Brian Terry's family deserves to know why Eric Holder is blocking a key ATF whistleblower's book on Fast and Furious

Guest post by Investors Business Daily


Transparency: The Justice Department blocks a tell-all book by an ATF special agent on how Brian Terry, Jaime Zapata and hundreds of Mexican nationals were killed with weapons supplied by this administration.

ATF Special Agent John Dodson is a national hero who in 2011 blew the whistle on Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration's gun-running operation to Mexico.

Testifying before Congress, he disclosed that his supervisors had authorized the flow of semiautomatic weapons into Mexico instead of interdicting them, weapons that found their way into the hands of Mexican drug cartels with deadly results.

Dodson has put his intimate Fast and Furious knowledge into a book titled "The Unarmed Truth." It provides the first inside account of how the Obama administration permitted and helped sell some 2,000 guns to Mexican drug cartels, guns used in the murder of two federal agents and hundreds of Mexican citizens.

Just as Attorney General Eric "I didn't read the memo" Holder has stonewalled on providing information and documents to Congress and the American people, hiding under President Obama's invocation of executive privilege, the Department of Justice has denied Dodson permission to publish the book.

Dodson submitted his manuscript for ATF review, as is required, and was told in a letter from ATF ethics official Greg Serres, a representative of the most transparent administration in history: "This would have a negative impact on morale in the Phoenix Field Division and would have a detremental (sic) effect on our relationships with DEA and FBI."

The family of slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry stands behind Dodson and supports his attempts to publish his manuscript, according to Ralph Terry, president of the Brian Terry Foundation and Brian's uncle.

The operation was exposed when Brian was killed in December 2010 by an illegal immigrant working for the Sinaloa Cartel near Nogales, Ariz., just 10 miles from Mexico. Two Fast and Furious weapons were found at the murder scene.

Two such weapons also were used to murder Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico on Feb. 15, 2011, came from suspects who were under ATF watch but not arrested at the time.

"Do we really need to remind ATF leadership that the men that killed Brian Terry were carrying weapons supplied to them by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious," Terry wrote, not buying the ATF's morale excuse.

"Allowing the publication of John Dodson's manuscript would go a long way in showing that ATF has nothing to hide," he added.

The operation was later described by the administration as an attempt to bring down the drug cartels by following weapons bought by straw purchasers. But it soon became clear to agents involved that this was a cover story,with the real purpose unknown and murky to this day.

"Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals, this was the plan. It was so mandated," Dodson, then attached to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' (ATF) Phoenix office, testified before Rep. Darrell Issa's House Government Reform and Oversight Committee on June 15, 2011..

"Rather than conduct enforcement actions, we took notes, we recorded observations, we tracked movements of these individuals for a short time after their purchases, but nothing more," Dodson testified.

"Knowing all the while, just days after these purchases, the guns that we saw these individuals buy would begin turning up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico, we still did nothing."

The book, no pun intended, is not closed on Operation Fast and Furious. The one Dodson has written deserves to be published, and the Terry and Zapata families deserve to know truth. So do the American people.


Read More At Investor's Business Daily