Timothy Johnson: Ed Morrissey’s Operation Wide Receiver Lie: "They Accounted For Those Guns"
During the June 13 broadcast of Cam & Company on NRA News, conservative blogger Ed Morrissey relied onblatant falsehoods to draw a distinction between the failed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Operation Fast and Furious and its Bush-era analogue, Operation Wide Receiver. Morrissey claimed that during Wide Receiver ATF “coordinated” with Mexican law enforcement officials and that firearms involved in the operation were “accounted for.” In reality, no such coordination occurred and many of firearms involved in Wide Receiver were lost after being allowed to “walk” across the U.S. border with Mexico. Morrissey’s claims came during an exchange with host Cam Edwards where the men mocked Attorney General Eric Holder’s June 12 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee: CAM EDWARDS, HOST: And again, you know Ed, what we got was, “I am cooperating, and I’m an awesome attorney general, why my goodness gracious I put a stop to these tactics in Fast and Furious. That’s more than any other attorney general has ever done.” ED MORRISSEY: And he tried to say, “Well, I’m sure that the attorney general that you think was more qualified than me, you know, he didn’t bother to stop it when it was done under Operation Wide Receiver.” But what Eric Holder had to admit the last time he tried to make that statement was that there were some significant differences in Operation Wide Receiver. Which is one, they actually tracked the guns after they were released, and two, that was that Operation Wide Receiver was done in coordination with the Mexican government. There was law enforcement on both sides of the border tracking those guns. They accounted for those guns. And that’s the reason why that operation didn’t result in two dead American law enforcement officers and hundreds of dead Mexicans. I mean that’s, that’s I mean, there is a huge gulf between those two things. Far from being “accounted for,” the vast majority of the 450 guns involved in Wide Receiver were never recovered by the United States. This may have been because the ATF agents involved in Wide Receiver did not actually coordinate with the Mexican authorities as Morrissey claimed.
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Timothy Johnson: Ed Morrissey’s Operation Wide Receiver Lie: "They Accounted For Those Guns"