What Is This World Coming To?

A couple of weeks ago I got two emails on the same day from reporters at Bloomberg's TheTrace.org asking about a blog post I had written. While I did give them a clarification on one item, I kinda ignored the request to put them in touch with my sources on the NRA Board of Directors.

Then yesterday, a friend sent me a link to an article in Slate.com regarding Marion Hammer's condescending email about those purged from their committees on the NRA Board. It included this paragraph.

One day later, NRA board member and Soldier of Fortune magazine founder and publisher Robert K. Brown reported on Facebook that he had been removed from the Grassroots Development Committee, the Veteran’s Affairs Committee, and the Legislative Policy Committee. “[Nobody] in the NRA power structure has the guts to explain to me why this was done,” Brown wrote at the time. “NRA leadership lacks any moral character and basically falls under the label of loathsome toads.” (Blogger John Richardson reported that Brown had maintained assignments on the Publications Committee and the Special Contributions Committee. Brown declined to comment to Slate, but said he is a board member.)

What the hell is this world coming to when those with paid jobs in the media have to reach out to us citizen journalists and/or quote our work? I think it would amuse the late Mike Vanderboegh given the work that he, David Codrea, and Dave Workman did in exposing Project Gunwalker aka Operation Fast and Furious.

It’s About Time DOJ Released These Docs

The Department of Justice announced today that it had entered into a conditional agreement with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to release the documents it has been withholding for six years related to Operation Fast and Furious.

From the DOJ release:

Today, the Department of Justice entered into a conditional settlement agreement with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and will begin to produce additional documents related to Operation Fast and Furious. The conditional settlement agreement, filed in federal court in Washington D.C., would end six years of litigation arising out of the previous administration’s refusal to produce documents requested by the Committee.

In announcing the settlement, Attorney General Sessions said:

“The Department of Justice under my watch is committed to transparency and the rule of law. This settlement agreement is an important step to make sure that the public finally receives all the facts related to Operation Fast and Furious.”

It is a shame that Mike Vanderboegh did not live to see this after all the effort he and David Codrea put in to getting the story out to the public.

David Codrea On Robert Mueller And Gunwalking

David Codrea along with the late Mike Vanderboegh were the two independent journalists who helped bring Operation Fast and Furious to the light of day. I doubt there is anyone around today who has a better knowledge of it than David. Thus, it was with great interest that I saw a post by David at Ammoland.com asking about former FBI Director Robert Mueller's role in the affair.

The key part:

He (Mueller) was asked to stay on beyond his 10-year term by Barack Obama, curiously just as things were starting to heat up on the Operation Fast and Furious investigations by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “Gunwalking” and the Brian Terry murder took place on his watch, and Mueller’s FBI, with its confidential informants being tracked as suspects by ATF, was up to its neck in things.

Outrageously, there is no reason to expect Congress to be any more successful at exposing the full truth than they have been so far at holding Eric Holder accountable for his Fast and Furious obstruction. Nor, as we see from the preponderance of agenda reporting, lies of omission and outright fake news can establishment media be relied on. As with the original Fast and Furious reporting, expect new revelations to come from independent efforts while those with the mass reach fall back on deliberate indifference and hoping not too many notice.

 David notes that Mueller condemned the Supreme Court's decision in DC v. Heller. It may be just a coincidence and it may be that Mueller along with Eric Holder was helping to pull the strings. We just don't know. However, I will say that David rarely speculates without substantial evidence in hand.

David goes on to add that an independent film that had been shelved dealing with Operation Fast and Furious is being resurrected.

See David's post for the complete story on the film and on Mueller.

Fast And Furious Revisited

Sharyl Attkisson had a story this morning on her Full Measure news show about Operation Fast and Furious and BATFE Senior Agent John Dodson. Since it isn't syndicated in all markets, I have embedded it below.

As I watched her interview with Agent Dodson, I was struck by a few things. First, Dodson is a brave and ethical man. He is still with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives despite all the crap thrown his way by his own agency. He has been transferred 11 times in the six years since he blew the whistle on Operation Fast and Furious. It is obvious that the powers that be in BATFE - who just happened to be in positions of power six years ago - want him gone. Dodson has gone into some detail about his experiences in his own book over the scandal.

Second, I am aghast that the Department of Justice under President Trump and AG Sessions has not seen fit to release all the documents sought by the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee. I have to hope that the reason the documents haven't been released is because the issue hasn't been brought before Sessions himself. If I remember it correctly, Jeff Sessions and his staff were some of the first people approached by the late Mike Vanderboegh regarding the gunwalking.

Third, the Deep State exists. There are still people in positions of power who are working tirelessly to retaliate against whistleblowers like John Dodson and to continue submerging the truth about Project Gunwalker aka Fast and Furious. Until these people are rooted out and dismissed, I doubt the full truth will ever be known.

Earlier this month, the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee released another report which dealt with the obstruction of Congress by the DOJ with regards to Operation Fast and Furious. The report concluded that there were failures (1) to provide answers to the Terry family, (2) there was a failure to objectively gather the facts, (3) there was a significant lack of respect for Congressional oversight, and (4) that former Attorney General Eric Holder's priorities were politics and spin.

Obituary And Remembrances

Mike Vanderboegh passed away earlier today after a long battle against cancer. His good friend David Codrea published these two remembrances of Mike in AmmoLand and OathKeepers.

You can find the AmmoLand one here and the OathKeepers one here.

David is correct:  the freedom movement did lose an important voice.

The "official" obituary was published in the Birmingham News today. I have reprinted it in its entirety below:

Michael Brian Vanderboegh

July 23, 1952 - Aug. 10, 2016 born July 23, 1952 in St. Joseph, Michigan, resident of Pinson, Alabama, survived by wife, Rosey, son, Matthew Bradley (Nicole) of Wiesbaden, Germany; daughters Hannah Rose (Brandon Vanslambrouck) and Zoe Kate Vanderboegh all of Pinson, Alabama; and grandsons, Mason Brennan of Youngstown, Ohio and Gabriel Michael, and granddaughter Olivia Laura, both of Weisbaden, Germany; mother, Norma Vanderboegh; brother, Dwight Vanderboegh (Cheryl); sister, Teresa Lehman (Jim). He was preceded in death by his father, Donald Vanderboegh and sister, Meri Kay Vanderboegh. Longtime 2nd Amendment activist, author, citizen journalist, and blogger who, with David Codrea, first broke the story of the Fast and Furious scandal in December 2010. Resident of Alabama since 1985, Mike was also an historian, amateur archaeologist, and researcher of Alabama's civil war history, especially the unionists of Winston County. He was the founding historian of La Grange Living History Association, a founding member of the 1st Alabama Union Calvary Company C reenactment unit and active in local historical preservation issues. More recently, Mike was the founder of the National Three Percent Movement and led armed civil disobedience actions from Connecticut to Oregon, smuggling forbidden firearms magazines to states that banned them. Controversial throughout his life, he was constantly devoted to the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. An adamant enemy of collectivism of all kinds, he was denounced by Bill Clinton on CNN, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, as well as the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations and various racists and anti-Semitic groups. He was also very unpopular with the ATF and the FBI. In 2005, he served with the Minutemen on the New Mexico border and was always proud to say that he had been on the enemy's list of the past three White Houses regardless of party. As his friend Kurt Hoffmann said, "it is better to be despised by the despicable than admired by the admirable." He described himself as a citizen first, Christian Libertarian who believed in God, free men, free markets, the rule of law under the founder's republic and that the Constitution extended to everyone regardless of race, creed, color, or religion. He lived by the motto that "all evil prospers with the silent consent of the good, therefore I will not be silent". Services to be held at Kilgroe Memorial in Leeds on Saturday, August 13, 2016 at 2PM. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the American Cancer Society . Visit online at www.kilgroefuneralhome.com Kilgroe Funeral Home, Leeds directing.

Published in The Birmingham News on Aug. 12, 2016

Michael Brian Vanderboegh

Click name above for additional details at:
www.kilgroefuneralhome.com.
Arrangements under the direction of:
Kilgroe Funeral Home
1750 Ashville Rd | Leeds, AL 35094 | (205) 699-3181

RIP Mike Vanderboegh

Mike Vanderboegh passed away in the wee hours of the morning today. Cancer finally did to him what the government, the gun prohibitionists, and the Southern Poverty Law Center could not do. It stopped him. Mike was 64.

I had occasion to meet Mike at a number of Gun Rights Policy Conferences and NRA Annual Meetings. Despite the impression he might have given by his angry prose, in our first meeting at the 2011 NRA Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh I found him to be a loving father who was more interested in talking about the soccer prowess of his two daughters than he was about gun related stuff.

Mike should always be remembered for the role he (and David Codrea) played in exposing Operation Fast and Furious. It would have remained a virtually secret government operation aimed at increasing support for gun control without his efforts to get congressional investigators interested. He is owed an eternal debt of gratitude by the gun culture for this.

There is a long obituary and account of his life at the Kansas City Star. It called him a militia and "Patriot" leader in the headline. Even the despicable SPLC had a long account his life and death. The comments on the announcement there are as one might expect from those of their ilk. Nonetheless, it looks like Mike had the last word even there.

Yet the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights can never die “as long as there remain free men and women who believe in the Founders' vision,” Vanderboegh wrote.

“This is the essence of the Three Percent,” he said, “that no matter how small our numbers are –– if we remain armed and determined –– we may yet preserve the flickering flame of liberty.”

Sipsey Street Irregulars will not be going away. Mike's son Matthew has taken over running the website and has continued postings there. I do hope he will finish his father's manuscript of Absolved as it was a great story in the John Ross/Matt Bracken mold of anti-gun control fiction.

The announcement of Mike's passing on Sipsey Street can be found here.

A Little Late To This

As many of you know, Mike Vanderboegh has been battling cancer among a whole host of ailments. Recently, he was told by his oncologist that his time for this world was quite limited. David Codrea is spearheading a campaign to raise money for Mike and his family during his last days.

Per Mike, the doctors have told him he is not long of this world. As we all know, his financial situation due to years of disability and devotion to the larger issue of self-sacrifice for freedom is terrible. He is doing what he can to get his affairs in order, but the reality is, his wife will be left in really bad shape. I would like to help with a funding appeal.

I looked at various "crowdfunding" sites, but there are hoops to jump through and/or a cut they take. For now at least, in order to get the ball rolling and hopefully growing as it does, I'm asking all of Mike's friends to spread the word and to send gratitude offerings directly to him:

Paypal to georgemason1776@aol.com*

Check, money order, cash, etc. to Mike Vanderboegh, PO Box 926, Pinson, AL 35126.**

Mike is cranky and cantankerous and can be a SOB at times. That said, he deeply loves his wife Rosie and his daughters and son. While he may have pissed off a lot of people over time, he still was the person with David Codrea and Dave Workman who broke open Operation Fast and Furious aka Project Gunwalker. If that was all he ever did in his life for the Second Amendment, then it would have been a life well spent.

As David Codrea writes in Ammoland today, donations and gifts to Mike should not be seen as charity but rather "gratitude gifts".

I like that and will be contributing. I hope you will see it in your heart to do so as well.

Headline Of The Day

The Washington Post had a fawning story on Ernst Mauch and his Armatrix iP1 on Wednesday. Pretty much it said if it wasn't for those damn Second Amendment types we'd have "safer" (sic) guns.

In his post about this story, Mike Vanderboegh. never one to mince words, had this wonderful headline:

From the land of great ideas and engineering (You know, the folks who brought us Zyklon B). When some German starts talking about how Americans "must" do something, I get nervous.

To refresh your memory, Zyklon B. was a cyanide-based pesticide developed by German chemical conglomerate IG Farben in the 1920s. It was used with ruthless efficiency in the 1940s to kill about 1.2 million "enemies of the Reich" at  the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps.

Off To Houston Plus Two Items

I'll be leaving to catch my flight to Houston in a few minutes. Blogging may be sporadic for the next two days as I'll be spending time with family in Texas. Expect it to resume full force during the NRA Annual Meeting and thereafter.

A couple of items before I leave.

First, Sebastian reports that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has turned down the NRA's appeal in NRA v. BATFE. He has a good preliminary analysis of the opinion. This is the case that challenged the Gun Control Act of 1968's restriction on sales of handguns to those between 18 and 21 years of age.

Second, today is the 38th anniversary of the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese communists. Mike Vanderboegh posted a very soul-searching remembrance of the event a couple of days ago. As Mike would be the first to point out, he used to be a left-wing radical. When I say "left-wing", I don't mean a brie and Chablis liberal - think really hardcore.

If you want to read a good book on that last month of the Vietnam War, I'd suggest Black April by George J. Veith.

The defeat of South Vietnam was arguably America’s worst foreign policy disaster of the 20th Century. Yet a complete understanding of the endgame—from the 27 January 1973 signing of the Paris Peace Accords to South Vietnam’s surrender on 30 April 1975—has eluded us.

Black April addresses that deficit. A culmination of exhaustive research in three distinct areas: primary source documents from American archives, North Vietnamese publications containing primary and secondary source material, and dozens of articles and numerous interviews with key South Vietnamese participants, this book represents one of the largest Vietnamese translation projects ever accomplished, including almost one hundred rarely or never seen before North Vietnamese unit histories, battle studies, and memoirs. Most important, to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of South Vietnam’s conquest, the leaders in Hanoi released several compendiums of formerly highly classified cables and memorandum between the Politburo and its military commanders in the south. This treasure trove of primary source materials provides the most complete insight into North Vietnamese decision-making ever complied. While South Vietnamese deliberations remain less clear, enough material exists to provide a decent overview.

Ultimately, whatever errors occurred on the American and South Vietnamese side, the simple fact remains that the country was conquered by a North Vietnamese military invasion despite written pledges by Hanoi’s leadership against such action. Hanoi’s momentous choice to destroy the Paris Peace Accords and militarily end the war sent a generation of South Vietnamese into exile, and exacerbated a societal trauma in America over our long Vietnam involvement that reverberates to this day. How that transpired deserves deeper scrutiny.

Logistics Wins Wars

The Complementary Spouse's uncle sent me the video below. It describes the Allied effort in World War II to get gasoline from Great Britain to the front in continental Europe. It was called Operation Pluto for Pipe Lines Under the Ocean.




Mike Vanderboegh recently had a post about the importance of logistics for the Russian Army in their Chechnya campaign. It was based upon an article that had appeared in the Marine Corps Gazette. The article found that the Russians struggled in their battle due to their logistical problems.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution And CSGV

There are times that I think that Josh Horwitz of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (sic) gets his ideas from outerspace and there are times I think he channels his inner Maoist student revolutionary. Today it appears he is looking to Chairman Mao and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution for his inspiration.

The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to enforce orthodoxy and to wipe out those who deviated from it. In China's case, it meant Communist orthodoxy. One of the hallmarks of the Cultural Revolution was the public denunciation of those who may have deviated from this orthodoxy. So it is with Josh Horwitz who would have made a good Red Guard.

Today, in his column in Huffington Post, he attacked not only Kurt Hofmann but those gun bloggers who have stood with him.

It would be tempting to dismiss Hofmann as an aberration -- an isolated extremist with little ability to inspire actual acts of violence -- except for two important factors. The first is that Hofmann's disturbing call to use IEDs against American service members has been defended by a broad swath of the pro-gun movement. This includes statements of support from "The War on Guns" blogger David Codrea, "No Lawyers -- Only Guns and Money" blogger John Richardson, the pro-gun Calumet Foundation, "Gun Free Zone" blogger Miguel Gonzalez, "Guns Save Life" blogger John Boch, "Days of Our Trailers" blogger Roy Kubicek (AKA "Thirdpower"), "Shall Not Be Questioned" blogger/NRA election volunteer coordinator Keith Milligan (AKA "Sebastian") and "Of Arms & the Law" blogger David Hardy, among others.

Second, and more important, is the man that Hofmann himself cites in his blog (on four separate occasions) as the inspiration behind his scheme to empower "budding militia ordnance engineers": former Alabama militia leader Mike Vanderboegh.

The real target of Horwitz is not Kurt and not the other gun bloggers. It is Mike Vanderboegh. Horwitz devoted as much time attacking Mike and his online novel Absolved as he did the rest of us. That Horwitz feels so threatened by a middle-aged man who is in tremendously poor health is telling.

After reading the post and the comments, it is obvious to me that they hate the First Amendment as much as they do the Second Amendment. To be more precise, Josh Horwitz and his erstwhile Red Guard believe in freedom of speech for themselves but not for those who deviate from their notion of orthodoxy. Those of us who deviate must be silenced, denounced, and made to confess our sins.

The ironic thing is that during Mao's Cultural Revolution, as the child of a physician father and a research scientist mother, it would have been Josh himself who was expelled from school and his parents made to confess their sins against the proletariat.

Josh Horwitz is just as much a totalitarian thug as the rest of his minions at CSGV. No amount of education at "the better schools" will ever change that.

UPDATE: Joe Huffman is upset that he wasn't listed among the gun bloggers by Josh Horwitz. Moreover, he does know a thing or two about blowing things up.

Mike Vanderboegh On White House Links To Fast And Furious

As I said yesterday, it will take days to sift through all the stuff that was released on Tuesday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the first part of their Final Report on Operation Fast and Furious.

Mike Vanderboegh has been doing some sifting of his own. He has written extensively in the past about Dr. Kevin O'Reilly who had been in the White House on the National Security Council. You may remember that he and Phoenix SAC Bill Newell had a back channel communication going on Operation Fast and Furious. While Newell has been questioned about this, the White House refused to let the Oversight Committee speak with Dr. O'Reilly citing executive privilege.

In his latest installment, Mike finds more evidence of the White House's fingerprints on Operation Fast and Furious. Sit down with a cup of coffee and read it a couple of times. There is a lot there.

Vanderboegh And Codrea On Lou Dobbs Tonight

I'm glad to see Lou Dobbs give Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea the credit they deserve for breaking the story on Operation Fast and Furious. They were interviewed this evening on his Fox Business show about their ethics complaint against Eric Holder as well as what they see coming next for the investigation.



A bit off topic but I think Mike looks good given his recent surgery and the attendant complications. You can tell he's lost some weight. I hope and pray that his recovery continues without any further complications.

Bar Ethics Complaint Against Holder Makes Fox News

The formal ethics complaint filed with the DC Bar by Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea got some airtime today on Fox News.



William LaJeunesse of Fox discussed the complaint with Brian Darling of the Heritage Foundation and Michael Frisch of Georgetown Law Center. Frisch was formerly senior assistant bar counsel to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. As might be expected, they differed in the seriousness of the ethics complaint and how it would be treated by the DC Bar.

Darling, who is a Senior Fellow for Government Studies at Heritage, thought the complaint was on solid ground. However, he didn't expect them to take it up until next year.

"It is clearly a reasonable basis for a complaint against Eric Holder to say 'you are in charge of the Justice Department, the Justice Department is refusing to produce documents that were subpoenaed by Congress and as a result you were held in contempt to Congress not once, but twice'," he said.

Frisch, who is an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown, didn't think the DC Bar would take the complaint seriously and would likely dismiss it.

"Because this particular complaint is written as if the attorney general had already been convicted of a crime, I think it will likely be rejected on its face," said Michael Frisch, former member of the D.C. Bar Counsel and current Georgetown Law School professor.

Frisch goes on to add that the DC Bar has the option of deferring any action until such time as a parallel proceeding such as a civil proceeding is completed.

Mike and David fired a shot across the bow and it was a brilliant strategic move. Whether it is squashed or not by the DC Bar is actually irrelevant because it has kept the issue of Holder and contempt alive in the mainstream media.

Ethics Complaint Filed Against Holder With The DC Bar

In the next stage of taking the fight for justice to the belly of the beast, David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh have filed a formal ethics complaint with the Office of Bar Counsel, Board on Professional Responsibility of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

From their press release:

3 July 2012

An ethics complaint against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has been filed by David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh with the Office of Bar Counsel, Board on Professional Responsibility of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Codrea and Vanderboegh are the two bloggers who first broke the news of the Fast and Furious scandal in December 2010.

Said Vanderboegh, Eric Holder believes that he will escape serious consequences of the congressional investigations of the Fast and Furious scandal simply by running out the clock on his tenure. We intend this ethics complaint to place him on notice that his lies and malfeasances will follow him until justice is done."

 The letter accompanying their ethics complaint can be found here.

More power to David and Mike. I'd love to see the look on the face of the person who opened that complaint!

Condolences

Condolences to David Codrea and his family on the passing of his father this morning. David's father had been ill for some time. Nonetheless, nothing really prepares one for the loss of a parent.

Also keep Mike Vanderboegh in your prayers as well. He went in the hospital on Monday for what was scheduled to be an out-patient procedure to place a stent in his esophagus. The out-patient procedure turned into an overnight stay and I'm still not sure if he has returned home yet.

It is a cruel twist of fate that the two citizen journalists who broke the news of Operation Fast and Furious were not able to participate in today's events. Without their groundbreaking work and their introduction of certain whistleblowers to Congressional investigators, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee would never have voted to hold Eric Holder in contempt. We owe them a debt of gratitude for their tireless work on this scandal. We should also keep them and their families in our prayers during this trying time for both families.

"There's A Bus Waiting"

Given the history of Obama throwing subordinates and other supporters under the bus, I don't think any of us really believe that he'll go to the mattresses for Eric Holder. Chris Muir in tomorrow's Day by Day cartoon captures this reality very well.

It is obvious that Muir keeps up with the gun blogs to know about Mike's latest revelation regarding the new whistleblowers.

Courtesy of Chris Muir and Day by Day Cartoon.

Keep In Your Thoughts And Prayers

During this Holy Week I'd ask that you keep in your thoughts and prayers two gun bloggers who have made very important contributions over the years.

First, Dave Hardy who was just released from the hospital on Wednesday.

Released from the hospital yesterday afternoon, still rather weak. Last night I got a sound sleep, but the night before got only an hour or so. The usual hospital noises, awakenings for blood draws and vital checks, plus a special disturbance.... patients in the next room over who listened to the TV or talked loudly until 2 AM, and thereafter faked moans of pain and begged for help. They stopped the moans of pain after another patient mocked them by groaning in chorus. I don't know if they were drunk, had mental problems, or were just jackasses.

Doc said he was initially concerned that I was going septic, but that had been avoided.

All I have left is exhaustion, some aches from sleeping on that bed, and some bruising where the IV went in and more where I got all the blood sticks in the other arm. I even got four injections to the belly; I'd only heard of those for rabies (and that might be history, or a legend).

Secondly, Mike Vanderboegh who just had major surgery has been readmitted to the hospital to deal with what has now been diagnosed as an abcess.

Woke up 0230 with stabbing pain in my left side just under the rib cage, like somebody was taking a Sykes-Fairbairn dagger and probing for my lung. Called Doc and he, like me, feared a pulmonary embolus. Made it into the ER in record time. CAT scan on lungs said no, praise the Lord. Further tests revealed that something is leaking internally, with probable infection. They stuck another drain in me and here I am sitting in Room 539 back at Trinity Montclair. Keep me in your prayers.

I'd also ask that you remember the family of Newbius whose funeral was this past Wednesday. Losing a father and husband is always hard.

About Those Big Fish The ATF Was Pursuing...

Ostensibly the purpose of ATF's Operation Fast and Furious was to use the little fish (aka straw purchasers)as a means to reach the big fish of the Mexican drug cartels. After it came out last week that the ATF let Manuel Celis-Acosta, ringleader of the illegal gun buyers, off when they had him in custody at the US-Mexican border, we now learn that the so-called big fish were informants for the FBI.

According to DEA and Congressional reports, the two men were the primary cartel contacts used to finance the illegal gun trafficking ring. Jim Needles, the assistant Agent in Charge of the Phoenix ATF office estimated the brothers spent $250,000 on guns tracked by his agency while conducting Operation Fast and Furious. Needles called it “a disappointment” the FBI didn’t bother to tell his agency of the connection.

“You are getting at the very basis of this investigation,” Senator Charles Grassley said Friday.

“But I have to wait till we have all the information before we bring down the hammer.”

Grassley first revealed in September 2011 the FBI, knew, but failed to tell the ATF, it’s informants were part of the gun trafficking ring. Then in February, Grassley called them “the big fish” ATF had been looking for the entire time.

Both the FBI and DEA know the Miramontes brothers’ role and identity, but declined to tell the ATF during a “deconfliction” meeting Dec. 15, 2009. Nor did either agency speak up at any of the joint meetings all three agencies attended of the Southwest Border Initiative. The DEA and ATF’s Group 7 shared the same floor of the same building and the same ‘wire room’ to listen to wiretaps of suspects.

Eventually and under pressure, the FBI invited top ATF officials to a classified briefing in El Paso in the late summer of 2010 and described the Eduardo and Jesus Miramontes as "a national security assets". The two men were "off limits, untouchable and indictable" said a source familiar with the briefing.

Mike Vanderboegh offers this analysis of the news:

Is it becoming clearer? Black operations are compartmentalized. The only thing that is required is the ability to deflect interest from other agencies and supervisors within a given agency who might be meddlesome. "National security" goes a long way. What is also required are back-channel means of communication and control. Can you say from "old friends" like the State Department's Kevin O'Reilly serving on the National Security Council and "Gunwalker Bill" Newell in Phoenix? I knew you could. And remember the one thing in Phoenix which would be required would be someone in control who could issue the proper orders and put them in a nice legal-looking frame -- Janet Napolitano's lickspittle, anti-gun zealot Dennis K. Burke. Personnel is policy.

Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich is leading a counter-attack by accusing Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and their investigators of "impeding the Department's efforts to hold individuals accountable for their illegal acts." Moreover, as David Codrea notes, Weich's objections center around the fact that ATF knew Manuel Celis-Acosta was trafficking in firearms and still let him go despite that knowledge. His attempt at deflection on the leaks coming from the Department of Justice is a day late and a dollar short given what we now know.

Even In The ICU He Does More Than The Mainstream Media

David Codrea has this update on Mike Vanderboegh's condition after his surgery on Tuesday. The mainstream media (Sharyl Attkisson and William LaJeunesse excepted) should be ashamed that they are still being outrun by an old guy in an ICU hospital bed on Operation Fast and Furious.

I just got off the phone with him. He's sitting up now. He's also feeling the effects of the medications, but is lucid, engaged and interested in knowing what's going on. He passed on some Gunwalker-related info I can't go into (yet), but it shows even from his hospital bed in ICU he continues to shame the major media.

I started to recommend he take it easy, that the fight will still be here for him to return to when he recovers, and then stopped myself and acknowledged to him that fight is what invigorates and keeps ornery cusses like us going.

He was happy to hear about the well-wishes and prayers from many of you.