FAST & FURIOUS

FAST & FURIOUS

Below is an explanation of what has been called the "Fast & Furious" gun walking scandal.  This was a serious scandal in which the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, was held in contempt of Congress by the U. S. House of Representatives and is considered a major scandal of the Obama administration.
Wikipedia gave an excellent general description of Fast & Furious.

ATF gunwalking scandal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Weapons recovered by Mexican military in Naco, Sonora, Mexico on November 20, 2009. They include weapons bought two weeks earlier by Operation Fast and Furious suspect Uriel Patino, who would buy 723 guns during the operation.^[1]

"Gunwalking", or "letting guns walk", was a tactic of the Arizona Field Office of the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which ran a series of sting operations^[2][3] between 2006^[4] and 2011^[2][5] in the Tucson and Phoenix area where the ATF "purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them."^[6] These operations were done under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, a project intended to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico by interdicting straw purchasers and gun traffickers within the United States.^[7] The Chambers case^[who?] began in October 2009, and eventually became known in February 2010 as "Operation Fast and Furious" after agents discovered some of the suspects under investigation belonged to a car club.^[1]
The stated goal of allowing these purchases was to continue to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher-level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels, with the expectation that this would lead to their arrests and the dismantling of the cartels.^[6][8][9] The tactic was questioned during the operations by a number of people, including ATF field agents and cooperating licensed gun dealers.^{[10][11][12][13][14]} During Operation Fast and Furious, the largest "gunwalking" probe, the ATF monitored the sale of about 2,000^[1]:203[15] firearms, of which only 710 were recovered as of February 2012.^[1]:203 A number of straw purchasers have been arrested and indicted; however, as of October 2011, none of the targeted high-level cartel figures had been arrested.^[6]
Guns tracked by the ATF have been found at crime scenes on both sides of the Mexico–United States border, and the scene where United States Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed December 2010. The "gunwalking" operations became public in the aftermath of Terry's murder.^[2] Dissenting ATF agents came forward to Congress in response.^[16][17] According to Humberto Benítez Treviño, former Mexican Attorney General and chair of the justice committee in the Chamber of Deputies, related firearms have been found at numerous crime scenes in Mexico where at least 150 Mexican civilians were maimed and killed.^[18] Revelations of "gunwalking" led to controversy in both countries, and diplomatic relations were damaged.^[2]
As a result of a dispute over the release of Justice Department documents related to the scandal, Attorney General Eric Holder became the first sitting member of the Cabinet of the United States to be held in contempt of Congress on June 28, 2012.^[19][20] Earlier that month, President Barack Obama had invoked executive privilege for the first time in his presidency over the same documents.^[21][22]
              To read the entire article:      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal 
There a numerous articles written on the "Fast & Furious gunwalking scandal.  Below are links to some.

CNN JusticeFast and Furious gun turns up after Mexican resort shootout
By Evan Pérez, CNN Justice Reporter      updated 7:44 PM EST, Tue December 31, 2013 
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 Los Angeled Times    Full coverage: ATF's Fast and Furious scandal    June 20, 2012

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The Hill  --Report: 'Fast and Furious' gun turns up at Mexico shootout scene    By Mario Trujillo     January 01, 2014, 10:05 am 
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Forbes     Was Operation Fast And Furious Really Part Of A Secret Deal Between The DEA And Mexico's Sinaloa Drug Cartel?   January 14, 2014

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CBS News  -  More Fast and Furious guns surface at crimes in Mexico  August 14, 2013

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FOX NEWS  -   Gun from botched 'Fast and Furious' operation turns up after Mexican resort shootout    January 2, 2014

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 CBS Evening News   A primer on the "Fast and Furious" scandal   February 12, 2014
A very good description and dictionary of terms used

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 New American   --- Obama’s “Fast and Furious” Gun-running Scandal Grows   May 28,2013

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The New American    -- House Votes to Hold Holder in Contempt June 29, 2012