The report can be found here.
The Washington Post reports on it here:
Federal agents and prosecutors in Phoenix ignored risks to the public
and were primarily responsible for the botched effort to infiltrate
weapons-smuggling rings in the operation dubbed “Fast and Furious,” according to a report released Wednesday by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
The long-awaited report also criticized senior officials at the
Justice Department and its Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives in Washington for lax oversight of the attempt to block the
flow of weapons to Mexico’s violent drug cartels. Many of the weapons
later turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States,
including one where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed.
The Hill reports that House Republicans want to see structural changes at the ATF:
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz pleaded with
lawmakers on Thursday to make major structural reforms at the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in the wake of a botched
gun-tracking operation.
“There were a serious lack of controls in
place in both the U.S. attorney's office and ATF operation,” Horowitz
said at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing.
“There
has to be a serious review and vetting of operations like this … and
how to prevent that going forward, is watching carefully to make sure,
in fact, the reforms we're all talking about aren't lost once the
headlines of the report go away — that there is oversight.”
Committee
Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and ranking member Elijah Cummings
(D-Md.) have pledged to work on reforming the ATF and the U.S.
attorney’s office to avoid repeating the mistakes that led to Operation
Fast and Furious.
File this under congressional oversight and checks and balances.
