Issa Says He Doesn’t Believe Holder’s Testimony Was Accurate

Thursday, July 07, 2011
By Fred Lucas

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)

(CNSNews.com) – House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) says he does not believe Attorney General Eric Holder gave accurate testimony when Issa questioned him in the House Judiciary Committee on May 3.

In that testimony, Holder told the Judiciary Committee he had “probably” heard only in the “last few weeks” about the Justice Department’s “Operation Fast and Furious.” Issa told CNSNews.com he is convinced—“absolutely”—that Holder knew about the operation earlier than he claimed.

Operation Fast and Furious, begun in 2009, purposefully allowed known and suspected smugglers to purchase weapons at licensed gun dealers in the United States—sometimes while under active surveillance by U.S. law enforcement–and then allowed the smugglers to get away with the weapons, in some cases delivering them, as the government expected, to Mexican drug cartels. Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were specifically ordered not to stop the purchases, not to intercept the smugglers after they made the purchases, and not to retrieve the weapons.

Yet, three full months after these public news reports, at a May 3 Judiciary Committee hearing, Attorney General Holder, under questioning by Issa, testified that he had “probably” only learned about Operation Fast and Furious in “the last few weeks.”

“We believe that he was aware of it much earlier than he said in his testimony and questioning before the Judiciary Committee,” Issa told CNSNews.com in an interview.

“Are we confident that Eric Holder knew it much earlier? No,” said Issa. “Did he know it earlier than he testified? Absolutely.”

At the May 3 Judiciary Committee hearing, Issa asked Holder: “When did you first know about the program officially, I believe, called Fast and Furious? To the best of your knowledge, what date?”

The Merriam Webster online dictionary defines “few” as “a small number of units” and “week” as “any of a series of 7-day cycles used in various calendars.” By contrast, Merriam Webster defines a “month” as “approximately 4 weeks or 30 days.”

Click here to see a timeline of events and documents related to Fast and Furious as it unfolded over a 17-month period prior to Holder’s testimony.