Katie Pavlich on Obama’s Lies and Cover-up of Fast and Furious

Katie Pavlich, who literally wrote the book on Operation Fast and Furious, delivered a very timely talk to the Accuracy in Media “ObamaNation: A Day of Truth” conference on September 21^st. It was the day after the Justice Department’s Inspector General issued a report on the scandalous gun walking operation that resulted in the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, and ICE agent Jaime Zapata, plus hundreds of Mexicans. She points out that it was mainly blogs that broke this story, but that Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, who AIM honored this year with a Reed Irvine Award, had done an “amazing” job covering the story.

Pavlich, who is the news editor for Townhall.com, said that the President lied about the origins of Fast and Furious. “You had President Obama go on Univision,” she told the crowd, “which was interesting, because Jorge Ramos, who has asked about President Obama’s involvement in Fast and Furious in the past, did the job that the regular mainstream media in America won’t do and asked him some tough questions about Fast and Furious. In particular, ‘Don’t you think that Eric Holder should be fired, whether he knew about this or not, whether it’s incompetence or he lied about his involvement?’ And then President Obama lied. He straight up lied on Univision and said that Operation Fast and Furious was a Bush administration program. Well, considering Fast and Furious started in September and October 2009, long after President Bush left the office, it’s not a Bush administration program.”

Fast and Furious is back in the news recently, as Univision, a Spanish language network, partnered with ABC News, filed a devastating report showing some of the tragic consequences of this operation which sent some 2,000 guns into the hands of Mexico’s notorious drug cartels. The report, which appeared on the ABC News website, but did not air on their evening news shows, said, “As part of Operation Fast and Furious, ATF allowed 1,961 guns to ‘walk’ out of the U.S. in an effort to identify the high profile cartel leaders who received them. The agency eventually lost track of the weapons, and they often ended up in the hands of Mexican hit men, including those who ordered and carried out the attack on Salvarcar and El Aliviane, a rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez where 18 young men were killed on September 2, 2009.”

This AIM conference where Pavlich spoke was the same conference where Patrick Caddell said that the media have become “the “enemy of the American people.”

Highlights of Katie Pavlich’s talk follow:

KATIE PAVLICH: I assume, by now, that everyone in this room knows about the Fast and Furious scandal. Essentially, a short version is, the Obama Justice Department funneled 2,000 AK-47-style, .50 caliber-rifle-style weapons into Mexico, didn’t tell the Mexican government about it, and then two of those weapons showed up at the murder scene of one of our border patrol agents. From the beginning the administration has tried to cover up every aspect of this, down to the fact of the connection between Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder being connected to this government program. This investigation has been going on for eighteen months now. Because we’re here with Accuracy in Media, I’m going to focus a little bit on the media angle of how this has been handled.

Essentially, the Fast and Furious scandal was broken online by bloggers. It wasn’t broken by mainstream media reporters, it wasn’t broken by more mainstream or bigger outlets online—it was broken by small bloggers who were doing citizen journalism. Ever since that point, we’ve had a little bit of coverage from the mainstream media. Sharyl Attkisson has been amazing at her job, Jake Tapper’s covered it a little bit, but, overall, it’s one of those situations where you ask, “What would the media do if President Bush was in office?” and it would be completely the opposite.

So after ignoring the scandal for about eighteen months, the media is now taking an Inspector General’s report that came out yesterday as the bible of what the scandal is all about, despite this being a report of the Justice Department, by the Justice Department. We saw this report come out yesterday. It’s a credible report, there’s a lot of interesting and good information in it. But what people aren’t getting is the full story as to who wrote that report. The Inspector General’s name is David—Michael Horowitz, David Horowitz is a conservative activist—Michael Horowitz, and he’s only been on the job for about five months. Thirteen months prior to that, the Inspector General was Cynthia Schnedar. Now, Ms. Schnedar worked for Eric Holder during his time as U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C. in the ’90s, and ever since then she’s had a long-term personal and professional friendship with him. So she’s the one who did the bulk of the work on it, yet, on its face—and what the media’s reporting—this is a report by Mr. Horowitz, which, partially, is true, but the bulk of the work was done by her. Not to mention—this is something the media has decided to gloss over as well—the Inspector General report this time was allowed to be edited and looked at by all of the people involved in Fast and Furious, meaning people like Eric Holder, and all of the people named in this report, had a chance to take a look at it, comment on it, and ask for revisions and things that weren’t factual in the report. This is something that didn’t happen under the Bush administration.

[J.] Christian Adams, who is a former DOJ attorney and whistleblower, wrote a good piece about this. He said, “Look, I’ve worked under the Obama and the Bush Justice Departments, and there in no way was any opportunity, during the Bush administration, to be editing Inspector General reports that are supposed to be following the evidence and the facts where they lie.” So one of the things that I found most interesting yesterday was that the Inspector General told Congressman—he was asked, specifically, “Out of all the documents that you’ve seen throughout your eighteen months of investigation, are there any of those documents that you believe Congress shouldn’t be able to see?” and the answer from the Inspector General was, “No”—meaning Eric Holder and Barack Obama, in not turning over their documentation, are in the wrong.

You had President Obama go on Univision, which was interesting, because Jorge Ramos, who has asked about President Obama’s involvement in Fast and Furious in the past, did the job that the regular mainstream media in America won’t do and asked him some tough questions about Fast and Furious—in particular, “Don’t you think that Eric Holder should be fired, whether he knew about this or not, whether it’s incompetence or he lied about his involvement?” And then President Obama lied. He straight up lied on Univision and said that Operation Fast and Furious was a Bush administration program. Well, considering Fast and Furious started in September and October 2009, long after President Bush left the office, it’s not a Bush administration program. Of course, he would lie in front of a Hispanic audience on Univision, because, of course, he needs their vote, and exposing a scandal that resulted in the cold-blooded murders of 400-plus Mexicans would be quite a problem for him, I think.