ATF Chief Reassigned in Wake of Botched “Gunwalking” Operation

An ongoing Department of Justice investigation into a joint government agency operation aimed at major gun-trafficking networks on the Southwest border has resulted in the replacement of three officials who played critical roles in the botched effort known as Fast and Furious. According to the DOJ announcement, Kenneth Melson, the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives since 2009 will become a senior advisor for forensic science in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy. Arizona’s U.S. attorney, Dennis Burke, has resigned from his position and Emory Hurley, the line prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, who worked on the operation, has been reassigned to civil cases. Overseen by Burke, Operation Fast and Furious was an initiative designed to take down Mexican drug cartels importing U.S.-purchased weapons. Instead of focusing on minor gun violations, ATF agents were ordered to track small-time gun buyers at Phoenix –area gun shops in an effort to link them to the major cartels in a practice referred to as “gunwalking.” Though the operation has resulted in charges against 20 people, with more pending, the government lost track of over a thousand guns, two of which were recovered in December from the scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent’s murder in Arizona. And in a report released last month by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, it was alleged that some of the guns were also recovered at other crime scenes in Mexico. B. Todd Jones, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota will be the ATF’s new acting chief and Dennis Burke will be replaced on an acting basis by his first assistant, Ann Scheel. Jones, who has been called a demonstrated leader with a wealth of experience, will continue to serve as U.S. attorney while assuming the top post at the ATF. While three ATF agents were laterally transferred a few months ago as a result of the investigation, the replacement and reassignment of these three key officials is considered to be the DOJ’s most significant effort to address the controversy.