarding the 

health care bill. 

Let me go to another question. This goes to some of the correspondence that I had written you asking for documents and to be 

20 

allowed to interview both present and former staff members. But 

is the Department asserting a legal privilege in refusing to comply 

with my request for those documents and those interviews about 

then-Solicitor General Kagan’s involvement with the health care 

legislation? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well—— 

Mr. SMITH. You know your letter to me did not assert any legal 

privilege. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yeah. The Department has released 

documents under FOIA relating to this matter, and those documents are certainly available to Members of the Committee. The 

documents that we have released are consistent with—— 

Mr. SMITH. I am not asking about the documents. Are you asserting a legal privilege; is that why you are refusing to give me those 

documents? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, it is our view that in terms of 

trying to determine the answers to the questions that you have, 

that with regard to recusal questions, those are requests best 

brought by those who were involved in the context of the litigation. 

Mr. SMITH. Right. So you are not asserting any legal privilege. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, there are, it seems to me, separation of powers concerns given the fact that Members of Congress 

are amici—amicus, amici in the ongoing legislation, and so I would 

have concerns there with regard to separation of powers. 

Mr. SMITH. What would be the legal privilege you are asserting 

if you assert one then? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, all I am saying is that with regard to the information that is requested, it has been provided. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. So again, you are not asserting a legal privilege. Is there any reason, therefore, I should not get the documents 

or be able to interview the individuals that I requested to interview? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, as I have said, that the Federal 

law provides for the resolution of these recusal questions, and each 

Justice has to make those kinds of—— 

Mr. SMITH. Right. I am not taking about recusal questions or 

what a Supreme Court Justice might or might not do. I am talking 

about my request for documents. I can’t imagine any good reason 

why you would withhold them, unless you were to assert a legal 

privilege, and then we could discuss a legal privilege. But I haven’t 

heard you say you are asserting any legal privilege. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, the documents I think that you 

have requested have essentially been released under a FOIA that 

has been filed, and those documents are available. 

Mr. SMITH. No, the documents that I requested may or may not 

have been released. That is what we are trying to find out is what 

other documents might exist. We also requested to interview two 

individuals, and you have not agreed to let us interview those individuals. But if you are not asserting a legal privilege, then I will 

move forward with scheduling those interviews and look forward to 

the documents. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, we have not expressed, I guess, 

at this point a legal privilege. What we have expressed, as I indiVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:08 Sep 11, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\120811\71602.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
21 

cated before, are constitutional concerns about the nature of the request. 

Mr. SMITH. I know, but concerns don’t rise to the level of a legal 

privilege. We all have concerns about a lot of subjects. I have expressed some of my concerns today. But if you are not going to assert a legal privilege, then I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t 

get those documents and conduct those interviews. Thank you for 

that. 

The gentleman from Michigan Mr. Conyers is recognized for his 

questions. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

You have got here Chief Ralph Godbee, lots of other police chiefs 

and law enforcement people behind you. Would you tell us how you 

partner with them to fight violent crime and particularly gun running with State and local police officers who are on the front lines, 

sir? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, the gentlemen who sit behind 

me and the people who they represent are essential partners in our 

fight against violent crime generally and against gun violence in 

particular. 

The Federal Government relies on our State and local partners, 

who are obviously in the front lines in this fight. We try to support 

them in ways that we can, we try to come up with programs that 

protect their lives, but the reality is that in coming up with—and 

that is why I think these five gentlemen are so good to have here 

today. They are the ones who have come up with really innovative 

programs that we have tried to support and then tried to expand 

across the Nation. They are, first and foremost, great partners in 

this fight, and what they are doing in their cities are things that 

we are trying to replicate not only in other cities, but in the work 

that we are doing along the southwest border as well. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you. 

Tell me where is the Mexican Government in all of this gun running, and violence, and drug epidemics that goes on that usually 

starts in Mexico, but eventually gets to the U.S. and Southwest 

area? What is the Mexican Government’s role and attitude? How 

do you work with them? 

Attorney General HOLDER. They have also been good partners. 

President Calderon has, I think very courageously, committed his 

government to fight the cartels. He has done so in a way that has 

done, I think, at great political cost. It has certainly cost the lives 

of many Mexican law enforcement officials who have been a part 

of this battle. Forty thousand people in Mexico have lost their lives 

over the course of the last 5 years in connection with this fight. 

The Mexican Government is committed to eradicating the cartels. 

We have worked with them in unprecedented ways in terms of extraditing people to the United States in cooperation, in sharing intelligence, and working with vetted units in Mexico. We have 

moved resources to the southwest border and have linked up with 

task forces with our Mexican partners. 

So our interaction with the Mexican Government in dealing with 

these cartels is really unprecedented. 

Mr. CONYERS. Well, I mentioned several things that we really 

ought to do in terms of getting on top of not just the drug—the gun 

22 

smuggling and gun walking, but the drug problem as well. And you 

are our chief law enforcement officer in the Nation. I know you are 

relying on State and local law enforcement as well, but what are 

the big issues? What is the big picture in terms of what it is we 

might want to consider in the Congress to help get on top of this 

and to help you and the Department of Justice get on top of not 

only the drugs, but the guns as well? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I think there are certain things 

that would be very helpful. There is no gun-trafficking statute now 

or even an express prohibition on straw purchasing. If Congress 

would consider legislation in that regard, I think that would be— 

that would be good. We have to rely now on paperwork violations 

to try to get at gun traffickers, and the sentences that are typically 

given for those kinds of technical violations are far too low for the 

serious nature of the crimes. 

It is far too easy for criminals to get their hands on weapons. 

Congressional support for the regulation that we put in place along 

those—in those four Border States to deal with the long guns, the 

long guns that can be purchased there, a regulation that is consistent with what we already do with regard to handguns is something that congressional support would be important for. 

So the possibility of having ways in which we could have a good 

dialogue about effective measures that would reduce the flow of 

guns to Mexico, make this Nation more safe, protect the lives of 

people in law enforcement in this country, and respect the Second 

Amendment at the same time is something that I think a meaningful good dialogue with Members of the Committee would be very 

productive. 

Mr. CONYERS. I am glad you mentioned the Second Amendment 

so that my friend and colleague Darrell Issa won’t be nervous 

about the other strategies that you will be using. 

Mr. ISSA. I will still be nervous. 

Mr. CONYERS. I thank you very much, General Holder, and I return the balance of my time. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Conyers. 

The gentleman from Wisconsin Mr. Sensenbrenner is recognized 

for his questions. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Holder, I deeply appreciate your coming here to talk largely 

about Fast and Furious, and the way this has been handled within 

the Justice Department, I think, has put the Justice Department 

as an institution under a cloud that has not been exceeded since 

the infamous COINTELPRO scandal of the 1970’s. 

You are at the top of the Justice Department. Do you think the 

buck stops with you? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am ultimately responsible for all of 

the actions that occur within the Department, but I think as you 

look at what happened with regard to Fast and Furious and try to 

decide what kind of performance I have done in this regard, I think 

you have to look at what happened, what I did once I learned of 

these matters. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Well, that is a question of when you 

learned it, because there have been inconsistent submissions to 

Congress. You know, you yourself testified that you had only heard 

23 

about it a few weeks earlier, and then in November you said it 

probably was a few months. As late as October 7, in response to 

allegations that you lied on May 3, you wrote to Congress your 

statements on Fast and Furious have been, quote, ‘‘truthful and 

consistent.’’ And then your underlings on February 4, Assistant AG 

Ronald Weich, responded to Senator Grassley denying that the 

ATF had walked guns, and that letter ended up being withdrawn. 

As Mr. Issa has said, lying to Congress is a Federal felony. You 

know, I don’t want to say that you have committed a felony, Mr. 

Attorney General, but obviously there have been statements so 

misleading that a letter had to be withdrawn. 

You know, I think that some heads should roll. And I do agree 

with Senator Grassley that Assistant Attorney General for the 

Criminal Division Lanny Breuer should be fired. And I know that 

that decision is not yours, but it is the President’s, but I think that 

merely getting the head of the ATF Director at the time is not sufficient since it is obvious that there was knowledge within the Justice Department. 

What are you going to do to clean up this mess? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, first let me make something 

very clear, and in response to an assertion that you made, or hinted at, nobody in the Justice Department has lied. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Then why was the letter withdrawn? 

Attorney General HOLDER. The letter was withdrawn because 

there is information in there that was inaccurate. The Justice Department letter of February 4—— 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Okay. Well, tell me what is the difference 

between lying and misleading Congress in this context. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, if you want to have this legal 

conversation, it all has to do with your state of mind and whether 

or not you had the requisite intent to come up with something that 

can be considered perjury or a lie. 

The information that was provided in that February 4 letter was 

gleaned by the people who drafted the letter after they interacted 

with people who they thought were in the best position to have the 

information. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Well, okay. The wagons down the street 

are in a pretty tight circle, you know, Mr. Attorney General. The 

American people need the truth. They haven’t gotten the truth 

from what has been coming out of the Justice Department in the 

last year, and they were relying on Congress to get the truth. Now, 

you are here today, and, again, I appreciate your being here today 

as a way to get the truth, but the answers that you have given so 

far are basically saying, well, gee, somebody else did it, and, you 

know, there is really no responsibility within the Justice Department. 

You know, the thing is is that if we don’t get to the bottom of 

this, and that requires your assistance on that, there is only one 

alternative that Congress has, and it is called impeachment, where 

our subpoena powers are plenary, and there can’t be any type of 

legal immunity or privilege that can be asserted on that. Now, you 

know, I have done more impeachments than anybody else in the 

history of the country. It is an expensive and messy affair, and I 

don’t want to go this far, but if we keep getting pushed down the 

24 

road, and the can keeps on getting kicked, and we don’t get closure 

to this, what is Congress to do so that we don’t spend all of our 

time in court arguing privilege, which is not a way to get at the 

truth? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, the Justice Department has released facts, and I think that is what we need to focus on, facts. 

As part of the creation of the February 4 letter, I made the determination that we would release things that a Justice Department 

has never, ever released before, deliberative—core deliberative material about how that letter was put together, information that 

clearly could have been withheld and has always been withheld by 

my predecessors, and I expect by my successors as well. 

Getting to the bottom of this is something that we all want to 

do. The inspector general, pursuant to my request, is conducting an 

investigation of this matter, and I suspect we will have a great 

many more answers than we presently do. I don’t have the ability 

to do a top-to-bottom investigation at this point out of deference to 

the investigation that is being done by the inspector general. That 

does not, however, preclude me from taking action that I think appropriate based on information that comes to my attention in spite 

of the fact that the inspector general has an ongoing investigation. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Well, you won’t have an independent counsel, and we end up having the Justice Department investigating 

itself in the absence of an independent counsel. And, you know, 

having gone through interminable hearings on COINTELPRO, with 

all due respect, Mr. Attorney General, you have got to get this done 

much more quickly than plugging the holes that COINTELPRO 

ended up showing existed in the Department at that time. 

I yield back. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry. 

Mr. SMITH. For what reason what does the gentlewoman from 

Texas seek to be—— 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I seek clarification. The gentleman in his 

questioning indicated impeachment. I was not sure which official or 

which person he was speaking of in terms of impeachment. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from Wisconsin was referring to the 

fact that while he was Chairman of this Committee, he oversaw the 

impeachment process. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Continuing my inquiry. The statement that 

the only one alternative is impeachment, I am trying to—— 

Mr. SMITH. That is not a parliamentary inquiry. 

The gentleman from California Mr. Berman is recognized. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Clarification. 

Mr. BERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to yield a 

little time to the Ranking Member on this issue. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you, Howard Berman. 

I merely wanted to clear the record with Jim Sensenbrenner. I 

have had far more impeachment experience than he has. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. BERMAN. The answer is only if the Chairman allows my time 

to be extended. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from California recognized for a full 

5 minutes, that is correct. 

25 

Mr. BERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

We have heard a lot, some of it quite unbelievably overblown. I 

would like to give you some of the truth as I see it. 

You are on record as admitting that the Fast and Furious program was a fundamentally flawed program. Fast and Furious is 

only one program in many undertaken by the U.S. law enforcement 

authorities not only to limit the harm of illegal gun trafficking, but 

also, most importantly, achieve the broader goal of protecting U.S. 

and Mexican citizens. 

There has got to be a little perspective on what is going on in 

the U.S.-Mexico relationship on this issue. Once President 

Calderon made the historic decision to take the fight directly to the 

drug cartels, law enforcement both in Mexico and the United 

States became more complicated and more dangerous. And the fact 

is—and I see it from a Foreign Affairs Committee perspective as 

well as from this perspective—that U.S.-Mexico law enforcement 

cooperation and general cooperation is wider and deeper today than 

it has ever been in the history of our two nations. 

The Department of Justice has apprehended and extradited an 

unprecedented number of criminals, including some of the most 

dangerous cartel leaders. They have successfully investigated violent crimes committed against American nationals in Mexico and 

along the border. They have trained hundreds of Mexican prosecutors and police officers, many of whom work side by side with U.S. 

counterparts on these shared goals. The level of intelligence sharing and cooperation is unprecedented at this particular time. 

We also have to acknowledge the negative impact caused by the 

significant stream of guns going into Mexico from the United 

States. Every day thousands of guns are smuggled across the 

United States border into Mexico, making citizens of Mexico and 

the United States less safe. The U.S. Southwest Border States, 

Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, are the top four source 

locations for firearms received and traced in Mexico back to the 

United States. 

General Holder, I am wondering if you could develop—I think 

you got into this a little bit with Ranking Member Conyers—what 

could the Congress be doing in terms of funding, in terms of passing laws to help make this a successful endeavor? I would like you 

to just expand on some of those specific issues. Are we giving you 

the resources you need to make this cooperation produce the goal 

that both countries’ governments share? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, frankly, no. 

We have sought additional legislative enhancements to our abilities to deal with the gun trafficking problem, as I indicated to the 

Ranking Member. We have also sought funds to increase the number of ATF agents who operate in these teams along the Southwest 

border. I think we requested funds so that we would have 14 of 

these teams. That number was reduced, based on the funding level 

that we got, to about seven or eight, I believe, which decreased our 

ability to act or interact effectively or as effectively as we might 

with our Mexican counterparts. 

So there are funding issues, there are issues with regard to the 

confirmation of an ATF Director, a permanent ATF Director. There 

are legislative statutory tools that we could use from Congress and 

26 

that we have proposed. All of these things would help us in our 

fight against the gun trafficking problem that you have I think so 

rightfully identified. 

Mr. BERMAN. The only thing I guess I would just close with the 

simple statement that as we pursue responsibly our oversight responsibilities on a program that you have stated was fundamentally flawed, that we keep in mind our obligations as a Congress 

to help something that I think there is a broad consensus must 

continue, must expand, and must achieve the goals that our two 

governments are committed to, and to have some perspective on 

what is going on. That perspective seems to have been lost in some 

of the rhetoric that has come in recent months. 

Mr. ISSA. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. BERMAN. I yield back. 

Mr. ISSA. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. BERMAN. Do I have time to yield? 

Mr. ISSA. You do. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman has 5 seconds left. 

Mr. BERMAN. I yield. 

Mr. ISSA. I would just make the point that Fast and Furious is 

not a program. We have been repeatedly told it is less than a program; it is just an operation, just an operation. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman is recognized for an additional 30 seconds. 

Mr. BERMAN. I take your point. I just don’t quite understand it. 

Mr. ISSA. Just that when we try to—— 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from California has the time. 

Mr. ISSA. Would the gentleman continue to yield? 

I thank the gentleman. The point that I am making is there is 

a wide question of a lot of things that go on at Justice. And I agree 

with the gentleman that we need to look at the overall management of Justice. But this small operation and the refusal to give 

us the truth early on has caused it to be a bigger—— 

Mr. BERMAN. I appreciate the time. I also would love to hear 

about Congress’ agenda to make this cooperation truly as effective 

as it could be, funding, the legislation regarding the paper trail on 

guns and all the other things that the General mentioned that we 

should be doing. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Berman. 

The Judiciary Committee will stand in recess until immediately 

after this series of four votes. I do not expect to take a lunch break. 

So when we return, we will proceed until the next series of votes, 

about 1:15. We stand in recess until after these votes. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. SMITH. The Judiciary Committee will come to order. And the 

gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Coble, is recognized for his 

questions. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Good morning, General. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Good morning. 

Mr. COBLE. General, the FBI, as you know, operates under Attorney General guidelines for most or all of their investigative activities. The objective of these guidelines is the full utilization of all 

authorities in investigative matters consistent with the ConstituVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:08 Sep 11, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\120811\71602.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
27 

tion and the laws of the United States. It furthermore ensures that 

activities must be lawful and reasonable, and respect liberty and 

privacy, and avoid unnecessary intrusion into the lives of law-abiding citizens. They enable the FBI to perform its duties with effectiveness, certainty, and confidence. The purpose of these guidelines, 

though it appears apparent, is to establish consistent policies in 

such matters. General, does the ATF and/or other Department of 

Justice law enforcement components operate under these guidelines? 

Attorney General HOLDER. There are general guidelines that 

exist within the Department and that control the activities of the 

various investigative agencies that are part of the Department, the 

Marshals Service the DEA, the ATF, and the FBI. There might be 

some that apply specifically to the FBI given its unique mission 

with regard to counterterrorism and intelligence that might not 

apply to the other components. 

Mr. COBLE. I think you may have already answered this one, but 

are the guidelines identical investigative activities, or may one 

agency do something that another cannot do under similar circumstances? And if they differ, how do they differ from the guidelines under which the FBI operates? 

Attorney General HOLDER. There are general guidelines that 

handle or control the way in which investigations are to occur. For 

instance, if we are looking at Fast and Furious, those were outside 

the guidelines certainly that apply to ATF, but they would also be 

outside the guidelines that would apply to the Drug Enforcement 

Administration, to the FBI as well. One of the things that we have 

tried to do in this reform of ATF, and under the leadership of Todd 

Jones, is come up with a whole set of new policy changes and recommendation—and rules with regards to how ATF itself can handle and conduct certain investigations. 

Mr. COBLE. General, if I would have had two words to describe 

Fast and Furious, it would be reckless at best, and a disaster at 

worst. But firearms, I am told, sold under the Fast and Furious 

program were included in ATF statistics on the retail sale of firearms and related regulations. Now that we know that ATF apparently skewed the statistics, particularly about long gun sales, will 

these statistics be scrapped or abandoned? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I don’t if that in fact is true, but the 

2,000 weapons or so that were involved in Fast and Furious should 

not be counted as part of that overall number. And to the extent 

that that is true, we would pull—I don’t know if that is true or not. 

Mr. COBLE. General, have you implemented any policy to end 

programs such as Fast and Furious? And these changes, are they 

permanent or temporary? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, as I said, in addition to the 

things that Todd Jones has put in place that deals with certainly 

the problems that are I think most egregious about ATF, he talks 

about the way in which surveillance has to occur when you are 

monitoring trafficking, gun trafficking operations, I released in 

March of this year a field directive through the Deputy Attorney 

General that indicated that gun walking, as we have come to call 

that practice, is prohibited, and made sure that every agent in the 

Justice Department, every prosecutor in the Justice Department 

28 

understands that. So it is clear that gun walking is not acceptable, 

was never acceptable, but is certainly not acceptable after my policy pronouncement in March of this year. 

Mr. COBLE. General Holder, earlier this year, August, I believe, 

you named Todd Jones as the new director of ATF. This appears 

irregular because he currently continues to serve as U.S. Attorney 

for that area in Minnesota, while at the same time—he is wearing 

two hats, in other words. Am I missing the mark, or is this irregular? 

Attorney General HOLDER. It is irregular. I mean, we have a 

nominee, a very qualified person who could be the head of ATF. I 

thought a management change was necessary at ATF. And in the 

absence of a confirmed head, I had to go with who I thought was 

best for the organization. Todd is a very experienced prosecutor. He 

is a great U.S. Attorney. 

But you are right; he is in fact wearing two hats. He is working 

extremely hard. But I think he has made meaningful changes at 

ATF. He has lifted morale. He has put in place a set of regulations 

that would prevent the mistakes from the flawed Fast and Furious 

operation I think from ever occurring again. But you are right, it 

is irregular. And given my druthers, I would rather have a confirmed, permanent head at ATF. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, General. 

I see my red light has illuminated, so I will yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Coble. 

Another gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Watt, is recognized 

for his questions. 

Mr. WATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And Mr. Chairman, I had hoped the way my colleague from 

North Carolina started his questioning, that we were going to treat 

this as a general oversight hearing, which is the way my memo 

said it was going to be, rather than an inquiry into one single subject. So I want to spend my time asking about some other things 

unrelated to Fast and Furious, because there are a number of other 

important things going on in life. 

And some of those things the Attorney General and his staff 

have made tremendously good decisions about. One of those is to 

have all these police chiefs sitting behind you today, one of whom 

is from my hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. And for the 

Members on the Democratic side at least, they will certainly get to 

know Chief Rodney Monroe when they come to Charlotte for the 

Democratic National Convention. So I want to applaud the work 

that he is doing to prepare us for that significant national event. 

Perhaps the police chief from Tampa is behind you also—I don’t 

know him—he will be doing that counterpart work for the Republicans at the Republican National Convention. But that is a massive, massive undertaking. 

And I know that the Attorney General’s Office, the Department 

of Justice, Secret Service, all of the Federal authorities are working 

well, based on everything I have heard, to prepare for those big security events. And I want to say publicly how much I applaud that. 

Second, there are a number of things going on on an issue that 

we are dealing with or trying to deal with in this Committee dealing with online piracy. And we have some proposed legislation. I 

29 

won’t ask you to comment on that. But I would ask you to comment 

briefly on the extent of the problem and briefly on what the Department of Justice is doing to try to combat online privacy until 

we can get the bill passed. And I say comment briefly, because I 

have got one other subject that I want to get to related to redistricting, and voter suppression, and the preclearance process under 

the Voting Rights Act. Perhaps those issues, voter suppression in 

particular, may not be as important to some of my colleagues on 

this Committee as Fast and Furious and guns, but for a number 

of people in this country who would like to have the opportunity 

to vote, they are very serious issues. 

So why don’t I just ask you to comment on what is happening 

in both of those areas, online piracy and the voter suppression, redistricting, and preclearance process. 

Attorney General HOLDER. We have been, I think, very aggressive with regard to our law enforcement efforts concerning intellectual property concerns. In February 2010, I established the Department’s task force on intellectual property. I traveled to China I 

guess sometime last year, was at the White House I think 2 weeks 

or so ago to announce a program where I cut some radio spots, in 

addition to television spots that were done by others to talk about 

the whole question of piracy. And I think we have to understand 

the significance of it. It is a moral and legal problem there, but it 

is also a job killer. When things like intellectual property are stolen 

by other countries, by other people in this country, inappropriately, 

it costs jobs. It inhibits creativity. And so we have looked at it in 

a variety of ways. 

I work with Victoria Espinel, who heads up the White House effort in this regard. And this is a priority item for us. I would certainly like to work with you with regard to the bill that you mentioned and see if we can come up with a way in which we put more 

teeth into our enforcement efforts. With regard to the whole question of voter suppression and challenges, we have filed a number 

of lawsuits with regard to changes under covered districts covered 

by the Voting Rights Act. I actually will be giving a speech at the 

LBJ Library on Monday and talking about this in a more fulsome 

way. 

The Justice Department has the responsibility under the Voting 

Rights Act to look at proposed changes in voting schemes that are 

in areas covered by the Voting Rights Act. And there is only so 

much I can say there because we have to act in a neutral way or 

almost act as judges in that regard. I can tell you, though, that I 

am concerned about some of the things that I have seen, without 

getting into specifics about any one. I was a prosecutor in the public integrity section, and I actually investigated and prosecuted 

voter fraud cases when I was a young prosecutor. And I am concerned that some of these changes go far beyond that which exists 

in terms of vote fraud. I think we need to have some kind of notion 

of proportionality. And the arc that we have seen over the course 

of this country has always been to increase the number of people 

who have the ability to vote, whether it is, you know, after the 

Civil War, the enfranchisement of women, we have always tried to 

make it easier. And I am concerned that these recent efforts are 

going to have a negative impact. And I think ultimately that is not 

30 

good for our democracy. We want as many people as we can to have 

their voices heard in the most important way, and that is by casting votes. 

Mr. WATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Watt. 

The gentleman from California, Mr. Gallegly, is recognized. 

Mr. GALLEGLY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Good morning, General Holder. You know, General, I continue to 

hear from ICE agents, from many ICE agents, that they are frustrated that they have had significant difficulty with U.S. Attorneys 

prosecuting work site enforcement cases. Can you give us specific, 

and I want to emphasize the word specific, data regarding the 

number of prosecutions DOJ have accepted and how many they 

have declined? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, if you allow me to respond to 

that after the hearing in a written fashion, I am sure I can come 

up with some numbers. But I don’t have those numbers. 

Mr. GALLEGLY. I can completely understand that. But I would, 

for the sake of the record of this hearing, appreciate that information as soon as you can get it to us. 

As everyone clearly understands, welfare fraud is playing a 

major role in our ability to continue providing service, the level of 

service that is necessary in Medicare, and the fact that fraud is 

playing a significant threat as it relates to the solvency of that 

fund. There have been several estimates that exceed well in excess 

of $60 billion annually in fraud. And I am sure you are aware of 

that. 

There is also evidence that organized crime, including gangs 

from Russia and other Eastern European countries and other 

places as well, that they are finding that filing fraudulent claims 

is a fast and quick way to make a lot of money. And most of that 

money is going offshore. Can you give us any detail as to what DOJ 

is doing in prosecuting these offenders and working with local law 

enforcement? I have met with my local people in the Los Angeles 

area. They are very frustrated. How much effort is really being put 

into it, and what success are you having with dealing with the 

issue of Medicare fraud? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Congressman, you are right to point 

that out as an issue that is of great concern. It is one that we have 

tried to focus our attention on. We work with our partners at HHS. 

Secretary of HHS Sebelius and I have been to a number of places 

to raise the consciousness of local officials, work with our Federal 

partners to deal with this problem. It is a multibillion dollar issue. 

And given the problems that we have with the solvency of those 

programs, this is a problem that we have to get a handle on. We 

have put together what we call the HEAT task forces around the 

country. I think we are in about 13 cities now. I think that is about 

right. And that is the way in which we identify the places where 

we see the greatest amount of fraud. We then deploy these task 

forces to those places. Interestingly, they proved to be pretty effective. But the problem is the fraudsters tend to move from that site 

and go to another city. 

31 

But the concern you raise is a very real one. And it is something 

that we have to pay attention to and for which I hope we will receive adequate funding, both at HHS and at DOJ. 

Mr. GALLEGLY. I appreciate the assessment that many of these 

are moving onto other cities. But I am sure it won’t come as any 

news flash that that isn’t necessarily the case in areas like Los Angeles. They may move, but it may be across the street or into another pigeon hole where millions and millions of prescriptions are 

filled, or never filled, in storefronts that have maybe 150 square 

feet in them that is providing so-called Medicare benefit or Medicare recipients in the thousands. So how would you describe the 

level of success you feel that you are having with resolutions to 

these folks that you are after? How many are you really—for instance, in Los Angeles how many major rings have you been able 

to shut down and put in jail? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Again, I would have to maybe provide 

you with some specific information after the hearing with regard 

to how successful we have been in Los Angeles. But I think the 

way in which you have described the issue, and as these intracity 

moves, moving from one place in Los Angeles to another place, this 

notion of storefronts exactly describes the problem, where people 

come in for—allegedly come in for services that aren’t rendered, 

and the government is billed for them, everything from blood transfusions to the use of prosthetics. There are a whole variety of 

scams that are used. And the way in which you have described it, 

especially with regard to storefronts in these strip malls, I mean, 

those are the kinds of things that we are trying to confront. I will 

get you the information about—— 

Mr. GALLEGLY. If you would be kind enough to get us information. I would like some specificity as it relates to durables, prescriptions, and things such as mammograms to people that are repeatedly received as many as three and four mammograms in 1 week. 

I see my time has expired. Yield back. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I would just say you identified something that really has to be a priority for the Justice Department. 

And I hope that Congress will support our funding request and 

HHS’s funding request. The money that we spend in these enforcement efforts, we save huge amounts of money down the road by 

just investing relatively small amounts of money in prevention and 

enforcement. It makes the programs that much more financially 

stable. 

Mr. GALLEGLY. I look forward to seeing the data. 

And I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Gallegly. 

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. SMITH. For what purpose does the gentleman from California 

seek recognition? 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to renew my request that Mr. Farenthold be able to 

sit on the dais. Apparently, Mr. Schiff has left—Mr. Schiff is there, 

but we have a number of seats that are vacant on this side. And 

since he won’t be asking questions, any position would normally be 

fine. 

32 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Issa, I talked to the gentleman from Texas, and 

actually, I was just getting ready to recognize him. And he has requested, and I want to recognize the gentleman from Texas, my colleague, Blake Farenthold, who is an active member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. And he is sitting on the 

front row. 

Blake, give us a wave. 

And appreciate his being here. And he is, I think, happy to observe the Committee from where he is sitting. 

Mr. ISSA. He looks better on the dais, though, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

Mr. ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. 

The gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee, is recognized for 

her questions. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and to 

the Ranking Member, for the opportunity. 

Mr. Attorney General, let me first of all thank you for your service and thank those who are sitting so prominently behind you. I 

work with chiefs of police as a former judge in my community. I 

think my former mayor, Mayor Lee P. Brown was a drug czar, but 

he was also the head of the Major Chiefs Association. He had the 

uncanny ability of being mayor and chiefs of police in New York, 

Houston, and Atlanta. And I notice our good friend that was formerly the police chief here in the city—the District of Columbia has 

now moved onto Philadelphia. But I was looking at the timeline, 

and this will not be my total lineage of questioning, but I was looking at the timeline of operation Fast and Furious. Could you tell 

me when you were sworn in as the Attorney General of the United 

States of America? 

Attorney General HOLDER. In February of 2009. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And I noticed that the ATF launched Project 

Gunrunner in 2005. Were you in the Justice Department in 2005? 

I don’t recollect that you were. 

Attorney General HOLDER. No, I wasn’t. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. So this is an ongoing program that started in 

essence under the Bush administration? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, Gunrunner started under the 

Bush administration, and Wide Receiver started under the Bush 

administration. Fast and Furious started under—during the 

Obama administration. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And then there was some morphing. It is sort 

of a continuity of sorts, because I think they had sort of the same 

intent, if I am not mistaken. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Right. Operations with the same aim, 

which was designed to stop the flow of guns from the United States 

to Mexico. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I am looking at some news articles. And I am 

reading some numbers that are absolutely overwhelming. And one 

number says that nearly 40,000 have been killed in gangland drug 

warfare. Is that a crisis from your perspective? 

Attorney General HOLDER. It is a crisis of immense proportions. 

These are 40,000 people killed in Mexico over the last 5 years. But 

it is a national security concern for the United States of America. 

33 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And I think you made it very clear that the 

horrific infractions, failings of Fast and Furious, you are doggedly, 

along with the IG, on the process, doggedly pointing and looking 

to investigate what the flaws may have been. 

Attorney General HOLDER. That is correct. I have described it as 

a flawed investigation, flawed in concept, flawed in execution. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. You made the record very clear. 

Attorney General HOLDER. It is something that—where mistakes 

were made. And we have to find out where those mistakes were 

made. And then I am going to hold people accountable in that regard. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And likewise, we have offered our sympathy 

to any fallen officer, but in particular to our fallen officer that was 

murdered in Arizona. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Officer Terry. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And I offer, as well as we did when we lost 

an officer that suffered in the Customs and Border, in the incident 

in Mexico that happened as well, that was an issue that we confronted on the Homeland Security Committee. 

I just want to make sure I offer into the record, you mentioned 

what we can do in terms of no national gun trafficking law, and 

I would ask the Chairman that our Committee begin hearings on 

that because we need to be a partner with you. But I would like 

to put into the record that we recently passed, Mr. Secretary, H.R. 

82, which allows anyone to carry a gun into another State where 

they have a permit. I see uniformed officers behind you. My argument was that this might jeopardize our uniformed officers and 

also violate States’ rights. I have here a list of opponents that include 56 major chiefs of police. This bill was passed on the floor of 

the House. I would ask the Chairman to allow me to put this list 

again in the record regarding opposing H.R. 822. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, the document will be made a part 

of the record. 

[The information referred to follows:] 

34 


71602B-1.eps
35 


71602B-2.eps
36 


71602B-3.eps
37 


71602B-4.eps
38 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Let me ask you how that compounds, potentially, the idea, having gone to the other body, potentially the damage and the devastation that may impact local chiefs and law departments who are on the streets every day. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, the concern that we certainly 

have with regard to officer safety, something that we have focused 

on a lot at the Justice Department in the last couple of years, we 

have seen historic drops in the crime rate. Over the last 2 years, 


71602B-5.eps
39 

however, we have seen, unfortunately, a tragic rise in the number 

of officers who have been killed in the line of duty. And we have 

seen a spike in that rise over the course of this year. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And I am not going to cut you off. My time 

is short. I just want to put this comment to my good friend from 

Wisconsin who compared this, the most major devastating incident 

in the Department of Justice since COINTELPRO—I happened to 

be a person that was on the select committee on assassinations for 

King and Kennedy, as a staffer, and I know full well what 

COINTELPRO was, and also dealing with the incident in terms of 

gun running in the Reagan administration. But the point I want 

to make is when an Attorney General covers up a torture memo, 

I believe that we should not so lightly point to an incident happening in your department where you are fully investigating it. I 

questioned Secretary—excuse me, Attorney General Gonzales, with 

great respect for him, over and over again about the happenings in 

the hospital with then-Attorney General Ashcroft—and this was 

when Gonzales became Attorney General—regarding the torture 

memo, which was an enormous international, if you will, incident. 

And I could never get the truth on that particular set of circumstances. 

So let us not compare the full investigation that you are engaged 

in with something worse than we could have ever expected. And I 

still don’t understand who the gentleman was trying to impeach, 

for this has no basis in the law for any impeachment proceedings, 

whether he is intending to speak to you or to the President of the 

United States. 

And I just wanted to be very clear that we are not in the 

grandstanding position today; we are in the getting truth position 

today, Mr. Chairman. 

And Mr. Attorney General, you are in the business of getting the 

truth. 

Thank you very much. I yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Goodlatte, is recognized for questions. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Holder, before turning to Fast and Furious, I would like 

to ask you a question regarding an investigation that is taking 

place in another Committee, the Energy and Commerce Committee. 

And that relates to the Solyndra Corporation and their default and 

bankruptcy and the investigation related to that. The law that set 

up the incentives for innovative technologies provides for the Secretary of Energy to notify the Attorney General when there is a default on an obligation. This is 22 U.S.C., Section 16512, Subsection 

4(a). If the borrower defaults on an obligation, the Secretary shall 

notify the Attorney General of the default. Did Secretary Chu ever 

notify you of that default prior to this becoming the public furor 

that it has become? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I don’t know if something like that 

has been transmitted to the Justice Department or not. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. It requires that it be transmitted to you. Are 

you familiar with such a transmission being relayed to you? 

40 

Attorney General HOLDER. This is not something that I have 

seen. It doesn’t mean, however, it might not exist someplace in the 

Department. I just don’t know. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. The reason it is important is that the next section, Subsection B, says that on notification, the Attorney General 

shall take such action as is appropriate to recover the unpaid principal and interest due from, one, such assets from the defaulting 

borrower as are associated with the obligation; or two, any other 

security pledged to secure the obligation. Obviously, if you are not 

notified, you are not able to take that action. 

In addition, that same public law provides in another section 

that the obligation shall be the subject to condition that the obligation is not subordinate to any other financing. Obviously, the fact 

has been determined that Solyndra did subordinate its obligation 

to the U.S. to other private financiers. And I am wondering if, 

given the fact that it appears the law was violated in that regard, 

if the Attorney General’s Office is going to investigate what happened there, how it was the Department of Energy allowed that 

subordination to take place, which required their approval, and if 

that investigation of who was responsible for that is taking place. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I guess on September the eighth 

of this year, agents from the FBI and from the Department of Energy’s Inspector General’s office executed search warrants on 

Sylindra’s offices. There is an ongoing investigation which kind of 

precludes my ability to speak too much about this matter, other 

than to say that this is something that we have under active investigation. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Let me just follow up on my first question. 

Would you take a look and determine whether that notification 

from Secretary Chu was sent to the Attorney General’s Office? And 

if so, when that took place? And would you let the Committee know 

the answer to that question? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yes. I can get you that answer, Congressman. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you very much. 

Now, with regard to the Fast and Furious investigation, although 

the Department has taken steps to ensure that these tactics are 

never used again, it is certainly an unfortunate reality that we will 

continue to feel the effects of this flawed operation for years to 

come because thousands of firearms were transferred as a part of 

this program. The guns lost during this operation will continue to 

show up at crime scenes on both sides of the border. What are you 

doing to track them down? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I agree with you. And that is 

what I said in my opening statement, and what I said before in the 

Senate last month, that we are going to be feeling the repercussions of those mistakes and the flawed operation for years to come. 

And you are right, that we will be seeing these weapons in the 

United States I fear, certainly in Mexico as well. We are in the 

process of trying to determine, you know, to the extent we can, 

where they are, trying to use the tools that we have to seize these 

weapons. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. You know who purchased them. You know when 

and where they were purchased. And are you aggressively folVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:08 Sep 11, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\120811\71602.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
41 

lowing those leads? Even if some of those people may have been informants and so on, are you attempting to recover through those 

individuals these weapons? 

Attorney General HOLDER. We are certainly trying to follow 

those leads. But one of the flaws in the program—— 

Mr. GOODLATTE. How many have you recovered? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Of the 2,000 guns, some several hundred have been recovered. I don’t know what the number is now 

precisely. That is another number that we can get you. 

But one of the problems is that once these guns are purchased 

and they get into the stream of commerce, they become difficult to 

follow. And one of the problems with the operation is that we don’t 

have all of the information, all of the information that you would 

want to have. 

But we are trying. I think several hundred weapons have been 

recovered. I don’t know how many are still out there. But your observation is a correct one, and one that I agree with, that this is 

an issue that is going to be with us for many years to come. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. And begs the question if they are difficult to follow, why were they ever allowed to get into this pipeline in the 

first place? 

Attorney General HOLDER. That is the flaw of Operation Fast 

and Furious. There is no question about that. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Goodlatte. 

The gentlewoman from California, Ms. Waters, is recognized. 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Holder, Attorney General Holder, I am trying to sort out 

some contradictions that are very obvious in this whole discussion 

about walking guns. And I am concerned about U.S. Congressman 

Dan Boren of Oklahoma and Denny Rehberg of Montana, who 

amended H.R. 1, the fiscal year continuing appropriations act of 

funding year 2011, to prohibit the use of Federal funds for a new 

regulation currently being proposed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. From what I can understand, the 

AFT proposal would require licensed Federal firearms dealers to 

file reports with ATF on all sales of two or more semi-automatic 

rifles within 5 consecutive business days if the rifles are larger 

than 22-caliber and use detachable magazines. 

I don’t know whether or not this would apply to all of the States, 

or whether or not this would apply to California, Arizona, New 

Mexico, and Texas. But my real question is, given all of your actions and your opposition to gun walking that started in the previous Administration, and the way in which you are trying to make 

sure that this doesn’t happen again, all the actions that you have 

taken, why would anyone propose that your hands be tied and that 

you not be able to have a proposal that would certainly make all 

of us safer? 

I live in California. And we are constantly bombarded with the 

reports of drug lords and the killings that go on there on the border 

and the creeping into San Diego and other parts of California. So 

I am very supportive of what you have identified by way of containing guns being easily accessible to these drug lords and not allowing gun walking to ever happen again. So can you discuss with 

42 

me why your proposal should be adopted by AFT, and what would 

happen if in fact this amendment is—this Boren of Oklahoma and 

Denny Rehberg of Montana, their amendment would successfully 

get, you know, passed and to the President’s desk? How would this 

hamper your efforts? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I share your concerns. That is 

one of the things I talked about in my opening statement. It is a 

very reasonable, I think, and limited measure. It only applies to 

the four States that border Mexico. It would provide the ATF with 

real-time lead information. And it is consistent with what the rule 

that now exists with regard to the purchase of handguns. 

Just to give you a dramatic example, if somebody walked into 

one of these licensed dealers in one of those four States without 

this provision and wanted to buy 100 AK-47s, that information 

would not be reported to the ATF. The ATF, if that information 

was reported to them, would have the ability to start making initial determinations as to whether or not there is something we 

need to be concerned about. 

But in the absence of that provision, somebody can walk in, and 

over the course of 5 days, whatever number of days, buy as many 

of these dangerous weapons, so many of which have been used 

in—— 

Ms. WATERS. Excuse me, Mr. Attorney General, that was a dramatic statement that you just made. Someone could legally purchase 100 weapons of the sort that you just described, and it 

wouldn’t have to be reported? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Not—if this provision were in place, 

that information would have to be reported—— 

Ms. WATERS. Yes. 

Attorney General HOLDER [continuing]. By the dealer to the ATF. 

Ms. WATERS. Yes. 

Attorney General HOLDER. But in the absence of that, in those 

four States, that would not occur. As long as there was not—as 

long as the guns were not—they would not have to do that. 

Ms. WATERS. And you are talking about AK-47s, for example? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yeah. I am using a dramatic example, 

but that would be accurate. 

Ms. WATERS. Well, that is alarming. Are you sure that you have 

made Mr. Boren and Mr. Rehberg aware of how they could potentially hamper the ability to get that kind of information that would 

be so important for ATF? 

Attorney General HOLDER. It is something that we have certainly 

tried to share information with Members of Congress about. We are 

in litigation now here in the District Court in Washington with 

people who are opposed to the implementation of this, I think, very 

reasonable regulation. It is something that we are prepared to fight 

for. 

Ms. WATERS. Well, thank you very much. And I am hopeful that 

there is some way that you can make this absolutely clear to all 

of the Members of Congress. Because I suspect there are many 

Members who do not understand what would happen with the 

Boren amendment. And I think it is important that at least we 

have the facts as you have described them. Thank you. 

And I yield back the balance of my time. 

43 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Waters. 

The gentleman from California, Mr. Lungren, is recognized. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Thank you very much. 

Thank you for being here, Mr. Attorney General. 

Mr. Attorney General, just for some facts on the table. With respect to the previous quote-unquote Gunrunner programs, including Wide Receiver, in those programs, are you aware of whether or 

not the agents involved were instructed to break off surveillance 

once the weapons were delivered? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No, they were not. But both of—— 

Mr. LUNGREN. Isn’t that one of—— 

Attorney General HOLDER [continuing]. The programs were different in terms of the instructions that were given, the reality is 

that guns nevertheless made their way, in Wide Receiver, to Mexico. 

Mr. LUNGREN. I understand that. I understand that. I am not 

talking about that. Were you aware of that, the Wide Receiver program? Were you aware of the failure of the Wide Receiver program 

before you were aware of the Fast and Furious? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No, I became aware of Wide Receiver 

I guess during the course of our examination of Fast and Furious. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Anybody under your overall supervision aware of 

the failure of Wide Receiver, either prior to the time that Fast and 

Furious started or during its operation? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, we now know that people in the 

Criminal Division of the Justice Department were aware of Wide 

Receiver, the problems that were associated with Wide Receiver. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Can you give me any reason why anybody would 

believe that a program like this would be contemplated with the 

idea that the agents would be instructed to break off surveillance 

once the weapons were delivered? Isn’t that asking for disaster? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yeah. And again, I don’t disagree 

with you that that is a flawed concept. And exactly who did it, why 

they did it is something that the Inspector General, I hope, will 

help us resolve. 

Mr. LUNGREN. I understand you have got the Inspector General, 

but you are running a Department. And frankly, if you passed everything off to the Inspector General before making management 

decisions about whether people who were responsible for previous 

decisions should remain in power, frankly, you would be giving the 

Inspector General the job to do. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I understand that I have—— 

Mr. LUNGREN. No, no. Here is the only reason that I bring this 

up. You are the one who brought up the question of the previous 

Administration. And okay, you want to do that. But let’s talk about 

the distinction between those programs. That was not gun walking 

in the terminology that most people think. When you talk about a 

controlled delivery, even though you can go to the dictionary and 

say controlled delivery means you just control it to delivery. The 

parlance of controlled delivery in previous programs meant that 

you followed it afterwards. 

Now, they screwed up because they found that those indicators 

that they had that were supposed to let them know where the 

weapons were, the bad guys figured that out. But I would hope 

44 

that—I mean, here is my problem. I mean, when I became a Congressman this time around, people said what is the difference between being Attorney General of California and being a Congressman? I said, well, after I finish a meeting, I don’t have to go out 

and face reporters who ask me about something one of my 5,000 

employees has done that I don’t know anything about. And I know 

you have more than 5,000 employees. But that was my internal 

thought. The fact of the matter is I am responsible. I was responsible for what they did. And you are responsible for what these 

folks did. 

And the frustration I have is this, and maybe it is unfair, so 

maybe you can help me with this. After all this time, we still don’t 

know, because the Inspector General is looking at it, we still don’t 

know who knew what when and who made the decisions. And that 

doesn’t give much confidence to the American people, particularly 

when CBS reports that there is a memo from AFT Field Operations 

Assistant Director Mark Chait e-mailed Bill Newell, I guess Newell, with this, quote, Bill, can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same licensed gun dealer and at one time? We are 

looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun 

municipal sales, thanks. 

I have got to deal with people in my district who are law-abiding 

citizens who believe in the Second Amendment who say to me look, 

the Feds are overreaching all over the place, and here you got a 

situation where they screwed up. They are the ones responsible for 

hundreds, if not thousands of weapons going to Mexico. People are 

dying, including some of our law enforcement agents. And yet they 

are using that as an excuse to extend their reach in the law. Now, 

either this memo—are you aware of this memo, July 14, 2010, from 

Mark Chait to Bill Newell? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No, I am not aware of it. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Would you think that would be appropriate? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I think what you—you are taking a memo and taking it I think out of context. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Sir, I will give you a chance to answer, but I will 

tell you why I don’t think I am taking it out of context. This is in 

direct reference to the guns that were involved in Fast and Furious. And then you have someone under your direction—not saying 

you directed them to do it, but someone who is under your authority saying, let’s use this stuff. Maybe it is going to help us. I don’t 

know if it is going to help us at a hearing, but it is going to help 

us try and get our new policy through. And then I am trying to respond to law-abiding citizens who believe in the Second Amendment who say, you got the Federal Government who screws up 

sending thousands of weapons south; they are using that as an excuse why they should put more restrictions on us. So how do I respond to that in a way that is fair based on the facts when so far 

I have heard, I am sorry, Mr. Congressman, I can’t tell you because 

the Inspector General is looking at it? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Let me deal with both of those things. 

First, that the Inspector General has a responsibility that I have 

asked her to assume, and that is to do an independent investigation of that. That will take time. 

45 

That does not, however, lessen the responsibility that I have as 

the head manager of the Justice Department to take steps where 

that is appropriate. And I have taken steps. I have made personnel 

decisions. I am prepared—those were initial determinations that I 

have made. And I am prepared to take other steps before the Inspector General reports back. I think that will be—her conclusions, 

her findings will be useful for me in trying to make ultimate determinations. But I don’t need the Inspector General to make certain 

determinations that I will make. 

With regard to the question of that memo and the long gun rule, 

the ATF reached out to the field to obtain examples of cases or operations where that kind of a rule would have been helpful. Now, 

the operation known as Fast and Furious was one of seven cases 

that were already underway, already underway, that ATF later 

cited as an example to illustrate the potential benefit of collecting 

information about the multiple sales of certain types of rifles. So 

this was already underway when that question was—— 

Mr. LUNGREN. I understand, but you would see how some people 

might reasonably come to the conclusion that it was sort of selfdealing. The Department creates a situation in weapons go south 

across the border in the hundreds, if not the thousands, and then 

uses evidence of the fact that that occurred to support their effort 

to try and extend the reach of the law. That is my question. 

Attorney General HOLDER. But Congressman, with all due respect—— 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from California is recognized for an 

additional 30 seconds so the Attorney General can answer the last 

question. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I say this with all due respect. Take 

a step back and think about the implications of what you are saying is that the Justice Department came up with a flawed program 

in order to justify a regulation. And given all that has flown—— 

Mr. LUNGREN. I am talking about after the fact, after the fact. 

You screwed up, you ought to admit you screwed up, but you ought 

not to use your screw-up as a basis for trying to extend your authority. That is my point. I am not trying to talk about a conspiracy. I am talking about a responsible action after the fact. 

When you screw up, you ought to say you screw up. The people involved ought to say they screwed up. And then don’t allow your 

screw-up to be the basis for trying to extend your legislative agenda. That is all I am saying. 

Attorney General HOLDER. And all I am saying is, as I said, 

there were seven cases. These things were already underway when 

that information was sought. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Lungren. 

The gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Johnson, is recognized. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, Attorney General Holder, for being here today. 

There is a hole in our gun control laws that is so large that you 

could drive or fly a space shuttle through it. And it is called the 

gun show loophole. And what that gun show loophole enables unlicensed firearms sellers to do is to sell an unlimited amount of firearms per year, or per gun show, to anybody, without having to perform a background check as a licensed gun dealer must. And so we 

46 

have got gun shows, thousands of gun shows per year being held 

throughout America, and we have got untold numbers of licensed 

gun dealers who are selling their wares at those gun shows, and 

you have untold thousands of unlicensed private weapons dealers 

who are selling firearms, including automatic assault rifles of the 

type that walked away in Operation Fast and Furious. 

How many automatic assault rifles walked away during Fast and 

Furious? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I think the number that has generally 

been reported is about 2,000. 

Mr. JOHNSON. It is about 2,000. 

Now, how many firearms are sold to al-Qaeda terrorists, to other 

convicted felons, to domestic violence perpetrators, to convicted felons, to White supremacists, how many unlicensed gun dealers—or 

let’s say how many weapons, how many assault rifles let’s just say 

in a given year are sold to such individuals by unlicensed gun dealers at these gun shows that are unregulated? And how many of 

those end up walking away to Mexico? Can you give us a number 

on that? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I don’t have a number on that. I can 

certainly endeavor—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. Would it be more than a couple of hundred? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Sir, I am pretty certain it would be 

more than 2,000. But in terms of getting those numbers for you, 

I can try to do that and provide you with those numbers after the 

hearing. 

Mr. JOHNSON. It would seem to me that with the thousands of 

gun shows and unknown numbers of private gun owners selling an 

unknown number of weapons, including assault rifles, to unknown 

people, it would seem to me that there is a fair possibility that a 

whole lot more than 2,000 weapons would walk out of the gun 

show and find their way into the hands of a Mexican drug cartel. 

Would you agree with me on that? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Again, without knowing the numbers, 

I wouldn’t want to guess. But I think that one of the things we 

need to focus on is to know who actually is buying weapons. 

Mr. JOHNSON. And we don’t have that ability right now with that 

gun show loophole. Correct? 

Attorney General HOLDER. We don’t have it across the board. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Okay. Now, let me ask you this question. Over the 

last 5 and a half years, we have had five acting directors of the 

ATF. How does the Senate’s failure and refusal to confirm a nominee for that important agency, what effect does that have on the 

ability of that agency to be guided in a way so as to avoid the kind 

of situations like Fast and Furious? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I think that is actually a very good 

point. When you have a confirmed head, there is a certain prestige 

that goes with that demarcation. But beyond that, it allows a person to have a longer term, to have a certain consistency to put in 

place programs, to put in place controls that did not exist and that 

allowed Fast and Furious to happen. What Todd Jones has done as 

the acting head of ATF in a relatively short period of time I think 

is fairly remarkable. It would be a better thing if we had somebody 

in his place who had a confirmed—was a confirmed person, and 

47 

could extend the time that he would spend or she would spend running the organization. Todd is still the head of the U.S. Attorney’s 

Office in Minnesota. And I can’t expect him to devote, you know, 

4 years, for instance, as somebody might if they were a confirmed 

head and serve a full term, a full Presidential term, to do the same 

thing. And that consistency, that presence for an extended period 

of time has I think a huge positive impact on an organization. 

Mr. JOHNSON. You think the NRA and other Second Amendment 

rights radicals have confidence that the U.S. will not have a competent ATF head if the Senate continues to deny a leader for that 

organization, thus rendering it rudderless? Is politics causing that, 

you think? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I mean, it certainly has a negative 

impact on the organization. There are certain groups that I think 

have actively opposed nominees, both put up by President Bush as 

well as President Obama, who I think were amply qualified to lead 

the organization and who, for whatever reason, were not confirmed. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. 

The gentleman from California, Mr. Issa, is recognized. 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I would be remiss if I didn’t take exception to calling the 

NRA members, the millions of them, radicals. I think that is an offensive statement beneath contempt in this Committee. 

Mr. Attorney General, will you agree to come before the Oversight Committee without the need for a subpoena in the January 

time frame? 

Mr. JOHNSON. Will the gentleman yield? 

Mr. ISSA. I will not. 

Mr. Attorney General, will you agree to come before the Committee I Chair, the Oversight Committee, the one you produced 

these documents to, in the January time frame without the need 

for a subpoena? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I will consider it, but I will note I 

have testified on four occasions with regard to this matter. I have 

appeared before you on at least two occasions. 

Mr. ISSA. You have appeared before this Committee. Your organization pushed back on the request for a joint hearing here today. 

Not will you consider it, but do I need to serve a subpoena on yourself, and Lanny Breuer, and the other people under direct investigation of my Committee, or will you agree to come voluntarily in 

the January time frame before the Committee? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I will consider any request that you 

make. 

Mr. ISSA. I thank you, Mr. Attorney General. 

I now would go to the questions of e-mails. This is the document 

you refer to. Most of these documents, 5,000 or so, are, in fact, emails. Mr. Attorney General, I have a question for you. Not one of 

these e-mails, in fact, is yours. Aren’t you an a prolific e-mailer? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No. 

Mr. ISSA. Don’t you e-mail? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yes. 

Mr. ISSA. Do you have a personal e-mail account and as well as 

an Attorney General’s e-mail account? 

48 

Attorney General HOLDER. I have an e-mail account at the Justice Department, yes. 

Mr. ISSA. Do you have a personal e-mail? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yes. 

Mr. ISSA. Do you regularly e-mail to Lanny Breuer, your former 

partner and your head of the Criminal Division? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No, I wouldn’t say regularly. There 

are only a limited number of people who know my e-mail address 

in the Justice Department. 

Mr. ISSA. Let me cut to the chase. Don’t you think it is a little 

conspicuous in his absence that there is not one e-mail to or from 

you related to Fast and Furious in any way, shape or form? 

Attorney General HOLDER. There are a variety of reasons why 

the e-mails that we have shared with you are there. We have 

shared in an unprecedented way e-mail information that no Justice 

Department, no Attorney General has ever authorized before. You 

have deliberative information contained, I guess, in—— 

Mr. ISSA. But isn’t it true that executive privilege does not flow 

to the Attorney General, only to the office of the President? So deliberative process within your Department running law enforcement, in fact, doesn’t serve executive privilege. As the Chairman 

said going on, you haven’t cited any reason that these would not 

have been delivered. 

Attorney General HOLDER. In making production determinations, 

we have followed what Attorneys General in the past have always 

used in applicable standards, and these are Republican as well as 

Democratic Attorneys General. And the information that we have 

provided to you has been responsive, has been, I think, fulsome, 

and also unprecedented. 

Mr. ISSA. Well, unprecedented would be an Attorney General 

who knew nothing about something where his own DAG, now his 

present chief of staff, was intimately familiar. 

Gary Grindler was well aware, according to documents provided 

of Fast and Furious, on March 12, 2010. Are you aware of that, 

that he with an aware of Fast and Furious and what its procedures 

were on March of 2010? 

Attorney General HOLDER. It was certainly brought to his attention as a part of a regular briefing he got from ATF, but he did 

not hear during that briefing anything about the tactics. 

Mr. ISSA. Really? Is that why in his own handwriting when he 

talks about going to stash houses, he clearly understood in a document you have delivered—he clearly understood in his own handwriting what the tactic was. 

Attorney General HOLDER. No, that is not—— 

Mr. ISSA. I am sorry, but I am going to ask you a different question—— 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well—— 

Mr. ISSA. Because he understood. No, no. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Could I answer that question? 

Mr. ISSA. You have answered it less than truthfully. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Could the questioner allow the witness to answer the question? 

Mr. ISSA. Madam, this is my time. I am not yielding. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I am not asking you to yield. 

49 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from California Mr. Issa has the time. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I would appreciate it if you would allow the 

witness to answer the question. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from California Mr. Issa has the time. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I understand that. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentlewoman from Texas—— 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I would appreciate it if the witness could be 

allowed to answer the question, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentlewoman from Texas has not been recognized. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I ask for a sense of protocol here. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from California has the time. 

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Attorney General, as I was saying, Mr. Grindler— 

you can’t answer on his behalf, and so it makes no sense to. This 

is evidence that was delivered. 

Do you regularly talk to your chief of staff? And do you regularly 

receive oral briefings from Mr. Grindler? And, in fact, when you 

made the decision to have him be the DAG and then the chief of 

staff, wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that if he knew on March 

10th, as this document indicates, that you would also know, March 

10th, March of 2010, March 12 of 2010? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, first, he was not intimately— 

made intimately familiar with the program as a result of that briefing. The briefing that he received from then-Acting Director Nelson 

did not go into the tactics. Nelson indicated—— 

Mr. ISSA. Of course it didn’t go into the tactics. 

Mr. Chairman, I would ask that I have the time restored that I 

lost with the lady’s interruption. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman is recognized for an additional minute 

and also to give the opportunity to the Attorney General to respond 

to the question. 

Mr. ISSA. I certainly look forward to that. 

Mr. Attorney General—— 

Attorney General HOLDER. I was in the middle of an answer, I 

think. 

Mr. ISSA. You know, you are in the middle of filibustering, so I 

will let you answer. I have two more things to quickly go over, and 

then you can have all the time the Chairman will give you. 

Does it surprise you that these boxes, five boxes, represent just 

what one gun dealer gave us voluntarily, while, in fact, this seems 

to be all the information you have responsive to our subpoena; does 

it cause you to think that, in fact, we believe you were withholding 

documents? We believe that, in fact, there is more production. So 

my final question—and you can answer all of them for as long as 

the Chairman wants—is do you today have documents responsive 

to the lawful request of the Oversight Committee that have not yet 

been granted? 

Attorney General HOLDER. All right. Well, Let me go back to my 

first answer that I was not—— 

Mr. ISSA. Well, mine is pretty easy. Mine is a yes or no, and then 

the others you are going to go on for a while. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I will get to that. 

Mr. ISSA. Would you please get to it first? 

50 

Attorney General HOLDER. With regard to Gary Grindler, he was 

not provided with a detailed analysis of Fast and Furious. He was 

given information about—— 

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, I asked earlier that the Attorney General be placed under oath. I was denied that. But what I will make 

the point is that it is not productive for anyone to come before this 

Committee and tell us what somebody else didn’t know. That is exactly how the legislative liaison behind the Attorney General Mr. 

Weich came and gave false testimony to my Committee, false because people who are still working for the Attorney General knowingly gave him misleading information in addition to the U.S. attorney, and no action has been taken. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Is the gentleman’s time extended, or is there 

regular order? 

Mr. ISSA. I might note for the record that the IG—— 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I have a parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman—— 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I have a parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from California continues to be recognized. And let me make a point in the record that he is not over 

time near as much as the gentlewoman from Texas was a few minutes ago. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I thank you for your courtesies, but I would 

like to understand whether the gentleman has extended time. 

Mr. SMITH. And he was recognized for that purpose, as the Attorney General will be recognized for the purpose of responding—— 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And will he allow the Attorney General to answer the question? 

Mr. ISSA. I look forward to it. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much. 

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, I use only 5 more seconds. 

The fact is the inspector general has released information that 

was secret to the object of our investigation with the knowledge of 

the Justice Department. She is not currently, in our opinion, qualified to investigate and, in fact, has overstepped the line by delivering secret tapes to the object of our investigation while the Justice Department was slow-rolling that discovery. And this is the 

ATF agent that was intimately involved with this. 

So I want you to understand I have treated this Attorney General as a hostile witness because ultimately when he comes before 

us saying he is going to clean house, no house has been cleaned. 

And I would love to hear his answers. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman’s time has expired. The Attorney General will be given the opportunity to respond. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I will try again. Gary Grindler was 

not provided with information as you have described, intimate information, about Operation Fast and Furious. He was not told 

about the tactics that were used there. The person who did the 

briefing was the acting head of ATF, and he has, I understand, testified before your Committee that he did not, in fact, share that 

tactical information with Mr. Grindler. 

51 

I note that Mr. Nelson also briefed you, Congressman, about a 

month or so later or before, I forget which, and he said at that time 

he did not share with you information about those tactics. So the 

notion for your contention that Gary Grindler was familiar with 

this or intimately familiar with this is inconsistent with what I 

think the facts are. 

And you take me to task for trying to assume what I know 

Grindler to have said. You have not interviewed him as well, and 

nevertheless you feel comfortable doing the same thing. 

With regard to the documents that you talked about, we have not 

withheld any documents that are responsive to the matters that 

you have—that you have asked us about. We have withheld information that pertains to ongoing investigations; that is the thing 

that might have limited our document production. But again, what 

we produced on February the 4th is unlike anything that any Committee in any part of this Congress, Senate or House, has ever seen 

before. And I want to make clear, as we said in that letter, that 

is not precedential, not holding, and I don’t think any future Attorney General should be expected to do that, but given the nature of 

what we did in withdrawing that February 4 letter, it seemed to 

me to make sense to make an exception to what has been a longrecognized rule. 

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, could the AG be allowed to fully answer, since it was pursuant to a subpoena whether or not his answer about did he provide—— 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. ISSA. It means he was withholding or not withholding. He 

did not answer that. 

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, that requires unanimous consent. I 

withhold—— 

Mr. SMITH. The gentlewoman has now been recognized. 

I was asking the Attorney General a question. Does the Attorney 

General wish to respond any further to the questions? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am fine. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from Virginia Mr. Scott is recognized 

for his question. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Holder, a lot has been made about the letter written by 

your Assistant Attorney General Mr. Ron Weich. Nobody expected 

him or believes that he has any personal knowledge of the information, but expected him to get the information and relay it. The information has, I think, been subsequently determined to be false. 

Do you know where he got the false information? 

Attorney General HOLDER. The information that was contained 

in that letter, the incorrect information that was contained in that 

letter, was derived from people in the field who had the operational 

responsibility for Operation Fast and Furious, both from the ATF 

in Phoenix as well as the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix. That 

information, I think logically, was presumed to be accurate. That 

information was transmitted to people in Washington, who put the 

letter together. And if you look at the February 4 document production that we made, you can see how this went back and forth and 

how the letter was actually put together. 

52 

It turned out that the people in Phoenix had information that 

was not, in fact, accurate, and that is the stuff that found itself 

into the February the 4th letter. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now, what did you do when you found out that the 

information was not accurate? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I couldn’t hear you. 

Mr. SCOTT. What did you do when you found out that the information was not accurate? 

Attorney General HOLDER. One of the things that I did early on 

was to ask the inspector general to look into this. I was hearing 

from inside the Justice Department one set of facts. I was hearing 

from Members of Congress and members of the media something 

else. An it seemed to me that given this disparate information that 

I was receiving, that an investigation needed to be had. And on 

February the 28th, I asked the inspector general to begin an investigation. 

Mr. SCOTT. An article in USA Today says, ‘‘The program,’’ referring to Fast and Furious, ‘‘was fundamental′′—′′which Holder has 

finally acknowledged is fundamentally flawed occurred with the 

knowledge and approval of Justice.’’ 

Do you want to respond to that statement? 

Attorney General HOLDER. That is not true. I mean, the notion 

that people in Washington, the leadership of the Department, approved the use of those tactics in Fast and Furious is simply incorrect. This was not a top-to-bottom operation; this was a regional 

operation that was controlled by ATF and by the U.S. Attorney’s 

Office in Phoenix. 

Mr. SCOTT. There is a memo dated November 16, 2007, about a 

meeting of the Attorney General in 2007 with the Mexican Attorney General that says, Of particular importance ATF has recently 

worked jointly with Mexico on the first-ever attempt to have a controlled delivery of weapons being smuggled into Mexico by a major 

arms trafficker. While the first attempts at this controlled delivery 

have not been successful, the investigation is ongoing. 

Does that suggest to you that guns were so-called walking in 

2007? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, certainly not walking in the 

same way that they were allowed to walk in Fast and Furious, but 

the reality was guns did find their way into Mexico in an inappropriate way. 

And one thing that I want people to understand is that I don’t 

know what Attorneys General did back then and how they reacted 

to it, but I can tell you what this Attorney General did. I asked for 

an inspector general investigation. I sent out a directive to the field 

that this kind of activity was inappropriate. I made personnel 

changes. And I am overseeing with the help of Todd Jones substantial reforms at ATF. I was very active in dealing with this issue. 

You can look at what other Attorneys General did. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Switching subjects, the last Administration was cited for political 

hiring within the Civil Rights Division. Have you continued that 

political hiring in violation of the law? 

Attorney General HOLDER. We hire people within the Civil 

Rights Division on the basis of their experience, their commitment 

53 

to that which the Civil Rights Division has historically stood for, 

people who are going to be good litigators, people who are going to 

work hard. We don’t hire people on the basis of political or ideological affiliation. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a number of other 

questions that I will be submitting—— 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Would the gentleman yield for a moment? 

Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. SCOTT. For the record I yield the balance of the time. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you. 

Very quickly, Mr. Chairman, I would like to put into the record 

the Examiner: Mexico Losing Its War on Drug Cartels; and the Los 

Angeles Times that says how many have died in Mexico’s drug war. 

Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. SMITH. I am sorry. 

Mr. SCOTT. She asked unanimous consent. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection. 

[The information referred to follows:] 

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71602C1-1.eps
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71602C1-2.eps
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71602C2-1.eps
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71602C2-2.eps
58 

Mr. SCOTT. I yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman yields back his time. 

The gentleman from Iowa Mr. King is recognized. 

Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Attorney 

General Holder, for coming here to testify. I had a number of questions that come to mind as I listened to the responses that are 

here. They sort down to this: As near as I can determine, have you 

identified the weapon that actually killed Agent Terry? 


71602C2-3.eps
59 

Attorney General HOLDER. That would go into a ballistics report 

determination, and I am not prepared to talk about that given that 

it is still a pending case. 

Mr. KING. It is still under investigation, but there is some data 

there that is being examined by Justice? 

Attorney General HOLDER. As I said, there is an ongoing investigation. There is a case that has been indicted, and obviously a 

part of that trial will be the ballistics report. 

Mr. KING. Have you identified a suspect or a person of interest? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Somebody has been indicted in connection with that case. 

Mr. KING. Somebody has been. And that is not information that 

you can speak to today? 

Attorney General HOLDER. There are some rules there that don’t 

allow me to—apparently this is a matter that is under seal. 

Mr. KING. But there has been an indictment. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yes, there has been an indictment. 

Mr. KING. Thank you. 

And if you were to tell us who that was, you couldn’t did so in 

this setting? 

Attorney General HOLDER. That is correct. 

Mr. KING. If we were in executive session, could you do that? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I don’t think so. I think it is a courtordered seal. 

Mr. KING. Okay. That is satisfactory to me. 

Attorney General HOLDER. We have to seek leave of the court in 

order to do that. 

Mr. KING. That is satisfactory. Thank you. 

Do you have a sense, or an estimate, or data on the numbers of 

Mexicans that have been killed or homicide investigations that 

have brought about deaths where there have been weapons used 

that are from Fast and Furious in Mexico? We lost Agent Terry. 

How many Mexicans do you estimate have died because of the 

weapons that have been sent to Mexico? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I don’t know that figure, Congressman King, but I fear that the number of people on the Mexican 

side of the border, frankly as well on the United States border, will 

be negatively impacted by the mistakes of Fast and Furious are 

going to—there are going to be people who are going to be harmed. 

I don’t have any numbers, but I fear that that is what is going to 

happen, has probably already happened, and is likely to happen in 

the future. 

Mr. KING. Do you have, though, reports or data that would give 

you some sense of that? Is it a report that is delivered to you in 

your briefing that when we know all about Agent—we know about 

Agent Terry, but I am thinking about this from a public relations 

standpoint, and I am thinking that if this happened in the United 

States—and I am going to guess that there are multiple deaths in 

Mexico—if there is anything proportional to the distribution of the 

weapons, are there any reports that give you a sense of this happening as a communication going back and forth across the border 

and identifying Fast and Furious weapons that may have been 

used in crimes and homicides in Mexico so that you have a sense 

of that number? 

60 

Attorney General HOLDER. I don’t have a sense of that as yet. I 

mean, we certainly work with our Mexican partners to try to trace 

guns that are seized in connection with crimes. That is why I said 

that, you know, we have traced 64,000 of those guns over the last 

5 years. My guess will be that we will trace some guns over the 

coming years and months back to Fast and Furious, and then we 

will be able to connect those traced weapons to crimes that have 

occurred in Mexico. But to date I have not received that information. 

Thank you. I would like to shift a little bit. I know the last time 

you were before this Committee May 3 of this year as I recall we 

had a discussion about the Pigford farms issue, and I submitted a 

series of questions about that, and you have answered most of 

those questions in writing as of, date, I think it was October of this 

year. So I would like to narrow in on that a little bit, because the 

Pigford farms issue you cite as the authority for Justice and presumably USDA to negotiate with Black farmers the authority that 

is in the Farm Bill, commonly known as a farm bill, and you cite 

the sections of the bill. 

And I will just tell you in this Committee that I had a conversation with the then-chairman of the AG Committee, Collin Peterson 

on the way over to the floor to vote on this farm bill, and I said 

to him the authorization that you granted in the farm bill, which 

you cite in your response, will open up the door to $1.3 billion in 

additional Pigford claims. His response to me was no, that $100 

million caps the spending on the settling all outstanding Pigford 

claims, you will be satisfied with the results of that. That was our 

disagreement. I have had the Secretary of Agriculture cite the 

same section that you have cited. I have the section before me, and 

I will ask unanimous consent to introduce it into the record at the 

conclusion, but it says here that ‘‘shall not exceed $100 million and 

it shall be construed to effectuate its remedial purpose of giving a 

full determination on the merits of each Pigford claim previously 

denied that determination,’’ which is the language that opened up 

Pigford 2. 

So I will submit that authority only exists to resolve all outstanding Pigford claims and cap them within $100 million. We 

have a claim coming back to Congress for an additional 1.15 billion. 

I have no information in my letter that tells me how many claims 

you have from Pigford. And I don’t have any information that tells 

me what was spent on attorney fees in settlements of Pigford 1. So 

I would appreciate if you could respond to that. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Sure, we will get you that information. 

Mr. KING. And including the value, the cost of attorney fees in 

Pigford 1? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Sure. 

Mr. KING. And anything that is current. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Whatever information we have with 

regard to the questions you have asked, I will make sure it gets 

passed on to you. 

Mr. KING. And I will just ask for follow-up. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. KING. I ask unanimous consent to complete my question. 

61 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman continues to be recognized for a final 

question and then the AG to respond. 

Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just ask that we 

know that there are negotiations according to your letter that took 

place between the Department of Justice, the USDA, and representatives of the Black farmers, which sounds to me in their response to be multiple organizations, multiple entities. So I would 

ask you if you personally had a conversation with Secretary Vilsack 

with regard to Pigford and who are those entities that were negotiated with to come to this settlement that I contend goes beyond 

$100 million cap that was authorized. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I certainly talked about this 

matter with Secretary Vilsack, the person who is primarily responsible for the settlement of the case, from the Justice Department 

side is the associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli. There were a 

variety of organizations, entities, individuals who were engaged. 

We were trying to work out a settlement short of litigation so people who were potential plaintiffs were part of these conversations 

to reach this agreement. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. King. 

Mr. KING. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Cohen, is recognized. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Holder, I am understanding this issue some, but it is a great tragedy this agent 

was killed and it will be a year next week, as I understand it. And 

it was a Fast and Furious weapon that he was killed by, as I understand it. Is there any great difficulty in Mexico for folks who are 

part of these drug cartels or, you know, folks to get guns? Are guns 

rather plentiful in Mexico in general? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I think we can safely say that they 

are readily available, and the part of the problem with their ready 

availability is the fact that so many guns flow from the United 

States to Mexico. As I said over the last 5 years, at least 64,000 

weapons traced to the United States that were found in Mexico, 

and those were only the ones that were traced. There are undoubtedly additional guns in Mexico that have not been traced back to 

the United States. 

Mr. COHEN. So while it is a supposition I would presume that if 

Fast and Furious didn’t occur, that the individuals that committed 

this act, this violent act and resulted in the death of the agent, 

they would have probably had weapons anyway? 

Attorney General HOLDER. You know, we can never—you can 

never suppose, but for is always hard to determine, but I don’t 

think that is an illogical conclusion that the people who were involved in that senseless, tragic, awful murder probably could have 

had access to other weapons. 

Mr. COHEN. I kind of remember the president of Mexico saying 

something about most of the guns that come there come from the 

United States. I think he also said something about most of the 

market he has from marijuana comes from the United States too. 

So we supply him with guns and a market. We could certainly dry 

the market up, but that is the job of the Judiciary Committee, I 

realize. 

62 

What are we doing to try to stop guns from going into Mexico? 

Are there efforts at the border to stop guns from traveling this 

country there? 

Attorney General HOLDER. We have moved people to the border. 

We work with our partners—the Justice Department works with 

our partners at DHS to try to come up with ways in which we inspect cars that are going from United States to Mexico. We have 

teams of agents that work together to try to determine ways in 

which we can stop the flow of guns. We use a variety of intelligence 

methods that I can’t really get into to try to determine if cartels 

are trying to bring into Mexico huge stashes of guns. 

We also need to use things on this side of the border, and that 

is one of the reasons why that long gun rule, I think, is so important. If we see substantial numbers of these long guns being purchased, it gives the ATF real-time leads that they can follow to see 

if, in fact, these are legitimate purchases or if they are purchases 

by people intending to have those guns shipped to Mexico. 

Mr. COHEN. Coming home which is where I think the real issues 

are, not to say that they are not important about the border and 

all, but in our cities, we have a lot of youth violence and gangs. I 

want to commend you for having a national forum on youth violence prevention and including Memphis in the forum. Can you 

give the Committee some information about what you have done to 

help inner cities fight youth violence and gang activities? 

Attorney General HOLDER. One the things I want to say is the 

five police chiefs behind me from Charlotte, Detroit, Philadelphia, 

Baltimore and Boston, have all embraced, and we learned from 

them, the way in which we deal with this issue of youth violence. 

It is not simply a question of doing what is traditional law enforcement, that we have to come up with ways in which we deal with 

the underlying problems that involve our young people in these 

antisocial behaviors. 

Congressman Scott has been, I think, very forward leaning in 

this regard with legislation that he has proposed and that we support. We have tried to deal with these underlying causes, and it 

has been particularly useful to have our partners in law enforcement identify with and be participants in these preventive activities in addition to all the great things that they do on the enforcement side. The thing you have talked about what we are doing in 

Memphis is an example of the kinds of things we are trying to do 

in the Obama administration. 

Mr. COHEN. I would like, Mr. Chairman, to comment that the 

gentleman from Philadelphia, the chief, I recognize you and I kept 

thinking where do I know you from. And where I know you from 

is when you testified before this Committee on the bill to allow 

folks who had gun permits to travel from State to State based on 

Federal edict rather than state cooperative agreements. And at the 

time, I was a sponsor of the bill that ended up passing, but because 

of your testimony and law enforcement’s objections, as well as my 

belief in States’ rights, I changed my position, came off as a sponsor and voted against the bill. Your testimony was effective and it 

is nice to see you again, and I thank you for that. 

I yield back the remainder of my time, Mr. Chairman. 

63 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Cohen. The gentleman from Texas, 

Mr. Gohmert, is recognized. 

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Attorney General for being here. We do appreciate the law enforcement 

being here. We have had multiple of our Democratic friends point 

out their presence and we do appreciate the job you do. I thought, 

and everybody needs friends, and I am glad you are supporting the 

Attorney General. I thought about inviting the law enforcement 

that is furious over Fast and Furious, but there is just not room 

in the room or building so I didn’t do so. 

Let me ask you, Attorney General, have you read the opinion 

from the 5th Circuit Court of appeals on Holy Land Foundation 

trial that came out yesterday? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I have not seen that. 

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, we know from prior documentation that 

there has been relationship with CAIR and the Justice Department; is there any ongoing relationship, any reach-out at this time 

still to CAIR? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, we certainly reach out to a variety of Muslim groups as we try to—— 

Mr. GOHMERT. I am talking specifically about CAIR. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I was getting there. But I don’t think 

that we have any particular outreach efforts at this point with 

CAIR. 

Mr. GOHMERT. You know there was a partnership between the 

FBI and CAIR, in 2009 it was temporarily suspended. I didn’t 

know if there was informal outreach to CAIR. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I—— 

Mr. GOHMERT. We do know from this opinion yesterday, we know 

from the prior Fifth Circuit opinion when CAIR and ISNA and others tried to have their names struck as named coconspirators, that 

it was unsuccessful that the circuit basically saying there is a case 

there to prove. And then as we know, you decided not to pursue 

those, or your Department did as we talked about before. 

In the decision yesterday, the court said that the Palestine Committee created not only the Holy Land Foundation, but a number 

of other Islamist entities in the U.S., leaders of one of those entities 

the Islamic Association of Palestine subsequently created CAIR, 

Council on American Islamic Relations which are cited as coconspirators, so it does create some concerns. 

We know there was massive document, a massive number of documents being furnished to the defendants in that case. A lot of production of documents, but I would like to ask that we get copies 

of the documents that were provided to the five defendants who are 

now convicted and affirmed by the Fifth Circuit. Would the Justice 

Department make those documents available? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am not sure I know what documents 

you are talking about. If they were provided in litigation? 

Mr. GOHMERT. Correct. 

Attorney General HOLDER. And if we can provide them, I am 

sure that we would. I don’t know if there are documents that have 

been provided in discovery that we don’t have the ability to provide. I just don’t know the answer to that. 

64 

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, they have been furnished to your Department to the defendants in the case. Those defendants have now 

been found guilty of providing support to terrorism. There is no 

question in my mind that those documents are now in the possession of terrorists. And so we have had trouble getting production 

of all the documents that we have desired and requested. And I 

didn’t think that there should be any problem with privilege or 

anything of that nature since the defendants are convicted of supporting terrorism have them, the terrorists have them. And I just 

felt like it would be a good idea for Congress to have them. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I will take that request under advisement and to the extent we can provide documents—— 

Mr. GOHMERT. I hope we will have as good a standing as the terrorist supporters that have been convicted. 

I am familiar as a judge handling massive litigation, been an 

MDL with a document dump. About 100 of these are Grassley’s letters. But I want to ask you, since you had said before in your statement that you asked the Department Inspector General to investigate this Fast and Furious matter in March, you ordered a directive be sent to law enforcement prosecutor prohibiting such tactics, 

and in this entire stack is not an e-mail, not a letter, not a transcript of a speech, nothing from you. I would ask where they are. 

If you did those things in February or March, where are they? And 

not only that, you testified May 3 in here as we recall that you had 

just learned about Fast and Furious a few weeks before. And now 

you say actually in February, March you made these orders. When 

was the first time after May the 3rd you began to suspect that you 

may have actually taken actions in this case? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, actually took actions well before 

May the 3rd, on February 28. 

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, unless you were intentionally misrepresenting the facts on May 3, which I am not contending at all no. 

Attorney General HOLDER. No. 

Mr. GOHMERT. Then at some point you began to wonder gee, I 

believe I issued some orders in this matter. We haven’t seen the 

orders, all we have is the transcript here. We know you are capable 

of mistakes as you have verified. Where are the e-mails, letters, orders, where are they from February and March? 

Attorney General HOLDER. There are a couple of things going on 

here. I didn’t play any role in the drafting of the February 4 letter. 

With regard to the notion—— 

Mr. GOHMERT. So you were not the one who ordered the—— 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman’s time has expired. The AG will be allowed to answer the last question. 

Attorney General HOLDER. With regard to the question of what 

I said on May 3 about a few weeks, I said a few weeks about when 

I first learned about Fast and Furious, I learned about Fast and 

Furious when this became a matter of controversy. I think some 

time in the beginning of the year. My guess is probably the middle 

of February, which would have been 10 or 12 weeks before I said 

a few weeks. Now, I could have said a couple of months, maybe I 

should have been more precise. But a few weeks, from my perspective, was accurate then and it still seems to be accurate now, when 

65 

I say a few weeks, 10 or 12 weeks that I think be encompassed in 

that description. 

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Chairman, I would ask that he be allowed to 

actually answer the question of whether or not he is the one that 

actually ordered the inspector general to investigate that. And if so, 

where the documentation of it is. That was my question. 

Mr. SMITH. Has the AG answered? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I will answer. I was, in fact, the person who requested, ordered the inspector general to begin this investigation. I don’t think I did that in any written form. I think 

that was transmitted from me either through my chief of staff, the 

Deputy Attorney General, to the IG. There might be a writing that 

exists in that regard. I don’t think I signed off on anything actually. I have a good relationship with the inspector general, the inspector general’s office had looked at this whole question of gun 

trafficking before, and it seemed logical to ask them to expand 

their inquiry and look into Fast and Furious. As I said, I don’t 

think it is any writing from me, but I can check that. I don’t think 

there is any writing from me that exists with regard to. 

Mr. GOHMERT. We should ask for a copy if any such exists. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Gohmert. 

The gentlewoman from California, Ms. Lofgren, is recognized. 

Mr. LOFGREN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There has been a lot 

of discussion on a lot of topics today. I noted the Chairman took 

the opportunity to discuss health care. And since we don’t get you 

in front of us that often, I am going raise an issue that is not Fast 

and Furious. That is the Second Amendment; there is an amendment that comes before that and that is the First Amendment, and 

that is the subject of my inquiry. 

As you know, for over a year, ICE and the Department of Justice 

have been seizing domain names as hundreds of Web sites on allegations of criminal copyright and trademark infringement. One 

particular domain name was seized a year ago, November 2010, 

Dajaz1.com a very popular blog that was dedicated to hip-hop 

music. Just today, the news is with the details that the seizure, 

which I thought raised troubling questions at the time about the 

government’s conduct in the case, and really raises questions about 

constitutional rights of due process and free speech as they apply 

to Web sites. After the government seized the domain name, its 

owner filed a quest for the government to return it to them. And 

under the law, the government has 90 days to initiate a full forfeiture proceeding against the domain, or else it has to return the 

property. 

However, in this case, the deadline passed with no action. And 

when the Web site’s lawyer asked with your Department’s lawyers, 

he was told the government had filed an extension with the court, 

entirely under seal without notice to him. They had no notice, they 

had no opportunity to respond. And when the lawyer, of course, 

this was according to the news reports, asked for any sort of proof 

that the extension had actually existed, your Department’s lawyers 

reportedly said he would just have to trust them. 

The government then claimed to have received two additional extensions under the same process without notice, without a hearing, 

66 

and they refused to release the court order according to the press 

reports. And then as of today, the last extension was filed and the 

government finally admitted that it did not have probable cause for 

the forfeiture, and the domain name was returned to the Web site 

owners today. 

In short, a blog site which is identical in terms of First Amendment protection to a newspaper or a magazine has the same First 

Amendment rights was shutdown for an entire year by the government, by our government, with no due process, no contested hearings, no written orders. I just think—if these reports are—that is 

just an outrageous violation of the First Amendment. 

So my question is, I assume that you believe that the First 

Amendment doesn’t allow the government to go in and shut down 

the press for a year prior to restraint on speech without any kind 

of due process. I don’t—I guess this is a question, do you think that 

is consistent with the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments to the 

Constitution. And if the fact—I will give you the article that I just 

read today. If the facts are as reported in this article what will you 

do to make sure that the wrongdoers in your Department are no 

longer in your Department? I mean this is—there has to be a sanction for someone to do such a thing. If we did this to a magazine 

if we went and locked the doors and put a sign and said ‘‘closed’’ 

and refused to deal with them for a year, people would be outraged, 

but since it is a blog, and since it is hip-hop artists. It seems to 

me, the hip-hop artists have as much right to due process and the 

First Amendment as any other American, so could you comment on 

that, Attorney General. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am not familiar with the reason 

why that domain name was seized or the facts of this case. I will 

certainly look into that and we will get back to you with whatever 

information we can. You are right, I mean—what the subject matter is of a particular blog is obviously entitled to First Amendment 

protections. There maybe other reasons this was received. I just 

don’t know. I can tell you my daughters are watching this hearing, 

having heard about this hip-hop issue now, I will hear about this 

from them when I get home. 

Mr. LOFGREN. Very good. 

Attorney General HOLDER. And if nothing else, I will make sure 

that I stay in touch with these folks to get you an answer. My 

daughters will be on me about this one. 

Mr. LOFGREN. Well, I wonder if you could give a commitment 

that if the facts are as we have outlined that you will take appropriate action within your Department to make sure that those who 

violated the law in the DOJ are dealt with and that this becomes 

a well-known sanctionable type of activity in your Department. 

Attorney General HOLDER. We will certainly look at it, my hope 

would be that there is a reason, an acceptable reason why these 

actions have occurred, if they have been accurately described. But 

to the extent that somebody has acted inappropriately in the Department I will make sure they are held accountable. 

Mr. LOFGREN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Franks, is recognized. 

67 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, General, for being here. I guess to lay the groundwork here, you understand that perhaps reason that this issue has gotten so much attention is that in the simplicity of the overall project here, it appears that the American government, the American Justice Department—Department of Justice, through their Department subsidiaries, have orchestrated a program to get American gun dealers to 

sell guns to straw buyers, to then run those guns to Mexico and 

give them to drug cartels, around 2,000 high powered weapons, 

with the understanding that that takes grave risk for innocent 

human life. 

I mean at this point, we know at least one of our own agents was 

killed, and probably 150 or more Mexican citizens were killed. Now 

that is a pretty scary scenario by itself. But I think the thing that 

would really concern the American people is why this was all done. 

On the one hand, if it was just something that was sincere effort 

that went wrong or just gross incompetence, that is one thing. But 

Mr. Issa mentioned some internal e-mails that I think were pretty 

significant, because if the American people learned that the motivations for all of this was somehow to make a case to deprive them 

of their second amendment rights, to make a case to further the 

Department’s ability to further regulate gun rights within the 

United States, that would make them very angry, General. So let 

me just read a couple of e-mails again. I know Mr. Issa has already 

done this, but I just want to be clear on this so that you understand why some of us are so concerned. 

On July 14, 2010 the ATF headquarters received an update on 

Fast and Furious. And the assistant director Mark Chait e-mailed 

Bill Newell, the head of ATF’s Phoenix office. ‘‘Bill, can you see if 

these if guns were all purchased from the same license gun dealer 

and at one time? We are looking at antidotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks.’’ 

In other words they were trying to use this tragedy to build a 

case for the demand letters. Well done, yesterday, Bill in light of 

our request for demand letter 3, this case could be a strong supporting factor if we determine how many multiple sales of long 

guns occurred during the course of this case. It appears that the 

ATF was trying to rely on walked guns orchestrated by the Department to justify its new long gun reporting requirement known as 

demand letter 3. The people would be very upset if that was true. 

Now you have already testified that you haven’t read these e-mails; 

is that correct? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am sorry, that I haven’t read? 

Mr. FRANKS. You already told Mr. Issa that you hadn’t actually 

read these e-mails. 

Attorney General HOLDER. That is correct. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, you know, the thing that is difficult for me, 

General, is that you then told him that it was out of context. And 

how would you have known that it was out of context if you hadn’t 

read them. What would give you the first indication that they were 

out of context? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Because he read part of the e-mail to 

me, and I was able to listen to that and understanding what he 

68 

said or what he read from the e-mail and knowing what happened 

here as I—— 

Mr. FRANKS. I will accept that. But do you read, I know you said 

that you don’t oftentimes read letters from your own staff. Do you 

read major letters from oversight chairmen like Mr. Issa and Mr. 

Grassley that come to your office, do you personally read these letters? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I can certainly say that over the last 

few months, everything that Mr. Issa has sent and Senator Grassley has sent, I have read. 

Mr. FRANKS. Let me say then to you, on July 12, 2011, which 

was a letter that they both sent to you, the e-mails I just read to 

you were attached to the letter. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I might not have read the attachments. Understanding something. These things come in, I read 

these things from Mr. Issa, from Congressman Issa and Senator 

Grassley, because I take seriously—— 

Mr. FRANKS. It is hard for me to—anyway, let me skip, ask you 

one more question here. Mr. Issa also asked if you had given all 

the pertinent e-mails here and that he noted that none of them had 

your name on this, none of them. And you said this is—this obviously is probably one of the most significant scandals facing your 

tenure over at the Justice Department, and not one e-mail, General, was from you? Not one of them? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, we have produced a really substantial amount of stuff around the February 4 letter, but I just— 

let me be very clear, that with regard to documents that go beyond 

that from February 5 on, those materials have not been produced 

and it is not our intention to produce them following that—— 

Mr. FRANKS. So the answer to his question would have been no, 

that you haven’t given him all the pertinent e-mails. I guess it is 

very simple in my mind that either if there are no e-mails from you 

that have been given to Mr. Issa, if there are none regarding this 

Committee, then we are left with three options here: Either this is 

not that big a deal to you, and I know that it is; or somehow you, 

for particular reasons, don’t write e-mails so that there can’t be any 

record; or that you haven’t given us those e-mails, that is the only 

three things I can come up with, there may be other possibilities, 

I am open to hear it. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I made an exception to the way in 

which the Justice Department has always conducted itself with the 

provision of these materials around that February 4th letter and 

acted in a way with regard to all other e-mail material in a way 

that all other Attorneys General before me have. And on that basis, 

there are e-mails, materials that we have not and will not produce. 

Mr. FRANKS. I understand. Mr. Chairman, my time is up, but I 

understand, Mr. General, and I appreciate—but that answers the 

question. And I appreciate that, because without insulting you, 

that is one of the first clear answers I have gotten today is that 

you have agreed that you haven’t given the Chairman all of the 

pertinent e-mails, and you are saying you are not going to, at least 

that is a clear answer for all of us, and with that, I yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Franks. The gentleman from Illinois, 

Mr. Quigley, is recognized. 

69 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For those keeping score 

at home, one side is using this horrible screw-up to justify a policy. 

The other side is using this horrible screw-up to justify not funding 

ATF, not giving the ATF a leader, continuing to make tracing difficult of guns, continuing to make releasing statistics difficult, and 

for allowing continued extraordinarily lax policies for the violators 

and the purchasers of straw weapons that will be used long, long 

after this hearing today to purchase weapons to endanger Mexicans 

and Americans and our DEA agents. Penalties that were described 

in hearings before this Congress as nothing more than a moving 

violation. 

So Mr. Attorney General, now that I have got the score card up 

to date. Let me just congratulate you, I can’t forget that I am from 

Chicago, and yet again, yesterday there was a sentencing of an Illinois governor. So we will have two in jail at the same time, four 

of the last eight governors, two of my last four predecessors in this 

office went to jail or are going to jail. So I want to commend your 

office for its work. I just wish we didn’t give you so much work to 

do. 

But toward that end, Mr. Sensenbrenner and I did manage to get 

a bill out of this Committee dealing with repairing honest services, 

I would like your reaction on where we need to go with that. As 

you know, the Supreme Court struck down that Act, many provisions of it, and they are a necessary tool. Given where we are in 

Chicago but across the country, where in your mind do we need to 

go to deal with official corruption? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I thank you for the compliment, 

it is not something that I should be complimented for, but the men 

and women in U.S. Attorneys office in Chicago deserve all the credit. Pat Fitzgerald is a great U.S. Attorney, a friend, he has done 

a wonderful job over a great number of years there and he has a 

great staff. I also appreciate the efforts that you and Congressman 

Sensenbrenner have—the efforts that you have made in trying to 

help us deal with that Supreme Court decision. 

The honest services provision in Title XVIII is a vital tool for us 

to have as we try to fight official corruption cases. A number of 

cases over the years have been made on the basis of the use of that 

provision, and to the extent that we can work with Congress to 

have that provision formed in a way that it can withstand constitutional muster that will help us; it will give us another tool in our 

arsenal against official corruption, which is a priority for this Administration. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. And obviously, the bill has not passed the full 

House and/or Senate. To the extent that your agency can or will 

participate in making sure that we do this right as with—we would 

like this one to stand up for some time, we certainly appreciate 

your help in that manner. 

Attorney General HOLDER. We would be glad to work with you 

in that regard. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I yield back. 

Mr. ISSA [presiding]. The gentleman yields back. We now recognize the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Poe, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. POE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. General, the way I see 

the Fast and Furious operation based on all of the information that 

70 

I have received, is that United States Government, Justice Department, ATF, we are aware of a situation where guns could be 

bought in the United States, serious weapons, automatic, semiautomatic, sniper rifles, bought by straw purchasers and were observed by Federal authorities, wanted to watch the guns go to Mexico, go to the drug cartels and see where they ended up. 

Here is how it ended up. Two thousand weapons, based upon the 

information that we have received from your Department, 600 of 

those weapons are accounted for, the vast majority are not accounted for. We don’t know what country they are in and who has 

got them. But this operation is serious to me because people died 

with this ill-founded decision. We talk about the two Americans, 

the two agents, one Brian Terry, Jaimie Zapata in Mexico, the two 

agents. But at least 200 Mexican nationals died too because of the 

United States watching these weapons, knowing where they were 

going and lose those weapons. Mexican government hasn’t said a 

whole lot about this other than at least 200 Mexican nationals. 

Those Mexicans nationals that were murdered because of our 

watching this illegal conduct are just as important as the two 

Americans that were murdered as well. And that is why this is a 

serious discussion. 

You are the Attorney General, you are a lawyer, former judge, 

prosecutor, you are the head guy in the United States when it 

comes to the Justice Department and law enforcement. My understanding is you didn’t really know about the operation, the memos, 

you might have gotten the memo, didn’t read the memo or didn’t 

read all of the memo, not sure about that. But you are the person 

in charge of this, and believing that you were unaware of Operation Fast and Furious requires to coin a phrase, a willing suspension of disbelief. It is hard for me to believe that you were unaware 

of this operation that went to Mexico. 

Now my question is very simple, who is the person in the United 

States Government that made the decision on Operation Fast and 

Furious to facilitate the guns going to Mexico? Who is that one person? 

Attorney General HOLDER. We don’t know yet. 

Mr. POE. So you don’t know who was responsible for the conduct 

of these thousands of guns going to Mexico? We don’t know who 

that is? 

Attorney General HOLDER. We know that the case was opened in 

the ATF office in Phoenix a month or so before it was opened in 

the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix. We know that it was given 

OCDETF status sometime after that, but we do not know as yet 

who the particular people, person was, to the extent it is a person, 

in either of those offices that said this is the way in which this operation, this flawed operation should be conducted. 

Mr. POE. So we don’t know the person that signed off—I mean, 

I don’t know how the Federal Government works, everybody has 

got to sign off on something, especially something like this. We 

don’t know who that person is yet. Is that what you are telling me? 

Attorney General HOLDER. With all due respect, I would be surprised if we are going to see a document that somebody signed off 

on that said you can let guns walk. I would be surprised if we see 

something like that. 

71 

Mr. POE. Would you agree—— 

Attorney General HOLDER. I don’t know. 

Mr. POE. We don’t know who was in charge of making that final, 

it is time to send the guns to the enemy of Mexico, the drug dealers, which is phenomenal to me. It is a violation, I understand, of 

international law to allow gun trafficking to go between two countries. Do you agree with that? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I don’t—it would depend. If you 

look at—— 

Mr. POE. People in one country are smuggling guns to another 

country, isn’t that a violation of international law? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I don’t know about international 

law, but I was going to say if you look at Operation Wide Receiver, 

if the governments agree that weapons can go from one country to 

another, I would not think that violates international law. 

Mr. POE. If they agree, that is the key. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Right. 

Mr. POE. Did the Mexican government agree to Operation Fast 

and Furious? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Not the way—not the way—not the 

way which it was actually carried out. 

Mr. POE. The way it turned out? 

Attorney General HOLDER. The way it turned out. 

Mr. POE. Would you agree it was a reckless? It was a reckless 

operation on the part of the United States? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I think the way it was carried out, I 

would certainly say it was flawed, reckless, I probably would agree 

with that. It was done inappropriately and had tragic consequences 

and is going—as I said in my opening statement, it is going to continue to have tragic consequences. 

Mr. POE. More people are going to die probably. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Unfortunately, I think that is probably true. 

Mr. POE. The person recklessly causes the death of another person under many State laws, including Texas, where some of these 

guns were bought, it is manslaughter, it is a crime. It is my belief 

that if the United States government helped facilitate reckless 

homicide, reckless killing of other people, this is a serious matter. 

And there may be people in our government, Justice Department, 

the ATF, that if they helped facilitate reckless conduct that caused 

the death of an individual in the United States or in Mexico by 

sending these guns down there, they should be held criminally responsible for that conduct. 

Are you going, as far as the Attorney General, to make sure that 

if criminal violations were committed by anyone in our government, 

that you are going prosecute those people? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Sir, if we find there were criminal 

violations connected to the conduct of the Fast and Furious, I will 

commit that those—that we will take those findings seriously and 

that people will be prosecuted. Now when I said reckless before, I 

was talking about the way in which the operation itself was conducted. I don’t want to cast too wide a net here and say that on 

the basis of what we know now that there is a basis to conclude 

that people connected to Fast and Furious either at the ATF in 

72 

Phoenix or in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix would necessarily have the requisite state of mind or done things that would 

bring them under the ambit. 

Mr. POE. Reclaiming my time, that is not what you are saying, 

that is what I was saying. I was saying—— 

Mr. SMITH [presiding]. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. POE. Thank you very much. And I request unanimous consent to submit further questions to the Attorney General and have 

answers in writing. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection. Thank you, Mr. Poe. 

The gentlewoman from California, Ms. Chu, is recognized. 

Ms. CHU. Mr. Attorney General, before I begin with my questions, I would like to thank you for the anti-crime accomplishments 

in my district of Los Angeles. Earlier this year, the Department 

took down in 1 day more than 100 members and associates of 

transnational organization crime groups that were involved in 

widespread criminal conduct in Los Angeles, Miami and Denver. 

These were violent and fraud-related crimes, including kidnapping 

and drug distribution. And also, in recent years, the Department 

has gone after a San Gabriel Valley-based organization linked to a 

major ecstasy ring leading to the seizure of over 1.1 million ecstasy 

tablets. 

Your office has also engaged in a massive take down of major 

methamphetamine and cocaine suppliers in some of the most violent street gangs in Los Angeles and La Puente. So I thank you for 

all of those efforts. It has truly helped our area. 

And I would also like to commend you for the work your department has done in regards to voter rights. Your office has handled 

27 new cases this year and opened up 172 investigations in this 

area. We all know there has been a large number of unprecedented 

legislation suppressing voter rights. And I am happy to hear that 

your office is vigilant about not letting that happen. 

Can you provide some examples of what the department is doing 

to ensure that newly enacted State legislative efforts on voter identification are implemented in accordance with the Voter—Voting 

Rights Act? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, we have a special role to play 

under the Voting Rights Act. Our Civil Rights Division, which is 

ably led by Tom Perez, has been very active in this regard. And to 

the extent that changes are made in covered jurisdictions, we review those proposed changes. And where we think something runs 

afoul of the Voting Rights Act, we note that and do not pass on 

them. Where we think that they are consistent with the Voting 

Rights Act, we approve them. We have taken, in a number of 

places, lodged objections to proposals that have been made with regard to changes in voting schemes. 

Ms. CHU. And what steps are being taken to ensure that jurisdictions and the public are aware of what is permissible and not permissible with these types of laws? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, you know, we have tried to—Assistant Attorney General Perez in particular has spent a lot of time 

on the road, trying to educate people, especially in those areas covered by the Voting Rights Act, about—and we have interacted with 

State officials as well, to let them know about ways in which things 

73 

can be changed consistent with the Voting Rights Act, warned jurisdictions about ways in which changes might be made that might 

run afoul of the Voting Rights Act. 

And then, more generally, to talk to members of the public, as 

I have tried do, when I have been out there to talk about the Voting Rights Act. As I said, I am going to be talking about this in 

a speech in the LBJ library next week, I think on Monday or Tuesday. 

Ms. CHU. Very good. 

Well, I also want to thank you for something else, which is that 

there is an issue about offensive materials about Muslims that was 

used in some FBI training. And I know that in the Senate Judiciary meeting last month, you acknowledged that this has stopped. 

It was when the FBI was conducting counterterrorism training, 

using materials that included inflammatory statements about Islamic beliefs and offensive stereotypes about Muslims. So, at that 

Senate Judiciary meeting, you acknowledged that it stopped. And 

I would like to know what the status is of the situation and the 

steps that have been taken or any investigation that has been 

opened up about the use of these biased trainers and materials. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, the person who was responsible 

for the use of—I guess using that material is no longer going to be 

used by the FBI. We have also enhanced our efforts to make sure 

that we review all the materials that are used in the training of 

agents, lawyers, personnel within the Department of Justice to 

make sure that that kind of mistake doesn’t happen again. This is 

something that the FBI Director, the heads of the other law enforcement agencies within the Department, as well as I and the 

leadership in the Department, are committed to making sure does 

not happen again. I mean, that was totally inappropriate, and it is 

a mistake that we will not allow to happen again. 

Ms. CHU. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Chu. 

The gentleman from Utah, Mr. Chaffetz, is recognized. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you. 

And thank you, Mr. Attorney General, for being here. Have you 

spoken to Secretary Napolitano about Fast and Furious? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Have you spoken with Secretary Clinton about 

Fast and Furious? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Have you spoken to President Obama about Fast 

and Furious? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I don’t think that I have. I see the 

President—— 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. That is okay. If you haven’t, you haven’t. 

Have you spoken to the President of Mexico about Fast and Furious? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Have you spoken to the attorney general of Mexico about Fast and Furious? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I don’t believe so. 

74 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. You have routinely argued that you have been oblivious and disengaged in this operation. And I buy that to a large 

extent. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am not sure I would characterize—— 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. But we have a dead Border Patrol agent in Agent 

Terry. We have 2,000 missing guns. We have 200 deaths in Mexico. 

We had dead government officials in Mexico. We have a Mexican 

helicopter with troops in it that was shot, three of which are 

wounded back in May of this year. We have 50-plus Members of 

Congress calling for your resignation over this, and you have never 

spoken to any one of these people about this operation? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, first off, the notion that I am 

somehow oblivious to this matter is totally belied by these inconvenient things called the facts. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. You took 5 days to go to the Caribbean. You 

didn’t have 15 minutes to call Secretary Clinton, Napolitano, talk 

to the President, or your counterparts in Mexico? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Understand something with regard to 

Secretary Napolitano, we, our agencies have been in constant touch 

with each other about this issue because we are engaged, both of 

us, in the prosecution of the killer of—— 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. So if you were intimately involved and engaged 

in this, remember Agent Terry was killed in December, mid-December, and then we had Jaime Zapata, who was killed in Mexico, two 

officers shot, February 15. On February 16, you and Secretary 

Napolitano issued a press release that is titled, ‘‘Secretary 

Napolitano and Attorney General Holder form a joint task force to 

assist Mexico’s investigation into yesterday’s shooting of two ICE 

agents in Mexico.’’ 

At the very beginning of this press release, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder 

today met to discuss this issue. And how is it that you and Secretary Napolitano said you never even talked or discussed, even 

brought up or had any discussion about Fast and Furious? 

Attorney General HOLDER. The press release that you talk about 

is not a Fast and Furious matter. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. But—— 

Attorney General HOLDER. Understand—you have to understand 

something of the way Washington works here, okay? The reality is 

that when it comes to matters that are under investigation—— 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. But the death of Jaime Zapata was highly likely, 

it was highly likely that that came from Fast and Furious. In fact, 

from testimony that we took from Agent Forcelli, and I am going 

to read from this, is from January 8 of 2011, quote, And there was 

the sense like every other time, even with Ms. Giffords’ shooting, 

there was a state of panic like, oh, my God, let’s hope this is not 

a weapon from that case. And the shooting of Mr. Zapata down in 

Mexico, I know that again, that state of panic that they had like, 

please, let this not come back. 

So the agents on the ground were so concerned that this is going 

to happen. You and Secretary Napolitano have a discussion, and 

there is no discussion about even the possibility of Fast and Furious? 

75 

Attorney General HOLDER. There is—the meaningful conversations that happen between DHS and DOJ happen at lower levels, 

between investigators. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. But when you and—what did you and Secretary 

Napolitano talk about if you didn’t talk about Fast and Furious, 

and it is the day after Jaime Zapata, and you were very quick to 

issue press releases? 

Attorney General HOLDER. You are making an assumption that 

that in fact is a Fast and Furious case. I am not sure that—— 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. We didn’t know at the time. You didn’t know at 

the time. I didn’t know. Nobody knew at the time. Isn’t it a reasonable assumption to suggest that it may have been guns from Fast 

and Furious that happened, that caused that death? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Given the fact that there are over the 

course of the last 5 years 64,000 weapons that have gone from the 

United States to Mexico—— 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. I have a hard time believing, Mr. Attorney General, with all due respect, my time is short, twice the President of 

the United States has gone before the American people and said 

that you had nothing to do with this, you weren’t involved in it, 

you weren’t engaged in it. Yet you said you have never spoken to 

the President. How is it that he would know you haven’t been— 

weren’t involved in this, and he can make such a claim if you have 

never even spoken to him about it? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, the President gets information 

from the Justice Department in a variety of ways. We interact with 

the White House Counsel’s Office very frequently. I don’t know exactly what the flow of information is within the White House, but 

he can find out about my state of involvement in matters connected 

to the Justice Department without speaking directly to me. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Let me move onto—you have access to, obviously, 

the e-mails of Dennis Burke. On Wednesday, November 24, 2010, 

he sent an e-mail that said, ‘‘Some of the weapons bought by these 

clowns in Arizona have been directly traced to murders of elected 

officials in Mexico by the cartels. So Katie bar the door when we 

unveil this baby.’’ How is it that you have never had a discussion 

with your counterpart in Mexico about this? 

In fact, in a Los Angeles Times article, dated September 19 of 

this year, quote, At no time did we know or were we made aware 

that there might have been arms trafficking permitted. In no way 

would we have allowed it because it is an attack on the safety of 

Mexicans. It goes on in the article, actually the paragraph before, 

And to this date she said U.S. officials have not briefed her on the 

operation gone awry, nor have they apologized. 

What is unacceptable is that you and everybody in your organization, according to you the higher-ups, know about this investigation. You don’t have 15 minutes to pick up the phone. And we have 

still never talked to these people in order to solve this problem because, as you say, it is going to go on for some time. 

Attorney General HOLDER. We have taken steps, I have taken 

steps to solve this problem in that I ordered an examination of this 

to determine exactly what happened. I have issued directives that 

this should never happen again. We have put in place measures at 

ATF so that this kind of thing won’t happen again. 

76 

What Todd Jones has done with regard to the reforms that he 

has put in place I think are going to be extremely effective. And 

I have made personnel changes with regard to—— 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. You haven’t fired anybody. Nobody has been 

fired. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Does the gentleman want to respond to the last question? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I just was trying to say that I have 

made personnel changes with regard to the agencies that have 

been involved. And these are initial determinations that I have 

made. It is not all that I am possibly going to do. There is an impatience here, and in some ways, I understand it, but the reality is 

that you have to do these things on the basis of evidence, on the 

basis of findings that are factually grounded. And when I am in 

that position, I will take the appropriate actions. But I want to assure you and the American people that people will be held accountable for the mistakes that were made in Fast and Furious. 

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, point of inquiry. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chaffetz. 

Who seeks to be recognized? 

The gentleman from California. 

Mr. ISSA. A point of inquiry. Do political appointees of the Presidents and the Attorney General serve at the pleasure of the President or the Attorney General, or do they need to have to be fired 

for cause? 

Mr. SMITH. That is not actually a parliamentary inquiry—— 

Mr. ISSA. But I am sure inquiring. 

Mr. SMITH [continuing]. Though it may be a legitimate question. 

The Judiciary Committee will recess until immediately after this 

series of votes. We expect that to be about 2:30. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. SMITH. The Judiciary Committee will come to order. 

Before we resume our questioning, I would like to welcome the 

newest Member of the Committee, Jared Polis, from the Second 

District of Colorado. Congressman Polis was just appointed yesterday to fill a vacancy on the Committee. And we are happy to welcome him back. He was on the Committee for several years and is 

back on now. 

He also serves on the Rules Committee and the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. And at our next meeting, we 

will go into even more details about Mr. Polis. But we welcome him 

today. 

And will be recognizing you immediately for questions. 

Mr. POLIS. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to draw your attention, Mr. Attorney General, to the 

issues surrounding the regulation of medical marijuana. 

I wanted to first clarify, there is a memo dated October 19, 2009, 

from David Ogden. I am sure you are familiar with that memo. The 

contents of that memo is advisory to the States is still in force. Is 

that correct? That is still a current memo? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yes. 

Mr. POLIS. Okay. Thank you. And one of the issues that was 

later clarified in a memo by James Cole is what we are talking 

about when we are talking about caregivers, who your memo inVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:08 Sep 11, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00080 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\120811\71602.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
77 

structs should not be an enforcement priority. The Colorado Constitution in Article XIV happens to have a definition of caregiver. 

It is further refined in our Colorado statutes. And I wanted to see 

whether I can get your assurance that our definition of caregiver 

in our State’s Constitution will be given some deference by the U.S. 

Attorney General’s Office. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am not familiar with the provision. 

But what we said in the memo we still intend, which is that given 

the limited resources that we have, and if there are States that 

have medical marijuana provisions, and if you take into account 

the Cole memo, if in fact people are not using the policy decision 

that we have made to use marijuana in a way that is not consistent 

with the State statute, we will not use our limited resources in that 

way. And so I don’t know—I assume that—I just don’t know about 

that provision. 

Mr. POLIS. And again, in the case of Colorado, we do have definitions of some of the terms in your documents in our Constitution. 

And I would hope that the U.S. Attorney General for the State 

would look at that. 

Now, as you know, the Department of Justice recently announced 

a crackdown in California. Now, part of the issue there, it is my 

understanding, they did not have a functional State-level regulatory authority. Colorado does have an extensive State regulatory 

and licensing system for medical marijuana. And I would like to 

ask whether our State regulation, our thoughtful State regulation, 

passed with strong bipartisan majorities in both Chambers of our 

legislature, provide any additional protection to Colorado from Federal intervention. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Again, I am not familiar with it, but 

I would have to look at it. But again, our thought was that where 

a State has taken a position, it has passed a law and people are 

acting in conformity with the law—not abusing the law, but acting 

in conformity with it—and again given our limited resources, that 

would not be an enforcement priority for the Justice Department. 

Mr. POLIS. Thank you. I am grateful for that clarification. 

One of the issues that many of the legal, regulated medical marijuana shops and dispensaries shops in Colorado brought to my attention is their inability to open bank accounts at most FDIC institutions. That makes the industry harder for the State to track, to 

tax, to regulate, and in fact makes it prone to robberies because it 

becomes a cash business as well. Is there any intention of the Department of Justice to prosecute bankers for doing business with 

licensed and regulated medical marijuana providers in the States? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Again, I would think, consistent with 

the notion that how we use our limited resources, again, if the 

bankers, the people seeking to make the deposits are acting in conformity with State law, that would not, again, be an enforcement 

priority for the Justice Department. 

Mr. POLIS. Thank you. 

Moving onto another issue with regards to Internet piracy, as 

you know the Judiciary Committee recently held hearings on 

SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act. I had many concerns with this bill, 

including an overly broad definition of infringement. As you know, 

there is a lot of content on the Internet. In fact, as example, on 

78 

YouTube alone, there’s 100 hours of video that is uploaded every 

minute. Many of this, many of the videos that have been uploaded 

contain some type of rights infringement, with no intent for commercial gain. 

I ask with the substantial new powers that would be granted to 

the Attorney General’s Office under SOPA, what type of resources 

would the Department of Justice need to handle the hundreds of 

millions of prosecutions that would be necessary and indicated 

under SOPA? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I think that you have to look at 

what powers we would be granted and then how we would use our 

resources. Not every matter, though it might be a technical violation of a statute, is something that we are going to use our resources going against. I mean, if there is a YouTube upload of 

something that is not intended for commercial use and we don’t 

think there is any great harm, that is not the kind of thing we are 

going to be going after. 

Mr. POLIS. So it is fair to say, given otherwise the absence of tens 

or hundreds of billions of resources to go after everybody, there 

would be selective enforcement of the Stop Online Piracy Act from 

the Attorney General’s Office? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, selective enforcement, as a prosecutor you get a little nervous saying that phrase. But there would 

be an appropriate use of our resources, taking into account what 

the harm is, and always with the thought that what we are trying 

to do is to protect the abuse of copyrighted material. 

Mr. POLIS. I thank the gentleman. 

And just note that with regard to the selective enforcement, 

there is not currently criteria in the bill, so that would be at the 

discretion of your office to decide what type of selective enforcement of that law and the new powers would be given to the Attorney General under that would entail. 

And I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Polis. 

The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Gowdy. 

Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Holder, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote a 

letter to a Member of Congress, February 2011, a letter which was 

demonstrably false. Your Department withdrew that letter 10 

months later. When did you learn that that letter was false? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I would not characterize the letter as false. I would say it contained inaccuracies. 

Mr. GOWDY. Well, Mr. Attorney General, it contained material 

demonstrably false statements. Agreed? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No. 

Mr. GOWDY. You don’t think they were demonstrably false when 

you represented ATF makes an effort to interdict all weapons going 

to Mexico? You don’t think that is demonstrably false? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Not in the way you used the word. 

Mr. GOWDY. How do you know what way I used the word? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am listening to you. 

Mr. GOWDY. Is it false? Can I demonstrate that it is false? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, you said materially false. You 

are using legal terms there. You are a lawyer. So now we are in 

79 

that realm. And you said materially false. And that is a fundamentally different thing from—— 

Mr. GOWDY. All right. Do you think it was demonstrably false? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I would say that it was inaccurate. 

Mr. GOWDY. All right. When did you learn it was inaccurate, demonstrably false? 

Attorney General HOLDER. You know, I am not sure, but I had 

concerns about it early enough that in spite of the expression on 

February 4, I ordered that investigation on February the 28. And 

it was an evolving process. As time went on, more and more information became available. And it became more and more clear that 

that letter contained inaccurate information. 

Mr. GOWDY. Well, it strikes me that if a statement that false 

were made to a judge, you would have withdrawn that statement, 

that brief, that memo, that filing the moment that you learned it 

was false. And I am just curious why there is not the same regard 

for this branch of government that there would be for the judicial 

branch of government. 

Attorney General HOLDER. If you look at what happened over the 

course of months between the time of the letter until it was formally withdrawn, there were a number of instances where we indicated that we had concerns about what was in the letter, in testimony that Mr. Weich gave, at one point I believe, he said we were 

not—I don’t remember the exact expression that he used, but he 

indicated there that we had concerns. In a letter that I sent I guess 

in October, I indicated there were problems with Fast and Furious 

which was inconsistent with what the letter said. There were a 

number of things that happened between February 4 and I guess 

December or November, whenever it is that we actually withdrew 

it. 

Mr. GOWDY. Let’s go back to February 4, because there are at 

least four senior DOJ officials who knew or should have known 

that letter was false at the time it was delivered. Your chief of 

staff, Gary Grindler, saw a map of Mexico where guns were being 

recovered. He was debriefed on Fast and Furious. He knew that 

cash was being paid for the weapons in Arizona. Lanny Breuer, you 

will concede, knew for a fact that gun walking was taking place in 

February of 2011. Agreed? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No. 

Mr. GOWDY. You disagree that Lanny Breuer, despite the fact 

that he has admitted it, knew that gun walking was taking place 

by ATF. Mr. Attorney General, there are e-mails where he admitted it in October of 2010. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Okay, now Congressman, you have to 

be careful here. He said that he knew about gun walking in Operation Wide Receiver. 

Mr. GOWDY. Right. Which is why it is very important Mr. Weich 

didn’t say Fast and Furious in his letter to Senator Grassley. I see 

where you are going with that. He didn’t make a distinction on 

Fast and Furious. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am just trying to be careful here. 

Mr. GOWDY. And I want to be careful, too. 

Attorney General HOLDER. You don’t want to conflate things. 

Mr. GOWDY. I am not conflating. 

80 

Attorney General HOLDER. Okay. 

Mr. GOWDY. Did Lanny Breuer know that ATF engaged in gun 

walking in February of 2011. 

Attorney General HOLDER. He knew they had engaged in gun 

walking in the Fast—in the Wide Receiver operation. 

Mr. GOWDY. So the answer to that question would be yes. Lanny 

Breuer knew that any statement that ATF makes every effort to 

interdict guns and not allow them to go to Mexico, he knew that 

statement would have been false. 

Attorney General HOLDER. He said that he made a mistake in 

not connecting that which he knew about Wide Receiver and didn’t 

apply that knowledge to what happened in Fast and Furious. 

Mr. GOWDY. What about Jason Weinstein and James Trusty? 

This is their e-mail exchange: It is a tricky case given the number 

of guns of that have walked. That is October 2010. Trusty responds, It is not going to be any surprise that a bunch of U.S. guns 

are being used in Mexico, so I am not sure how much grief we get 

for gun walking. These aren’t AUSAs in Arizona. These aren’t 

rogue ATF agents. These are senior DOJ officials. And I cannot believe that they just learned recently that a demonstrably false letter had been mailed to a Member of Congress. Why not correct it 

the moment you realized that it was wrong? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, they admit that they made mistakes with regard to what their level of knowledge was and what 

they should have done in the preparation of the letter. They relied 

on people who they thought had the best knowledge in Arizona and 

did not bring into their calculation information that they had previously had about the gun walking that had occurred in that prior 

operation. 

Mr. GOWDY. Mr. Attorney General, you brought several law enforcement officials with you today. And I salute their service. It 

just strikes me—and I am quite confident I will get this question 

when I go back home—when law enforcement officers lie to lawyers, they go to jail. When lawyers lie to Congress, they seem to 

get promoted. There is a Border Patrol agent who is on his way to 

Federal prison right now on a 1001 conviction. What consequences 

can we expect because of false statements made to Congress? 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

And if the Attorney General will respond to the question. 

Attorney General HOLDER. As I said, there is an Inspector General investigation that is underway. I will look at the results of 

that investigation. 

But I will also be looking to see what happened with regard to 

the creation of that letter, if there is any more information that I 

can glean on my own, before making determinations as to how people will be held accountable for the mistakes that they made. 

In taking into account in making that determination, what roles 

have they played in the Department, what good things have they 

done. I mean, one cannot look at these mistakes, I think, in isolation. One has to look at the totality of the person’s service to the 

Department and then, on that basis, make a determination as to 

what the appropriate sanction will be. And that is what I will do. 

Mr. GOWDY. Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent for 

15 seconds just so I can follow up on one point. 

81 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman continues to be recognized for 15 seconds. 

Mr. GOWDY. Mr. Attorney General, it just seems to me that the 

policy is now going to be let’s get the least knowledgeable person 

that we can to write the letter. I found the exchange between you 

and Chairman Sensenbrenner to be interesting on mens rea. The 

defense is that Mr. Weich didn’t know what he didn’t know, so we 

are going to get the least knowledgeable person in the Department 

of Justice to write the letters to Members of Congress. Is that what 

we can expect from now on? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No. What you can expect from this 

Department of Justice, as long as I am the Attorney General, is 

that we will do our best to get you accurate information as quickly 

as we can. 

And I actually think that one of the problems with regard to the 

Fast and Furious response is that we were rushed. If people—although if you look at, you know, that e-mail, all those e-mails that 

we sent around, you see people are really interacting with one another, trying to find information. But I think there was a time 

pressure there that, frankly, they should not have allowed in the 

process. They should have taken more time, sent a placeholder response or something like that, and if it took 2 weeks to get a response back to Congress, that would have been better than I think 

the 4 or 5 days that it took. I think that is certainly one of the 

problems. And there was a lesson learned. 

Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Gowdy. 

The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Deutch, is recognized. 

Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General Holder, welcome, thank you for spending the day with 

us. Thank you for your candid responses. 

I would note that sometimes facts get in the way of political theatrics. And I appreciate your willingness to share facts with us 

today. 

I would like to just revisit this discussion by taking a step back 

for a minute, General. Can you, since we have delved into the 

weeds, can we back up for a second? When did you learn about Operation Fast and Furious? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Sometime in the beginning of the 

year. It would have been I think after I got those letters from Senator Grassley on January the 31st. And at some point after that, 

I think sometime in February, I first learned about Operation Fast 

and Furious. 

Mr. DEUTCH. And what did you tell the U.S. Attorney’s Offices? 

What notice did you send them when you learned of this? 

Attorney General HOLDER. After I ordered the Inspector General 

investigation, in March, I sent a directive to all of the U.S. Attorney’s Offices that gun walking was not acceptable, not an acceptable technique or tactic, that it was contrary to DOJ policy. I had 

the Deputy Attorney General send that out to all of the U.S. Attorneys. 

Mr. DEUTCH. And that was after you ordered the investigation. 

And tell me about the investigation that you were ordering. 

82 

Attorney General HOLDER. The order for the investigation was on 

February 28. I thought that I was getting conflicting information 

from people within the Department of Justice and what I was reading in the media and, frankly, what Congress was bringing to my 

attention. And it just seemed to me that I needed to have—find a 

mechanism to finally resolve what these conflicting positions, and 

as a result, I ordered—I asked the Inspector General to engage in 

this investigation. 

Mr. DEUTCH. And what is the time frame of that investigation? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am not sure. They are—I know, 

they are feverishly working on it. When it will actually be completed, I don’t know. 

Mr. DEUTCH. I appreciate that. 

There are 64,000 guns in Mexico is the number that I understand. Ninety-five percent of the weapons recovered from murders 

in Mexico, 95 percent, were traced to the United States. Tens of 

thousands of weapons were traced to the United States. It is—this 

discussion is vitally important, but I think it is equally important 

for us to broaden the discussion to one of how to address the fact 

that there are still tens of thousands of weapons that are winding 

up in Mexico from our border. 

Can you speak, General, to the actions the Congress can take in 

order to help stem that flow of guns? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I think, certainly, if Congress 

were supportive of our funding requests to help ATF with these 

teams that we would like to send to the border—we tried to send 

14 at one point. I think we only sent seven or eight because of 

funding problems, these ATF teams that have an ability to monitor 

the trafficking of weapons into Mexico. That would be helpful. 

There is a trafficking statute, if Congress would pass—consider 

and pass that, I think that could help us as well. Support for that 

regulation that we put in place that deals with long guns and the 

sale of them over the course of, you know, a 5-day period. All of 

these things I think would be helpful. And a more protracted dialogue about what the nature of the problem is, which is a national 

security threat to the United States. You know, it is not only the 

executive branch that has ideas that I think could be useful. I am 

sure there are great ideas in Congress as well. And to the extent 

that we can identify them, work on them, and do so in a way that 

is respectful of and consistent with the Second Amendment, I think 

that would be very useful. 

Mr. DEUTCH. I agree. I also would suggest, General, that it is 

worth broadening this debate to within our own borders as well. 

I think it is worth noting that 100,000 people a year in America 

are shot in gun violence; 32,000 died from gun violence last year; 

20,000 American children and teens are shot every year involving 

gun violence. Every day in America 270 people in America, 47 of 

them children and teens, are shot. And every day, 87 people die 

from gun violence in this country. 

This is a very important hearing. And this is an important discussion about this operation and the investigation that you have 

started. 

I think, unfortunately, the debate that we are not having often 

enough here is one about gun violence in this country, is one that 

83 

acknowledges the fact that law enforcement officers in our country 

now need to carry assault weapons themselves in order to match 

the firepower of the criminals who carry assault weapons. There 

was a survey done of about two dozen police departments by the 

International Association of Chiefs of Police that since 2004, all of 

the agencies have either added assault weapons to patrol units or 

replaced existing weapons with military-style assault rifles. Military-style assault weapons are now necessary. They are needed by 

our police officers because assault weapons are flowing freely within our own borders. 

And while this discussion is important, we live in a country 

where the assault weapon ban has expired, and we see assault 

weapons now flowing through the streets, causing our law enforcement to have to carry assault weapons. 

The gun show loophole continues to exist. And it is about time, 

and I say this only rhetorically, I don’t ask for your response, General, but it is about time that we focus as a Congress on the steps 

that we need to take to decrease gun violence in this country and 

to get these assault weapons, that are created for the sole purpose 

of killing people, off of our streets one and for all. 

I very much appreciate your being here, and I appreciate this exchange, General. Thanks so much for coming. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Deutch. 

The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Ross, is recognized. 

Mr. ROSS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And Mr. Attorney General, I thank you for being here. I know 

it has been a rather long day for all of us. I just want to clarify 

your understanding of your being here today, because there was 

some confusion I think at the beginning. Is it your understanding 

that you are here under oath, that you are under penalties of perjury as to your testimony? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am here to tell the truth, sure. 

Mr. ROSS. Okay. So you believe that you are here under oath. Is 

that your understanding? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am not sure I am technically under 

oath, but I have an obligation to tell the truth. I don’t need to 

swear an oath; I am here to tell the truth. 

Mr. ROSS. Thank you. I hope so. Thank you. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am going to tell the truth. 

Mr. ROSS. I want you to tell the truth. Because I want to ask you 

a little bit about your management style. 

Attorney General HOLDER. All right. 

Mr. ROSS. You know, it looks as though that you have not really 

been reading any of the memos that you get on Fast and Furious. 

In fact, I think that your Chief of Staff Ken Ohlson has testified 

before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he also did not read 

the memos sent to your attention regarding Fast and Furious. And 

I am just curious, why would that be? You learn about this operation sometime after the first of the year this year, and yet it has 

been going on for a year. You are the number one law enforcement 

officer in this country. And yet you don’t know what is going on. 

That would make me upset if I was in your position. Does it not 

you? 

84 

Attorney General HOLDER. You have to understand these memos 

that you are talking about are weekly reports that come to the Office of the Attorney General, the Office of the Deputy Attorney 

General. And they are statements by the various components of 

what is going on in them. If you look at the very things that we 

have submitted to Congress that show what actually dealt with 

Fast and Furious in those weekly reports, they don’t indicate anything about these bad tactics. 

Mr. ROSS. Okay. 

Attorney General HOLDER. It talks only about Fast and Furious 

as if—— 

Mr. ROSS. But somewhere in the line, somewhere in the line of 

authority, you have been—you are not new to this. You were in the 

Office of Public Integrity, what, for 12 years? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Public Integrity Section. 

Mr. ROSS. Yeah, Public Integrity Section for 12 years. You were 

Deputy Attorney General for 3 years. None of this structure is new 

to you. And yet there is somebody below you, and not your chief 

of staff, because he didn’t read the memos, but there is somebody 

who is reading these memos. Why are they not reporting to you? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Because if you read the memos, read 

them, if you will read the memos you will see—and they are not 

memos, they are these excerpts—if you read these excerpts about 

Fast and Furious, all it says is that Fast and Furious essentially 

is going fine—— 

Mr. ROSS. But did you know what Fast and Furious was at that 

time? Did you know that it was akin to Wide Receiver but not the 

same? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No. 

Mr. ROSS. Did you know what Fast and Furious was at all at 

that time? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No, I didn’t know about Fast and Furious until about February of this year. 

Mr. ROSS. Shouldn’t you have known? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No, because Fast and Furious is an 

operation, a regional operation. There are all kinds of operations 

going on right now in the Justice Department about which I know 

nothing because of the way in which the Department of Justice is 

structured. They are handled by—— 

Mr. ROSS. Who specifically would have been reading those 

memos? Do you know by name who specifically would have been 

reading—— 

Attorney General HOLDER. People on my staff. 

Mr. ROSS. Who are their names? 

Attorney General HOLDER. The people—whoever had the portfolio for ATF with regard to their weekly memos, NDIC with regard to their weekly memos. Those are the people on my staff who 

would have had that responsibility, making the initial determination as to whether or not there was information contained in those 

reports that should be brought to my attention. 

Mr. ROSS. Would you agree that one of the most fundamental 

principles of leadership is that you can delegate authority but you 

cannot delegate responsibility? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Okay. That sounds about right. 

85 

Mr. ROSS. And would you be willing then to say that you are responsible for Fast and Furious operation? 

Attorney General HOLDER. As I said, I am ultimately responsible 

for everything that happens in the Justice Department. 

Mr. ROSS. Do you have any remorse for what happened with 

Agent Terry? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Of course, I do. 

Mr. ROSS. Have you spoken to their family? Have you apologized 

to their family? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I have had contact with the family 

that I am not going into. The nature of my interaction with them 

is between me and them, and I will leave to them how they want 

to, if they want to, reveal that. People on my staff, in addition to 

me, are in constant touch with the Terry family. 

Mr. ROSS. But you have not apologized to them, as I understand 

it. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I will say that I have expressed my 

feelings to them, and I am going to leave—— 

Mr. ROSS. You are the number one law enforcement officer in 

this country, and a law enforcement officer has died as a result of 

a botched operation. Don’t you feel some sense of remorse that you 

ought to apologize to the family? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I feel great remorse, great regret, and 

I have expressed this to the Terry family. I am not going to reveal 

to you in this setting the nature of the interaction—— 

Mr. ROSS. Just real briefly. And I—— 

Attorney General HOLDER [continuing]. The nature of the interaction that I have had with the Terry family. I am not going to do 

this in front of the media. I am not going do it in front of a Congressional—— 

Mr. ROSS. But you haven’t apologized. That is all I wanted to establish. Now, you also testified in your opening statement that, as 

you state here, that used inflammatory and inappropriate rhetoric 

about particular one tragedy that occurred near the Southwest border in an effort to score political points. Do you feel that somebody 

is trying to score political points with this incident? 

Attorney General HOLDER. With the Fast and Furious incident? 

Mr. ROSS. Yes. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, let’s just say that some people 

have not let facts get in the way of—— 

Mr. ROSS. And you are here with clean hands to say that. Correct? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Excuse me? 

Mr. ROSS. You are here with clean hands to say that. Because 

in your opening statement, you also allege, or you assert that, for 

example, earlier this year the majority of House Members voted to 

keep law enforcement in the dark when individuals purchase multiple semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. Mr. Attorney General, it 

seems to me that you are trying score as many political points as 

you are asserting that somebody else has done in this operation. 

And I find that rather offensive. 

Attorney General HOLDER. What I have said there is factually 

accurate. I don’t have any problem with people, you know, criticizing me or the Department as long as what you say is factually 

86 

based. That is fine. I mean I understand that. I am a big guy. I 

have been in Washington for a long time. 

The concern I have is where things are thrown at the Department generally, and me personally, that are not factually based. 

That is where I draw the distinction. 

Mr. ROSS. I see my time is up. I yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Ross. 

The gentleman Puerto Rico, Mr. Pierluisi, is recognized. 

Mr. PIERLUISI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, General. I am sorry I haven’t been able to be here 

as long as I wished. I had a parallel hearing I couldn’t excuse myself from. 

But the first thing that comes to my mind is that I should commend you, because the little time I have been here, I have been 

watching you. And I keep seeing that you keep saying, as I have 

said, as I have said, as I have said. And that leads me to believe 

that you have been asked so many questions, similar questions, 

and you have had the candor, the demeanor, the patience to deal 

with them. 

And that is what we should be expecting, and we expect from the 

Attorney General. And so that is why I thank you, and I commend 

you. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Thank you. 

Mr. PIERLUISI. Stay like that, though, because this hasn’t finished. 

But I have a couple of questions, a couple of comments. First, I 

am personally concerned about the gun shows and, obviously, the 

straw purchasers. And putting aside this Fast and Furious operation, which you have already denounced, and you put a stop to it 

as soon as you learned of it, what else are you doing to deal with 

the straw purchases and the gun shows that seem to be, you know, 

like totally unregulated and so on? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, we have tried to make a priority 

the fight against gun violence. And we try to approach it in a variety of ways, by being aggressive in going after those who traffic in 

firearms, to go after those people, convicted felons, for instance, 

who should not have access to weapons, to try to come up with 

ways in which we keep guns out of the hands of felons. And that 

is really important, because if you look at the number of police officers who have been shot and, unfortunately, died over the last couple of years, the vast majority of them have been shot by people 

who were felons and who should not have had access to weapons. 

And so we do a whole variety of things to try keep guns out of 

hands of people who should not have them. 

Mr. PIERLUISI. That is good. 

One thing that bugs me is that for 5 and a half years, we haven’t 

had a permanent director at ATF. Yet I see lots of vacancies there. 

I see them in Puerto Rico, my district, my place; 45 percent of the 

slots are vacant, even though we have a huge crime issue and illegal gun issue. Is that affecting the level of resources that ATF has? 

I mean, is this lack of a permanent director affecting its mission, 

its ability to meet its mission? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I do think so. I think that internally 

an organization runs better when a person who is seen as the perVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:08 Sep 11, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00090 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\120811\71602.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
87 

manent head, the Senate-confirmed head is in charge. I think people respond better, although I think Todd Jones is doing a great 

job as the acting person now. 

But beyond that, a person who is Senate confirmed has the ability in the budget process to lobby for his or her organization in a 

way that a person who is doing it in an acting capacity cannot. You 

just have more heft within the Administration, in dealing with 

Congress, if you are the confirmed head. And I think because ATF 

has been so long without a confirmed head, it has not had the ability to argue as forcefully, as effectively as maybe some of the other 

components within the Department for resources. 

Mr. PIERLUISI. Going back a bit to this Operation Fast and Furious, I am the first one who recognizes that Congress has every 

right to do oversight on this issue and investigate and so on. And 

I know you do, too. 

But one thing that comes to my mind is that the moment you 

learned of it and you did not get the right answers from your 

troops, that is when you said, I am referring this to Inspector General. And as far as I know, the Inspector General doesn’t report to 

you, has wide discretion. Her objectivity hasn’t been questioned. So 

this is in the proper hands. And is there an investigation ongoing 

at the moment? And what is—and another question I have is isn’t 

that your modus operandi? When you see any potential irregularity 

in your Department, isn’t the Inspector General the place you go 

to to try correct it? And then if there is going to be referrals, administrative actions, then they happen? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yeah. I think that was—I thought 

that was the appropriate thing to do. I continue to think it is the 

appropriate thing to do, to have an independent Inspector General 

look at this situation, this flawed operation, and share with me and 

with the rest of the world what her conclusions will be. 

The Inspector General in the Justice Department has I think a 

deserved reputation for independence. There were a lot of investigations that were done by the IG during the Bush administration 

that I think generated a lot of attention and I think were indicative 

of the kind of independence that the IG is capable of doing when 

it was making determinations about the Justice Department in 

which the office sits. I am confident that with regard to this matter, the IG will be able to independently review this, as I described, 

flawed operation and come up with some facts upon which I can 

take further action. 

Mr. PIERLUISI. Thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent for 15 more seconds. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman is recognized for another 15 seconds. 

Mr. PIERLUISI. Before I stop, my time has expired, I want to 

mention to you, Attorney General, that I have requested that 

ONDCP Director Gil Kerlikowske, the drug czar, craft what I call 

a Caribbean Border Initiative, something similar to the Southwestern Border Initiative. And the reason is straightforward. We 

are in a crisis in the Caribbean. Homicides at the worst possible 

level. More than half of the homicides in Puerto Rico are drug related. The situation merits particular attention, a similar initiative 

to the one you have in the Southwest. I hope I will count on your 

support. 

88 

Attorney General HOLDER. The point you make is a very good 

one. The Administration has what is called the Caribbean Basin 

Security Initiative that is in place to deal with the island nations 

in the Caribbean and the problems that they are facing. I was in 

the Caribbean for 4 days, I guess 2 or 3 weeks ago, where I met 

with four heads of state, a variety of attorneys general and interior 

ministers to talk about—I was in the Dominican Republic. I was 

in Barbados. And I was in Trinidad. And I met with, as I said, 

those groups of people to deal with the situation that they are talking about. And as Mexico is becoming more successful, drugs are 

now starting to flow through the Caribbean Nations both to the 

United States and then through Africa into Europe. 

Mr. PIERLUISI. And there are two American territories, Puerto 

Rico and the Virgin Islands right here. 

Attorney General HOLDER. That is very true. And the problem is 

one we have to confront. This is a national security issue that we 

have to confront. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Pierluisi. 

The gentlewoman from Florida, Ms. Adams, is recognized. 

Mrs. ADAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Holder, I am going to ask you some questions, and I think 

they are pretty easy yes or no questions. Let’s see if we can go that 

route. Are you aware of a 1994 implementation DOJ was responsible—— 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am sorry, I can’t hear you too well. 

Mrs. ADAMS. 1994, there was an implementation, DOJ was responsible for the implementation of CALEA standards for law enforcement. Are you aware of that? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am note sure of the year, but I certainly remember CALEA, yeah. 

Mrs. ADAMS. Does your agency operate under CALEA standards, 

or do you just implement them for law enforcement agencies across 

the country? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am not sure, do we operate under 

them? 

Mrs. ADAMS. Yes. I mean do you have that type of—are you accredited? I mean, you accredit other agencies. Are you following the 

same type of accreditation, guidelines as agencies throughout our 

Nation? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I assume that we do, yes. 

Mrs. ADAMS. You assume. So then you would agree that supervisory personnel are accountable for those people and in the performance of the people underneath them. Correct? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yeah. As a general rule, sure, yes. 

Mrs. ADAMS. You know, I listened intently because I am one of 

those law enforcement officers. I am not a lawyer or anything else. 

And I also have a husband on the wall over in Judiciary Square. 

I have a lot of friends on that wall also. So I am going to come at 

it a different area. 

I take issue with you saying that we are trying make political 

points with Officer Terry’s death. To me it is personal. Okay? It is 

not political. One of our officers were killed with weapons that 

were allowed to walk. That should never have happened. I have 

worked in undercover. We never would allow weapons to walk. 

89 

Now, I have heard you say if we get this provision that would— 

the long guns then it would help. The problem is under Fast and 

Furious, it wouldn’t have helped, would it? Those weapons still 

would have walked, wouldn’t they? Under Fast and Furious, would 

they have walked or not. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yeah, but—— 

Mrs. ADAMS. Yes. 

Attorney General HOLDER. One does not necessarily preclude the 

other. I mean, the fact is that under Fast and Furious, a flawed 

operation, and about which I have not tried to defend the conduct—— 

Mrs. ADAMS. Correct. I understand that. But under that system, 

would they not have walked? 

Attorney General HOLDER. In the larger picture, there is no 

question that the implementation of that long gun rule will decrease the possibility that we will have further tragedies. 

Mrs. ADAMS. Mr. Attorney General, what my question was, 

under Fast and Furious, those weapons still would have walked, 

would they not? Yes or no? 

Attorney General HOLDER. You don’t dictate. The weapons went 

into the flow of commerce because of mistaken decisions that were 

made by people in the Justice Department. 

Mrs. ADAMS. Let’s talk about those decisions. Let’s talk about 

those decisions. Here we have an operation you get memos on, but 

no one, not you nor your chief of staff is reading those memos. 

Somewhere along the lines, somebody has to know something because this is an operation that is not just within our borders; it is 

crossing international borders. So what rises to the level that the 

Attorney General of our United States needs to know? What is it 

that you need to know about that rises to that level that you have 

an operation crossing international borders? You now say that you 

didn’t find out about it until after the fact, and after inquiries happened, after Mr. Terry—Officer Terry’s death. What is it that 

would rise to the level that you would have to sign off on? Since 

going across international borders isn’t one of them, could you tell 

me what would be? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, first of all, you are referring to 

these as memos. They were weekly reports. 

Mrs. ADAMS. Well, any operation. Is there an operation that 

would rise to the level that would need your sign off? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Sure, there are things that I have to 

sign off on. 

Mrs. ADAMS. But not this one, the one that crossed international 

borders. 

Attorney General HOLDER. No. 

Mr. ISSA. Would the gentlelady yield briefly? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Can I answer the question first? One 

has to understand, and I would urge you, if you have not done this, 

to look at these weekly reports, and to look at exactly what it 

was—— 

Mrs. ADAMS. Mr. Holder, I understand you had weekly reports. 

And I have got a couple more questions. I want to make sure I get 

them in. But I am asking you, and I ask you what would rise to 

the level for you to have to sign off on it? Because this apparently 

90 

did not. You said you had weekly reports that you didn’t review 

and your chief didn’t review. That is the question I asked, and you 

said there is, so I am waiting to hear. But while I wait for that 

answer, let me ask you another question. Because one of my colleagues asked you about your e-mails. And you went straight to 

your work e-mail, hardly anybody has that. I am going to ask you 

a very direct question. You have a personal e-mail account. Did you 

at any time, at any time, e-mail on your personal account with 

Larry Breuer or Lanny Breuer and Gary Grindler in regards to 

Fast and Furious ever? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Ever? 

Mrs. ADAMS. Yes or no. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentlewoman is recognized for an additional 

minute so the Attorney General can respond to her questions. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I don’t know. I can tell you that I—— 

Mrs. ADAMS. Would you check and get back with us? If you need 

some help, I am sure that your agency personnel can get into those 

computers. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, with regard to provision of emails, I thought I had made it clear that after February the 4th, 

it is not our intention to provide e-mail information, consistent 

with the way in which the Justice Department has always conducted itself. 

The exception that I made, that I made in the hope that the Justice Department would be seen as transparent, was to go against 

that tradition and to make available deliberative material around 

the February 4 letter. 

Mrs. ADAMS. So, again, as in when you were here before and I 

asked you about a totally different issue, you were saying that you 

refused to provide that information. Is that correct? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I didn’t hear you—you were talking 

at the same time I was talking. And please, she can have more 

time. I don’t want to cut off your time. I just didn’t hear the question. 

Mrs. ADAMS. Previously, in another Committee, when you were 

here earlier, I asked you another question. You said you would not 

answer that question. Now you are saying that you won’t provide 

those e-mails because that is not consistent with whatever policy 

was previous. I am asking you if there is clean hands here, will you 

provide those e-mails to this Committee? 

Attorney General HOLDER. As I said—— 

Mrs. ADAMS. Yes or no? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am going to act in a way that is consistent with the all Attorneys General before me. 

Mrs. ADAMS. That is not my question, Attorney General. You 

know, with due respect, that was not my question. I asked you, 

with clean hands, would you supply those e-mails, whether it is 

work related or personal e-mails, as they apply to anything that 

had to do with Fast and Furious? 

Attorney General HOLDER. And as I said—— 

Mrs. ADAMS. To this Committee? Yes or no? 

Attorney General HOLDER. As I said, with regard to the Justice 

Department as a whole—— 

91 

Mrs. ADAMS. I yield back, Mr. Chair. I am not going to get an 

answer. 

Attorney General HOLDER. As I said, with respect to the Justice 

Department as a whole, and I am certainly a member of the Justice 

Department, we will not provide memos after February the 4th. 

And that is a way in which we are—— 

Mrs. ADAMS. With regards to e-mails. I didn’t ask memos. I said 

e-mails. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Emails, memos, consistent with the 

way in which the Department of Justice has always conducted 

itself in its interaction—— 

Mrs. ADAMS. What about prior to February 4? 

Mr. SMITH. The gentlewoman’s time has expired. 

The answer was no, is that correct, Mr. Attorney General. 

Attorney General HOLDER. No, but consistent with the way in 

which the Justice Department has always conducted itself. This is 

not something that I am making up in terms of new policy. 

Mr. SMITH. I know. But you used the word ‘‘not.’’ I took ‘‘not’’ to 

be no. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Oh, I said no. I am saying no, but 

again, consistent with DOJ policy. 

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mrs. Adams. 

The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Quayle, is recognized. 

Mr. QUAYLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, Attorney General Holder, for being here. 

I want to kind of go back to the February 4 letter as well that 

Mr. Gowdy was talking about earlier, because when we were looking over some of the e-mails between DOJ, ATF, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, and trying to kind of parse the language 

of how they were going to respond to Senator Grassley’s letter—— 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am not hearing you very well on 

that mike. 

Mr. QUAYLE. Is that better? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Okay. 

Mr. QUAYLE. Okay. One of the things, just parsing the language 

and figuring out how to respond properly to Senator Grassley in 

the letter, for me, it kind of looked like you were starting—that 

group was starting to move into a not a coverup mode, but a mode 

that really is more intent on language rather than providing a 

straightforward response. At any time, wouldn’t it have been easier, because the letter was actually addressed to the director, Acting 

Director Melson, wouldn’t it have been easier, and do you know or 

if anybody else knows if Acting Director Melson actually just said, 

hey, why don’t I go in to Senator Grassley, talk to him, brief him, 

brief his staff on what the operation is all about rather than relying on somebody who did not have the requisite information to 

draft a letter that turned out to be factually inaccurate that you 

later had to withdraw? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I think a couple things there. 

Acting Director Melson actually did come to the Committee headed 

by Chairman Issa on his own—— 

Mr. QUAYLE. But that was well after the letter. 

92 

Attorney General HOLDER. That is fine. That is fine. That is true. 

But he went in there and spoke to them on his own after—before 

we had scheduled an appointment with him. So he did that on his 

own. But with regard to the formation or the formation of that letter, ATF was intimately involved. If you look at the e-mails, you 

will see that you have people from ATF at a high level here in 

Washington, as well as ATF people in the field who were involved 

in the interaction, the back and forth of that e-mail traffic trying 

to get accurate information to send back to that congressional inquiry. 

Mr. QUAYLE. And I would just say sometimes, it is just easier to 

just have a short briefing. And I don’t know if—did the acting director offer to go and meet with Senator Grassley at that time, and 

then was he rebuffed and told not do that? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No. 

Mr. QUAYLE. He was not? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No. I think what we were doing was 

responding to a letter that was sent to us and that expected a letter back in response. 

Mr. QUAYLE. Well, it did say briefing. I am just curious, because 

I thought that would probably be the most efficient use of time and 

resources, rather than the back and forth of making sure that we 

have the language right. 

Attorney General HOLDER. My guess would be that having the 

Director show up would be the person who would have to get 

briefed in order to do that exchange of information. It is probably 

better to have the people who were lower down and closer to the 

facts be the ones who were involved. If you look at the e-mails, you 

will see that that was the case. 

Mr. QUAYLE. In talking about that letter, do you know when was 

the last time that the Department of Justice actually had to withdraw a letter that it sent to Congress? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I don’t know. 

Mr. QUAYLE. So is it a rare thing or is it—— 

Attorney General HOLDER. Sure it is a rare thing. 

Mr. QUAYLE. It is a pretty rare thing. I mean, I know that Mr. 

Gowdy already addressed this issue, but what sort of policies have 

you put in place, or structural reforms have you put in place so 

that something like the factually, grossly factually inaccurate letter 

that was sent to Congress doesn’t happen again? And if it does, 

that the Department of Justice will act more swiftly in withdrawing that letter so that the Members of Congress can have accurate information? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, I think we have learned lessons 

here. And we have had requests for information regarding Fast and 

Furious since that time that, frankly, we have taken more time to 

respond to. We have sent interim responses to indicate that we are 

in the process of looking at information, gathering information to 

make sure that what we send is in fact accurate. 

I mean, you got to understand something. It is rare, as you said, 

and it is something about which I have great regret. This is not 

something I want to have happen on my watch. But I want to 

make sure that it doesn’t happen again. People who are in the Department who were involved in that process and have observed it 

93 

I think have all been sensitized in a way that perhaps we were not 

before, which is not to say that people were cavalier, but that I 

think we need to up our game and be even more careful than we 

had been in the past. 

Mr. QUAYLE. Okay. Have you put into place other structural reforms to make sure that—I mean, you have stated the Fast and 

Furious was just an abject failure and had fundamental flaws— 

that are put into place so that something like Fast and Furious 

does not happen again? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yeah. I think that if you will look at 

all of the things that have been done at ATF, there is for instance 

now a protocol that has to be followed at ATF when gun trafficking 

is observed or when you are doing gun trafficking investigations. 

You cannot lose sight of guns. You have to make a decision about 

when an arrest is going to occur. What happened in Fast and Furious under the new regulations, and assuming that they are followed, it could not happen. In addition, I have sent out, through 

the Deputy Attorney General, an edict that makes very clear that 

gun walking is simply an unacceptable practice. 

Mr. QUAYLE. I know that you are aware of this, but there is a 

number of Members of Congress that have called for your resignation over this. So I just want to know, will you be resigning over— 

because of the fallout from Fast and Furious? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I have no intention of resigning. I am 

the Attorney General who put an end to these misguided tactics 

that were used in Fast and Furious when I found out about them. 

I am also the Attorney General who called on the Acting Inspector 

General to investigate this matter. I am also the Attorney General—no, you know—— 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. QUAYLE. Could I ask unanimous consent for 15 more seconds? 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman is recognized for an additional 15 seconds. 

Attorney General HOLDER. More time is fine. If I could finish my 

answer. 

Mr. QUAYLE. I was just asking you just a yes or no, and that is 

fine. But do you think that Mr. Breuer, Mr. Grindler should resign 

or be removed from their posts? 

Attorney General HOLDER. On the basis of the information that 

I have now, no. 

Mr. QUAYLE. What about Mr. Weinstein or Mr. Siskel, if we are 

going down another level? I know Mr. Siskel is over at the White 

House Counsel, but do you think that they should resign or be removed from their posts? 

Attorney General HOLDER. On the basis of the information I have 

now, no. 

Mr. QUAYLE. Okay. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Should anyone resign? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Again, on the basis of the information 

I have at this point, no. Now, there have been resignations that 

have occurred. Let’s not think that nothing has happened here 

since Fast and Furious was exposed. Resignations have occurred. 

People have been moved in terms of personnel actions. And as I inVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:08 Sep 11, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00097 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\120811\71602.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
94 

dicated, I guess in one of my responses to somebody, the personnel 

actions that I have ordered are initial ones, and I will be monitoring the situation to see if there are other things that I should 

be doing. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Quayle. 

The gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Griffin. 

Mr. GRIFFIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, General 

Holder for being here today, I just want to follow up on a few 

points my colleagues have touched on today. First of all, I want to 

talk a little bit about Ms. Adams’ point that she was making, and 

that is, certainly I worked at main Justice, I worked in the criminal division with Assistant Attorney General Chertoff. I understand how much paper comes across your desk and everyone else’s 

desk. I understand that time is limited and you have to do the best 

you can to process a lot of information, I get that. But I think Ms. 

Adams raises a good point, and that is, at what point do you believe the assistant Attorney General, or someone else, had or has 

an obligation to, particularly in your case, with Lanny Breuer, because you have a close relationship, or a longstanding relationship 

with him, at what point is there an obligation for one of these senior officials to raise something like this to your level? I understand 

that they are in briefings and you can’t read them all. 

There is a lot of stuff that my staff puts in my inbox, but they 

know that if it is something really urgent, they don’t stick it in my 

in box, they call me, they come in my office, they get in my face 

and say, hey, this is very important. 

So this is not just an operation, or this was not just an operation. 

This was, in fact, an international operation if taken—if looked at 

broadly, because the consequences of these firearms going across a 

border, and that was part of the plan. So my question would be, 

at what point is someone expected to raise something like this 

knowing that if it were maybe Canada or the U.K. Or some other 

country where we were trying to let guns walk. We certainly 

would, I would think, we would want to inform them or work with 

them. Help me understand what your perspective is on that, because at some level, at some level, someone has to walk into your 

office and say, this should not be occurring. 

I want to give you one more fact on that, Mr. Breuer indicated 

that when he learned about gun walking in early 2010 instead of 

calling the head of the ATF, or telling you, he just asked two of 

his deputies to raise concerns with folks at the ATF. And so in 

light of what has happened, who and when should they come to 

you about something like this? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I think that is a very legitimate question. And Lanny Breuer has indicated that the information that he 

obtained about Operation Wide Receiver and the gun walking that 

happened there, or the failure of the mission to stop the flow of 

guns into Mexico, that is something that he should have brought 

to my attention, to the attention of the Deputy Attorney General. 

I think that is the kind of information that, in fact, should be. If 

we had an instance where you had evidence of gun walking, either 

the assistant—whoever had possession of that information, the Assistant Attorney General, people in my staff, that is the kind of inVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:08 Sep 11, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00098 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\120811\71602.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
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formation that should have been brought to my attention. As Mr. 

Breuer indicated, he said that he made a mistake in not doing so. 

Mr. GRIFFIN. Are there set policies on that now? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am not sure there are set policies 

as much, you know, you have to look at this information and you 

have got to know what are the kinds of things that are routine and 

need not be brought to somebody’s attention, that which is important. 

Mr. GRIFFIN. I am limited on time so I am going to try to move 

quickly. I would just suggest that regardless of what other issues 

might arise at the Department of Justice, you might want to put 

gun walking on a list somewhere as something that raises flags. 

The other question—I see my time is running out. I want to go 

back to what Mr. Lungren asked about earlier, he referred to a 

CBS article that talked about using antidotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales, basically using a situation 

created by the government to support a policy argument folks in 

the government want to make. And your response was that that 

was somehow unrelated, or it was so far back in time that maybe 

it was unconnected. What exactly was your response on that to Mr. 

Lungren? 

Attorney General HOLDER. The statement, the notion that somehow this operation was used to justify the request for that regulation is simply not accurate. It did not happen that way. The operation was conducted separate and apart from any desire to have 

this long gun regulation, that is simply not there. So that just 

didn’t happen. 

Mr. GRIFFIN. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent for 30 

more seconds. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman is recognized without objection for another 30 more seconds. 

Mr. GRIFFIN. I look further down in that CBS news article and 

it says, ‘‘On January 4 of 2011,’’ because the quote referenced earlier was July of 2010—’’on January 4, 2011, as ATF prepared a 

press conference to announce arrests in Fast and Furious, Newell 

saw it as another time to address multiple sale on long gun issue.’’ 

And the next day he e-mailed—Chait e-mailed Newell, ‘‘Bill, well 

done yesterday. In light of our request for demand letter 3, this 

case could be a strong supporting factor, if we could determine how 

many multiple sales of long guns occurred during the course of this 

case. 

I know I am running out of time. I just ask you to take another 

look at that. You may not have intended it, I don’t know what was 

going on over there, but clearly, some folks had what happened in 

Fast and Furious, they had that in mind as something to use to 

support a policy that people in this Administration are advocating 

for. So I just ask you to take a second look at that, this is an article 

on CBS News Web site yesterday. Thank you, thank you, Mr. 

Chairman, and thank you for being here. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Clearly an attempt to use Fast and 

Furious as a way to bolster the request for that long gun regulation 

would have been foolhardy given the flawed way in which Fast and 

Furious was carried out. 

96 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Griffin. The very patient gentleman 

from Nevada, Mr. Amodei is recognized. 

Mr. AMODEI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you General 

Holder for your patience, too. How would you describe your leadership style? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am sorry? 

Mr. AMODEI. How would you describe your leadership style? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I think I am a person who delegates 

pretty well. I think I set goals that I expect people to meet. I am 

not a micromanager, I hire good people, I invest them with the authority to carry out that which I expect them to do. Try to give 

them the resources they need in order to do their jobs. And I would 

think that on the basis of what I—being immodest here, what I 

have been able to do over the last couple years, 21⁄2 years, whatever it has been at the Justice Department, I think I have done a 

good job in managing the Justice Department. 

Mr. AMODEI. Do you lead from the front? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I’m sorry? 

Mr. AMODEI. Do you lead from the front? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Yeah, I think I do. I don’t ask anything of the people who work for me that I would not be willing 

to do myself. I work hard, I work long hours, as do they. 

Mr. AMODEI. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield the 

balance of my time to my colleague from South Carolina. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Gowdy has 

the balance of the time. 

Mr. GOWDY. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Holder there were a series of wiretap applications made to the Department of Justice in 

Fast and Furious. Do you recall how many? 

Attorney General HOLDER. No. 

Mr. GOWDY. Several. Would you disagree with that? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am sorry? 

Mr. GOWDY. Several? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I don’t know how many, but I have 

to say that with regards to discussions of wiretaps there is a limited amount of information that I am going to be able to share in 

this forum. 

Mr. GOWDY. Right. And I am not going to ask you thinking that 

is going to get you in trouble with a Federal judge. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Please don’t. 

Mr. GOWDY. Those applications are voluminous, they are long 

and they are factual predicates to support the application for a 

wiretap, correct? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Speaking just generally and not—I 

won’t get in any trouble, speaking generally, that is accurate. 

Mr. GOWDY. Are you convinced there is no discussion of gun 

walking in any of those T-33 applications? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Again, I can’t get into the specifics. 

Mr. GOWDY. Have you read them? 

Attorney General HOLDER. I have not read them. 

Mr. GOWDY. Who approves them? Whose division is that? Is that 

the criminal division? 

Attorney General HOLDER. That is the criminal division. 

Mr. GOWDY. That would be Mr. Breuer? 

97 

Attorney General HOLDER. No, he only approves the roving wiretaps. 

Mr. GOWDY. Is he the head of the criminal division? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Right but there are no roving wiretaps in Operation Fast and Furious. 

Mr. GOWDY. But there are several wiretaps, wiretaps that have 

long factual predicate supporting the application. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I not seen them but I make that assumption. 

Mr. GOWDY. You haven’t read them, so you can’t say whether or 

not yet another Department of Justice official would have been put 

on notice that gun walking was part of Fast and Furious. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I can’t say that, but you cannot say 

it either. 

Mr. GOWDY. No, I can’t. 

Attorney General HOLDER. You can’t say the converse. 

Mr. GOWDY. No, I can’t. Who does Mr. Weich report to? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Who does Mr.—— 

Mr. GOWDY. Weich. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Ron Weich? 

Mr. GOWDY. Yeah. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I guess on the Justice Department 

chart probably through the Deputy Attorney General to me. 

Mr. GOWDY. What I am trying to get at, your defense of your 

friend Lanny Breuer, I guess at some level is admirable, I just 

don’t understand it. It took me a minute to get you to admit that 

he knew that guns were being walked and there are scores of emails where he admitted it. He assigned a prosecutor to Fast and 

Furious. This is someone who, on his own Web site, boasts of being 

one of the best 100 lawyers in America. He knew that guns were 

being walked; he assigned a prosecutor to Fast and Furious; he forwarded an e-mail to his home computer of a draft of Mr. Weich’s 

letter, and he is going to stick around, Mr. Attorney General? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well, you are saying things. See you 

are doing what I asked you to not before and that is conflating 

things. He said—I said he knew about and he admitted he knew 

about gun walking when it came to Operation Wide Receiver. 

Shortly after. 

Mr. GOWDY. Mr. Holder, the letter is very specific. ATF makes 

every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally, and prevent their transportation to Mexico, is that true or 

false? 

Attorney General HOLDER. That is not accurate, but Mr. Breuer 

didn’t—as he indicated, he said he did not have anything do did 

with the creation. 

Mr. GOWDY. He forwarded this letter, a draft to his home computer. It does not take a long walk to get that he forwarded it to 

his home computer to read it. 

Attorney General HOLDER. I am only going by what Mr. Breuer 

has testified to, which is that he did not think that he reviewed the 

letter—reviewed the drafts before they went out. That is what he 

testified to. 

Mr. GOWDY. But you agree with me—— 

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman. 

98 

Mr. PIERLUISI. Regular order, Mr. Chairman. The witness should 

be allowed to finish. 

Mr. ISSA. Would the gentleman from Nevada be willing to further 

yield? 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from South Carolina has the time. 

Mr. GOWDY. I will be happy to yield to the gentleman from California. 

Mr. ISSA. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Attorney General, if there 

were seven wiretaps and they were all approved under the criminal 

justice committee, the criminal division, certainly we would hope 

that between now and the time you next appear, you would read 

them as would Lanny Breuer in detail since he approved them 

through his minions. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Well—— 

Mr. ISSA. Let me just go through one thing that I have to ask 

you, yesterday—— 

Attorney General HOLDER. Understand something—— 

Mr. ISSA [continuing]. We became aware, Mr. Attorney General—— 

Attorney General HOLDER. Please. 

Mr. PIERLUISI. Mr. Chairman, regular order. The time has expired. 

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Attorney General, I didn’t ask you a question, I 

simply said I would like you to be aware. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from California has the time. The 

gentleman from California is granted an extra 1 minute to allow 

the AG to respond. 

Mr. ISSA. There was no question. Here is the question—— 

Attorney General HOLDER. No—— 

Mr. ISSA. Yesterday, Mr. Attorney General, we became aware of 

the e-mail between—— 

Mr. PIERLUISI. Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. ISSA.—Lanny Breuer and his deputy Jason Weinstein, about 

Fast and Furious in March time frame that they exist. Some of 

these, actually all of these, have been withheld from the Committee. Will you agree to turn over those communications in the 

March time frame between Lanny Breuer and his deputy, Jason 

Weinstein? 

Attorney General HOLDER. March of what year? 

Mr. ISSA. 2011. 

Attorney General HOLDER. As I have indicated we are not going 

to be turning over materials after February—— 

Mr. ISSA. Are you aware that you are, in fact, by doing so, in the 

fact that we already issued from the Oversight Committee a subpoena, you are standing in contempt of Congress unless you have 

a valid reason that you express it, that you provide logs which you 

refused to provide for the other information, otherwise you will 

leave the Committee no choice but to seek contempt for your failure 

to deliver, or to cite a constitutional exemption. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman’s time has expired, the Attorney General will be allowed to respond. 

Attorney General HOLDER. We will respond in a way that is consistent with the way in which the Justice Department has always 

responded to those kinds of—— 

99 

Mr. ISSA. That is not the question, Mr. Attorney General. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Can I—— 

Mr. PIERLUISI. Regular order, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Please proceed, Mr. Attorney General. 

Attorney General HOLDER. We will respond in a way that other 

Attorneys General have, other justices. 

Mr. ISSA. John Mitchell responded that way too. 

Mr. PIERLUISI. Regular order, Mr. Chairman. 

Attorney General HOLDER. Was that called for? Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. PIERLUISI. He should be allowed to—— 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from South Carolina has the time, 

but I am going allow the Attorney General. Do you have any further response to that question? 

Mr. ISSA. To the question, Mr. Chairman, about whether or not 

he understood that it was in fact an act of contempt unless they 

recited a constitutional exemption and still had a responsibility to 

provide us logs, both of which they are refusing to do in testimony 

here today. 

Mr. SMITH. The gentleman from South Carolina’s time has again 

expired. Do you have a final response, Mr. Attorney General? 

Attorney General HOLDER. Ms. Adams asked me about—Congresswoman Adams asked me about political points. The reference 

to John Mitchell, let’s think about that, think about that, at some 

point—as they said in the McCarthy hearings at some point, have 

you no shame? But in any case, I will say that with regard to— 

we have made our point clear how we will respond. With regard 

to the question of wiretap information, Mr. Gowdy knows there is 

only so much I will be able to say about wiretap information. So 

reading it should not lead anybody to believe that I am going to 

be free, unless I—you want to get me in real trouble with a Federal 

judge about what’s contained in a wiretapping. 

Ms. ADAMS. Mr. Chair. 

Mr. SMITH. I thank you, Mr. Attorney General. Mr. Attorney 

General, thank you for your testimony today. Without objection, all 

Members will have 5 legislative days to submit additional written 

questions for the witness or additional materials for the record. I 

ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. 

Polis, be assigned to the Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and 

Administrative Law and the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism 

and Homeland Security. Is there an objection? If not, so ordered. 

The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:05 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

(101) 

1 E-mail from Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal to Solicitor General Elena 

Kagan (Jun 15, 2010). 2 E-mail from Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal to Solicitor General Elena 

Kagan (Mar. 21, 2010). 3 E-mail from Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal to Justice Department Counselor Lawrence Tribe (Mar. 21, 2010). 

A P P E N D I X 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

Prepared Statement of the Honorable Lamar Smith, a Representative in 

Congress from the State of Texas, and Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary 

Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Judiciary Committee 

last May and we appreciate his willingness to appear today to address many issues, 

including questions about his previous testimony. 

While I am pleased to welcome back Attorney General Holder, I am disappointed 

in the Department’s repeated refusal to cooperate with this Committee’s oversight 

requests. 

This lack of cooperation is evident in the Department’s handling of inquiries related to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF’s) Operation 

Fast and Furious, and the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 

2010. 

Operation Fast and Furious intentionally allowed straw buyers for criminal organizations to purchase hundreds of guns so that the ATF could track them across 

the U.S.-Mexico border. But Fast and Furious had a fatal flaw. Once purchased, 

there was no attempt to follow the firearms. Instead, the guns were allowed to cross 

over into Mexico without any coordination with Mexican authorities or any attempt 

to track the firearms. 

Tragically, two of the guns were found at the scene of the shooting death of Customs and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. And by the Department’s own admission, hundreds of guns remain unaccounted for. 

It’s been a year since the death of Agent Terry. Yet, many questions remain as 

to how such a reckless and dangerous law enforcement program was allowed to operate under the Justice Department. 

And inconsistent statements from Department officials about who knew what and 

when have only raised more concerns. 

I am also disappointed in how the Department has responded to my oversight requests regarding Justice Kagan’s involvement in health care legislation or related 

litigation while she served as United States Solicitor General. 

Despite claims from Obama administration officials that then-Solicitor General 

Kagan was ‘‘walled off’’ 1 from discussions regarding the President’s health care law, 

recently released e-mails indicate there may be more to the story. 

On March 21, 2010, an e-mail from the Deputy Solicitor General forwarded to Solicitor General Kagan contained information about a meeting at the White House 

on the health care law and asked: ‘‘I think you should go, no? I will regardless but 

feel this is litigation of singular importance.’’ 2 Solicitor General Kagan responded 

by asking him for his phone number. 

We also know from the e-mails that she personally supported the legislation’s passage. In a March 21, 2010, exchange with a Justice Department colleague discussing 

the health care legislation, Ms. Kagan exclaims, ‘‘I hear they have the votes, Larry!! 

Simply amazing.’’ 3

102 

4 E-mail from Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal to Brian Hauck, Senior Counsel 

to Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli (Jan. 8, 2010). 5 Health care passed the House on March 21, 2010, and was signed into law on March 23, 

2010. 6The Nomination of Elena Kagan to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the 

United States Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 111th Cong. (2010) (written response of 

Elena Kagan to Supplemental questions from Senators Jeff Sessions, Orrin Hatch, Charles 

Grassley, Jon Kyl, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn and Tom Coburn) 7 E-mail from Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal to Solicitor General Elena 

Kagan (Jun 15, 2010). 8 28 U.S.C. 455(b)(3). 

9Steven VanRoekel & Aneesh Chopra, Data.gov Goes Global, WHITEHOUSE.GOV (Dec. 5, 2011) 

available at, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/12/05/datagov-goes-global. 

These e-mails reveal inconsistencies with the administration’s claims that thenSolicitor General Kagan was walled off from this issue. 

To help clear up any confusion, I wrote the Justice Department to get additional 

documents and conduct staff interviews. It took nearly four months before the Department sent a one page response that denied my request. 

The Department did not assert any legal privilege over the requested information 

but simply refused to comply with the request. That is not a sufficient answer. 

Health care legislation was passed by the Senate on December 24, 2009. On January 8, 2010, Ms. Kagan told the Deputy Solicitor General that she ‘‘definitely would 

like the Office of the Solicitor General to be involved in’’ 4 preparations to defend 

against challenges to the pending health care proposals.5

Ms. Kagan found out she was being considered for a potential Supreme Court vacancy on March 5, 2010.6 So the issue is how involved was she in health care discussions between January 8 and March 5. Just as President Nixon had an eighteen 

and a half minute gap, does Ms. Kagan have a two month gap? 

The Office of the Solicitor General is responsible for defending the positions of the 

federal government in litigation before the Supreme Court. So it was the duty of 

then Solicitor General Kagan to participate in meetings and discussions regarding 

the legal defense strategy for the President’s health care proposal. 

It would have been a surprising departure from her responsibilities for Solicitor 

General Kagan not to advise the Administration on the health care bill. 

But if the Department continues to assert that she was ‘‘walled off from day one’’ 7

from discussions, then they should be willing to provide Congress and the public 

with documentation to prove that statement. 

The law clearly states that Justices must recuse themselves if they ‘‘participated 

as counsel, advisor or material witness concerning the proceeding or expressed an 

opinion concerning the merits of the particular case’’ 8 while they worked in a government capacity. 

The public has a right to know the extent of Justice Kagan’s involvement with 

this legislation as well as any previously stated legal opinions about the legislation 

while she served as Solicitor General. 

The NFL would not allow a team to officiate its own game. If Justice Kagan was 

part of the Administration’s team that put the health care mandate into play, she 

should not officiate when it comes before the Supreme Court. 

If the Department has nothing to hide, why not provide Congress with the requested information? The continued refusal to cooperate with legitimate oversight 

inquiries only heightens concerns that she might have a conflict of interest. 

President Obama has promised an ‘‘open and transparent government.’’ 9 Unfortunately, we often see a closed and secretive Justice Department. 

I know all members of the Committee look forward to asking questions on these 

and other issues. 

f 

103 

Response to Post-Hearing Questions from Judith C. Appelbaum, Acting Assistant Attorney, General, Office of Legislative Affairs, U.S. Department 

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Æ 


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