As the dust settles on the U.S. House of Representatives' vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress (which followed the White House invoking executive privilege to prevent the release of documents), I've watched the events unfold from the sidelines in pain.
Whenever you recognize someone for their service or achievement, there's always the chance that award recipients will turn around and disappoint even some of their most fervent fans. In 2010 and 2011, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) ran this risk when we chose to publicly recognize both House Government Affairs and Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and President Barack Obama for promoting open government, oversight and accountability.
Sadly, nothing in the sorry episode advances the causes that Issa and Obama championed. Having given awards to both men for their commitment to good government and open government respectively, I feel compelled to say something.
Being vigorous advocates for congressional oversight, POGO was initially encouraged by Sen. Charles Grassley's and Chairman Issa's cross-cameral investigation of the ATF's disastrous "Fast and Furious" program. This was the kind of meaty work POGO teaches Congressional staff to undertake in our monthly, bipartisan Congressional Oversight Training Sessions. The ATF gun-running scheme, which contributed to the death of at least one U.S. agent and placed weapons in the hands of organized criminals in Mexico, exposed both government wrongdoing and incompetence. Whether Holder obstructed the congressional investigation is certainly an appropriate inquiry.
But here is where it all began to go wrong. An important investigation into misconduct and deceit by a federal agency appears to have become a partisan game of gotcha to trap the biggest catch.
Oversight heavyweight Rep. John Dingell -- himself a loyal Democratic partisan -- cried foul in a "Dear Colleague" letter to the House last month. He wrote, "We should be appalled that the congressional investigation is not examining what is truly at issue here, the deceitful actions of ATF -- an agency that has a history of improper behavior -- and instead focusing on getting the Attorney General."
Certainly, if the Attorney General has done something wrong, it deserves a congressional inquiry. On the other hand, if there is no solid ground for the contempt inquiry, then the committee is making a mockery of congressional oversight.
This crucial point is one of the prime lessons we teach in our training sessions. Partisanship torpedoes the credibility of even legitimate investigations in the eyes of all but the similarly partisan. Back when he was in the minority, Issa demonstrated a seriousness in his investigations, such as his review of the Bush administration's notorious Minerals Management Service. But once he became chairman under a Democratic president, Issa made no effort to quell his inner partisan beast. For example, reversing longstanding practice, Democrats on his committee were no longer allowed their own witnesses at hearings if administration officials were testifying.
To make matters worse, the administration matched this disappointing behavior with its own. Exerting executive privilege to withhold agency documents from Congress? We have long believed there is very little information that should not be available to the Congress, and we have not heard any arguments from the administration that meet the limited reasons to keep information secret from Congress.
I turned to two experts on Congressional oversight and balance of power, and asked them what is going on. Both were figuratively shaking their heads in their email responses. Mort Rosenberg, who worked for the Congressional Research Service as an expert in congressional oversight, wrote, "I was attempting to explain to some people what Issa's imminent contempt proceeding was all about, that it was hardly unprecedented, and that it could never be the subject of a legitimate claim of presidential privilege."
Lou Fischer, a constitutional law expert and former staffer at the Congressional Research Service, concurred: "If there is any merit to Holder's position that Congress is entitled to documents as part of the legislative process but not for 'oversight,' then why did he give over 7,000 documents to House Oversight?"
In the end, I am left with the sinking realization that two of Washington's premiere advocates for open government are trampling these principles in a partisan election-year battle. There are no winners here. We all lose.
Danielle Brian is the executive director of the Project On Government Oversight. Cross-posted from POGO's Blog.
Follow Danielle Brian on Twitter: www.twitter.com/daniellebrian
A:) WHY did Holder revive something that was tried by Bush, and then shut down by Bush because IT DID NOT WORK.
and
B:) WHY did Holder commit an Act of War by not doing what Bush did and getting PERMISSION from the Mexican government to do this?
Why are Harry Reid and the Democratic Senate blocking all attempts to get Americans employed?
and her "two experts on Congressional oversight and balance of power") indulge in a curious willingness to turn a blind eye to an obvious fact: Attorney General Eric Holder has provided every single document requested by Representative Darrell Issa relating to the Fast and Furious operation. Holder, though, balked when Issa demanded further documents that had nothing to do with the ATF operation itself, but with executive branch handling of the investigation once it was under way. Clearly a sitting president can assert executive privilege over privileged communications among his top-level staff, and clearly Issa is digging for the post-operational communications only on the hope of finding snippets that might embarrass the president in an election year.
Lou Fischer most clearly displays this willing blindness when he asks (apparently rhetorically), "If there is any merit to Holder's position that Congress is entitled to documents as part of the legislative process but not for 'oversight,' then why did he give over 7,000 documents to House Oversight?" He gave over those 7,000 documents so that the congressional committee could carry out its proper oversight duties. He only balked when Issa insisted on casting his net so wide that he was likely to drag up used toilet paper from the White House bathrooms. He embarrasses himself to do so, and Danielle Brian embarrasses herself by turning a blind eye.
Lune
There is no state database of purchases or buyers, so to help prevent gun-running operations, an ATF team has been going over the purchase records from over 800 gun stores in Arizona. They found 31 people with suspicious buying patterns, but because of the details of the state law, were prevented from arresting them or seizing weapons.
One Friday afternoon, one of the 31 people bought a bunch of rifles from a gun store. The gun store owner thought it was suspicious, so he faxed the info to the Washington office of the ATF. By Monday, when the field team got a copy, the guns and the buyer were long gone. It is one of those rifles that was left at the scene when a border agent was killed. The guns were never in ATF possession, and the ATF did not make the sale.
The F&F agents sold no guns(other than the whistleblower Issa based his investigation on), they did not walk guns across the border and the real criminals are the NRA and their Republican enablers that have gutted all gun laws, allowing unlimited, unregulated and undocumented gun sales in Arizona with no waiting period or restriction.
Oh the humanity!!!
You can't buy arms if you do not have any money...
Operation Wide Receiver, a Bush-era joint effort by the US and Mexican governments, changed to Operation Fast & Furious, an Obama/Holder-era program done with neither the knowledge or coopertation of the Mexican government.
The most obvious question is WHY?
Why not get the assistance of the Mexican government in tracking these dangerous, high-powered weapons or at least advise them that a sea of these weapons will rain down on their country bringing death and havoc?
Why?
The only conceivable answer is US domestic policy.
But what domestic policy?
The answer to that question lies in the documents Obama and Holder, who promised the most transparent administration in history, are hiding. And they will hide those documents with all their might because once they get out, heads roll and impeachment becomes realistic.