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76–369 PDF 2012

IG REPORT: THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE’S OFFICE OF THE INSPECTOR GENERAL EXAMINES 

THE FAILURES OF OPERATION FAST AND FURIOUS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT 

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012 

Serial No. 112–186 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 

http://www.house.gov/reform 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California, Chairman 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

TIM WALBERG, Michigan 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan 

ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York 

PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona 

RAU ́ L R. LABRADOR, Idaho 

PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

JOE WALSH, Illinois 

TREY GOWDY, South Carolina 

DENNIS A. ROSS, Florida 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania 

VACANCY 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Ranking 

Minority Member 

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio 

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois 

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

LAWRENCE J. BRADY, Staff Director 

JOHN D. CUADERES, Deputy Staff Director 

ROBERT BORDEN, General Counsel 

LINDA A. GOOD, Chief Clerk 

DAVID RAPALLO, Minority Staff Director 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on September 20, 2012 ..................................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

Mr. Michael E. Horowitz 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 6 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 8 

APPENDIX 

The Honorable Darrell Issa, Chairman, Hearing Preview Statement ................ 72 

The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings, a Member of Congress from the State 

of Maryland, Opening Statement ....................................................................... 74 

Emails on ATF GunRunner .................................................................................... 76 

Revised Grassley letter ........................................................................................... 78 

Reponse letter from Michael E. Horowitz .............................................................. 79 

(1) 

IG REPORT: THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE’S 

OFFICE OF THE INSPECTOR GENERAL EXAMINES THE FAILURES OF OPERATION 

FAST AND FURIOUS 

Thursday, September 20, 2012, 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, 

Washington, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:36 a.m., in Room 2154, 

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Darrell E. Issa [chairman of 

the committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Issa, Burton, Platts, Chaffetz, Walberg, 

Lankford, Amash, Gosar, Labrador, Meehan, DesJarlais, Gowdy, 

Ross, Farenthold, Kelly, Cummings, Towns, Maloney, Norton, 

Kucinich, Clay, Lynch, Connolly, Quigley, Davis, Braley, and Murphy. 

Also Present: Representatives Adams and Barber. 

Staff Present: Ali Ahmad, Majority Communications Advisor; 

Robert Borden, Majority General Counsel; Molly Boyl, Majority 

Parliamentarian; Lawrence J. Brady, Majority Staff Director; Sharon Casey, Majority Senior Assistant Clerk; Steve Castor, Majority 

Chief Counsel, Investigations; John Cuaderes, Majority Deputy 

Staff Director; Carlton Davis, Majority Counsel; Jessica L. Donlon, 

Majority Counsel; Kate Dunbar, Majority Legislative Assistant; 

Linda Good, Majority Chief Clerk; Christopher Hixon, Majority 

Deputy Chief Counsel, Oversight; Henry J. Kerner, Majority Senior 

Counsel for Investigations; Beverly Britton Fraser, Minority Counsel; Kevin Corbin, Minority Deputy Clerk; Ashley Etienne, Minority 

Director of Communications; Susanne Sachsman Grooms, Minority 

Chief Counsel; Devon Hill, Minority Staff Assistant; Carla 

Hultberg, Minority Chief Clerk; Adam Koshkin, Minority Staff Assistant; Una Lee, Minority Counsel; Dave Rapallo, Minority Staff 

Director; Donald Sherman, Minority Counsel; and Carlos Uriarte, 

Minority Counsel. 

Chairman ISSA. The Committee will come to order. 

The Oversight Committee exists to secure two fundamental principles: first, Americans have a right to know that the money Washington takes from them is well spent and, second, Americans deserve an efficient, effective government that works for them. Our 

duty on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee is to 

protect these rights. Our solemn responsibility is to hold government accountable to taxpayers, because taxpayers have a right to 

know what they get from their government. It is our job to work 

2 

tirelessly in partnership with citizen watchdogs to deliver the facts 

to the American people and bring genuine reform to the Federal 

bureaucracy. This is our mission. 

Today we are dealing with exactly that kind of a situation. The 

IG’s report, issued yesterday, began with watchdogs and whistleblowers making us aware of a fatally flawed operation known as 

Fast and Furious. 

Before I begin with my opening statement in earnest, I want to 

first take time to thank Mr. Horowitz. On behalf of the Committee 

on Oversight and Government Reform, I want to congratulate him 

on, in fact, delivering an extremely comprehensive, strong, and 

independent report. 

Mr. Horowitz is not new to the Department, but he is new to this 

job, and, as inspector general, a Senate-confirmed nomination of 

March 29th; and when you were sworn in on August 16th we all 

asked the question can you pick up and do this kind of a job on 

such a monumental task that had already languished for a period 

of time before your entrance. Yesterday you proved to both sides 

of the aisle that you could, and I want to personally thank you. 

I note that, in fact, IGs serve a purpose that, in fact, we do not 

get and have not gotten from any administration. If not for the 74 

IGs and the 12,000 men and women that work for them, the level 

of transparency, accountability over waste, fraud, abuse of power, 

abuse of discretion, and the like would not be possible. This Committee, more than any other in the Congress, relies on their work, 

and yesterday we were not disappointed. 

The 471-page report released yesterday is a huge step forward 

toward restoring the public faith in the Department of Justice. I 

was impressed with the professionalism and thoroughness and 

scope of the report. I know, having been, only the day before, with 

Brian Terry’s family in Arizona, where we dedicated the Border Patrol station he worked out of before his untimely murder in 2010, 

that they too undoubtedly were impressed that a great deal of the 

closure they wanted by responsible parties at all levels was met 

yesterday. 

The conclusions after 19 months of hard work, of course, are 

greater than some would want and fall short of what others would 

want. They cannot, by definition, bring complete closure because 

even the IG, in his report, still has some questions. There were 

some individuals and some documents that are not yet available. 

But like any document, you have to, at some point, cut it off, come 

as you are and bring what you have. I think this was the appropriate time. I am particularly pleased that we waited an additional 

week to allow for materials that otherwise might not have been in 

the report. 

This Committee has had a difficult relationship with Justice, 

much of it because the attorney general, no matter how many 

times we asked, no matter how many times we subpoenaed, no 

matter how many meetings our staff had, were unable to get a 

level of cooperation necessary even to the information that the IG 

received. I hope in the next Congress, whoever sits in my chair will 

face an administration that understands that openness to Congress, openness to the Freedom of Information Act, and particularly 

3 

openness to the inspector general’s offices is critical if the American 

people are to have confidence in their government. 

Much of what is in the report, but not the main subject of the 

report, has to do with the February 4th, 2011, letter in which, admittedly now, Justice Department falsely stated that in Operation 

Fast and Furious guns did not walk. As I have often said since that 

time, the only way that statement could be true is if you believed, 

for guns to walk, they had to have legs. 

Operation Fast and Furious is a poster child for what you don’t 

do with deadly weapons. You don’t lose track of them. You don’t 

allow more and more and more of them to go while, in fact, you’re 

already seeing the effects of those weapons killing people in Mexico. And let’s make no mistake, weapons had already been found 

at deadly scenes of crimes in Mexico before Fast and Furious shut 

down. Only the tragic loss of Brian A. Terry brought an end to Fast 

and Furious. 

Although this report will not bring a complete end to the need 

for us to work with Justice to bring genuine reform to their process, it goes a long way towards that. I will particularly note that 

I am pleased that in some cases the executive privilege, invalidly 

claimed by the President of the United States, was not asserted in 

this discovery. Some materials contained in this report do help us 

because they are in fact many of the items that we wish we had 

received, in some cases were told we received, but in fact we later 

found were provided to the IG and not to us. 

The conclusions in any report by an IG are in fact respectful and 

less than conclusions as to what management must do. But already 

since yesterday two top individuals whose time to resign had come, 

14, 16, 18, 19 months ago, resigned. We expect that all 14 would 

find a way to find appropriate new occupations, ones in which their 

poor judgment, or lack of dedication, or unwillingness to actually 

read documents they were required to read would not be held accountable. 

There is no place in our government for people who, under statute, are required to do something and then say I didn’t do it, but 

I didn’t need to do it because somebody else did it below me. That 

is exactly why Congress puts in place a number of safeguards at 

what level things such as wiretaps can be authorized. 

For the American people who know that ultimately a wiretap application is trusted by a judge, in most cases, who grants it, the 

only protection for the American people is in fact knowing that 

there are safeguards in the application; that an agent or an individual simply can’t tap your phone by running up an application. 

The very safeguards that failed in Fast and Furious to know what 

was already known and that wiretaps would tell you in no uncertain terms that guns were walking, that same lack of safeguards 

could also cause anyone to see their phone tapped when in fact it 

should not be under the law. 

So I look at the protections not granted to safeguard against a 

fatally flawed tactic like Fast and Furious, but I look at it to know, 

as the IG noted in his report, that there need to be material 

changes in controls in how wiretap applications go through a process for approval. 

4 

Now, over the next several hours we will hear an awful lot from 

our witness, and I rely on our questions to be germane to our 

witness’s 471-page report. I believe that, in fact, given an opportunity to have fair question and answer, we will understand, first 

of all, why Jason Weinstein resigned yesterday, why Kenneth 

Melson retired yesterday, and why there is much work to be done 

to reform the Department of Justice and the Alcohol, Tobacco, and 

Firearms Agency in order for the American people and, I might 

note, the people of Mexico to have confidence in this Government. 

Lastly, nothing in this report vindicates anyone. If you touched, 

looked, could have touched, could have looked, could have asked for 

information that could have caused you to intervene, to complain, 

to worry, to talk to people and you didn’t, and you are in our Government, or even if you aren’t in our Government but were aware 

of it, you fell short of your responsibility. We all have a responsibility to protect against firearms ending up in the hands of dangerous criminals. 

With that I want to thank, again, our IG for being here today, 

and I yield to Mr. Cummings for his opening statement. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I 

thank you for calling this hearing. 

Let me welcome our witness, Mr. Horowitz, and to thank you 

and your staff, everybody from the clerk to you. I want to make it 

very, very clear I join the Chairman in expressing our appreciation. 

It is a thorough report. Your staff has done an outstanding job. I 

know that they missed a lot of vacation days and missed time with 

their families, but I want them to understand that we truly, truly 

appreciate not only their work, but the excellent way in which they 

did it, and I hope they are listening, and thank you again. 

Your office has worked for more than a year and a half on this 

investigation. They reviewed more than 100,000 pages of documents and interviewed 130 witnesses in compiling this very comprehensive report. They did it under the microscope of a highly politicized environment in which public accusations were sometimes 

made before the search for evidence even began. It was a difficult 

task, but he and you and your office did an admirable job and, 

again, we thank you. 

In my opinion, one of the most important things we can do here 

today is recognize the service of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, 

who gave his life for his Country. Although it cannot truly offer 

any solace to his family, I hope this report provides at least some 

of the answers they have been searching for since Agent Terry’s 

murder. 

Let me next commend Chairman Issa. We have had many disagreements about how this investigation should proceed, but the 

fact is that the Committee uncovered a severe problem that was 

festering since 2006 in the Phoenix office of ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona that allowed criminals in Mexico and the 

United States to obtain hundreds of guns. This Committee played 

an important role in exposing and halting these flawed operations. 

I also want to commend the attorney general. I have lost count 

of how many times he has testified on this issue, but he has remained evenhanded, respectful, and always true to the daunting 

and critical mission of the department he leads. He requested this 

5 

IG investigation and he has already put numerous reforms in 

place. 

To that end, I note that the Administration did not assert executive privilege over any part of the inspector general’s report over 

any of the documents relied on by the inspector general. In fact, 

the Department went a step further: yesterday, it sent to this Committee more than 300 pages of additional documents that were 

withheld previously. 

I think this is a positive development. I have always believed, 

and I continue to believe, that the Committee and the Department 

can resolve any lingering issues without further conflict. With this 

action by the Department, I urge the Committee to reconsider its 

position and settle the remnants of this dispute without resorting 

to unnecessary and costly litigation that nobody in this Country 

wants. 

With that, let me turn to the report in order to highlight several 

key points and raise some very specific questions. 

There can no longer be any doubt that gun-walking began under 

the Bush Administration. The IG report goes into great detail 

about Operation Wide Receiver and it finds that ATF agents simply 

let guns walk. It also finds that wiretap affidavits in Operation 

Wide Receiver contained just as much detail as those in Fast and 

Furious. The IG report concludes, ‘‘These tactics were used by ATF 

more than three years before Operation Fast and Furious was initiated.’’ 

There can also no longer be any doubt that gun-walking was 

never authorized or approved by the attorney general or senior Department officials, especially as some sort of top-down scheme or 

conspiracy against the Second Amendment. The IG report found 

that gun-walking ‘‘was primarily the result of tactical and strategic 

decisions by agents and prosecutors.’’ 

As the IG says in his written testimony for today’s hearing, ATF 

and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona ‘‘share equal responsibility for the strategic and operational failures in Operations Wide 

Receiver and Fast and Furious.’’ 

With these points in mind, I have two broad questions, Mr. Horowitz, which I hope you will address. First, how could this tactic 

have been used for so long, over the course of five years and two 

administrations, without the ATF field office in Phoenix or the U.S. 

Attorney’s Office in Arizona stepping in to halt it? What allowed 

it to go on for so long unchecked? 

Second, what should we do now to ensure that this never ever 

happens again? I know the IG has made his recommendations, and 

I have also made my own. Which of these recommendations have 

ATF and the Department already implemented? Which should be 

prioritized? And which may require legislation? 

Again, Mr. Horowitz, I thank you again, and your staff, for an 

excellent job. 

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

I now ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Arizona, 

Mr. Barber, be allowed to participate in today’s hearing. Without 

objection, so ordered. 

6 

I also would reserve the right to waive additional members in, 

as they arrive. Pursuant to our rules, members sitting on the dais 

will be recognized only after all other individuals on their side of 

the aisle have previously been recognized on a back-and-forth 

basis. 

With that, I also would like to thank Mr. Barber for making the 

effort to be there for the Brian Terry naming and for representing 

that area of Arizona that I think is so affected by Fast and Furious. 

Pursuant to the rules, all witnesses before this Committee will 

be sworn, so I would ask that our witness please rise to take the 

oath. Please raise your right hand. 

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give 

will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? 

[Witness responds in the affirmative.] 

Chairman ISSA. With that, the record will recognize that Mr. 

Horowitz answered in the affirmative. 

General, we normally talk a lot about the five minutes. Take the 

time you need to give us your opening, recognizing that it will be 

a long day of additional opportunities for you to answer questions 

not in your opening. With that, the gentleman is recognized. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE MICHAEL E. HOROWITZ 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ask that my full 

statement be made a part of the record. 

Chairman ISSA. Without objection, so ordered. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And I have pared that down somewhat, so that 

I don’t go on for 20 or 30 minutes, and I will try to stick to the 

five minutes, certainly. 

Good morning, and thank you to the members of the Committee 

for inviting me to testify today about our report, a report that we 

released yesterday which details a pattern of serious failures in 

both ATF’s and the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s handling of the investigations in Fast and Furious and Wide Receiver, and the Justice 

Department’s response to congressional inquiries about those 

flawed operations. 

This is my first opportunity to testify before the Congress since 

I was sworn in five months ago, and it is an honor to be here today. 

During the confirmation process, I made a commitment to the 

Congress and to the American people that I would continue the 

strong tradition of my office for independence, nonpartisanship, impartiality, and fairness. Those are the standards that I and my office applied in conducting this review and in preparing this report. 

As in all of our work, we abided by one bedrock principle: to follow the facts and the evidence wherever they led. And as indicated 

previously, this report could not have been done without the extraordinary dedication of the staff and the employees in my office; 

they worked long nights, weekends, through vacations, and I 

couldn’t thank them enough, and I appreciate the Committee’s 

thanking them for their hard work. 

As indicated, we reviewed over 100,000 pages of documents here. 

We interviewed over 130 witnesses, many on multiple occasions. 

The witnesses we interviewed served at all levels of the Department, from the current and the former attorneys general to the line 

agents in Arizona who handled the investigations. Very few witVerDate Aug 31 2005 08:59 Nov 02, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76369.TXT APRIL
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nesses refused our request to be interviewed, and where they did 

refuse we noted those in the report. The Justice Department provided us with access to the documents we requested, including documents from post-February 4th concerning the Department’s response to the congressional inquiries. 

We operated with complete and total independence in our search 

for the truth, and the decision about what to cover in this report 

and the conclusions that we reached were made by us and our office, and by no one else. 

I am pleased that we have been able to put forward to the Congress and to the American people a full and complete recitation of 

the facts that we found and the conclusions that we reached, with 

minimal redactions by the Department to our report. The Administration made no redactions for executive privilege, even though our 

report evaluates in detail and reaches conclusions about the Department’s post-February 4th actions in responding to Congress. 

Additionally, at our request, the Department has agreed to seek 

court authorization to un-redact as much of the wiretap information that we included in this report as possible. If the court agrees 

to the Department’s request, we will shortly issue a revised version 

of the report with that material un-redacted. 

The investigation that became known as Operation Fast and Furious began on October 31, 2009. By the time the indictment was 

announced on January 25th, 2011, over a year later, ATF agents 

had identified more than 40 people connected to a trafficking conspiracy that was responsible for purchasing over 2,000 firearms for 

approximately $1.5 million in cash. Yet, ATF agents seized only 

about 100 of those firearms that had been purchased. 

Numerous firearms that had been bought by straw purchasers 

were recovered by law enforcement officials at crime scenes in Mexico and in the United States. One such recovery occurred on December 14th, 2010, in connection with the tragic shooting death of 

a federal law enforcement agent, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent Brian Terry. Shortly thereafter, the flaws in Operation 

Fast and Furious became known as a result of the willingness of 

a few ATF agents to come forward and tell what they knew about 

it, and as a result of the conduct of the investigation by the Congress. 

On February 28th, the attorney general requested my office to 

conduct a review of Operation Fast and Furious, and we agreed to 

do so. During the course of your review, we received information 

about other ATF firearm trafficking investigations that raised serious questions about how they were conducted. Our report reviews 

one of them, Operation Wide Receiver. 

We conducted that both Operation Wide Receiver and Operation 

Fast and Furious were seriously flawed and supervised irresponsibly by ATF’s Phoenix Field Division, by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and by the ATF Headquarters, most significantly in their failure to adequately consider the risk to the public safety in the 

United State and Mexico. 

Both investigations sought to identify the higher reaches of firearms trafficking networks by deferring any overt law enforcement 

action against the individual straw purchasers, such as making arVerDate Aug 31 2005 08:59 Nov 02, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76369.TXT APRIL
8 

rests or seizing firearms, even when there was sufficient evidence 

to do so. 

The risk to the public’s safety was immediately evident in both 

investigations. Almost from the outset of each case, ATF agents 

learned that the purchases were being financed by violent Mexican 

drug trafficking organizations and that firearms were destined for 

Mexico. Yet, in Operation Fast and Furious, we found that no one 

responsible for the case, either at the Phoenix Field Division or at 

ATF’s Headquarters or in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, raised a serious question or concern about the government not taking earlier 

measures to disrupt a firearm trafficking operation that continued 

to purchase firearms with impunity for many months. 

We also did not find any persuasive evidence that supervisors in 

Phoenix, at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, or at ATF Headquarters 

raised serious questions or concerns about the risks to the public 

safety posed by the continuing firearm purchases or by the delay 

in arresting individuals who were engaged in the trafficking activity. This failure, we found, reflected a significant lack of oversight 

and urgency by both ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and a disregard by both for the safety of individuals in the United States 

and in Mexico. 

Our review revealed a series of misguided strategies, tactics, errors in judgments, and management failures that permeated ATF 

headquarters and the Phoenix Field Division, as well as the U.S. 

Attorney’s Office and the headquarters of the Department of Justice. In the course of our review, we identified individuals ranging 

from line agents and prosecutors in Arizona, to senior ATF officials 

in Washington, D.C. who bore a share of responsibility for ATF’s 

knowing failures in both of these operations to interdict firearms 

illegally destined for Mexico and for pursuing this risky strategy 

without adequately taking into account the significant danger to 

public safety that it created. We also found failures by Department 

officials related to these matters, including failing to respond accurately to a congressional inquiry about them. 

Based on our findings, we made six recommendations designed 

to increase the Department’s involvement in and oversight of ATF’s 

operations, to improve coordination among the Department’s law 

enforcement components, and to enhance the Department’s wiretap 

application review and authorization process. The inspector general’s office intends to closely monitor the Department’s progress in 

implementing these recommendations. 

Finally, we recommended that the Department review the conduct and performance of the Department personnel that are referenced in the report and determine whether discipline or other administrative action with regard to each of them is appropriate. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to be here, and I look forward to answering any questions that the Committee may have. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Horowitz follows:] 

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Chairman ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Horowitz. 

I will now recognize myself for a few questions. 

You were given a great deal of access in order to do this, over 

100,000 pages. Would you characterize—I realize you didn’t look at 

every page every day, but would you characterize were all 100,000 

pages ones that you would have made available to this Committee 

were you deciding to have us see those documents? As you know, 

we received less than 8,000 pages. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, as we went through, personally, I didn’t obviously go through myself the 100,000-plus pages. 

Chairman ISSA. I will ask it in reverse, maybe; it is probably better. Do you know of pages that you saw that Congress should, for 

good cause, be denied? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Every document we asked for and reviewed and 

cited in this report we found to be relevant and important. In fact, 

we don’t cite in this report every single relevant document; we obviously had to pick and choose. So certainly what we have seen and 

we asked for and saw we determined was relevant. 

Chairman ISSA. So it would be fair to say the documents from 

post-February 4th which you evaluated, saw, and helped you prepare this report in which executive privilege was not claimed, were 

relevant, you used them, and they should have been provided to 

Congress in the ordinary course. They are being provided indirectly 

at this time. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We certainly found they were relevant, which is 

why we insisted on reporting on them, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. Now, there were a number of people you didn’t 

get to speak to. I will note, I guess, Mr. Cunningham spoke to you 

and then later would not speak to you. Mr. Horowitz, can you tell 

us a little bit about your efforts to try to interview Kevin O’Reilly, 

a member of the National Security Team? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We reached out to his lawyer, requested an interview. We have no basis to compel interviews from individuals who 

are outside the Department of Justice. He does not work in the Department of Justice, so we had to ask for a voluntary interview. His 

lawyer told us he would not appear voluntarily. 

Chairman ISSA. Would it surprise you that he has been in Afghanistan and we have been denied even the ability to serve a subpoena on him? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I was not aware of where he was, but I was told 

by his lawyer—— 

Chairman ISSA. I am sorry, Iraq. Sorry. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. As I said, I don’t recall knowing, myself, where 

he was, but we were told by his counsel he would not appear voluntarily. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay. Also, there was a full-time employee of the 

Department of Homeland Security. Would you explain to us your 

efforts to interview that individual? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Yes. There was an agent from Department of 

Homeland Security that was assigned to the operation. As part of 

our effort to be thorough and interview all people who might have 

relevant information, we reached out. He, again, is outside the Department of Justice, so he declined our voluntary request to be 

interviewed by us. We sought, through the Department of HomeVerDate Aug 31 2005 08:59 Nov 02, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76369.TXT APRIL
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land Security, to speak to him and we understood that, absent 

being compelled and given immunity, that he would not speak voluntarily, and that was request was declined, is my understanding. 

Chairman ISSA. Now, pursuant, and this is outside, I admonished 

everyone to stay on to this, but I think for this particular case I 

want to go outside the scope of this somewhat. We are the Committee that will oversee a change in the IG Act, if there is one. In 

your opinion, if the IG Act had created a mechanism for you to 

fully vet these requests, even if these were individuals outside of 

your particular narrow agency, is that something you believe would 

be helpful, speaking as an IG, for future investigations? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Certainly, we would have used whatever authorities we had to seek testimony from individuals, as we were able to 

do internally within the Justice Department. So having expanded 

authority would have certainly allowed us to take additional actions here. 

Chairman ISSA. Were you ever made aware why Secretary 

Napolitano, Department of Homeland Security, was unwilling to 

have an individual who worked in an OCDETF of such a fatally 

flawed event, one that killed one of her charges, one of the border 

patrol that falls under her cabinet position, why she wouldn’t insist 

that that individual speak to you in this investigation? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I don’t know, personally, that information, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay. Now, one of the two last areas, it has been 

said by many, mostly on the other side of the aisle, that there is 

nothing in these wiretap applications that would have caused senior officials to see any red flags as to the reckless tactics. 

Now, realizing these documents are not unsealed, would you 

characterize for us whether you would say, as your report does, and 

I quote, and I will read this, but I would like you to elaborate, 

‘‘among the report’s other conclusions, your findings that wiretap 

applications approved by senior officials did contain red flags about 

reckless tactics who should have acted on this information.’’ And it 

goes on. 

That line, are we to conclude that, in fact, if you read one or 

more of these 14 wiretap applications, you should have known that 

guns were walking? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Yes. As we said in the report, and I also, myself, 

reviewed the 14 applications, believe that if you were focused and 

looking at the question of gun-walking, you would read these affidavits and see many red flags, in our view. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay, I ask unanimous consent for just one more 

question. Without objection. 

In your report there was an area that I focused on a little bit 

where it implied that Lanny Breuer did not respond or did not acknowledge the February 4th letter. Isn’t it true that Lanny Breuer, 

in fact, answered good job as at least an answer to the February 

4th letter, acknowledging that he had received it and obviously 

made that comment? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is correct. 

Chairman ISSA. And on that day, on February 4th, wasn’t he in 

fact on his way to Mexico City to sell the Mexican government on 

24 

what was effectively a gun-walking program coordinated with 

them? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, my understanding is he was actually in 

Mexico and my understanding was that he had raised the possibility of some program involving cross-border cooperation about 

gun trafficking activity, but, frankly, I don’t have more knowledge 

than that at this point. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

Recognize the Ranking Member for his questions. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Horowitz, I want to walk through some quick points with 

you and then ask you to respond in more detail to some broader 

questions. You examined Operation Wide Receiver, which was during the Bush Administration, and Operation Fast and Furious, 

which was during this Administration, is that correct? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Correct. We looked at both of those matters. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. In your report you found that gun-walking occurred in both operations, is that right? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is correct. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. We are not talking only about a botched coordination efforts with Mexico; we are talking about ATF agents stopping surveillance in the United States and letting guns walk in 

both operations, is that correct? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Correct. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. In fact, your report said this, ‘‘Operation Wide 

Receiver was noteworthy because it informed our understanding of 

how these tactics were used by ATF more than three years before 

Operation Fast and Furious was initiated.’’ Is that what your report said? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Now, you also found that neither Attorney General Mukasey nor Attorney General Holder authorized or approved 

gun-walking, is that right? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is correct, although I would note Attorney 

General Mukasey was sworn in after the completion of Operation 

Wide Receiver’s investigative portion of the activity. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. You also found that there were wiretap applications in both operations and that the wiretap applications in Wide 

Receiver included the same kinds of potential red flags you found 

in Fast and Furious affidavits, is that correct? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We found red flags existing in Wide Receiver as 

well. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. But deputy assistant attorney generals from both 

administrations did not routinely read these affidavits, according to 

your report. You interviewed officials from both administrations 

and they told you their normal practice was to read only summary 

memos, is that correct? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We interviewed three of the five deputy AGs who 

reviewed the 14 wiretaps, and all of the three that we interviewed. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I understand. I want you to just tell us what 

happened. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I don’t want to suggest that all three indicated 

that they did not routinely read the affidavits when they came to 

them. 

25 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I want to make it clear that I believe that we 

need to, if there is reform, and I think your assistants mentioned 

this yesterday, and I am sure the Chairman would agree with me, 

we need to make sure folks read the affidavits. Would you agree? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I agree and I actually formerly was a deputy AG 

in the Criminal Division, so I have 12 years out of date, but I remember reviewing them. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Now, for both operations you also found that 

gun-walking was not ordered from the top but, instead, was ‘‘primarily the result of tactical and strategic decisions by the agents 

and prosecutors.’’ Is that right? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is right. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. You said in your testimony that the ATF and 

U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona ‘‘share equal responsibility for 

strategic and operational failures in Operations Wide Receiver and 

Fast and Furious.’’ 

So here are my questions, and I think these questions will go to 

the heart of the reform that I hope that we will be able to get underway. 

How could these tactics have continued in Phoenix over a span 

of five years and two administrations without being stopped either 

by ATF or the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona? 

My second question is how should it have worked? And if an ATF 

agent came to his superiors in Phoenix with this kind of plan 

today, how should it be examined and vetted now? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, as to the first question, I think there were 

serious lack of controls in place in both the U.S. Attorney’s Office 

and ATF operation, primarily ATF because they are the law enforcement agency that needs approval. We highlighted one of them 

as an example. Even though ATF, for eight years, has been in the 

Department of Justice, the attorney general guidelines for use of 

undercover operations were never amended to cover ATF. 

So there were a series of failures in the controls. We have made 

significant recommendations in that area. The Department and 

ATF have put in place additional tools and controls already, but 

there has to be a serious review in vetting of operations like this 

that impact not only the number of guns in the communities that 

are impacted by these, but that involve a foreign operation involving guns going to a foreign country. That wasn’t there at the time. 

So there needs to be a serious look at that. 

And how to prevent that going forward is watching carefully to 

make sure, in fact, the reforms we are all talking about aren’t lost 

once the headlines of the report go away; that there is oversight, 

follow-up by the Inspector General’s Office and I am sure by the 

Congress in this regard. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Just one last question. It seems as if Mr. Melson, 

who was heading ATF, seems like, from reading the report, seems 

like he may have fallen asleep at the switch. I mean, from what 

you saw—again, this is the head of ATF. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Right. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Can you tell us about what your report says 

about that? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Yes. We found, in Operation Fast and Furious, 

that there was significant information coming to ATF HeadVerDate Aug 31 2005 08:59 Nov 02, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76369.TXT APRIL
26 

quarters. In fact, by March of 2010, the deputy director of ATF, 

who was an experienced agent and had served in the ATF for a 

considerable period of time, for the first time in his career asked 

for an exit strategy because of his concern about what he had seen. 

He asked for it, it didn’t come to headquarters for six weeks, and 

it wasn’t reviewed by the deputy director until almost a year later, 

after the shooting of Agent Terry and after the indictment occurred. 

The fact that the deputy director could see the need for an exit 

strategy in March of 2010 and not receive it and review it until 

2011 I think speaks volumes about what happened here in terms 

of failures of oversight. 

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

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

With that, we recognize the distinguished—oh, with that, I ask 

unanimous consent the gentlelady from Florida, Mrs. Adams, be allowed to participate in today’s hearing. Without objection, so ordered. 

With that, we now go to the gentleman from Utah, Mr. Chaffetz. 

Mr. CHAFFETZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your tenacity in continuing to go after this. We have a dead Border Patrol 

agent, nearly 2,000 AK–47s released, hundreds of dead Mexicans, 

a Mexican helicopter shot down at one point, a dead Border Patrol 

agent, hundreds of guns that are still unaccounted for, untold number of crimes that have been committed with these guns, and an 

attorney general whose best guess and best argument is a plea of 

ignorance. So I think Mr. Cummings, the Ranking Member, asked 

the most salient question: How does this go on for so long without 

somebody saying something is wrong here? 

I have a fundamental problem and challenge with the fact that 

the acting ATF director, Mr. Melson, is in that position for two 

years and met with the attorney general one time. One time. That 

is inexcusable in my book. 

I also think what happened, part of the conclusion, I think, validates what we have been concerned about for so long, that the 

adults in the room, the head of the Criminal Division, is supposed 

to be Lanny Breuer, but Lanny Breuer, having been briefed on 

what happened previously, knew about gun-walking, knew about 

these straw purchases, and said nothing about it. He didn’t issue 

a new edict that says we are not going to do this anymore. In fact, 

you would be led to believe that by just allowing it to continue on, 

no new directive, that he was actually endorsing this. That is what 

I take from it. 

I think this is a wonderful report. I appreciate the thoroughness. 

I think you are a professional and did a great job. I think you were 

a little soft on Lanny Breuer. To suggest, as you did, on page 314, 

moreover, Breuer did not supervise Operation Fast and Furious 

and did not authorize any activities in the investigation I think is, 

I would disagree with that statement. 

Jason Weinstein reported to Lanny Breuer, and as this report 

clearly highlights, Jason Weinstein is being made as the key person that was probably most responsible here. 

I would also point out to my colleagues that on February 4th, 

2011, of all the days, the day that we are issued, specific to Senator 

27 

Grassley, a letter that was totally false about ATF’s activities. By 

the way, this letter doesn’t even mention Fast and Furious, it says 

that these guns were allowed to walk, that ATF does not allow 

guns to walk, any way, shape or form. I would point to the February 4th memorandum about the Assistant Attorney General 

Breuer going to Mexico. 

As a synopsis to that, in Mexico, he proposed to the Mexican government, Assistant Attorney General Breuer suggested allowing 

straw purchases cross into Mexico. We have in black and white a 

document suggesting that he is not only approving of these types 

of activities, he is advocating for these types of activities. 

So to answer Mr. Cummings’ question, it is crystal clear; the 

head of the Criminal Division was down there pitching the Mexican 

government that we ought to be doing more of this. That is why 

it continued, because the person in charge was advocating for it. 

He knew about it previously. And when he did hear about it, he 

did nothing about it. 

In fact, when that letter, on February 4th, goes out the door, he 

had seen it and he said nothing about it. And then what is worse 

is, after the letter goes out, everybody at the Department of Justice 

knows that it is wrong; it takes 10 months for them to fess up on 

it. In fact, they issue another letter, in May, again compounding 

the problem, hiding from the American people and this Congress 

the truth. 

Mr. Chairman, I would also highlight what is said on page 277 

by the inspector general: We found that the affidavits described, we 

are talking about the wiretap applications. We found that the affidavits described specific incidents that would suggest to a prosecutor who was focused on the question of investigative tactics that 

the ATF was employing a strategy of not interdicting weapons or 

arresting known straw purchasers. 

Nevertheless, June 7th, 2012, the attorney general testifying in 

the Judiciary Committee, in response to Congressman Quayle, I 

have looked at these affidavits, I have looked at the summaries; 

there is nothing in those affidavits, as I reviewed them, that indicates that gun-walking was allowed, a direct contradiction and very 

different from what the inspector general looked at. I appreciate 

you seeking the unsealing of these documents so that we can all 

see them. 

Mr. Chairman, I am also concerned that there was a culture and 

environment where people were either afraid or not willing or 

didn’t want to share with the attorney general key information specific to what we were doing with Mexico, and what I would highlight, and I am running out of time here, the culture and the environment was not conducive to have the truth surface. 

It is shocking and troubling to me that we did not, that the Department of Justice never communicated to the senior people at 

Homeland Security, where one of their agents was dead, and still 

hasn’t, to this day, I have questioned them. The secretary of Homeland Security didn’t ask the attorney general what was going on, 

nor did we ever communicate with the Secretary of the State Department so that she could deal with this situation. 

We pour thousands of weapons into Mexico and we never bothered to tell the Secretary of the State? Isn’t that her job, role and 

28 

responsibility? That is one of the things I think we also have to 

look at because that is one of the compounding problems that happened along this way, even after we knew all these facts, and still 

to this day I don’t think the Department of Justice ever solved. 

Chairman ISSA. Would the inspector general want to answer any 

implied question there? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. No. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay, with that we recognize the gentlelady 

from New York, Mrs. Maloney, for five minutes. 

Mrs. MALONEY. First of all, I would like to welcome the IG and 

note that he is from the great State of New York. We are very 

proud of you even though you are now a Washingtonian, and congratulations on your public service. We appreciate very much your 

report. 

First of all, on guns. If you were so concerned about guns on the 

border, then my colleagues could have supported the bills that we 

put forward, the Democrats, really for gun safety. So, in my opinion, you are not serious. If you were worried about guns at the border, then let’s make it a federal crime to traffic guns. Let’s make 

it a crime to forestall vast sales of these guns. Let’s ban assault 

weapons that aren’t used to do anything but kill people. They don’t 

kill animals, they just kill people. There are a number of things 

that we could do right now that would get the guns off of the border. 

And the Mexican government supports it. They have asked us to 

do so. When we came forward with our bills, we got a letter from 

the president of Mexico saying this is wonderful; that will help 

guns on the border. 

But I would like to do what the Chairman wanted, which is to 

focus on this excellent report that Mr. Horowitz came out with, and 

I would like to refer that in December of 2011 our attorney general 

explained to the House Judiciary Committee that gun-walking and 

Operation Fast and Furious, I like to call it Vast and Curious, 

originated with the local Phoenix office of the ATF and the U.S. attorney, and that it was not the result of any strategy or directive 

from main Justice. 

And he said, in May, ‘‘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 topto-bottom operation; this was a regional operation that was controlled by ATF and by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix.’’ 

Mr. Horowitz, your report reaches a similar conclusion, pointing 

back to the genesis of these tactics by the field agents and prosecutors in Phoenix, and this is what your report says about Operation 

Wide Receiver: ‘‘In sum, the evidence demonstrated that the decision to not interdict the firearms, despite having probable cause to 

do so, was a decision made by the ATF Phoenix Field Division and 

was intended to advance ATF’s broader goal of identifying additional participants in the conspiracy.’’ 

So my question to you, Mr. Horowitz is, and I believe it is the 

main question that we have had as a Committee, is how is it that 

these tactics started? What went wrong? Can you explain what you 

found in your investigation that would explain how these tactics 

first started being used in Operation Wide Receiver? 

29 

Mr. HOROWITZ. In Operation Wide Receiver, what appears to 

have occurred is that information came to the agents in the Tucson 

Office of the Phoenix Field Division and they made a conscious decision to not take any action to stop the trafficking with the straw 

purchasers because they wanted to follow the guns and figure out 

to whom they were ultimately going. And that was a decision made 

early on in the investigation, almost at the outset, and it was done 

with the acquiescence and approval of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. 

So that is why we found that there was a failure by both offices. 

Mrs. MALONEY. And that was the office in Phoenix, right? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Correct, U.S. Attorney’s Office for Arizona, for 

the District of Arizona. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Okay. What about the Operation Fast and Furious? Did the agents have bad motives or did they just fail to consider the public risk involved? What were they thinking? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. They did not have bad motives as far as we 

found. What we heard from the agents was they had made a conscious decision that the long-term effort, that having a long-term 

investigative strategy that dismantled a large organization was the 

greater good that they were undertaking; to dismantle the organization, stop the trafficking, and that that was what they believed 

was in the best interest of the public safety. 

As we found, that was an incorrect calculation. Law enforcement’s primary objective is to protect the public. You can’t take action to let guns walk that will harm people for the greater good. 

Mrs. MALONEY. What can we do to make sure that this does not 

happen again? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, I think, first and foremost, there needs to 

be the serious reform and controls we have outlined at ATF. There 

has to be an internal change in how cases are managed there. 

There needs to be supervision; there needs to be oversight, and 

thoughts about investigations like this need to be carefully reviewed at the highest levels of the organization at the outset, not 

deferred to to the line agent or to their line supervisors. That, to 

me, is the first and most important effort. 

Mrs. MALONEY. So you would say that that is the most important 

reform that you think the Department could take? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Initially. I think that is a step that is apparent 

that has to happen. I think there are many other reforms that we 

have outlined, including, for example, making sure that, at the Department of Justice, in the Criminal Division, deputy AGs are reviewing the wiretap applications when they get them. That is another reform we have put forward. There needs to be clear policies 

in place within ATF as to what is allowed and what isn’t allowed, 

so that it is not just reviewing and vetting; it is a clear line as to 

what is or is not permitted. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentlelady. 

We now recognize the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. 

Gowdy. 

Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Inspector General, when I met with you several weeks ago, 

I left that meeting cautiously optimistic that we would receive a 

thorough, balanced report, and my optimism was rewarded because 

of you and your staff. I also shared, in no small part, I am sure, 

30 

because of your exemplary service in the Southern District of New 

York and with the Department of Justice. Your career as a prosecutor gave me that cautious optimism. And I shared with you this 

was never about politics to me. I don’t care which party is in 

power. It was about a dead Border Patrol agent and holding the 

institutions of government responsible for what they have done. 

And I think it is wonderful, at one level, that we have an independent entity like you to investigate. I just naively thought that 

is what the Department of Justice was. I naively thought the attorney general, as the top law enforcement official in the Department 

of Justice, was that independent entity that we could trust. And 

whether it is the letters in March and February of 2011, whether 

it is testimony that has been delivered to committees of Congress, 

sadly, the Department of Justice was not vindicated, despite some 

of the headlines this morning. 

Wiretap applications. I specifically asked the attorney general 

are you sure that someone reading these wiretap applications and 

the summaries would not be left with the conclusion that gunwalking was a tactic that was used? And he said yes, he was sure. 

And your report debunks that. You used to read wiretap applications, correct? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Correct. 

Mr. GOWDY. And your conclusion, with that background, is that 

a reasonably prudent person reading these applications and summaries would have been on notice way back when that the tactic 

of gun-walking was being used, is that correct? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Yes. For someone who is watching it, looking for 

it in that context of gun-walking, I agree that they would have seen 

those red flags. 

Mr. GOWDY. That was a startling conclusion that you reached. 

Another starting fact, I don’t want to say it is a conclusion, but a 

fact that you included in your report, and you correct me if I am 

mischaracterizing what you wrote, but the attorney general, even 

today, does not believe that a dead Border Patrol agent from an 

agency that he doesn’t supervise, who was killed by a weapon as 

part of an investigation of an agency he does supervise is something that should be brought to his attention. Does your report not 

include a paragraph that even today the attorney general is not 

sure that this fact pattern should have been brought to his attention? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. As we included in the report, the attorney general told us that it would not necessarily be something he would 

be expected to be notified of. And we are talking about not the 

death, because he was notified about the death, but about the fact 

that two firearms were found at the scene that were connected to 

Operation Fast and Furious. 

Mr. GOWDY. Right. But, inspector general, you were a prosecutor, 

I was a prosecutor, others up here have been prosecutors. When 

you have a dead law enforcement officer, the next words out of 

your mouth are I want to know everything there possibly is to 

know about how this happened. I don’t just want to know what the 

autopsy says; I want to know how we got to this point, which does 

speak to management, and it does speak to a duty to supervise; not 

just a commonsensical duty. 

31 

I want to ask you specifically about the code of professional responsibility. Is there a duty to supervise, for supervisory attorneys 

to supervise the work of those underneath him? Not a common law 

or a commonsensical obligation, but is there a code of professional 

responsibility obligation to supervise? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I am not sure I could speak directly to the code 

of professional responsibility in that regard because we were looking at obviously whether there was supervisory failures. We clearly 

found there was an obligation as part of the performance responsibilities of the agents and the prosecutors to supervise, and the 

failure to do that was a serious management failure, in our estimation, in our view. 

Mr. GOWDY. All right, there are two letters, one in February and 

one in May, both of which were demonstrably false. You can argue 

that they were calculated to mislead, but there can be no argument 

that they were false. They were signed by Ronald Weich, but I 

guess the largest exception I take to your report is the same one 

that Mr. Chaffetz had. 

Lanny Breuer was the criminal chief. Lanny Breuer was responsible, at some level, for the approval of the wiretap applications. 

Lanny Breuer forwarded this February 4th letter, which was demonstrably false, to a home computer, and you don’t have to be a 

real good prosecutor to deduce that you forward something to a 

home computer because you are going to read it. 

I can’t think of any other reason to forward a letter other than 

to read it, unless you are a historian or an archivist, and I don’t 

think he is either one of those. And then he confirms our suspicions 

by writing, good job. 

So given the duty to supervise, given the false letters, given the 

failure to connect the dots, as he said and you concluded, I can’t 

imagine a headline that reads, passengers charged with speeding, 

driver exonerated. I can’t imagine that headline. But, yet, we have 

DOJ people that were under Lanny Breuer who are either resigning or being disciplined. How does he escape discipline? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. As our report outlines, we found that Mr. Breuer, 

back in April 2010, knew about, learned about the gun-walking tactics in Wide Receiver, and, as we outlined in the report, it was a 

failure by him to alert the deputy or the attorney general to that, 

because ATF reports to the deputy, not to him. So it was incumbent upon him, in our view, to report it to the deputy and the attorney general. 

And, again, when the letter came in from Senator Grassley nine 

months later or so, in January 2011, we believed, as he ultimately 

testified, that he should have alerted the Department to that. 

Those were two findings we made. 

As to what the discipline or decision is as to discipline or administrative or other conduct or other related failures, that is really a 

decision ultimately under our system to the attorney general. I 

have authority to investigate, make the findings, which I did, and 

then it is up to the attorney general to decide what, if any, discipline to impose. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

We now go to the gentlelady from the District of Columbia, Ms. 

Norton, for five minutes. 

32 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I especially thank you, Mr. Horowitz, for a very thorough job 

where you had to dig into a lot of weeds. And I do appreciate the 

way you connected the dots and drew the lines so that we understood where the responsibility went. My line of questions really go 

to why this investigation has gone on for so long and why the public was concerned about it. 

The face of this investigation, the poster boy, as it were, has been 

the attorney general of the United States, and the Committee has 

had hearings where over and over again it was alleged that the 

gun-walking was known at the highest levels, even by the attorney 

general, and that this was an approved plan, approved by, to quote 

from a recent record, at the highest levels of the Obama appointees. 

Now, I think it is only fair, when the attorney general, over and 

over again, has been the face of this investigation, the one held responsible for the gun-walking, to put on the record what you have 

found with respect to the attorney general of the United States. 

Now, you have indicated that you received cooperation from the 

highest levels of the Justice Department in doing your investigation. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Yes. We received the documents that we asked 

for and, as indicated, other than the handful of individuals who refused to speak with us, we generally were able to speak with everybody we wanted to. 

Ms. NORTON. Did you speak with the attorney general of the 

United States? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We did. 

Ms. NORTON. You did not? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We did. 

Ms. NORTON. You did. May I ask you did you find any evidence 

that Attorney General Holder approved of the gun-walking tactics 

that have been under investigation by this Committee? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. As we outlined in the report, we found no evidence that the attorney general was aware, in 2010, before Senator 

Grassley’s letter, of Operation Fast and Furious and the tactics 

that were associated with it. 

Ms. NORTON. So the attorney general cold not have approved because he did not even know about the gun-walking tactics before 

2010. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We found no evidence that he had been told in 

2010. 

Ms. NORTON. Now, let’s go to other high levels of the Justice Department. Did you find any evidence that the acting deputy, Gary 

Grindler, knew or authorized gun-walking? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We found that the acting deputy attorney general 

was briefed about Operation Fast and Furious in March of 2010, 

but we concluded, after looking at what that briefing involved, 

which was item 4 of a 7 item agenda in a 45-minute briefing, that 

it wasn’t a sufficient briefing to put him on notice, directly and expressly, that gun-walking had occurred. 

It did, we thought, it was sufficient to trigger questions, but not 

sufficient to put him on notice. And we were particularly troubled 

by the fact that he was never briefed again by ATF, when, within 

33 

two weeks after that briefing, the deputy director had asked for the 

exit strategy that I referenced earlier; that no one went back to 

him to tell him that information. 

Ms. NORTON. So this controversy centered in the U.S. Attorney’s 

Office and at the ATF. Your last answer, does that mean that you 

think they deliberately tried to keep the acting deputy attorney 

general from knowing about the parts of Fast and Furious that perhaps were most controversial? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We didn’t find any evidence of deliberateness. 

Again, this is a situation where the deputy director of ATF had 

asked for an exit strategy in March and never looked at it until 

2011. So it would be hard to explain what was going on or what 

people were thinking given that level of failure of oversight. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Horowitz, to your knowledge, is anyone at the 

Justice Department looking into perhaps the most important new 

tool the attorney general, the U.S. attorney could have, a tool that 

might have been useful to the U.S. attorney in dealing with the 

gun-walking, or are we left, at the end of this investigation, with 

gun-walking and whatever else anybody can think of to do something about it? 

Is there any work going on in the Justice Department, as a result of your investigation, to give ATF or the U.S. attorney, Arizona 

here, the kinds of tools that would in fact mean that nobody would 

even think about a surreptitious way to get at guns like gun-walking and Fast and Furious? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. What I have been told about the Department’s 

response to this is, as we have highlighted in the report, are the 

reforms that are needed within ATF, within the Justice Department’s review of wiretaps, within its law enforcement operations 

generally. Beyond that, I haven’t been informed of any additional 

steps the Department has taken. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentlelady. 

We now go to the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Gosar. And I 

would ask if you would yield for 15 seconds. 

Mr. GOSAR. I will. 

Chairman ISSA. Following up on the previous two democratic 

questions, isn’t it true that the then chief of staff, when asked if 

the DAG knew, the deputy attorney general knew, then the attorney general should have been briefed related to what they knew 

about Fast and Furious and obviously the question of whether Fast 

and Furious weapons were found at the scene of Brian Terry’s murder? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is correct, and also that is what we found 

in our report. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

Mr. Gosar. 

Mr. GOSAR. Thank you, Mr. Horowitz. Thank you. As my previous colleague had said that I grilled you when you came to talk 

to me, and thank you very, very much for instilling some trust. 

In your discovery with witnesses, paperwork, did anyone within 

your findings, within the DOJ system, raise questions about the 

truthfulness and possible misleading testimony that was being presented by the attorney general in his testimony to Congress? 

34 

Mr. HOROWITZ. No one indicated that in their interviews 

with—— 

Mr. GOSAR. Did you directly ask the question? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I would have to go back, frankly, and look at the 

transcripts. 

Mr. GOSAR. We would like you to ask that question. Okay? 

In detailing up with Lanny Breuer, it is my understanding that 

Lanny, or Mr. Breuer, and Wide Receiver closed in 2007, if I am 

not mistaken. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. The investigative activity ended in 2007. 

Mr. GOSAR. Right. So we should know something about it. So Mr. 

Breuer sent members from the Criminal Division to review the 

auspices and directives of Operation Wide Receiver, true? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Correct. 

Mr. GOSAR. Isn’t this like having a prior? I am a dentist, but this 

is like even worse than what Operation Wide Receiver would have 

been, because you know the outcomes here and you are still permitting it to go. And if I am not mistaken, that is in March of 2010, 

right? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. March and April. I believe it is April of 2010 that 

the meeting occurs where Mr. Breuer is informed that there is 

going to be a meeting and his deputy goes to that meeting to discuss gun-walking and Wide Receiver. 

Mr. GOSAR. And that is with Mr. Voth, right? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is with Mr. Hoover, the deputy director. 

Mr. GOSAR. Then it gets better. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And the deputy assistant director, McMahon. 

Mr. GOSAR. So then it gets even better, because if I am not mistaken, Mr. Voth comes to Washington, D.C. and does a presentation on March of 2010, March 5th, if I am not mistaken. I think 

Joe Cooley was at that presentation, right, at the direction of Mr. 

Breuer? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. On the March 5th presentation, that is correct. 

Mr. GOSAR. So all these pieces are pointing to Mr. Breuer, that 

he knows about this early on. I have a problem with this, with Mr. 

Breuer, because he is directly in the line of fire, from what I am 

seeing here; and we have problems. Because not only does he go 

to send somebody back to Arizona, and listens to Mr. Voth’s presentation and almost gets the thumbs up, no caution flags at all. And 

just like the wiretaps, these are alarming discoveries. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. It is clear that Mr. Breuer was aware, in April 

2010, about the gun-walking and Wide Receiver, which is why we 

were troubled by his decision to not tell the deputy attorney general or the attorney general about it, because they have authority 

over ATF; he does not. So that is why we found he should have 

done that. 

Mr. GOSAR. It seems to me, but it is very alarming, because I 

think the scrutiny on Fast and Furious is much higher than what 

Wide Receiver is. They are both egregious, don’t get me wrong, but 

this is, to me, you already know the results and then you are making the results even worse. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, and that is why we were troubled when the 

information came to the Department from Senator Grassley, in 

35 

January of 2011, that those dots weren’t connected by Mr. Breuer 

and by his deputy, Mr. Weinstein. 

Mr. GOSAR. Okay. The day after Brian Terry was killed, the attorney general actually emailed three people asking for details, did 

he not? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is correct. I believe it was the day after, but 

I remember—— 

Mr. GOSAR. This includes Gary Grindler, Monty Wilkinson who 

failed to inform the attorney general in connection with the Brian 

Terry murder with weapons from Fast and Furious, true? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is correct, the failure to notify him about 

the connection between the two guns found at the scene, that they 

had been bought 11 months earlier by a subject that had been 

identified in fast and furious. 

Mr. GOSAR. Now, going back to my colleague from South Carolina, you know, when a law officer is murdered, there is a lot of 

raised tensions and a lot of questions being asked. We have a 

whole scenario of things that occurred here. I mean, the questions 

should have been asked and we should have had a better outcome. 

But there was another incident in Arizona, late January, my understanding with even Congressman Giffords, is questions were 

abounding was one of these guns being used, was that not? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I believe so. 

Mr. GOSAR. So we should have known. I mean, the attorney general’s testimony, to me, seems flawed. We would have been asking 

and should have known much earlier about these questions about 

Fast and Furious based upon the inquisition of the witnesses to 

these crimes and the nature of these crimes and the audacity of 

these crimes, particularly to higher members like Congress, right? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, as I indicated in the report, we certainly believed that when that information about the guns connected to the 

shooting scene of a law enforcement agent, that that kind of information needs to go to the attorney general of the United States. 

Mr. GOSAR. So it was covered up. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, I don’t know whether it was covered up or 

not, but it was not told to him. 

Mr. GOSAR. Okay. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

We now go to the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Lynch, for 

five minutes. 

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I thank the witness for a very, very thorough report, extremely 

thorough. Churchill might say that this report defends itself 

against the risk of being read by its very length. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. LYNCH. However, I am working my way through it. Started 

with the conclusions and going through it in great detail. But you 

do address a lot of the questions that we have raised here in five 

or more hearings. 

I do want to ask you one point, though, about vindication. Some 

are saying people are vindicated; some people are not. But in prior 

hearings the accusations were against the attorney general, and 

Attorney General Holder had come before the Committee several 

36 

times, also over in the Senate, and the accusation was that he 

knew, he knew about this operation, he ran it, and the blame lies 

with him. 

Now, I read your report and it says that there was no evidence, 

no evidence that he knew. You do, I think accurately, pinpoint 

some people who were ultimately responsible. You name them. You 

identify the flaws in their thinking, their misguided strategies, 

their misguided tactics, and how they made mistakes during this 

whole process, and it was a terrible and tragic mistake. You are 

also highly critical of some others. 

And, in fairness, there were cross-allegations against Attorney 

General Mukasey as well, that he knew more about Wide Receiver 

when he was in office as attorney general. Yet, after this very thorough analysis, you say there was no evidence that either Attorney 

General Holder or Attorney General Mukasey knew of those operations. 

So I am asking you do you believe that this report vindicates Attorney General Holder and, fair enough, Attorney General 

Mukasey, given their lack of information about what was going on? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I think the report speaks to what we found and 

didn’t find in our conclusions, and I will stand by the very lengthy, 

I agree with you, report, and not trying to re-characterize or characterize it today, myself. 

Mr. LYNCH. Okay. 

Chairman ISSA. Would the gentleman yield? Perhaps I can assist. 

Mr. LYNCH. Sure. 

Chairman ISSA. I think from the Chair’s standpoint, I think your 

point is extremely good, that nowhere in this report did we find 

specific incrimination of they knew, either one of these attorneys 

general; and I think that is an important point and it is one that 

I think, for the record, the Committee should be aware of, is that 

I don’t think anyone should have assumed that they knew. 

We certainly would all wish that any attorney general would ask 

to know more and would have known more, and I think the inspector general’s report does cast blame for high-ranking people not 

asking more questions. But I agree with the gentleman that neither attorney general was found to know it. 

Mr. LYNCH. Right. Reclaiming my time. 

Chairman ISSA. We stopped the clock for that question, by the 

way. 

Mr. LYNCH. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you for that 

courtesy. 

Look, this is a big agency; we have thousands of employees. We 

have, at least the report indicates and identifies, an assistant deputy attorney general in one division who failed to report, failed to 

inform his superior. So the implication is that the U.S. attorney 

general should know what every single assistant deputy attorney 

general knows and fails to report. 

I didn’t vote for him, but this Congress has just held the attorney 

general in contempt, the House did, and I just think based on this 

report, the suggestion by many, and some in this Committee, was 

that the attorney general was withholding information to protect 

himself because he was involved, and this report, this very thorough, very professional, very well done report, impartial, very obVerDate Aug 31 2005 08:59 Nov 02, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76369.TXT APRIL
37 

jective, based on the facts, based on documents not available to this 

Committee, based on interview of 130 witnesses, many not available to this Committee, interviewed multiple times, have concluded 

that that was wrong. That was wrong. This attorney general, while 

not perfect, was not guilty of the things that people on this Committee and others in the press accused him of, and that is secondary. That is secondary. 

Final responsibility here—— 

Chairman ISSA. The gentleman’s time has expired. Could you get 

to primary? 

Mr. LYNCH. The primary is the changes that have been made at 

ATF, because ultimately the primary objective here was to pay respect to Brian Terry’s service to this Country and to his family. So 

can you tell me whether the reforms to ATF that would prevent another agent who puts on the uniform for this Country and serves 

this Country could be protected now because of the changes that 

have been adopted by the ATF so that something like this doesn’t 

happen to another American in service of his Country on the Customs and Border Patrol? 

Chairman ISSA. The gentleman’s time has expired, but please answer. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. ATF steps, as we indicated, are important first 

steps. We thought there needed to be additional steps taken, and 

we recommended those and we will follow up to make sure those 

are put in place. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. And the gentleman’s other question 

about people informing or should have informed the attorney general or the other up, I think he would like to have an answer to, 

the up chain failure. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And we found, as we outlined in the report, we 

struggled to understand how an operation of this size, of this importance, that impacted another country like it did, could not have 

been briefed up to the attorney general of the United States. It 

should have been, in our view. It was that kind of a case. 

Mr. LYNCH. Okay. 

I thank you for the indulgence. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you. 

Chairman ISSA. Of course. 

We now go to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Meehan. 

Mr. MEEHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, Mr. Horowitz, for your continuing good work on 

behalf of the Department of Justice and certainly the United States 

of America. You couldn’t have teed off my questioning any better 

than asking about the failure to report this up the chain. 

I am going back to an April 12th. This is an email that comes 

from Deputy Attorney General Weinstein and it is with respect to 

a prosecution memo that he gets on Operation Wide Receiver, and 

these are his words: ‘‘I am stunned. Based on what we have had 

to do to make sure that not even a single operable weapon walked 

in undercover operations I have been involved in planning, I think 

we need to make sure we go over these issues with our front office. 

We owe it to ATF Headquarters to preview these issues before anything gets filed.’’ 

38 

So let me ask a predicate question. With complete knowledge 

that guns had been walked, that there were implications that had 

been crimes committed in Mexico based on a prior activity, did you 

ever ask why they continued to prosecute that case and send 

agents that actually re-invigorated that investigation and prosecution on the prior bad act? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I would have to go back and check the transcript 

on exactly what was asked and what was answered, and I am 

happy to do that. I do think it is evident from the email traffic that 

we looked at, which was a belief that this was a good case, there 

were people that they had evidence on, but that there would be the 

possibility of embarrassing the agency by press stories about the 

gun watch—— 

Mr. MEEHAN. We are more worried about embarrassing agencies 

than we are about the public safety and issues of that nature. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. From our standpoint, that appeared to be the 

outcome of that meeting that happened just two weeks later, which 

was about managing what the public’s reaction might be to learning about gun-walking. 

Mr. MEEHAN. What I find about this statement is in his own 

words the degree to which Mr. Weinstein believes that there is a 

responsibility to inquire with regard to an investigation. 

So now let’s move forward a little bit to the next matter, in 

which he is now in charge of the oversight of the Fast and Furious. 

And there are certainly communications that take place with regard to certain higher level individuals who are engaged in the review of information and others. What responsibilities did he have 

at that point in time to inquire as to the activities that may have 

taken place during Fast and Furious, appreciating that by his own 

language he had already understood, first, that the ATF had already engaged in this kind of activity improperly and, second, his 

own articulation that even a single gun being walked was a violation of what he considered to be his sense of a properly run case, 

and, third, his own desire to assure that inquiries were made? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, what occurred is in that late April into May 

time period, in connection with or immediately after the discussion 

he had about Wide Receiver and the gun-walking in Wide Receiver, 

he learned information about Fast and Furious. Perhaps not gunwalking was going on, but he learned information about the case 

sufficient enough to write an email to the head of the internal office at the Justice Department that handles wiretaps, to refer to it 

as the most or one of the most important cases involving the U.S.- 

Mexico trafficking activity. And he did that in the context of trying 

to ensure the wiretap applications were being reviewed promptly. 

He then, two weeks later, had one of those wiretap applications 

land on his desk for approval. He indicated to us he never read it; 

he only read the cover memo. As we indicate in our report, we 

thought there was sufficient evidence and information even in the 

cover memo to warrant him to inquire into that affidavit. 

Mr. MEEHAN. I thank you for your language, because this is his 

language. This is perhaps the most significant Mexico-related firearms trafficking investigation ATF has going. So he knew not only 

that, but the importance and the significance of it. Where is the 

duty to inquire with regard to you have notice. Now, we know as 

39 

attorneys, under the tort law, people are being sued all over the 

United States because they had prior notice of a condition, failed 

to act, and now they are being responsible because subsequent 

somebody else has been harmed. 

I have already identified the standards that this particular individual had, and we know he has explicit information about prior 

activities of this sort. We know that there is information that is 

contained within, according to your report, the affidavits of probable cause that he is responsible for reviewing, maybe not in complete, but the failure to inquire and the communications that take 

place between he and Breuer and one more in which there is this, 

well, I judged from his, effectively, demeanor that he understood, 

when he was talking to the ATF. Where is the duty to inquire that 

would have led to a clear articulation of what was going on with 

Operation Fast and Furious? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And that, I think, is a very important question 

and precisely the reason why we have the recommendation in the 

report about deputy AAGs needing to review the affidavits. They 

are not looking at it just as robotic lawyers to check a box about 

is this statutory purpose met, is another statutory purpose met. 

Deputy AAGs are SES, members of the SES; they are involved in 

policy issues. They have an appreciation, or should have an appreciation of broader issues. And if they notice a problem, their obligation, I believe, as a deputy AG, is to then ask follow-up questions. 

Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Horowitz, you get the ability—I am running 

out of time. You get the ability to be—and I think you did well 

here. You are judge, jury, fact-finder, and writer of the opinion, so 

you are able to classify things in a variety of different ways. Is it 

your opinion that Mr. Weinstein should have specifically and unambiguously questioned whether there were improper tactics on 

Fast and Furious that mirrored those that had taken place in the 

prior operation? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We found there was sufficient information in the 

cover memo he saw to either ask questions or to go into the affidavit and read it, which would have triggered, in our view, more 

red flags. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. I thank you for that line 

of questioning. 

We now go to the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Quigley, for five 

minutes. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you for your work. We appreciate all your staff and the 

extraordinary amount of work that took place here. 

You were talking a little bit about the wiretap analysis. Is it your 

sense, in talking to them, they thought this was because of the 

sheer volume that junior level people were only reading the summaries of these wiretap applications? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is what we had heard, which is the sheer 

volume of wiretap applications that came before deputy AAGs, with 

all the other items they needed to deal with, that they could rely 

on the memos from their subordinates, which we are not taking 

issue with the thoroughness of the memos that they received, but 

that was what we had heard. 

40 

Mr. QUIGLEY. But the memos, the summaries weren’t—were the 

summaries enough to create red flags, in your mind, or the actual 

wiretap applications, the full body? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, in our view, the summary memo that was 

received by Mr. Weinstein, given what had just occurred within the 

prior few weeks regarding Wide Receiver, were sufficient, in our 

view, to trigger him to inquire further. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. But going back to your point of avoiding this in the 

future, which is what we should really be about, unless there is 

something like you just described that triggers a more thorough 

analysis, how do you get through the volume that we talk about 

here in all these cases, and many more instances across the Country and other scenarios that you can only imagine? What is it you 

have to do, take a random number of a particular type and do a 

more thorough analysis to see if there is something more significant there? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I think, in our view, in each instance the Congress has authorized what is a very intrusive law enforcement 

technique, electronically wiretapping an individual’s phone or other 

personal device. Congress put very tight strictures on that. That is 

a Fourth Amendment right that is being invaded. 

In our view, in each instance, a deputy assistant attorney general, which is the person to whom the statute Congress has given 

authority to authorize that intrusion, should look at each affidavit 

in a manner sufficient to allow them to perform a personal judgment on whether they are comfortable that that application, that 

affidavit meets the statutory criteria. We recognize that the level 

of scrutiny they give to the affidavit can well be informed by what 

they read in the memo their staff has provided to them, but that 

they can’t and shouldn’t just rely on that staff memo. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. But again, back to your own experience, the sheer 

volume alone, is the staffing sufficient? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Certainly, there can always be more staffing, and 

the volume has grown since I was in the Criminal Division 12 

years ago, so I understand why there may be a need for more resources. But I think, regardless of whether there is a need for more 

resources, in our view, this is such a significant event that is being 

authorized that this deserves the highest priorities. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Let me skip to another point. In your analysis, 

what is your estimate of the total number of guns that were walked 

under both administrations? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. As we put in the report, rough estimate in Fast 

and Furious was about 2,000; rough estimate in Wide Receiver was 

about 400. That is total guns. There were about 100 firearms in 

each case that were interdicted by ATF. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. But now analyzing this as much as you did, and 

analyzing what Agent Forselli said, that straw purchasers are punished about like a moving violation, when he testified before this 

Committee, your best guess, in reviewing these applications, on the 

number of guns that are transported through straw purchases? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I am sorry, the number of guns—— 

Mr. QUIGLEY. That go to Mexico due to straw purchases. 

41 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, we did a report in Project Gunrunner a couple years ago that outlined the significant flow of firearm trafficking, so there is a substantial flow of firearms. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. But your guess in numbers annually, thousands 

and thousands and thousands? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. As I sit here, I am sorry, I don’t have that. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. But best guesses are—and this is a tragedy, and 

that is what we are about. But if the concern is, as the Chairman 

said earlier, to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals, 

this issue isn’t going to stop today, because straw purchases are 

happening today. And as the agent who testified in front of this 

Committee said, they are not punished any more than doing 65 in 

a 50. 

I know, because of your hard work, you appreciate this, but it 

cannot be lost upon you, sir, that the fact is we haven’t solved this 

problem if thousands, the numbers dwarfing what happened in this 

tragedy, are still taking place. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Clearly, as we outlined in our previous report, in 

Project Gunrunner, there is a need to take serious action, law enforcement action to address this problem. 

Mr. QUIGLEY. Thank you. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

I only ask you to maybe correct your statement about one thing. 

You used the word interdicted. Do you mean recovered or interdicted, when you said 100 weapons in each? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I am sorry. I am limiting that to ATF interdiction 

of 100 out of 2,000—— 

Chairman ISSA. Were recovered or covered? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I am sorry, 100 interdicted or stopped by ATF. 

Many additional recovered at crime scenes or in other locations. 

But only 100 in total of the 2,000. 

Chairman ISSA. And just because I think the gentleman’s point 

was very good, when you are using that term, it is a term where 

they lost control, but then regained control. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. In some instances that is the case. It is hard to 

generalize on the 100 because there were several different events 

that occurred as to how they got them, some of which I actually 

can’t even talk about because it is still under—— 

Chairman ISSA. I appreciate that. I just think that this Committee has spent an inordinate amount of time, as has the Judiciary, in trying to define what gun-walking is. If you grab them before they lose your control, we generally believe that is not gunwalking. And if you deliberately allow it to leave your control, that 

is gun-walking. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And the definition we operated under generally 

was you have an opportunity to interdict and a legal basis to do 

so, and you don’t. 

Chairman ISSA. A great standard, and it should be the standard. 

I thank the gentleman. 

We now go to the former chairman of the full Committee, the 

gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Burton. 

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

On page 455 of your report you refer to Lanny Breuer failing to 

report the gun-walking to the deputy attorney general and you say, 

42 

we believe Breuer should have promptly informed the deputy attorney general or the attorney general about the matter in April 2010, 

and he failed to do so. 

The question I have is the public relations office over there, I 

guess the lady’s name is Tracy Schmaler, on June the 5th she said, 

the Committee also knows full well that Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer did not review the wiretap applications in Fast 

and Furious. That does not stop the Committee, however, from 

falsely asserting that Breuer was responsible for authorizing them. 

There is a real inconsistency there. And the last part of my question is I understand that there is a Media Matters. I am sure you 

are familiar with what that is. This Ms. Schmaler evidently sent 

an email to them about somebody that ought to be investigated or 

ought to get a little pressure put on them. Are you familiar with 

any of that? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I have read the reports and I have seen them. I 

have not looked at it, Congressman, beyond that at this point. 

Mr. BURTON. So that was not involved at all in your—the reason 

I ask is if this kind of an email was sent for, I guess, Justin Phillips, were any other emails sent to Media Matters about the Chairman or members of this Committee who were conducting the investigation? Because she was pretty vocal and vociferous when she 

said, on June 5th, the Committee also knows full well that Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer did not review the wiretap applications in Fast and Furious. And then she went on to say, that 

does not stop the Committee, however, from falsely asserting 

Breuer was responsible for authorizing them. 

If this example of going to Media Matters about this Mr. Phillips 

is a way that they normally do things over there in the public relations department, I was concerned that maybe they were trying to 

do that to the members of this Committee that were working so 

hard on the investigation or possibly the Chairman. But you have 

no knowledge of that? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I don’t know about the interaction between Office 

of Public Affairs and Media Matters other than what I have read 

in the press in the last few days about it. 

Mr. BURTON. Okay. Thank you very much. 

I will yield to the Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

Speaking of retaliation against the Administration’s enemies or 

the attorney generals, if in fact federal funds are used in order to 

dissuade members of Congress or members of the Judiciary 

Branch, that would be a violation of law, wouldn’t it? You are not 

allowed to use federal funds to essentially try to attack your political opponents. That is kind of a no-no, isn’t it? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is my understanding. 

Chairman ISSA. IG 101. 

Well, to that extent, I would like to talk to you about the whistleblowers. As you said in your opening statement, and I think both 

sides of the aisle have called them courageous, your report does not 

spend much time discussing whistleblowers who exposed Fast and 

Furious, although you do mention it. Have you been able to determine whether the whistleblowers have in fact been dealt with fairly and protected under the Whistleblowers Act? 

43 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is a matter, as we indicate in the report, we 

are still finalizing and reviewing, and I agree, Mr. Chairman, the 

efforts of the ATF agents in this case to come forward and acknowledge what was not public—and having done law enforcement cases 

in the Southern District of New York, it takes a lot of courage to 

come forward, if you are in a law enforcement agency, and explain 

what the agency has done wrong. 

Chairman ISSA. And in your report would you feel that you have 

vindicated the whistleblowers? In other words, initially, when Dobson and others came forward, they were accused of, in fact, false 

allegations, etcetera. Would you say that at the end of your investigation, those 471 pages, as succinct as it is, pretty well does a job 

of vindicating their concerns that they raised publicly? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. It certainly, from my standpoint, and there were 

a lot of people who came forward, so let me just say—— 

Chairman ISSA. Right. I realize it is a broad group now. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. The folks who came forward, the agents who 

came forward and said guns were being walked and they could 

have had an implication in Agent Terry’s death is what some of the 

earliest information was on the Internet, and more publicly beyond 

that, I think it is pretty clear that that is what happened here, is 

that guns were walked in quite a substantial way. 

Chairman ISSA. Now, notwithstanding the fact that Brian Terry 

had to be gunned down for them to come forward in ever increasing 

numbers, wasn’t this an example of exactly why whistleblowers are 

to be protected and why whistleblowers should be encouraged to 

come forward sooner, rather than later? And I want to particularly 

mention ones who are not looking for a qui tam case, but, in fact, 

are truly just trying to get something bad stopped. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I agree. I think this is an example of the importance of employees in all parts of the government, in this case law 

enforcement, to come forward if they have information and be comfortable doing that. And that is one of the reasons, as you know, 

I have put in place a whistleblower ombudsman position in my office, because of this and other events that I have seen that people 

need to be comfortable to come forward and talk, and we need to 

do a good job of following up on their concerns. 

Chairman ISSA. Well, I want to thank you and I want to particularly thank you for the fact that more whistleblowers go to IGs. IGs 

run down more of these problems, by far, than Congress ever does, 

so we often get noted when whistleblowers come to us, but most 

of the cases that we see come through your offices when whistleblowers have come within the agency. 

With that, I would note that one of the UCs that will be on the 

floor today will in fact be a whistleblower reform, so there couldn’t 

be a better time to remind the members of Congress that we depend on whistleblowers and we need to protect them. 

With that, I am pleased to go to the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. 

Davis. 

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

And thank you, Mr. Inspector General. I want to thank you for 

your very informative and clarifying information. I think what you 

have delineated gives the average citizen a great deal of confidence 

that what they are hearing is what has actually happened. I know 

44 

that Lanny Breuer, the head of the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice has been severely criticized by some members 

of Congress for what they considered to be his actions here. Senator Grassley has called for his resignation, the Chairman of this 

Committee has said Mr. Breuer ‘‘clearly had culpability,’’ and Mr. 

Chaffetz even said that Mr. Breuer started this up in 2009. 

So I want to ask you a few questions to see if we can’t really clarify and understand what Mr. Breuer’s role in these two programs. 

One, Mr. Horowitz, did you find that Assistant Attorney General 

Breuer authorized or directed gun-walking in either Operation Fast 

and Furious or Wide Receiver? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We did not. 

Mr. DAVIS. Did you find that Mr. Breuer review or approved the 

wiretap applications in either operation? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. No. In each of the 14 instances it was a deputy 

assistant attorney general who authorized the applications. 

Mr. DAVIS. Did you find any evidence that Mr. Breuer was aware 

that gun-walking occurred in Operation Fast and Furious before 

the information became public? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Prior to Senator Grassley’s letter, we did not find 

information that he was aware of gun-walking in Operation Fast 

and Furious; it was only with regard to Wide Receiver that we 

were aware of that information. 

Mr. DAVIS. In April 2010, Mr. Breuer did learn about the gunwalking tactics that had been used during the Bush Administration 

in Operation Wide Receiver, but only after the operation had been 

completed. So, Mr. Horowitz, what did Mr. Breuer do when he 

learned that gun-walking occurred in Operation Wide Receiver? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. What we were told by Mr. Breuer and Mr. 

Weinstein, and perhaps others that we interviewed, was that there 

would be a meeting with ATF and at that meeting ATF would be 

told that the gun-walking tactics were unacceptable. We found that 

there was no, however, admonishing at the meeting. Mr. Breuer 

was not at that meeting, but we found that there was no, in fact, 

admonishing of ATF for that conduct. 

Mr. DAVIS. What additional steps, if there were any, do you think 

Mr. Breuer should have taken when he learned that gun-walking 

occurred in Operation Wide Receiver? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, as indicated, one of the things we sought 

out to do here was address the facts that we found and not go beyond those, and in this case we found he knew about Wide Receiver 

in April of 2010. He did not have direct authority over ATF, it was 

the deputy attorney general and the attorney general who had authority. Those tactics were unacceptable and he should have told 

the two people, one or both of the people, who could have taken action to stop or to correct what was happening. 

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Breuer testified publicly before Congress, has acknowledged and apologized for his oversight, and explained that he 

regretted the fact that he did not raise concerns about Operation 

Wide Receiver with other senior leaders at the Department of Justice. Chairman Issa has also alleged that Mr. Breuer was actively 

advocating gun-walking to the Mexican government. 

As evidence for this claim, Chairman Issa points to notes from 

a meeting with senior officials for the Mexican government on FebVerDate Aug 31 2005 08:59 Nov 02, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76369.TXT APRIL
45 

ruary 2nd, 2011, that stated that Mr. Breuer discussed controlled 

deliveries. Here is what the note said: ‘‘Mr. Breuer suggested allowing straw purchasers to cross into Mexico so the Mexican federal 

police force can arrest the Mexican, attorney general’s office can 

prosecute and convict. Such coordinated operation between the 

United States and Mexico may send a strong message to armed 

traffickers.’’ 

Chairman ISSA. I would ask unanimous consent the gentleman 

have an additional minute. Without objection. 

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Horowitz, in your report you draw a sharp distinction between gun-walking and controlled deliveries. Do you consider advocating for coordinated operations with Mexico to be the same as advocating for gun-walking? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We found, as you noted in our report, that controlled deliveries are different from gun-walking, and we would 

draw a distinction between the two, and a distinction was drawn 

between the two for us by a number of witnesses. 

Mr. DAVIS. I thank you very much for your testimony. 

Chairman ISSA. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. DAVIS. Yes. 

Chairman ISSA. Isn’t it true that Wide Receiver, as an intent 

stated, was a controlled delivery? The actual gun-walking that occurred was when agents abandoned their watch of the weapons for 

any number of reasons, including they had been there for hours, 

they were tired, they went home. But the actual program that Assistant Attorney General Breuer was advocating, in fact, reads 

right on what was Wide Receiver. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And in Wide Receiver there first was a failure to 

interdict, then there was this effort of controlled deliveries, then 

there was a failure again. And the controlled deliveries that, as I 

understand it, and we did not investigate this further, that Mr. 

Breuer had talked about in February of 2011 was an effort to do 

coordinated interdiction with Mexican authorities. That was 

stopped by the deputy attorney general’s order a few weeks later. 

Chairman ISSA. But, in fact, if he had succeeded and they had 

gone to do it, they would have been essentially repeating a history 

of something that had failed, the transborder crossing interdiction. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Right. Well, they clearly failed in Wide Receiver, 

and I guess, as with all things, the devil is in the details as to how 

the plan of action would be. So I am hesitant to speculate as to 

what the outcome would be, but that was the idea in Wide Receiver, was to try and do an effective controlled delivery, which 

never happened. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

I thank the gentleman for yielding. 

We now go to the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Labrador, who is 

not from Florida, but from Idaho. 

Mr. LABRADOR. Or wherever I am from, right? 

Chairman ISSA. Well, we could go on and on, but you are just 

lucky Ross was out of the room. The gentleman is recognized. 

Mr. LABRADOR. Good morning. Thanks for being here. And I 

thank you for your report. I think it is very thorough. You know, 

this morning and yesterday we have heard a lot of media reports 

46 

about how this is a vindication for Mr. Holder, and you have already said that you are not going to go there, you are just going 

to let the report speak for itself. But I find it fascinating that the 

only way some of the people here and in the media are saying that 

this is a vindication for Mr. Holder is by creating a strawman argument. 

They are saying that what this Committee was investigating was 

whether Mr. Holder knew or participated in Fast and Furious from 

the beginning. That is a strawman argument. We didn’t know what 

Mr. Holder knew. And why didn’t we know? Because he came to 

Congress on several occasions and he misled Congress. Whether it 

was intentional or whether it was unintentional, the facts in your 

report show that he, on several occasions, didn’t tell the truth to 

Congress, isn’t that true? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We don’t draw a conclusion as to his testimony 

to Congress; I think that, obviously, is for the members—— 

Mr. LABRADOR. But in the letters that were sent from the Attorney General’s Office twice, right, memos, the statements in those 

memos were either misleading or false, isn’t that correct? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We didn’t look at that as part of our review, Congressman, so I am not in the position today to speak to the representations to Congress in those letters. 

Mr. LABRADOR. No, in the memos that were sent. The letters you 

have are on, he stated on May 3rd Holder testified, well, you didn’t 

look at the statements, but he did give two memos to Congress 

through his office. There were two specific memos that were given 

to Congress that had to be retracted, isn’t that correct? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I am not aware of that, Congressman. Again, we 

didn’t question the Department about what they did or didn’t provide to Congress. 

Mr. LABRADOR. Okay. 

Chairman ISSA. Would the gentleman yield for just a second? 

Mr. LABRADOR. Yes. 

Chairman ISSA. Yesterday, in the briefing, you might want to 

check with your own staff, we were talking about the February 4th, 

which was later corrected, and the May 2nd, I believe. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Okay. 

Chairman ISSA. Those two you do have an opinion on. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Yes. I am sorry. The reference to memo, I was 

confused. 

Chairman ISSA. I know. I apologize. We will call them letters. 

Mr. LABRADOR. Yes, letters. So let’s call them letters. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Yes. I am sorry about that. 

Mr. LABRADOR. You are aware of the two letters, correct? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Correct. 

Mr. LABRADOR. The February 4th and the May 2nd letter. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Correct. 

Mr. LABRADOR. And those had to be retracted. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. The February 4th letter was retracted. I think, 

as the Committee’s own report indicated, as to the May 2nd letter, 

there is an argument that it is literally true, but that is what in 

part troubled us, as we wrote. 

Mr. LABRADOR. And you wrote in your report that that troubled 

you. 

47 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Right. 

Mr. LABRADOR. Because it was literally true. I don’t know if you 

used the word misleading, but it could mislead. 

So let me just ask you a simple question, and really quickly tell 

me how much time, how many people do you have on your staff 

working on this report? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I don’t know the number precisely because so 

many people had worked on it for 18 months. 

Mr. LABRADOR. Approximately. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. It was, I am guessing, north of 20, but it would 

be a pure guess. 

Mr. LABRADOR. And how many man-hours do you think were 

spent on this report? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. The good news is I wasn’t here for the first 13 

months, so I can’t tell you. The last five months I can tell you there 

were a lot of man-hours. I actually don’t know the exact number. 

Mr. LABRADOR. And as we just heard from Mr. Lynch, your report is so long that it may encourage some people not to read it. 

We have over 451 pages in your report. Do you think your time 

spent on this report, your time spent investigating this would have 

been necessary had the Department of Justice provided this Congress the same information that they provided to you in your investigation? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That would be hard to speculate on. I will say 

this. Regardless of what had happened along the way, I think the 

facts of Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious, the work we did was 

important to bring out and address. The agents brought forward 

very significant information before the letter writing that occurred 

that you have referenced. So I think we probably would have spent 

a lot of hours on it; our time might have been different. Obviously, 

chapter 6 in our report would have changed. 

Mr. LABRADOR. And in your investigation, you said you were a 

deputy attorney general before. In your time you are always asking 

the question what does somebody know about an investigation; 

what does somebody know about what you are investigating; all we 

were trying to get to was the bottom line of what the attorney general knew, what his department knew, and we spent countless 

hours here trying to figure that out. 

And in your report it says that they should have done a better 

job. I just find it fascinating that people are trying to exonerate 

anybody of any wrongdoing, when clearly there has been blissful ignorance, there has been blissful avoidance of the truth. And I just 

think it is time for us to get to the bottom line of what happened 

here. 

I really thank you for your report. I thank you for your time. And 

I thank you for doing the job that we asked you to do. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

We now go to the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Barber. 

Mr. BARBER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to sit in 

on this hearing. And I also want to thank you for coming to Arizona this week, when we gathered to honor Brian and to have a 

Border Patrol station named for him. This young man sacrificed 

the ultimate sacrifice for our Country, and your presence there, I 

think, gave the family a sense that the Congress was concerned 

48 

and was trying to do their best to find answers to the questions 

that they have. 

I have talked with the family, and when I met with them this 

week, they had one question and one request from us. They asked 

that we make sure that they get the information that they have 

been waiting for, that has been on their minds and in their hearts 

for 21 months. To me, it is outrageous that they haven’t gotten answers sooner. They want to know what happened to Brian; why 

were guns that were allowed to go into Mexico with the full knowledge of personnel in the Federal Government and that ultimately 

ended up at the scene of his murder in Rio Rico, Arizona. They 

want to know who made the decision to launch Fast and Furious. 

They want to know who should be held accountable for these decisions and what consequences they will face. 

Mr. Horowitz, I want to thank you and your staff for what is obviously a tremendous amount of work in preparing this report. It 

is, in my view, a report that has tremendous credibility and objectivity. And I think, finally, the Terry family is beginning, but just 

beginning, to get the answers they deserve that are long overdue, 

but I don’t believe they have yet received the answers to all of their 

questions, and I would like to address those in just a moment. 

Agent Terry, as we know, made the ultimate sacrifice for his 

Country. Nothing we can do will bring him back, but he and his 

family deserve to know what happened and who was responsible. 

Your findings prove that serious flaws in policy and inadequate 

oversight, and flagrant disregard for public safety allowed American weapons to fall in the hands of violent Mexican criminals and 

drug cartel members as a part of Operation Fast and Furious. It 

should never have been the policy of this Government to allow 

these firearms to be smuggled knowingly into Mexico, and the program should never have been approved and it must never happen 

again. 

So I have a question or two for you, Mr. Horowitz. You said that 

steps have been taken already to prevent a reoccurrence. Can you 

say specifically a couple of those steps that you believe will prevent 

a reoccurrence that are already in place? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, as we have put in our report, the ATF has 

instituted a variety of restrictions on when this type of activity can 

occur, so that is first. Second, there have now been put in place 

steps to require various levels of supervisory review that didn’t 

exist before. So, for example, those are two that ATF has done, as 

identified. We have suggested others and a more thorough review 

of the policies and practices to make sure that others are caught, 

such as requiring ATF to abide by the undercover operation rules 

that the attorney general has in place. 

Mr. BARBER. Thank you for that. The family believes, and I agree 

with them, that they may have been deliberately kept in the dark 

about Brian’s death and the circumstances surrounding it. Did your 

investigation reveal that this was discussed within the Department, and why it was not determined that the family should know 

more sooner? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I don’t recall us seeing evidence of discussion specifically about what to tell the Terry family. I would have to go 

back and refresh myself on that, but I don’t recall that being the 

49 

basis, if that was occurring, if that was what was being discussed 

in the emails we saw. 

Mr. BARBER. And one more question in the remaining time. We 

have heard that there were internal disputes within the Department of Justice at the field level that allowed Fast and Furious to 

walk guns into Mexico, specifically that there was a dispute between the ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Can you speak to 

what you found regarding this issue, please? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Yes. That is a very important issue that we take 

on and address, because there has been the suggestion from agents 

that while they couldn’t seize or take action because the U.S. Attorney’s Office had a restrictive view on what they could do or not do. 

That was an issue and that was a concern in other cases. 

What we found here in Fast and Furious was that didn’t exist. 

From the outset, both the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the agents at 

ATF decided they wanted to get to the top of the organization, and 

the way to do that was to take no action as to the straw purchasers. It wasn’t, in our view, a legal problem, an issue about the 

evidence; it was a tactical decision that was made by both entities. 

Mr. BARBER. I want to thank you for your testimony. 

Chairman ISSA. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. BARBER. Mr. Chairman? 

Chairman ISSA. Would the gentleman yield for just a quick question? 

Mr. BARBER. Please. 

Chairman ISSA. You have commented several times on this bottom-up, the agents deciding to do it. In your opinion and your 

staff’s opinion, was any part of it, if you will, the arrogance and the 

ambition, the our job is limited to we go after guns, alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, but basically guns, and they ran up the chain 

of drugs and drug cartels by this ambition that they were going to 

roll up people and entities that were well outside their basic jurisdiction? Was there any sort of a feeling by your people that this 

was the exuberance of ambition; I am going to get a big hit and 

I am going to move up and I am going to be director at the ATF, 

or something like that? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, I think there was a concern that we saw 

about a desire early on, for example, to go for a wiretap. That is 

generally thought of as a very sophisticated technique and shows 

sophistication in a case, even though we found there was all this 

evidence, by that point, hundreds of guns, lots of cash from people 

who had no income. So the question was why not take action then, 

but instead focus on the wiretap? So that concerned us. 

Another concern, and perhaps evidence of that thinking, although no one, of course, told us that was a reason. 

Chairman ISSA. No one ever brags about their ambition. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Right. As shocking as that may be. But right at 

the outset, the effort to keep ICE out of the case. As indicated, 

their emails right away, in November, at the outset of this, we 

have to keep ICE at bay; don’t have them investigate. Well, they 

have an important piece of the law enforcement effort in gun trafficking at the border, and you can’t take that position if you want 

to be effective at the border, in my estimation. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

50 

We now go to the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Farenthold. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Inspector General, I apologize if I sound terse or hostile. I 

am a huge fan of the inspector general program; I think it is a 

great asset. But there do remain some questions that I have gotten 

in my office, about is this investigation just the fox guarding the 

hen house. I think your report does go into great depth, but I do 

want to hit the outlines of it and some things that may lead to 

where we need to go further in this Committee in continuing to investigate Fast and Furious. 

My first question is the Supreme Court has made very clear with 

respect to executive privilege, there is not an unqualified presidential privilege. The deliberative process privilege requires that 

the protected material be both limited to communications occurring 

before the policy adoption and deliberately reflecting the process by 

which the policy alternatives are assessed at the highest level. 

As you know, the President has claimed executive privilege to a 

broad group of documents this Committee has subpoenaed, some of 

which I imagine you looked at in your investigation. You have had 

access to thousands more documents than we have. 

My first question is roughly how many of these documents, in 

your opinion, would be covered by executive privilege? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Congressman, we, fortunately, didn’t have to 

make a decision about what we thought was or was not within executive privilege because our decision right at the outset was to ask 

for all the documents that we needed, we got them, and to include 

them in the report. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. But you all looked at them. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We looked at everything that was relevant. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. Gut feeling, then, if you can’t answer specifically. Were there some in there covered by executive privilege? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I don’t know that. That was never our call. We 

were never shared with any information about that. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. All right. You noted also in your report that 

the White House refused to share internal communications with 

you during your investigation of Fast and Furious. We have noted 

a connection into the White House through Kevin O’Reilly at the 

National Security Council. Do you think the White House’s refusal 

to share these documents limited the scope of your investigation 

and would this Committee be well served by pursuing an investigation in that avenue? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, as we noted in the report, and as you know, 

Congressman, we did not get internal communications from the 

White House, and Mr. O’Reilly’s unwillingness to speak to us made 

it impossible for us to pursue that angle of the case and the question that had been raised. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. So it would probably be worthwhile for us to 

pursue. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, certainly, we have sought to pursue every 

lead we could, so I can just tell you from our standpoint it was a 

lead we wanted to follow. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. Thank you very much. As Mr. Burton pointed 

out, the DOJ has been accused of cooperating with outside groups 

like Media Matters for advice and spin on stories so they will come 

51 

out in a positive manner. And I imagine the press office and all of 

the DOJ is concerned about that. It actually kind of troubles me 

that there is such a political facet to what goes on in the DOJ. Of 

all the executive agencies, you would hope DOJ would be the one 

most above politics. 

But my question is do you know if the DOJ shared this report, 

prior to its release yesterday, with any outside groups and/or who 

within the DOJ that would have made substantive changes to the 

report? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We provided, for purposes of our comment and 

review, a draft of the report to the Department. We allowed the Department, internally, to share it with people who had relevant information, but to tightly control who saw it, and that it was not 

to be shared outside the Department. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. Okay, so, to the best of your knowledge, Media 

Matters didn’t vet this. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. They should not have, and if they had been allowed to see it, it would have been a violation of the understanding 

that we had about the review. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. All right, great. Now, I have been approached 

by commentators and constituents alike who question possible political motives behind allowing something like Operation Fast and 

Furious to continue. Some of them have claimed that there may 

have been a desire at some level to create a public outcry for stricter gun laws. Would your investigation have been able to uncover 

political motives behind allowing the operation to continue, and did 

it? Or is the entire fiasco a result of just gross mismanagement? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We did look at that issue and that question to see 

if we had documents or other evidence on that point. We didn’t, obviously, go into the investigation looking for the emotive specifically, but we did think it was important to address it. We do highlight in the report those instances where there is talk about perhaps changing rules, regulations, or laws. What we found is all of 

those incidences came after the investigation had begun. So the notion was, well, maybe this is a good example to show why we need 

to change the laws. But we didn’t find evidence at the outset that 

that was what was driving. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. Did you find evidence that at any point where 

the Fast and Furious Operation was in effect that this was happening? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. There was suggestion, later on in the investigation, that it might be a good example to show why rules, laws, regulations as an example of why they might need to be changed. 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. I see my time has expired. 

Chairman ISSA. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. FARENTHOLD. Certainly. 

Chairman ISSA. So to characterize, they were opportunistic after 

the fact, but you found no evidence that before the fact they did 

Operation Fast and Furious in order to get laws changed. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Correct. In the documents we reviewed, we did 

not see at the outset. In fact, the documents we saw indicated at 

the outset the notion was let’s not take action to get to the top, 

simply because they wanted to get to the top. 

52 

Chairman ISSA. Is Fast and Furious, 2,000 weapons being knowingly allowed to walk and leading to the death of Brian Terry, is 

that a good poster child for why you need to have tighter rules on 

gun dealers, since gun dealers were in fact ordered or coerced into 

participating in this, rather than listening to them when they say 

this guy is a straw buyer and arresting him? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, we found that in terms of a law enforcement technique or law enforcement tactics, that the decision-making that justified what was going on just failed in the primary mission of law enforcement, which was to protect the public. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. I thank the IG and I 

thank the gentleman. 

We now go to that splendid individual from the great State of 

Missouri for his questions and probing. With that, Mr. Clay is recognized for five minutes. 

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am so glad to be back 

after the August break and to get right down to business. 

Mr. Chairman, I think we can all agree that gun-walking, whether during Operation Wide Receiver or Operation Fast and Furious, 

was an incredibly reckless tactic that put both American and Mexican lives at risk. 

In February, the attorney general testified before this Committee 

that the Department had removed, reassigned, or accepted the resignation of a number of people within ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s 

Office in Phoenix that had operational oversight of Operation Fast 

and Furious, including the Acting ATF Director, Ken Melson, and 

U.S. Attorney for Phoenix Dennis Burke. 

Mr. Horowitz, it is my understanding that ATF has been under 

new leadership since August of last year, when the attorney general announced the appointment of B. Todd Jones, a former military prosecutor and U.S. attorney for the district of Minnesota, to 

serve as acting director of ATF. Is that correct? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is my understanding, Congressman. 

Mr. CLAY. And the attorney general also stated on several occasions that he was waiting for the release of your final report to 

make final determinations about further personnel actions. Is it 

consistent with prior practice for agency leadership to reserve certain personnel actions regarding individuals under investigation for 

alleged misconduct until there is an expected general report? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, since I am only five months on the job, Congressman, I am not sure I can speak to the experience. 

Mr. CLAY. So you are not clear on the history of it? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I don’t know what prior instances where my office has done reviews, what different approaches might have been 

taken, if any. 

Mr. CLAY. Well, your report not only makes policy recommendations for the Department of Justice, but also assessed ‘‘the performance of each of the Department employees who were most involved 

in Operation Wide Receiver and Operation Fast and Furious.’’ Several media outlets have reported that you recommended individuals 

for discipline by the attorney general. Mr. Horowitz, did your office 

make any specific personnel recommendation in light of Operation 

Wide Receiver and Operation Fast and Furious? 

53 

Mr. HOROWITZ. No. We simply reported on the facts of what we 

found and where we thought there were failures or other issues related to the performance, but not made specific recommendations 

as to what should or shouldn’t happen as to the—— 

Mr. CLAY. And is that common practice, to not make recommendations on personnel? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Again, being fairly new in the job, my understanding is that on occasions there may be instances where we 

have in the past, so I am not sure I can speak to the history of 

that. 

Mr. CLAY. I see. Okay. Yesterday the attorney general announced 

that former Acting ATF Director Melson is retiring and that Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein has resigned. The 

attorney general also stated that there may be more personnel actions for career employees at ATF and the Phoenix U.S. Attorney’s 

Office, although for Privacy Act reasons he cannot disclose them at 

this time. 

He stated, ‘‘Those individuals within ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona whom the OIG report found 

to have been responsible for designing, implementing, or supervising Operation Fast and Furious have been referred to the appropriate entities for review and consideration of potential personnel 

actions. Consistent with the requirements of the Privacy Act, the 

Department is prohibited from revealing any additional information about these referrals at this time.’’ 

Mr. Chairman, looking at how this has all developed, it gives me 

pause and makes me wonder did this Committee shoot from the 

hip? Did we move too soon? 

Chairman ISSA. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. CLAY. I mean, that is just food for thought for you, Mr. 

Chairman, and the rest of the Committee who voted so recklessly 

when it was time to take action against our attorney general. I 

yield. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. I might note that contempt was narrow; it was for the attorney general’s refusal to give 

us the very documents that the IG required in order to do this very 

comprehensive report. I would say just the opposite, that contempt 

was most appropriate, in retrospect, when in fact the very documents we now know and are applauding in this report were the 

documents denied us. 

Mr. CLAY. Well, reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. Before you came in—— 

Mr. CLAY. Reclaiming my time. 

Chairman ISSA. Of course. 

Mr. CLAY. This report seems very thorough. What is it, about 

1,400 pages? It seems like the OIG got all of the information—— 

Chairman ISSA. We previously noted that it is thorough at the 

minimum possible number of pages. 

Mr. CLAY. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. And I guess we are going 

to agree to continue to disagree on this. I wish you had been here 

earlier when the IG was explaining that he did need the documents 

he got and was happy to have them, and felt that we should have 

gotten them too. 

54 

Mr. CLAY. And better late than never. 

Chairman ISSA. Well, Jason Weinstein should have resigned a 

year and a half ago. The house cleaning should have happened a 

year and a half ago, if in fact Justice was going to have good judgment sooner, rather than later. But I respect the gentleman’s desire to disagree and I thank you. 

Now we go to a gentleman with whom I am more likely to agree 

at the moment, the distinguished gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. 

Lankford. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, yes, it would 

have been nice to have all these same documents that you had access to when we asked for them a very long time ago. I think a lot 

of people have asked these same questions and just wanted some 

answers. So thank you for your work and thank you for pulling 

that together, and I look forward to our Committee continuing to 

work, to be able to finish our reports out as well and hopefully 

have access to those same documents. 

Let’s get to the issue of fixing it. It is one of my primaries. When 

the attorney general was here, he and I had a conversation about 

how do we resolve this, the issue of putting out a statement that 

gun-walking is now forbidden, of any type. We will interdict weapons every time, okay, great, that is a first step. 

But there are multiple other issues. We start dealing with fixing 

it, things like the supervision of the process of investigations is 

very different for the FBI than it is for ATF, and my basic question 

is why. Why does FBI have one process supervising investigations; 

ATF has a very, very different process on that? It is overseen by 

the same DOJ. Why do we have these two different sets? 

The scope of the task that you mention in your report with ATF, 

that there is a regulatory function and a criminal function overlap 

at times, and there were obvious issues that happened at this. I 

will allow you to make a comment on one of those, then I have one 

more issue as well, the size of the agency and what they were trying to accomplish. 

As I read through your report, I got to page 338 and there was 

a very interesting comment there that basically alluded to the fact 

that ATF in Phoenix was over their head. They had too few people, 

they were trying to take on this massive task, and it looked like 

they were trying to accomplish something big, but they didn’t have 

the right people, were not coordinating; that this particular group 

of ATF agents were in way over their head and should not have 

been engaged in that. Again, it begs back to the scope of the task. 

So I have one more issue I want to visit on, but I want to talk 

a little bit about the issue of this, whether to reverse its criminal 

responsibility and the task that has been given to ATF and the 

number of agents they have on it. Do you have recommendations 

on that based on your investigation? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We do. And I think each of the issues you identified, Congressman, are very important and reforms that need to 

happen. The Department has four large law enforcement agencies 

under it: the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, and the Marshal Service. 

They should have consistency among their rules and requirements, 

of course, taking into account their different missions. That needs 

to happen. The fact that ATF was not brought under the attorney 

55 

general guidelines for undercover operations eight years into their 

tenure in the Department I think was significant, from our standpoint. 

So we have recommended and our second recommendation is for 

the Department to go back and review the other components, look 

at who has the best practices. You have an organization, you have 

multiple law enforcement agencies. There needs to be some effort 

to look at best practices and figure out who has them. If it is ATF, 

the other components should use them. If it is the FBI, the other 

components should use those. So I agree with you completely. 

Mr. LANKFORD. So you are talking about a downsizing of their 

task. Let’s make their task more specific and clearer, and also have 

clear parameters of supervision as you do with the other departments. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. There shouldn’t be four different rules if one is 

better than the other. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Right. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. They should conform. 

Mr. LANKFORD. And if this is redundant, then let’s make it clear 

from there. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Correct. 

Mr. LANKFORD. There also seems to be, as I read through your 

report, a bunker mentality, that as soon as Grassley’s letter hits, 

there is a shutdown and a let’s not allow Melson to go out and talk 

to them right away, let’s try to limit this and let’s try to work 

through the process, and try to limit it and dial that down. 

When Senator Grassley’s letter mentions Gunrunners, like, okay, 

let that sit out there when we really know it is Fast and Furious 

so we don’t start to get into the details. And the stunning one was 

not just the February letter of 2011, it is the May letter and it is 

the June 15th testimony here to this Committee that it was apparent, by that point, that they either knew or should have known at 

that point, in senior leadership, that what they were writing to 

Congress and what they were testifying was not the whole truth; 

it was a limited form of that that if you interpreted it the right way 

it might actually stand up under light, but now, in retrospect, 

wasn’t clear. 

That is a treatment to Congress and to those investigating that 

we are going to close in and surround ourselves with the wagons, 

and we are not going to let anyone in. Did you get that sense at 

all? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, when we looked at that May 2nd letter, 

again, we reached the conclusion, as you noted, that by that point 

there was enough information in the Department that it knew or 

should have known that it could not stand by that February 4th 

letter. 

Mr. LANKFORD. And they were not telling us, they were writing 

in such a way to make it look like they were saying one thing, 

when they were really saying something different. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, from our standpoint, the letter does appear 

to be literally true, as the Committee itself, I think, indicated in 

a report, but our concern was knowing the information they knew 

after four letters between February 4 and May 2nd where the Department made no substantive comments, but by that point the apVerDate Aug 31 2005 08:59 Nov 02, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00059 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76369.TXT APRIL
56 

propriate response either was to continue saying no substantive 

comments until the IG report comes out or to acknowledge the information it had already found. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Right. And when senior leadership, they do not 

inform the attorney general when Brian Terry is murdered, that 

there is a federal nexus to this as well in this ongoing investigation, again, that seems to be we are just kind of surrounding it and 

we are trying to make sure we are closing the information down, 

rather than letting the information get out. It seems to be from the 

very beginning this was a shutdown of information. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. There were many points in this case, at all levels, 

where information flow not only wasn’t what it should have been, 

but in some instances, as we outline in there, was inaccurate, even 

when information was flowing. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

I want to make sure I go correctly here. We now go to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Kelly. 

Mr. KELLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Horowitz, thanks for being here. I think what we have difficulty with—and I know as attorneys talk to each other it makes 

sense to them, but people in their regular world can’t begin to understand what the heck it is that we’re talking about. In my world, 

any answer but a yes is a no, so if it takes a long time to explain 

it, it is because you are hitting on stuff that is a little sensitive. 

You have done this for a long time. I know you have only been 

on this for five months and 13 months before it. How long does it 

take to do an investigation? Is this one of such a magnitude that 

we couldn’t come to a conclusion quicker than this? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I will tell you my understanding is in prior investigations, like the U.S. attorney investigation, that was a two-year 

or so investigation by the IG’s office. Given the volume of documents that we had, 100,000-plus documents, and the scope we 

wanted to undertake, which was to take it through the congressional responses, it took a lot of time to do that. 

And very importantly for us, this report had to be thorough, it 

had to be fair, and it had to be accurate, and it just took—I can 

tell you from the five months I was there working nonstop on this, 

it was an extraordinary amount of documents. But we wanted to 

make sure, and this is the commitment I made, I wanted this report to lay out all the facts. 

Mr. KELLY. And I think—I don’t speak for myself, but also for 

the Committee, that the 18 months that we were waiting to find 

out, and being stonewalled time after time after time, and requesting information and not being able to get it, and getting documents 

delivered in pickup trucks in the thousands with most of the pages 

redacted, this one just doesn’t pass the smell test. There is something wrong here that we are not getting to. 

And I listened to Jason Weinstein; he has resigned. Lanny 

Breuer, Gary Grindler, other officials at the Department are not 

going to receive any disciplinary action? Is that a disappointment 

to you after looking through what you have looked through for the 

last five months and building on the 13 months before that? 

57 

Mr. HOROWITZ. The way the operations are set up and the law 

is set up by Congress, we investigate, we then hand over our findings to the Department, and it is for the Department head to make 

those decisions. 

Mr. KELLY. And so in this case the Department head would be 

whom? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. The attorney general. 

Mr. KELLY. Okay. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And then it is up to the public and the Congress 

to decide? 

Mr. KELLY. Well, not so much. I think we can because perception, I think, in many cases is reality, and I think when you sit 

back and you watch as this unwound or did not unwind, and as the 

Chairman continued to ask questions and was stonewalled, you 

begin to get a feeling that, you know what? While we keep saying 

this isn’t political in nature, I have found very few things in this 

town that aren’t political in nature. 

And especially we talked about an administration, remember, 

this was going to be the most clear and transparent administration 

we have ever had. But when you ask questions and you can’t get 

the answers, when you have the attorney general come here and 

he can’t answer the questions, when you look at things that are 

going on, I think the American public deserves better than that. I 

mean, they have the right to know and we certainly have the responsibility to find out for them. 

But at some point the buck has to stop somewhere. The attorney 

general is appointed by the President of the United States. He 

comes in and he gets vetted, but all of these different agencies, 

when there is a turnover in administrations, there is a whole group 

of people that come in with them. In other words, if I am taking 

over a company, I also come in, I bring in all the managers I want 

in all the departments. 

Now, there may be some of those people still working in the 

same departments, but there is a way that we do things differently. 

And the law may not have changed, but maybe the policy and the 

way we enforce it and the way we go about it changes according 

to the philosophy or the methods of that administration. 

So I look at this, and Jim has talked about and we have all 

talked about it. Why? Why so long? Why so hard to get information 

that should have been very basic? And one may ask questions that 

at least required a yes or a no. And, again, a simple yes would 

have been fine, but the dragging out and dragging out. Is there any 

wonder why the American people have lost faith in the way we do 

things here? 

So you have looked at this and I have to tell you I don’t know. 

I watch it and I look at all the things that have happened, and 

whether it is Melson or Weinstein or whatever, if I am a whistleblower, you know what I am thinking? I will probably never do 

that again. Instead of these people being given a plaque and being 

brought forward, say thanks for what you did, they get thrown 

under a bus. 

So we have to understand that is part of the process, because 

what we have to do is we have to make sure the people at the top 

get protected, but you people at the bottom are very vulnerable. I 

58 

would really be, as a person who worked in those departments, I 

would be very lax, I would be very aware as I go forward. 

You looked through this whole thing. Anything you see in your 

place? Are you disappointed that it looked more political? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, I have that concern precisely, Congressman. There needs to be an assurance that people who want to come 

forward come forward and don’t feel like they are going to be retaliated against, demoted, action taken against them, whatever it is. 

This case is an example of the importance of people willing to step 

forward. 

Mr. KELLY. And I was very moved, I have to tell you. One of the 

first hearings here was Agent Terry’s family was here and the people that worked with him were here. They came here with a complete disregard for their future, but a complete dedication to the 

fact that this should not have happened to Brian Terry, and they 

needed to get to the bottom of it. 

It is just troubling to me that after 18 months things that we 

could have known way back then, and things that have been distorted and manipulated didn’t need to be done; and it just, to me, 

is, again, an indication of if we really mean what we say and say 

what we mean, we have to do it. We just can’t do words and think 

that that is the way to placate people. 

With that, Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Horowitz, you have called for, in your report, the unsealing 

of portions of the wiretaps that you sum in your report. I would 

like to also ask you to take possession of letters, exchanges in 

which this Committee has some difference of opinion, but concludes 

that wiretap affidavits describe specific incidences that would suggest the prosecutor who was focused on the question investigating 

tactics at the ATF would have recognized that there was an intent 

not to interdict weapons from straw buyers, and particularly ones 

in which straw buyers who were known to already be doing it were 

allowed to continue doing it, including the weapon sales that ultimately led to Brian Terry’s death. 

I would ask you to receive these letters. They are also, arguably, 

speaking about items under seal, but in hopes that you would expand your request for the Justice Department to unseal portions 

that may be also covered by those letters. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I have been given the letters and I will take a 

look at them. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

With that, we go to the ever patient Mr. Walberg, who, of course, 

represents my alma mater, so I may have recognized you last in 

the order, but certainly not least. 

Mr. WALBERG. I thank the Chairman. 

Also, I represent a district in the great State of Michigan which 

is proud of a favorite son or homegrown son, Brian Terry, and we 

take that as important. 

Also appreciate very much, Mr. Horowitz, your work, extensive 

work, but valuable work. 

Representative Lankford touched on the May 2nd Grassley letter 

and I appreciated that, and your response to that saying you were 

very troubled with the Department’s response as well. Do you beVerDate Aug 31 2005 08:59 Nov 02, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00062 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76369.TXT APRIL
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lieve your office had complete and unfettered access to the documents that you required to ensure a thorough review? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I do, Congressman. We asked for everything we 

thought was responsible and we ultimately got everything we 

asked for. 

Mr. WALBERG. So you believe everything that was necessary you 

received? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That was represented to us, including, as noted 

in the report, we asked for some personal emails, given the fact 

that, in at least one instance, we were aware of a transfer to a personal email account. 

Mr. WALBERG. Well, again, I would reiterate that was all we 

were asking here in this Committee as well, for those same type 

of documents so we could have done this review, and I think it 

would have ultimately brought about a substantiating report to 

what you were able to bring. 

As I understand it, you personally reviewed the Fast and Furious 

wiretap applications. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is correct. 

Mr. WALBERG. Former ATF Director Ken Melson said that after 

he read the wiretaps, he was sick to his stomach. Did you have a 

similar reaction? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, after I read them, I came to the conclusion 

that there was, in my view, more than enough red flags to identify 

serious questions about the tactics being used in the case. 

Mr. WALBERG. In relation to that, your report recommends that 

‘‘the Department should require that high level officials who were 

responsible for authorizing wiretap applications conduct reviews of 

the applications and affidavits that are sufficient to enable those 

officials to form a personal judgment that the applications meet the 

statutory criteria.’’ That was on page 431. 

Has the Department given you any feedback on this recommendation or indicated that it will implement it? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, in their letter to us that is attached as Exhibit A, they have indicated they agree with all our recommendations, and one of the things we have asked for is a report back in 

90 days on the status of the response to our recommendations. So 

they have indicated they are supportive of the recommendation. 

That is important. And now we will follow up in 90 days. 

Mr. WALBERG. Do you know whether Assistant Attorney General 

Lanny Breuer agrees with this recommendation? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I don’t know personally. The letter is from the 

Department on behalf of the Department as a whole. 

Mr. WALBERG. So we would assume that Attorney General Holder agrees with the recommendation? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is my understanding. 

Mr. WALBERG. I appreciate that. We will wait to see. And thank 

you for your response. 

I yield to Mr. Gowdy. 

Chairman ISSA. Are you going to yield to Mr. Gowdy? 

Mr. WALBERG. I was going to do that, Mr. Chair. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay. 

Mr. GOWDY. I am not real smart, but I am smart enough to let 

the Chairman go if he had a question. 

60 

Chairman ISSA. No. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t get it 

yielded back. The gentleman is recognized. 

Mr. GOWDY. I thank the Chairman; I thank the gentleman from 

Michigan. 

Mr. Inspector General, I hate to inject facts as predicates for 

questions that members of Congress ask, but the record will reflect, 

I know you already know this, the attorney general was never held 

in contempt of Congress because of his actions with Fast and Furious; he was held in contempt of Congress because he failed to turn 

over documents to committees of Congress, documents which he 

turned over to you; documents, some of which he is now beginning 

to turn over to us, 300 pages we got yesterday. So I hate to make 

the record clear, but he was never held in contempt of Congress because he sanctioned gun-walking. He was held in contempt of Congress because he thwarted our attempts to find out what you found 

out. 

Secondly, you said the February 4th letter was reviewed by dozens of people, including people within the Criminal Division at the 

Department of Justice. Do you know whether Lanny Breuer read 

the February 4th, 2011, letter before it was delivered to Senator 

Grassley? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. We found no evidence that he had reviewed it. 

He told us he did not recall reviewing it, and we found nothing in 

the emails indicating he had actually reviewed it or made a comment about the content of the letter. 

Mr. GOWDY. Did he give you any indication as to why he would 

forward a draft of that to his personal private email account? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I would want to go back to precisely answer that 

and look at the transcript. My general recollection is for purposes 

of reading it, but he didn’t recall whether he had read it after it 

had been sent out on February 4th. 

Mr. GOWDY. Now, you have been around the block a time or two; 

white collar cases. You twice have used the word recall. That is not 

the same as saying I didn’t read it; that is saying I don’t recall 

reading it. There is a difference, is there not? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. There is. 

Mr. GOWDY. Again, I am stumped as to what reason you would 

forward a letter to your personal email account if you are not an 

historian, you are not an archivist, you are not teaching grammar 

to the person writing or drafting the letter. What other explanation 

is there for forwarding it, other than to read it? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And that, you would assume, would be the reason 

to do it. 

Mr. GOWDY. Well, my time is up. I have more questions, but I 

will yield back, and I thank the gentleman from Michigan for his 

time. 

Chairman ISSA. Mr. Horowitz, just to make the record clear, you 

said that he didn’t comment. But isn’t the response good job a comment? And, if so, did that come before, during, or after the letter 

went out? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. The comment you are referring to came, I believe, 

on February 2nd, while the letter was still in draft form. I think, 

from our standpoint, it didn’t indicate an understanding of the conVerDate Aug 31 2005 08:59 Nov 02, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00064 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\76369.TXT APRIL
61 

tent. And if we didn’t use the precise words in the report that we 

should have, I understand that. 

Chairman ISSA. I am concerned only because the attorney general’s office, and Lanny Breuer as part of it, lied to Congress and 

he said good job with a draft that had the lie in it, and yet he is 

able to say I don’t remember reading it. Now, you are a former 

prosecutor, maybe one again someday. Do you accept that you are 

able to respond good job, able to do, as Mr. Gowdy said, forward 

it to your personal email, able to allow 10 months to go by? 

As an attorney and an officer of the court by definition, you are 

able to do all of that and yet say, well, I would have known it was 

a lie if I read it, but I didn’t read it? Would you accept that as a 

prosecutor, or would you go forward and at least let the jury decide? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, I think in doing this review, our standard 

was whether we could draw a decision, a judgment based on the 

evidence we had to put it in this report ultimately, and what we 

decided was we needed to put out the facts of what we found; others can draw conclusions. We didn’t feel like we could draw that 

conclusion in this report, and I didn’t speculate as to what I might 

do as a prosecutor. 

Chairman ISSA. But you did reach a conclusion that he knew or 

should have known. He was in that lump group that was at least 

somewhat derelict in a letter going out that he received, he forwarded, he commented on, and then says he doesn’t remember 

reading, and in fact was a lie to Congress and for 10 months was 

all over the front page of newspapers as we insisted that we had 

been lied to, that there was gun-walking, and that our whistleblowers were telling the truth while they were being retaliated 

against by the attorney general’s representatives. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, what we found as to Mr. Breuer was, frankly, regardless of whether he read the letter or not, given what he 

knew about Wide Receiver, his responsibility should have been to 

come forward and explain what happened in Wide Receiver, because the people who were drafting the letter told us it would have 

made a difference, and that is what troubled us. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. It didn’t really whether he read the letter, frankly. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. At this time, to make the record 

complete, I ask unanimous consent that the email trains of 2011, 

House Oversight and Government Reform DOJ date stamp number 

004022, be placed in the record. These items regarding ATF Gunrunner are between Dennis Burke and a number of people, Ron 

Weiss and so on, but including Lanny Breuer. 

Also Bates Stamp House Oversight and Government Reform DOJ 

004449, dated 2/2/2011, in which Lanny Breuer placed into his personal email, the address being redacted, forward revised Grassley 

letter, Grassley ATF clean, 5 p.m. docs, in which there are a number of comments we have already alluded to. Without objection, so 

ordered. 

With that, we now recognize as our final questioner in the first 

round the gentlelady from Florida, Mrs. Adams. 

62 

Mrs. ADAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and 

the Committee for allowing me to sit in and join the Committee. 

Mr. Horowitz, I have sat here and, as you know, I come from a 

law enforcement background, so I sit here and I listen, and I am 

very concerned that we had an operation that appeared to have no 

true oversight from anyone in an upper level, and when an exit 

strategy is requested in March of 2010 and nothing happens. I 

have a few questions as to what happened to this agency. 

I think I need to go back to maybe even before, because, as I 

worked with this agency years ago in law enforcement, they had 

these oversight protections. You could not get a wiretap without 

going and getting someone from above to review it and approve it, 

and then have it taken to a judge to be signed. 

So do you happen to know when they decided to do away with 

that practice? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I can provide you with the answer; I don’t recall 

as I sit here. But there was an evolving practice, as you indicated, 

at ATF that removed that requirement. 

Mrs. ADAMS. That would be nice to know, as to when they decided to remove those practices, because apparently those supervisors that should have been reviewing it did not review, or claim 

to have not reviewed it, and therefore we have a loss of a life of 

one of our own Border Patrol agents and many weapons across the 

border and people being harmed everyday. 

I, too, wanted to ask you, because I was reading on page 265 a 

statement about Mr. Hoover. He said he told us he did not recall 

attending the briefing on March 5th or the briefing from Melson on 

March 11th, although his Outlook calendar indicates that he was 

invited to the meetings and, as mentioned earlier, other witnesses 

placed him at both those briefings. 

I have heard many of your comments about, well, people could 

not recall, people could not recall. As an attorney, someone who has 

prosecuted cases, when someone tells you they can’t recall, what is 

your first impression, as an attorney? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, it probably depends on the context. 

Mrs. ADAMS. In the context of something like this? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. When you have Outlook invites and other people 

recalling you were there, it probably means you were there. 

Mrs. ADAMS. It means you were there. And so in the case of Mr. 

Breuer, when he had this email that was forwarded from himself 

to himself on a private account, and he sends back good job, as an 

attorney, step aside from, and if this had been a case that you were 

investigating as an attorney and prosecuting, what would your impression be? Do you believe he would have sent it to read it? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. The only thing that causes me hesitation there 

is that when you go through the email string, you do have Mr. 

Weinstein, when he sends the draft at the bottom of that string, 

Mr. Breuer isn’t one of the people to whom he sends, and there can 

be a tendency at times, I am not drawing a judgment in this case, 

but there can be a tendency at times when someone sends you an 

email or reporting on your good work to say back good job or something like that. 

So one of the things I wanted to be careful of in this case is to 

make sure everything was well founded, in our view, that we had 

63 

something to support it, but to put out the evidence and let people 

draw their own views and conclusions about that. So I respect the 

varying views that I have heard today about that issue. 

Mrs. ADAMS. I appreciate that. Your friendship with Mr. Breuer 

would not impact your decision-making on any of this, would it 

not? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. It had zero impact. When I took the oath to take 

this office, I took an oath to do this job, and as I committed before 

the Senate Judiciary Committee, the only thing that was going to 

make my decisions here were the facts and the law, period. 

Mrs. ADAMS. And I appreciate the fact that you were asking for 

personal emails, because I did ask that question in Committee. 

And I know that my colleague would like to ask another question, so, if I may, I will yield the rest of my time to Mr. Gowdy. 

Mr. GOWDY. I thank the gentlelady from Florida. 

Mr. Horowitz, I want to ask you this. I only have about 30 seconds, so I will do the quickest one that I have. Is your investigation 

still ongoing? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. There are pieces of this investigation that are ongoing, as we have reflected in the report. 

Mr. GOWDY. All right. And I will not ask you anything more beyond that. 

Contrary to the assertions of my colleagues, many of us have 

never asserted that the attorney general knew about the tactic of 

gun-walking. We have asserted that he should have. And what 

kind of leadership or management style you have does reflect on 

what kind of information is brought to you. Did you make specific 

recommendations with respect to creating a culture within the Department of Justice where information like this would work its way 

up the command chain? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, one of the things that I hope to do through 

the whistleblower ombudsman position is to make sure that there 

is an understanding and appreciation and a willingness for people 

to come forward and to get that information forward. That is one 

of the tasks I want to undertake, is to look at that culture issue, 

because, I agree with you, I think it is important. 

Mr. GOWDY. I thank the gentlelady. 

My time is up, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

We will now take a short second round. We won’t keep you much 

longer. 

One of the areas of particular interest, Mr. Horowitz, you received 100,000 documents; we got about 7,000, many of them documents we didn’t ask for. But one particular one that appeared in 

your report discussed emails between Jason Weinstein, the head of 

the Office of Enforcement or Operations, and William McMahon, 

who has been unavailable to us, in May of 2010 regarding applications and a possible roving wiretap. It is on page 271 of your report. You are familiar with it? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I am. 

Chairman ISSA. These documents were explicitly asked for in our 

subpoenas, but the Department never failed to hand them over. Do 

you think it is appropriate for the Department to deliberately withhold these documents without citing any reason or privilege for 

64 

doing so and, I might note, claiming that they had turned over extensive, unprecedented documents before February 4th? Would this 

document be unprecedented to send over, in your opinion? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, let me just say they were clearly, to us, 

highly relevant. I, frankly, don’t know the back and forth that occurred or the decision-making that occurred within the Department, so I don’t think I am in a position to answer precisely that 

question without understanding that. 

Chairman ISSA. I will rephrase. This document was relevant and 

important to your investigation that occurred before February 4th, 

is that correct? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is correct. 

Chairman ISSA. So when the attorney general has repeatedly 

said that he made unprecedented levels of documents available to 

us, he was thorough and complete, and he came before Congress 

so many times before February 4th and then omitted this, he omitted something which was clearly relevant and important to the investigation. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. As I said, I think these documents were, to us, 

highly relevant and important, which is why we spent so much 

time discussing them. 

Chairman ISSA. Now, as a former prosecutor, if you deliver a 

subpoena and somebody simply doesn’t mention a document, 

doesn’t turn it over and it is relevant to the subpoena, but yet they 

assert that they have fully complied with the subpoena, isn’t that 

actually a violation of the law, to simply not turn something over 

that you know you have? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Well, without understanding all the facts—— 

Chairman ISSA. Well, I am just talking about the hypothetical as 

a prosecutor. As a prosecutor, you serve a subpoena; you either get 

it or the counsel, the lawyers for the other side have an obligation 

to assert a privilege, provide a law, do all these things. You don’t 

simply not deliver it. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That would certainly be the expectation. 

Chairman ISSA. Are you considering or pursuing or investigating 

criminal referrals related to whistleblower retaliation? And I am 

making all of those so you don’t have to answer any one of them. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Let me say we are actively investigating a variety of the whistleblower issues, some of which the Committee has 

referred to us and Senator Grassley has referred to us. I would be 

hesitant to say what we are going to do, but I think you will find 

the reports will be coming in the not too distant future, and we are 

taking them very seriously. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. Now, I am going to go against sometimes the advice of folks who say, well, you know, don’t link the 

constant allegations that Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious are 

two peas in a pod. I am going to ask you a question that I think 

is at the kernel of my concern. 

You discovered in your report extensively that a number of people, including people at Justice, at the highest levels, were aware 

of Wide Receiver; they knew it had failed, they knew it had been 

shut down, they had U.S. attorney records. And yet they allowed 

Fast and Furious, whether through commission or omission, to do 

the same and more, correct? 

65 

Mr. HOROWITZ. There was no action apparent to try and change 

any policies, I agree with you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay. So the Justice Department knew that 

guns were walking, by their definition, at least in retrospect, and 

they didn’t take steps to stop it. We have a lot of people dead on 

both sides of the border. Aren’t you very concerned that these are 

the very elements that it takes for the Federal Government, for our 

government, for Congress’s appropriated dollars to be paid out in 

damages, whether to the hundreds of people dead in Mexico or at 

least one U.S. Border Patrol agent dead in the U.S.? Isn’t this kind 

of failure one that exposes the Federal Government to huge potential damages? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I am sure that is the case, and it troubled us very 

much, that so many people understood and knew what happened 

in Wide Receiver, took no actions, and, frankly, in Fast and Furious again so many people knew about it as the investigation was 

going on. Put aside what happened after the agents came forward, 

just as it was going on that so many people knew and no one 

seemed to take action, even the deputy director, again, when he noticed the needed for an exit strategy. 

Chairman ISSA. Now, you interviewed Lanny Breuer. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Correct. 

Chairman ISSA. One of your people interviewed him. After Brian 

Terry was killed, after the February 4th letter, Lanny Breuer 

looked me dead in the eye and told me that, in fact, there was 

nothing wrong with Fast and Furious; it was bad work on the 

ground. When you interviewed him, was that still his feeling, that 

there was nothing wrong with Fast and Furious, but simply the 

ATF agents had bungled it? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I don’t recall his precise answers to those questions. I am happy to go back and get that for the record for you. 

Chairman ISSA. Okay. 

I am going to yield to the Ranking Member. This continues to be 

my reason that I have so much doubt about Lanny Breuer’s judgment and his ability to continue doing his job, is that he believed 

that after February 4th, he believed it after Brian Terry was dead, 

and I can’t understand, for the life of me, how he could have believed it and still have his job. 

With that, I recognize the Ranking Member. 

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

Mr. Horowitz, I have a kernel of concern myself. After you have 

been here around here a few years, like I have, you get concerned 

about effectiveness and efficiency. I started my discussion off by 

thanking you and your staff for all that you have done, but the 

question is where does this lead. All those hours, all that effort. My 

mother, a former sharecropper, used to teach us, she had limited 

education, second grade education. She would tell us you can’t have 

motion, commotion, and emotion, and no results. Motion, commotion, emotion, no results. 

There are moments in life, and even in legislative life, where 

things come together and it presents a moment which is pregnant 

with the possibility of change. And if change does not take place 

at that moment, things usually get worse. This is one of those moments. I give the Chairman credit; he has brought all of this to 

66 

light. We have a great picture. You all have painted the picture 

quite accurately for us. I don’t think anybody up here likes the picture that we see. 

To be frank with you, knowing Eric Holder the way I know him, 

the honorable man he is, I don’t think he likes this picture. So for 

all of us, you know, reform is so very, very, very important, and 

in that light, because I want to be effective and efficient. I don’t 

want to leave here, looking back at my tenure in Congress, and say 

I was involved in one of those moments where we did nothing and 

it just got worse; where we did nothing and folks continued to be 

killed in Mexico with guns flowing from the United States; where 

we did nothing where neighborhoods like the one I live in, where 

it is easier to get a gun than it is to get a cigarette; where we did 

nothing. 

So as to the reforms, I want to ask you just a few questions. The 

Department of Justice has made significant changes in ATF and 

DOJ policy to ensure that the mistakes made in Operation Wide 

Receiver and Operation Fast and Furious never happen again. 

While new permanent leadership within ATF is an important step 

to ensuring accountability, Acting Director Todd Jones has also implemented several policy changes at ATF to improve case supervision and communication between field agents and ATF management. In November 2011, Acting Director Jones issued a memo 

clarifying ATF’s policy regarding firearms transfers, reinforcing the 

importance of interdiction, and directing agents to take all reasonable steps to prevent firearms criminal misuse. 

Mr. Horowitz, your report describes this memo as explicitly stating that ‘‘If law enforcement officials have any knowledge that guns 

are about to cross the border, they must take immediate action to 

prevent that from occurring, even if it means jeopardizing an investigation.’’ 

I ask you now what do you think of this guidance? Is it sufficient 

or would additional guidance be helpful? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I think it is an important piece of guidance, but 

I think more has to be done. And I couldn’t agree with you more, 

Congressman, about the opportunity to effect change in light of 

these events. We put out reports not just to put out reports, but 

to see change happen when it needs to happen. 

And I didn’t come back to take this job to write a report and have 

nobody follow through and no one listen to what we say and what 

we recommend, which is why our recommendations are bigger than 

just this case. For example, recommending to the Department that 

it create a regular interagency law enforcement coordination effort 

among its own law enforcement agencies, because I think, as you 

see here, there was a failure to coordinate among agencies, sharp 

elbows, a variety of things happened, and I am guessing, from what 

I understand, and we will see when the inspector general’s report 

comes out from DHS, that you will see more of that from the ICE 

standpoint. And that has to go away, and that is an issue that we 

have to think about. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Well, I just want—again, I want to thank you all 

for your efforts, and I know that—and I can assure you that all of 

us up here want to make sure that your efforts have not been in 

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gard to trying to make sure that the recommendations actually 

happen? I know we have some pressure points up here, but how 

about you? You talked about things that you are going to follow up 

on. How do you see that playing out? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. What we do, and as we have outlined here, is we 

have asked the Department and the attorney general to report 

back to us within 90 days on the status of the efforts, and with a 

time line for implementing it, because, as we all know, if there is 

not a time line in place, things drag. 

So our goal is to follow up, make sure things happen, because, 

as an IG, our strength is in a report like this and then following 

up on it; and, if recommendations aren’t followed, to go and report 

back, whether it is to Congress or the attorney general or to others 

that they haven’t been followed through. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Chairman, I don’t know what will happen in 

the election, but I hope that both sides will agree to bring back the 

appropriate parties, he said 90 days, but maybe in four months so 

that we can actually have that accountability that we are talking 

about, so that we can have that effectiveness and efficiency. 

Chairman ISSA. I agree with the gentleman. I would hope that 

Mr. Horowitz would keep his calendar open in mid to late January. 

I forgot to do something at the open, before I recognize Mr. 

Gowdy. As is the custom, I ask unanimous consent that all members have seven days to insert written statements and extraneous 

matter into the record. Without objection, so ordered. 

Mr. Gowdy, other than closing, you get the last word. 

Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to have just a little potpourri here at the end; I am going to bounce around, and it 

is not designed to fool you, although I don’t think I could if that 

were my design. 

Do you know when the Mexican government was informed about 

Fast and Furious, or if they have been debriefed on it? Because I 

could imagine it would impact our relationship with law enforcement in Mexico. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. I don’t know when they were debriefed and I 

don’t know the extent to which they were debriefed about it. There 

were some indications in emails that we saw about the possibility 

of alerting the Mexican authorities, but I don’t know. 

Mr. GOWDY. All right. There has been some discussion this morning about changes. Mr. Cummings, as he always is, was extremely 

eloquent talking about the desire to not see this moment pass. I 

also don’t want to see this moment used for purposes that are duplicative. Did you ever prosecute 924(c) cases? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Yes, although infrequently. 

Mr. GOWDY. The penalty for 924(c), which is using a firearm during a drug trafficking crime or another violent crime is five years 

consecutive to any other sentence, and each subsequent 924(c) is a 

consecutive five years. And depending on the nature of the weapon, 

if it is semiautomatic, it could be up to 20 years; and the third offense would be life. 

By virtue of the fact I went to law school, I am not good at math, 

but five years times 1,000 weapons just strikes me that unless your 

name is Methuselah, that is going to be a really long sentence. And 

I would also be curious, and I may ask you at some point to look 

68 

into whether or not line AUSAs are asking for upper departures in 

lying and buying cases. 

The remedy is not always to raise the statutory maximum if we 

are never coming close to the statutory maximum in the first place. 

Finally, I want to say this, because I want to conclude on a more 

harmonious note. Your job was to identify facts, and you do draw 

some conclusions, and almost all of your conclusions I agree with. 

And I am not suggesting we disagree on this. 

I have a little different analysis with respect to the Criminal Division chief. I think it is without question that he knew the tactic 

of gun-walking existed within the Department, whether he wants 

to say Wide Receiver or Fast and Furious is irrelevant to me. He 

knew the February 4th letter was false as drafted. 

I appreciate the fact that there could be explanations, other than 

reading a letter, that you would forward a letter to your private 

personal email account, and I appreciate the fact that from time to 

time we don’t read emails in full; we just say good job or thanks 

for sending it. I just have a higher expectation for that department 

and for the criminal chief. 

I think it is wonderful that we have someone of your independence. I actually thought that is what prosecutors and ministers of 

justice were to begin with. So I am going to conclude by saying the 

same thing when I started. You have an incredibly hard, important 

job. You were exceedingly candid in our personal conversations and 

you have been exceedingly professional in your public testimonies, 

and I wish you and the people that work with you all the best, because on this we can agree: the Department of Justice is not just 

another political entity. 

When we lose confidence in that blindfolded woman holding a set 

of scales and a sword, we are finished. It is not about politics; it 

never was. I appreciate the fact that Mr. Cummings would compliment Mr. Issa. This is a very politically charged environment 

that we work in and that you work in, and the fact that our work 

could draw bipartisan support is a testament to you and your staff. 

With that, I would yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ISSA. Would the gentleman yield for just a second? 

Mr. GOWDY. Yes, sir. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. I never thought we would actually 

get through your questions. You were good. 

I want to summarize a couple things. Obstructing Congress is a 

crime. I will make the statement; you don’t have to evaluate that 

one. Clearly, Justice, during this time, obstructed Congress. They 

made an untruthful statement on February 4th, they doubled-down 

by having, at a minimum, an extremely deceiving statement. 

As I have often said, the only way it is truthful they didn’t let 

guns walk is that the guns didn’t physically have legs and feet and 

shoes. They, in multiple areas, did not respond honestly and truthfully to a subpoena, leaving information out, information they made 

available to you. And, of course, the separate contempt question of 

refusing afterwards. But in that case I will accept that they were 

going to argue the question of presidential executive privilege. 

What do you think we should do, and what can you do, when 

agencies outright refuse to provide information pursuant to an investigation of a crime? 

69 

Mr. HOROWITZ. What I did when I walked into this job, and was 

committed to doing, was pressing forward and writing a report that 

covered everything, and putting it forward and letting, if folks 

thought there was material to redact, that was their responsibility. 

My job was to get to the facts and put it out there so the Congress, 

the American public could see what we saw, understand what we 

saw, hear the facts that we found and the conclusions that we 

reached. That is my job as inspector general. I wanted that out 

there and I am glad it is out there. And now, obviously, as to what 

occurred or didn’t occur in terms of productions in other instances, 

the evidence is there as to what we saw and we found. 

Chairman ISSA. But will you be looking into or doing any potential criminal referrals, which is within your authority, related to 

the February 4th letter and those who either lied or who became 

aware, particularly lawyers, officers of the court, became aware 

that an untruthful statement had been made and sought to make 

no effort to correct the record? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And let me just touch on that, on the February 

4th letter, because that is important. We looked at that and tried 

to figure out what people’s intent was and state of mind, because 

so much of that is driven by intent; and the difficulty with that letter, as we outline in the report, is it was such a disorganized and 

problematic process that you had people who didn’t know information making substantive edits to a letter, along with people who did 

know information providing inaccurate information. 

Sorting out how that letter ended up the way it did and blaming 

one person or two people for the particular information that came 

forward was the difficulty we had. It was such a problematic process, as we try and lay out, that you couldn’t disentangle, from our 

standpoint, all the different pieces as to who offered what and how 

changes were made. That was the difficulty we had with the intent 

issue. 

Chairman ISSA. Thank you. 

Mr. Cummings, do you have any closing remarks? 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yes, I just have one question. 

Since I was just listening to the question the Chairman asked, 

on page 395 of the report the inspector general’s report did not find 

that senior Justice Department officials engaged in an intentional 

effort to mislead Congress. Instead, the inspector general found 

‘‘Department officials relied on information provided by senior component officials that was not accurate.’’ I am reading that from 

your report. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. That is correct. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. And that goes to what you were just saying? 

Mr. HOROWITZ. Right. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. I see. 

Mr. HOROWITZ. And the problem is they were getting information 

in some instances was inaccurate, in some instances was accurate, 

and then the people finally drafting the letter, who didn’t know the 

underlying factual scenario, were actually making changes that 

they didn’t realize were substantive to the letter. 

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

Chairman ISSA. I thank the gentleman. 

70 

In closing, this concludes a major chapter in Fast and Furious 

and the false statements made to Congress, particularly to Senator 

Grassley afterwards. As we turn the page, it is this Committee’s 

hope that we will, in the coming days, see a level of cooperation 

that we have not thus seen. I was encouraged that the 300 or so 

pages that the attorney general personally said he would give me 

if I dropped further action on the subpoena were delivered without 

that subpoena being dropped. Notwithstanding that, I hope, in the 

days to come, that most, if not all, of those 100,000 pages that were 

made available to you, Mr. Horowitz, would be made available to 

this Committee, or, in the alternative and perhaps better, a willingness by the attorney general to allow a side-by-side evaluation by 

our Committee so that we could save the redundant time that you 

and your staff have used a great deal of in gleaning the facts and 

figures of these documents that we haven’t seen. It would be hopeful that that kind of willingness to have our investigators see what 

you have seen would in fact allow this to come to a quicker close 

and perhaps eliminate the need for a protracted fight in the courts. 

Lastly, I look forward to the American people having an opportunity to read as much of the material as can be made unsealed 

as possible. I believe the American people and the Terry family 

have an absolute right to have as much transparency as possible. 

I think particularly when we look at the failure of the safeguards 

of the Fourth Amendment rights, as you so aptly said, that, in fact, 

all groups, groups who have nothing to do with Fast and Furious, 

but have everything to do with civil liberties, are going to want to 

know how these failures occurred in detail and, like the Ranking 

Member said, in a nonpartisan way we are going to want to make 

sure there is change so this does not happen again. 

I might note that ATF is not the only law enforcement agency 

that requests wiretaps. Wiretaps are requested on a daily basis 

from many organizations. Through this investigation, I have, as a 

non-lawyer, gleaned a better understanding that wiretaps are presented to judges normally as a nearly complete decision. Judges 

rely on the honesty and integrity of the process at the Justice Department in order to authorize these. That does not mean they 

don’t have the right to question or to reject, but for the most part 

they are quickly dispensed with based on a trust that the documents are complete. Often, judges have told me that in fact their 

clerks look through a number of these and they rely on the completeness of that. 

To me, that says that the American people’s constitutional protections are perhaps delegated to individuals who ultimately do not 

exist in the statute as the responsible parties. I think Mr. Horowitz’s statement of his own experience at a time when he was reading these wiretap requests tells us that this has not always been 

so much a beneath me, even though the statute requires me standard. For that reason, both for those of us on both committees, Judiciary and Oversight, I pledge to work with both those committees 

to see that there is strict adherence to the statute in the future. 

And we do so not because of the Terry family’s suffering, but, in 

fact, because the American people have a right to expect that government respects greatly the limited and necessary invasion into 

people’s privacy, and that it must be both necessary and limited. 

71 

In the case of Fast and Furious, it was not necessary. And if 

nothing else has been told, the understanding that these operations 

continued long after a wiretap was not the source of additional information was a lesson. 

Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t think Mr. Horowitz and your 

entire team who have worked tirelessly for perhaps more months 

than some people would like, including those of you who worked on 

it for so many months. But I think for the Terry family, who is trying to deal with the striking down of their son, their brother, their 

cousin, at the tender age of 40, for those over here, very tender age 

of 40, in a way that he shouldn’t have been, this will bring partial 

closure, and for that I would like to thank you and I know the 

Terry family would like to. 

With that, I thank Mr. Cummings for his efforts today. I thank 

all the members who participated. 

And, Mr. Horowitz, again, for those not sitting behind you and 

the many who have worked so long, please express our thanks for 

your thorough and complete work. 

With that, we stand adjourned on this and we will immediately 

reconvene, after you leave, for a quick markup. 

[Whereupon, at 12:45 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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