Former Attorney General Edwin Meese, who served in the role former president Ronald Reagan, refused to comment when The Daily Caller approached him about the ongoing Operation Fast and Furious scandal plaguing current Attorney General Eric Holder and his Justice Department.
“Well I have not commented on it because unless you’re actually there in the Department of Justice knowing everything that went on, it’s very hard to comment on it,” Meese told TheDC. “We all know that it was, that it came to ruin, if you will, that it didn’t work out as it had been anticipated certainly and that there were a lot of problems with it, very serious problems, tragic problems in one case. But, more than that, I don’t know other than what I read in the newspapers so I can’t really comment in detail on it.”
Meese also refused to comment when TheDC asked him who should be held accountable for the deadly operation. It’s been more than a year since Mexican drug cartel members used at least two of the 2,000 assault rifles Holder’s DOJ provided to them to murder Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, and even longer since many of the at least 300 Mexican civilians were killed with Fast and Furious weapons. To date, no one has been held accountable.
“Well, again, without knowing all the facts its really, really difficult to comment,” Meese said. “Having been attorney general, I know how hard it is, even when you have all the facts, to unearth some of these things, but without being there it really wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment.”
During his tenure as attorney general, Meese admitted to involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal — a scandal similar in nature to Fast and Furious. During Iran-Contra, the Reagan administration secretly facilitated the sale of weapons to Iran. Meese had admitted the income the administration procured from the secret weapons sales was then directed to help fund the Contras, anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua, after Congress had cut off funding to the militant groups.
In Fast and Furious, documents Holder has provided to Congress thus far show that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives facilitated the sale of approximately 2,000 weapons to Mexican drug cartels. Despite Holder’s statements that Fast and Furious was a program run locally out of Phoenix, Ariz., there are now scores of documents that prove that Holder’s assistant attorney general, Lanny Breuer, acting ATF Director Ken Melson and senior Holder aide Gary Grindler were aware of Fast and Furious and its gunwalking tactics since the early days of the operation. They also suggest that Holder himself was aware.
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