Today the Department Of Justice’s Inspector General testified before the House Oversight Committee on the Department’s mishandling of the botched “Fast And Furious” operation that allowed thousands of weapons to flow into Mexico and possibly resulted in the death of one U.S. Border Patrol Agent. Among the IG’s findings: that DOJ officials knew about gun walking, that the White House refused to provide information, and that Attorney General Eric Holder still believes that he has nothing to do with the case.

IG: All DOJ Had To Do Was Read Documents To Know About “Gun Walking”

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC): “The wiretap applications: I’ve specifically asked the attorney general, are you sure that someone reading these wiretap applications in the summaries would not be left with the conclusion that gun walking was a tactic used? And he said yes, he was sure. And your report debunks that. You used to read wiretap applications, correct?”

Inspector General Michael Horowitz: “Correct.”

Rep. Gowdy: “And your conclusion, with that background, is that a recently [sic]prudent person reading these applications and summaries would have been on notice way back when that the tactic of gun walking was being used. Is that correct?”

Horowitz: “Yes, for someone who was watching it, looking for it in that context of gun walking, I agree that they would have seen those red flags.” (Committee On Oversight And Government Reform , U.S. House Of Representatives, Hearing, 9/20/12)

IG: DOJ Official Failed To Notify AG About “Fast And Furious”

Horowitz: “You know, as our report outlines, we found that Mr. Breuer, back in April 2010, knew about, learned about the gun walking tactics in Wide Receiver, and as we outlined in the report, it was a failure by him to alert the deputy or the attorney general to that, because ATF reports to the deputy, not to him. So it was incumbent upon him, in our view, to report it to the deputy and the attorney general, and again, when the letter came in from Senator Grassley, nine months later or so, in January of 2011, we believed, as he ultimately testified, that he should have alerted the department to that. Those were two findings we made. As to what the discipline or decision is, as to discipline or administrative or other conduct or other related failures, that’s really a decision ultimately under the system, under our system to the attorney general. I have authority to investigate, make the findings, which I did, and then it’s up to the attorney general to decide what, if any, discipline to impose.”

Rep. Gowdy: “I thank the gentleman.” (Committee On Oversight And Government Reform , U.S. House Of Representatives, Hearing, 9/20/12)

Holder Still Doesn’t Believe He Should Have Been Notified About “Fast And Furious”

Rep. Gowdy: “Another startling fact - I don’t want to say it’s a conclusion - but a fact that you included in your report - and you correct me if I’m mischaracterizing what you wrote - but the attorney general, even today, does not believe that a dead border patrol agent from an agency that he doesn’t supervise, who was killed by a weapon as part of investigation of an agency he does supervise, is something that should be brought to his attention. Does your report not include a paragraph that, even today, the attorney general is not sure that this fact pattern should have been brought to his attention?”

Horowitz: “As we included in the report, excuse me, the attorney general told us that it would not necessarily be something he would be expected to be notified of, and we’re talking about not the death - because he was notified about the death - but about the fact that two firearms were found at the scene that were connected to operation Fast And Furious.”

Rep. Gowdy: “Right. But, inspector general, you were a prosecutor. I was a prosecutor. Others up here have been prosecutors. When you have a dead law enforcement officer, the next words out of your mouth are, I want to know everything there possibly is to know about how this happened. I don’t want just want to know what the autopsy says. I want to know how we got to this point, which does speak to management, and it does speak to a duty to supervise, not just a commonsensical duty. I want to ask you specifically about the code of professional responsibility. Is there a duty to supervise for supervisory attorneys, to supervise the work of those underneath them? Not a common law or a commonsensical obligation, but is there a code of professional responsibility obligation to supervise?”

Horowitz: “I’m not sure I could speak directly to the code of professional responsibility in that regard, because we were looking at obviously whether there were supervisory failures. We clearly found there was an obligation, as part of the performance responsibilities of the agents and the prosecutors, to supervise. And the failure to do that was a serious management failure, in our estimation, in our view.” (Committee On Oversight And Government Reform , U.S. House Of Representatives, Hearing, 9/20/12)

White House Prevented IG From Pursuing Lead In “Fast and Furious”

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX): “You noted also in your report that the White House refused to share internal communications with you during your investigation of Fast And Furious. We’ve noted a connection into the White House through Kevin O'Reilly at the National Security Council. Do you think the White House’s refusal to share these documents limited the scope of your investigation, and would this committee be well served by pursuing an investigation in that avenue?”

Horowitz: “Well, as we noted in the report and as you know, Congressman, we did not get internal communications from the White House, and Mr. O'Reilly’s unwillingness to speak to us made it impossible for us to pursue that angle of the case and the question that had been raised.”

Rep. Farenthold: “So it would probably be worthwhile for us to pursue?”

Horowitz: “Well, certainly we have sought to pursue every lead we could. I can just tell you from our standpoint it was a lead we wanted to follow.” (Committee On Oversight And Government Reform , U.S. House Of Representatives, Hearing, 9/20/12)

DOJ IG Agrees That Holder Should Have Given Congress “Fast And Furious” Documents

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA): “Thank you, Mr. Horowitz. I’ll recognize myself for the first few questions. You were given a great deal of access in order to do this, over 100,000 pages. Would you characterize – I didn’t realize you didn’t look at every page every day - but would you characterize, were all 100,000 pages ones that you would have made available to this committee were you deciding to have us see those documents? As you know, we’ve received less than 8,000 pages.”

Horowitz: “Well as we went through - personally I didn’t obviously go through myself the 100,000-plus pages but,”

Rep. Issa: “I’ll ask it reverse, maybe this is probably better. Do you know of pages that you saw that Congress should, for good cause, be denied?”

Horowitz: “Every document we asked for and reviewed and cited in this report we found to be relevant and important. And in fact, we don’t cite in the report every relevant document. We obviously had to pick and choose. So certainly what we’ve seen, and we asked for and saw, we determined was relevant.”

Rep. Issa: “It would be fair to say the documents post-February 4th, which you evaluated, saw and helped you prepare this report in which executive privilege was not claimed, were relevant, you used them, and they should have been provided to Congress in the ordinary course. They are being provided indirectly at this time.”

Horowitz: “We certainly found they were relevant, which is why we insisted on reporting on them, Mr. Chairman.” (Committee On Oversight And Government Reform , U.S. House Of Representatives, Hearing, 9/20/12)