How Operation Fast & Furious and Bad Lawyers Armed Mexican Cartels
January 15, 2024
Forcelli, a former deputy assistant director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and journalist MacGregor (coauthor of Jane Doe #9) offer a disturbing insider account of the scandal surrounding the ATF’s weapons-trafficking investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious. After joining the ATF in 2001, Forcelli relocated to Arizona in 2007 to serve as a supervisor in Phoenix, where he encountered an office in disarray (many supervisors had been sent to work from home; one was even working as a salsa instructor in Colombia). Moving quickly to bolster morale, he encountered a major roadblock: prosecutors were oddly uninterested in pursuing gun cases. Over time, he came to realize that the ATF had lost track of more than 800 guns through Fast and Furious, an operation meant to trace illegal firearms as they crossed into Mexico so that the buyers could be arrested. Forcelli ultimately blew the whistle during a congressional investigation, which revealed that none of the operation’s intended cartel targets had been arrested, while the missing guns were being trafficked back into the U.S. Full of unsettling details (after the attempted assassination of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Forcelli’s agents “crossed their fingers” that the gun couldn’t be traced back to their operation), this is an eye-opening behind-the-scenes look at government malfeasance.