Holder, GOP square off over ‘Fast and Furious’

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder clashed with Republicans at a House committee hearing Thursday over demands that the Justice Department turn over more documents about a flawed gun-smuggling investigation.

Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will do what is necessary to force the Justice Department to produce information on its handling of congressional inquiries on Operation Fast and Furious.

The attorney general said he will consider Issa’s demand. But he said the department, with one exception, was inclined to follow a longstanding tradition of withholding internal documents about how to respond to congressional inquiries in order to preserve the ability to get candid advice from top officials.

“I think you’re hiding behind something here,” Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., told Holder. “You ought to give us the documents. ... It appears we’re being stonewalled.”

Issa has threatened to seek a contempt of Congress ruling against Holder for failing to provide the material. The lawmaker alleges the Justice Department is engaging in a cover-up.

“This has become political, that’s fine,” Holder said at the hearing, but there is no attempt “at a cover-up.” The Justice Department, Holder insisted, “will continue to share huge amounts of information” about Fast and Furious itself.

The department says a Feb. 9 deadline set by Issa is too soon to process “the broad scope of the committee’s requests.” Some 6,000 documents have been produced, but Republicans are seeking many more.

At his daily briefing, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Holder has cooperated with Congress and “the politicization of this is pretty apparent.” He said President Barack Obama thinks Holder is doing an excellent job and won’t agree to calls by some GOP members for Holder’s ouster.

Though neither side said so, negotiations are almost certain to be the next step.

Before the hearing started, Issa introduced Holder to federal agent John Dodson, a whistleblower in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who told Congress a year ago about the use of a tactic known as gun-walking in the Phoenix-based Fast and Furious investigation.

This tactic allows suspected “straw” buyers of weapons to walk away from gun stores with their purchases, rather than arresting them there. Instead, agents tried to track the low-level buyers and the guns to smuggling ringleaders and financiers, including Mexican drug cartel leaders, who have long eluded prosecution for their role in the flow of guns into Mexico. Straw buyers are those who discreetly purchase guns on behalf of someone else.

ATF’s Phoenix division has tried this tactic, with minor variations, in at least four investigations beginning in 2006 during the George W. Bush administration. It began three such probes under Bush before launching Fast and Furious in the Obama administration. All of the probes encountered problems.