Report: Guns Stolen from AZ Gun Store Sold to Cartels by ATF as Part of Fast & Furious

Via KVOA – Tucson:

GLENDALE, ARIZONA – A U.S. government gun-smuggling operation known as Operation Fast and Furious is at the center of hearings in the nation’s Capitol. The U.S Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives mis-managed the gun-walking program and helped fuel Mexico’s drug cartel wars. Up until now, the Obama Administration has argued the operation was only locally run out of Phoenix. But members of Congress are pressing the Obama Administration to reveal what was concealed in a series of documents about the flawed operation that the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., fought to conceal. Last summer, a federal judge agreed.

But now, the News 4 Tucson Investigators have uncovered documents that show even more guns turned up missing and those were never revealed to congressional investigators. Was Fast and Furious even more badly mismanaged than the public was led to believe?

In October 2010, a little more than two months before weapons from Fast and Furious turned up at the murder scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, someone broke into the Glendale gunstore whose owner had agreed to sell weapons to cartel gunbuyers for the ATF.

According to Glendale Police Department reports, the burglars broke into the adjacent church, then smashed down the wall separating the church from Lone Wolf Trading Company. Thirty-seven handguns were stolen. Lone Wolf Trading Company owner André Howard declined to speak with the News 4 Tucson Investigators about the burglary, saying he is under subpoena by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Howard is also a defendant in a civil lawsuit filed by Terry’s family. In a statement to the court last summer, Howard’s attorneys wrote:

“The employees of defendant United States either orchestrated the burglary to obtain even more weapons from Lone Wolf to place in the hands of wrong-doers, or advised others as to the secret location inside lone wolf where the guns were stored for some other purpose.”

ATF spokesman Tom Mangan acknowledged the October burglary but said the same people recruited by ATF to make gun-buys were not to blame.

“No it’s not. It’s an open investigation still.”

Weapons from the theft turned up at a shoplifting in Albuquerque, here in Arizona and as far south as Hermosillo, Sonora. ATF had surveillance inside the store at the time. Sources tell us the ATF had mounted surveillance video cameras to manage Fast and Furious. We are told the cameras were running on a loop at the time and ATF could have identified the burglars.

Mangan said that was not true.

“No, that’s inaccurate. It was, for the information that I have and what I’ve looked into through supervisors and various agents, it was operational during business hours.”

But people intimately involved in the ATF’s gun-walking programs say otherwise.

Tucson resident Mike Detty sold guns to cartel members from Mexico for the ATF under a different gun-walking program, Operation Wide Receiver. That operation was managed by the ATF under the Bush Administration.

“I was constantly coached by the ATF agents, ‘you really got to be careful, Mike, because this might be the last night that they are going to buy guns from you or this might be the night that their decide to keep their money,'” he recalled.

Detty has dealt with these cartel gunbuyers and with the ATF for several years. He’s convinced the same people used by the ATF broke into the gunstore.

“From my viewpoint this is a way of people he was dealing with, it was one way lower their cost per unit,” Detty said.

The Fast and Furious hearings continue in Congress and the Justice Department has until October to release information about what’s been hidden in emails and other documents related to the flawed program. We will continue to keep you posted as to whether the weapons stolen that night under the ATF’s scrutiny become a part of the Congressional hearings. If you have a story for News 4 Tucson Investigators, email investigators@kvoa.com or call 520-955-4444.

 

Obama Orders Military to Accept Illegal Aliens as a Path to Citizenship

Via The Examiner:

On Thursday, Department of Defense officials announced that for the first time in this nation’s history, those living in this country illegally will now be eligible for military service. While the military, for many years, has allowed foreign nationals to serve in our military, the program known as Military Accessions in the National Interest, (MAVNI), that program was only open to those here immigrating here through legal means, the Military Times reported.

Yesterday’s changes now affords anyone who can qualify for the 2012 Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA) program, better known as Obama’s ‘Executive Order Amnesty,’ the ability to enlist in the military.

This is obviously another tactic being employed by President Obama to give citizenship to illegal aliens, without going through Congress to do so. However, considering that nearly all of those covered by DACA are from Mexico and Central America, this latest political move poses a grave threat to our military as well as to the nation’s police departments.

[…]

Continue Reading

US Troops Heading to Ukraine

Via Reuters:

(Reuters) – As fighting between the army and Russian-backed rebels rages in eastern Ukraine, preparations are under way near its western border for a joint military exercise this month with more than 1,000 troops from the United States and its allies.

The decision to go ahead with the Rapid Trident exercise Sept. 16-26 is seen as a sign of the commitment of NATO states to support non-NATO member Ukraine while stopping well short of military intervention in the conflict.

The annual exercise, to take place in the Yavoriv training center near Ukraine’s border with Poland, was initially scheduled for July, but was put back because early planning was disrupted by the crisis in the eastern part of the country.

“At the moment, we are still planning for (the exercise) to go ahead,” U.S. Navy Captain Gregory Hicks, spokesman for the U.S. Army’s European Command said on Tuesday.

NATO stepped up military activity in its eastern member states after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March, and is expected to agree at a summit in Wales this week to create a new rapid reaction force of several thousand troops.

In addition to staging air force exercises, the United States is moving tanks and 600 troops to Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for joint maneuvers in October, replacing a more lightly armed force of paratroopers.

But Rapid Trident will entail the first significant deployment of U.S. and other personnel to Ukraine since the crisis erupted.

President Barack Obama will visit Estonia on Wednesday to reassure the former Soviet Baltic states of U.S. support, and Estonia’s prime minister on Tuesday called for a more visible NATO presence in eastern Europe.

Washington has promised Ukraine $52 million in non-lethal security aid and has already provided combat rations, body armor, radios and other equipment. Pentagon leaders have met with Ukrainian counterparts to discuss a range of cooperation, but, for now, arms supplies have been ruled out.

“It is very important to understand that a military solution to this problem is not going to be forthcoming,” Obama told reporters at the White House last week.

The United States European Command (EUCOM) says the exercise this month will involve about 200 U.S. personnel as well as 1,100 others from Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Britain, Canada, Georgia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Romania and Spain.

Focused on peacekeeping, it will include command post drills, patrolling and dealing with improvised explosive devices.

While it involves many NATO members as well as countries such as Ukraine, who are part of NATO’s broader “Partnership for Peace,” the exercise is not formally a NATO drill.

More broadly, under a broad program titled “Operation Atlantic Resolve” meant to show U.S. commitment to the European allies, NATO is running what officials say is a ramped up version of its regular summer and autumn training schedule.

 

NOAA: Wind Patterns, not Man-Made Climate Change, Responsible for Rise in Ocean Temperatures

Via NOAA:

Changes in winds over the eastern Pacific Ocean explain most of the warming trend along the West Coast of North America in the last century, according to a new analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Similar atmospheric shifts are known to drive fluctuations in Pacific climate over decades in the form of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), a long-recognized pattern of seesawing ocean temperatures. The new research indicates that similar changes in regional pressure and winds can also drive trends in sea surface and coastal air temperatures that extend over a century or more.

This study used independently measured ocean and land-surface air temperature records from 1900 to 2012 to confirm an already well-documented increase of approximately 0.5 to 1 degree Celsius in the northeast Pacific Ocean and nearby land areas. What’s especially interesting and new about this work is that independently measured atmospheric sea level pressures over the past century show that circulation changes account for nearly all of the year to year, decade to decade, and century long surface temperature changes in the northeast Pacific Ocean and West Coast states since 1900.

An evaluation of climate model simulations used in the latest IPCC reports finds that the atmospheric changes that account for most of the 113 year warming trend are not predicted to result from historical radiative changes, including both natural and anthropogenic forcings. It is also notable that most of the West Coast warming since 1900 took place between 1910 and 1940. These facts suggest that the temperature trend most likely occurred through natural changes in regional climate dynamics, the new study concludes.

[…]

Continue Reading…

Up to 1 Million Illegal Aliens May Be Enrolled in Obamacare

Via The Washington Times:

The Obama administration has dragged its feet on revoking Obamacare coverage for people who can’t prove U.S. citizenship or legal residency, allowing some of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. to continue enjoying taxpayer-funded benefits, a Republican senator charged Monday.

“The Obama administration is bending over backwards to give Obamacare to illegal immigrants but won’t protect hardworking American citizens who are losing their health care coverage,” said Sen. David Vitter, Louisiana Republican and an outspoken critic of President Obama’s health care law.

“The Obama administration has been granting deadline extensions, making excuses and turning a blind eye to falsified documents by illegal immigrants,” he said. “Enough is enough, and they need to provide answers to why they think illegal immigrants should be eligible for Obamacare.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the health care program, disputed Mr. Vitter’s claims.

The Obamacare law specifically excluded illegal immigrants. But the administration’s effort to verify immigration status of applicants for the law’s state-based health insurance exchanges has lasted well beyond the March 31 deadline to sign up for coverage.

Nearly 1 million people who signed up but had what the administration called “immigration data-matching issues” have been given six months to produce immigration documents while still covered, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

[…]

Continue Reading..

China Flooding US with Fraudulent IDs

Via CBS Chicago:

(CBS) – Fake driver’s licenses are flooding our market and could pose a real threat.

2 Investigator Dave Savini reports these bogus licenses are being produced overseas and sold online.

State and federal officials say they want to shut down the sales of them.

Bogus licenses are seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in big numbers, says Chief Customs Officer Brian Bell.

“We have hundreds of boxes of these,” he says. “They are all containing counterfeit driver’s licenses.”

They are incredible fakes. Smuggled into this country by high-tech forgery rings that have mastered the details so well, they could lead to critical security threats. Each license costs about $150.

They’re smuggled inside boxes of tea sets and jewelry from China; one intercepted batch was headed to a group of 20 students at the same college.

Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White says he is amazed by the level of these fakes.

One concern if the potential homeland security issue.

“And that’s why I’m not going to stand idly by and allow this activity to continue without doing something about it,” he says.

White’s team investigating these latest seized shipments includes Tyler DuMontelle.

“Instead of a generic hologram, they are imitating our actual holograms,” says DuMontelle. “These are some of the best I’ve seen.”

Says Bell: “The question is: Is it good enough to get you on an airplane?”

It is hard to know because the fakes are that good, say experts. However, the Secretary of State’s Office says the fakes have failed the laser and ultra-violet light tests.

For those who are underage, buying one of these fakes can lead to a year-long suspension of their real license. Some college students have been kicked out of school over this issue.

Starting this week, Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White will be running public service announcements to educate college students and others about the consequences of buying one of these fakes.

Another Flood of Illegal Aliens Expected in Build-Up to Amnesty Decision

Via The Latin Times:

While the U.S. government acknowledges that there is still a lot to do about the crisis of Central American children entering the country, experts and activists believe that sooner rather than later a new wave of unaccompanied youngsters will arrive at the border with Mexico.
” The situation in Central America hasn’t changed, we have the same problems of insecurity and violence, the lack of governability continues and jobs are still a problem – there is no work for young people who are members of cartels or street gangs,” the director of the Americas Program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Carl Meacham, told Efe on Thursday.

Though the entry of unaccompanied youngsters has declined in recent months following the massive arrivals in May and June, “that won’t last long,” Meacham said. 
He said that President Barack Obama‘s delay in easing immigration has sparked dispair among families, which is why they prefer to pay for their kids to be brought north, whatever the risks they run.
”

The president has not acted, Congress has not acted and the circumstances of the situation have not changed. There has been no legislation or change from the executive branch to eliminate the reasons why these children come to the United States,” Meacham said.
 By August 31, the number of of minors who had crossed the border unaccompanied was more than 66,000 in fiscal year 2014, which began on October 1, 2013.

IPCC Admits Agenda is Wealth Redistribution

Via Newsbusters:

If you needed any more evidence that the entire theory of manmade global warming was a scheme to redistribute wealth you got it Sunday when a leading member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told a German news outlet, “[W]e redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”

Such was originally published by Germany’s NZZ Online Sunday, and reprinted in English by the Global Warming Policy Foundation moments ago:

(NZZ AM SONNTAG): The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.

(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.

(NZZ): That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know.

(EDENHOFER): Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet – and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 – there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.

(NZZ): De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.

(EDENHOFER): First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

For the record, Edenhofer was co-chair of the IPCC’s Working Group III, and was a lead author of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report released in 2007 which controversially concluded, “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”

As such, this man is a huge player in advancing this theory, and he has now made it quite clear – as folks on the realist side of this debate have been saying for years – that this is actually an international economic scheme designed to redistribute wealth.

Readers are encouraged to review the entire interview at GWPF or Google’s slightly different translation.

– See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/11/18/un-ipcc-official-we-redistribute-worlds-wealth-climate-policy#sthash.Hds5aHeg.2F7aiQYP.dpuf

 

Tech Companies Slow Down Internet to Protest Lack of Government Control of the Internet, Demand Subsidies

Via Human Events:

[…]

Then there’s the Tech World – by and large a subset of the Left.  These people should certainly know better about government sloth and general incompetence damaging their industry – likely the nation’s and the world’s fastest moving and best.

But the Tech World has thus far remained steadfastly impervious to facts.  Or they – like the Left’s leadership – have an agenda all their own.

How else to explain this?

Large US Tech Firms Plan ‘Go Slow’ Day in Protest over Net Neutrality Rules

On Wednesday, these Internet companies will protest the federal government not unilaterally power grabbing “enough” authority over the Internet.  And to demonstrate their upset with this lack of government control – they are mock slowing down their sites.

Get that?  To protest the Internet staying exactly the same as it’s always been – basically government-free – they will dramatically alter the Internet.

And get this – they are slowing the Web to demand more government Web imposition.  Which if they get their wish will inexorably lead to a dramatically slower Web.

What’s the government track record on fast?  Department of Motor Vehicles, anyone?

[…]

Continue Reading…

Report: Clinton Aides Hid Critical Benghazi Documents from Investigators

Via The Daily Signal:

As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares for its first hearing this week, a former State Department diplomat is coming forward with a startling allegation: Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to “separate” damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

According to former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, the after-hours session took place over a weekend in a basement operations-type center at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. This is the first time Maxwell has publicly come forward with the story.

At the time, Maxwell was a leader in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, which was charged with collecting emails and documents relevant to the Benghazi probe.

[…]

Continue Reading