Fast & Furious: Univision Continuing to Ask the Tough Questions
Israel Ortega /
On the heels of staging a successful presidential forum, Univision, the largest Spanish-language network in the U.S., has uncovered more information on the failed Operation Fast and Furious.
Fast and Furious resulted in nearly 2,000 high-powered weapons travelling across the border to be used by Mexican drug cartels that has resulted in the deaths of dozens, if not hundreds, of innocent civilians.
Mexico’s former Attorney General Victor Humberto Benítez Treviño estimates that approximately 300 Mexicans have been killed by Fast and Furious guns, and hundreds of those weapons remain unaccounted for. Among the most disturbing allegations from the Univision report includes the possibility that Fast and Furious weapons were used by a squad of hit men working for the Juarez cartel to gun down 16 teenagers (and wound 12 more) who were attending a birthday party in Ciudad Juarez in January 2010.
As we have been reporting, Administration officials have been less than revealing about what they knew about the ill-conceived Fast and Furious Operation, including the strong possibility that Attorney General Eric Holder may have contradicted himself in sworn congressional testimony.
As my colleague Lachlan Markay writes responding to the recently released report authored by the Department of Justice’s own inspector general:
While the report does not claim that Holder misled Congress, it does say that those affidavits suggested gunwalking took place. Holder says he read those affidavits, and that they suggested no such thing. If the inspector general is correct, both claims cannot be true—either Holder did not review the affidavits, or he was not truthful about their contents.
The Univision report only furthers the need for this Administration to provide the American people and the Mexican government with more information about how the U.S. government could have possibly allowed this program to be carried out. It has resulted in the deaths of Mexican and American citizens including U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.
And despite the minimum coverage by the mainstream media of the Fast and Furious fallout, the recent inspector general report has made clear that there is more being uncovered, including the possibility that there may be another “ATF investigation that involves an individual suspected of transporting grenade components into Mexico…and supplying them to drug cartels.”
As evidenced in the recent presidential forum, where Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos pressed President Obama on a number of important issues, it’s clear that the largest Spanish-language news network is not afraid to ask the tough questions and shine a spotlight on the failings of this Administration.