Documentary filmmaker Fleming Fuller has produced a full-blown re-enactment of the events the night Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed. Terry was murdered in 2010 with Operation Fast and Furious weapons that the Obama administration allowed to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
The re-enactment, shot on location in the stretch of Peck Canyon, Arizona, where Terry was killed, offers viewers a glimpse into what likely happened that night.
The scene is part of a larger documentary that’s in the works called “Fast and Furious: Under the Radar and Above the Law.”
It opens with actors portraying Terry and the rest of his Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) team on location in the dark canyon late on Dec. 14, 2010. The group is seen staking out their positions in the desert with full tactical gear.
“It had been a long night, and they had been working this area for several days,” retired U.S. Border Patrol chief Ron Colburn – a founding member of BORTAC – narrates.
One member of the re-enactment BORTAC team says: “Alright, guys, let’s call it a night.”
“When suddenly they heard movement coming up the canyon,” Colburn says.
“Stand by, stand by,” says one BORTAC agent.
Another replies: “Bodies.”
“Five,” another agent says.
“Guns,” responds another.
“Everybody hold,” the BORTAC team leader says.
As the five drug cartel operatives – members of a “rip crew” – get closer to the group of BORTAC agents, one jumps up and yells: “Policia!”
Another shouts: “Border Patrol, don’t move!”
Almost instantly, a firefight ensues. One BORTAC agent fires a bean-bag weapon at the rip crew first. Then, the agents and the rip crew members exchange fire from real guns.
After the quick firefight, one BORTAC agent shouts: “Brian’s down!”
The actor portraying Brian Terry lays paralyzed on the canyon’s floor. “I can’t feel my legs,” Terry says.
An agent rushes to Terry’s side to comfort him. “You’re going to be okay,” the agent tells him. “You’re going to be alright.”
“Brian, come on buddy, come on,” the agent says, shaking Terry as he fades.
The other two agents dip down from their cover to take into custody the rip crew member who was shot and injured.
“After a very brief and violent exchange of gunfire, Brian was hit once,” Colburn narrates. “The bullet just missed his ballistically-protected vest. Within minutes, he had no pulse.”
“This area is so rugged, and so steep, that no Medivac helicopter could evacuate him from here,” Colburn continues as one of Brian’s fellow BORTAC agents fireman-carries him out of the canyon. “His teammates had to body carry him through rugged terrain in the dark of night for well over a mile to get to a Medivac site.”
“At the crime scene, at least two AK-47-type rifles were recovered – dropped by the Rip Crew. Within hours, they were traced to the covert operation known as ATF’s Fast and Furious.”
At the end of the clip, Fuller – the filmmaker – poses a few key questions about Fast and Furious that have never been answered, even by the recently-released Department of Justice Inspector General report: ATF “justified,” Fast and Furious “as a tool to indentify and bring down the cartel kingpins by following the weapons to their final destination, yet the ATF field agents were ordered not to track the guns or arrest the straw buyers and the program was kept secret from the government of Mexico.”
“If this covert project was not to stop guns being smuggled into Mexico, what was the true purpose?” he asks.
“There is a widespread belief that the actual intent was to place American guns at crime scenes in Mexico to justify highly restrictive new US gun laws,” Fuller suggests as an answer, pointing out that Terry’s murder brought an “abrupt” end to the program but more people continue to die as a result.
“The Department of Justice has obstructed the congressional investigation of these crimes by erecting a formidable wall of lies, non-compliance and intimidation,” the next screen reads.
