Former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) –
Dennis K. Burke, who as a lawyer for the Democrats on the Senate
Judiciary Committee in the 1990s was a key player behind the enactment
of the 1994 assault-weapons ban, and who then went on to become Arizona
Gov. Janet Napolitano’s chief of staff, and a contributor to Barack
Obama’s 2008 presidential primary campaign, and then a member of Obama's
transition team focusing on border-enforcement issues, ended up in the
Obama administration as the U.S. attorney in Arizona responsible for
overseeing Operation Fast and Furious.
When Obama nominated Burke to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, Burke told the Arizona Capitol Times he believed he understood what the president and his attorney general wanted him to do.
“There’s
clearly been direction provided already by President Obama and Attorney
General Holder as to what they want to be doing, and this is an office
that is at the center of the issues of border enforcement,” said Burke.
Over
the course of several days, CNSNews.com left multiple telephone
messages with Burke for comment on this story. He did not respond.
Dennis
K. Burke has had a long career working as an aide and political
appointee to Democratic elected officials. From 1989 to 1994, he was a
counsel for the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, working in
that capacity for several years on an assault-weapons ban, which was
finally enacted on Sept. 13, 1994 as the Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act. That act expired on Sept. 13, 2004. (See NYT: Dennis Burke, Sen. DeConcini, Weapons Ban.pdf)
From
1994-95, Burke served in the Clinton Justice Department in the Office
of Legislative Affairs, and in 1997-99, he was an assistant U.S.
attorney in Arizona.
From 1999 to 2003, Burke was chief deputy and special assistant to Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano.
In
2003, when Napolitano became governor, Burke became her chief of staff.
He stayed in that job until the fall of 2008, when he left to help
Democratic political campaigns, including then-Sen. Obama’s presidential
campaign.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. (AP Photo)
Federal Election Commission (FEC)records show that
on Jan. 9, 2008, while working as Gov. Napolitano’s chief of staff,
Burke contributed $2,000 to then-Sen Obama’s presidential primary
campaign. Since 1997, according to FEC records, Burke has contributed a
total of $16,350 to various Democratic candidates.
Eight
days before Obama’s inauguration, on Jan. 12, 2009--while Burke was
working on the transition team--Obama met with Mexican President Felipe
Calderon at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C. At that
meeting, Obama “pledged” to take action to stop the flow of guns from
the United States to Mexico.
Obama
also decided to put Burke’s old boss, incoming Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano, in a leadership role in making the
gun-trafficking problem a top priority.
“President-elect
Obama expressed support for efforts in the border states in both the
United States and Mexico to eradicate drug-related violence and stop the
flow of guns and cash,” incoming White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement at the time.
“He told President Calderón that he intends to ask the Secretary of
Homeland Security to lead an effort to increase information sharing to
strengthen those efforts. He pledged to take more effective action from
the United States to stem the flow of arms from the United States to
Mexico.”
When
Napolitano became Homeland Security secretary, Burke moved from the
Obama transition team to become her senior adviser. On Feb. 25, 2009, a
little more than a month after Obama had made his “pledge” to Calderon,
Napolitano testified in the House Homeland Security Committee. She
stressed that stopping the flow of guns to Mexico was a top priority of
the Obama administration and key focus of her work.
Former Obama chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)
Responding
to a question about violence on the border, Napolitano said the
administration was going to work with the Mexican government on the
issue. Then she said: “Secondly, it is looking at, government-wide, at
what we can do to stop the southbound export of weaponry, particularly
assault-type weapons and grenades that are being used in that drug war.”
Napolitano
further noted that drug cartels were targeting Mexican government
officials and law enforcement officers, and that, given the seriousness
of the threat, Obama’s national security adviser, the attorney general,
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and
Customs (of which the Border Patrol is part) would all be working on the
issue.
“I've
met with the attorney general of Mexico and the ambassador already,”
said Napolitano during the February 2009 hearing. “One of the things
that I particularly am focused on is southbound traffic in guns,
particularly assault weapons, and cash that are being used to funnel and
fund these very, very violent cartels.”
The
same day Napolitano testified in the Homeland Security Committee,
Attorney General Holder addressed the issue of drug-trafficking-related
gun violence in northern Mexico. He said he had had conversations about
the issue with the Mexican attorney general and that the Obama
administration believed that re-instating the assault-weapons ban in the
United States--the one Dennis Burke had initially helped push through
as Senate aide in 1990s--would help the situation in Mexico.
“Well,
as President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few
gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be
to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,” Holder said. “I
think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.”
Four-and-a-half
months later, on July 10, 2009, Obama nominated Burke to be the U.S.
attorney in Arizona. The Senate confirmed Burke on Sept. 15 of that
year.
It was in July 2010, after his nomination as U.S. attorney, that Burke told theArizona Capitol Times that
he had “been working on homeland security and border enforcement
issues” during the transition, and that there had “clearly been
direction provided already by President Obama and Attorney General
Holder as to what they want to be doing.”
“What
I hope to do, if confirmed by the Senate,” Burke told the paper, “is to
ensure that those plans and strategies are being implemented and we’re
moving quickly on prosecutions.”
After
the nomination, former Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) had high praise
for Burke’s work in getting the assault weapons ban through Congress
back in the 1990s.
“We
ended up getting senators who had never voted for a gun bill, like
Lloyd Benson of Texas and Sam Nunn of Georgia and Al D’Amato of New
York, who were friends of mine that I worked real hard,” DeConcini told the Arizona Capitol Times.
“But Dennis worked the staff. He was responsive to them and several of
the senators mentioned to me what a great staffer you’ve got there, and
I said, ‘Boy, you’re telling me.’”
The Arizona Republic has reported that
“DeConcini said Burke fostered the measure in concert with a key figure
in the white House, policy analyst Rahm Emanuel, who years later would
become chief of staff for President Obama. … ‘Dennis was the one who
worked with everyone on the Judiciary Committee to line up these members
and votes,’ DeConcini said. ‘Dennis had all these pictures of these
guns--the Streetsweepers and the AK-47s. And it passed by one vote. A
lot of it was not my eloquence on the bill, it was stuff that Dennis had
done.’”
Six weeks after Burke was confirmed, on Oct. 26, 2009, Eric Holder named him to the
Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC)
of U.S. Attorneys. In his capacity as an adviser to Holder, Burke
chaired the AGAC subcommittee on border and immigration law enforcement
while Operation Fast and Furious was happening.
The
same month that Burke joined Holder’s advisory committee with a
specific responsibility to report to Deputy Attorney General David Ogden
on border and immigration enforcement, Ogden’s office made a
significant change in the federal government’s strategy for dealing with
gun-trafficking on the Mexican border.
“This
new strategy directed federal law enforcement to shift its focus away
from seizing firearms from criminals as soon as possible, and to focus
instead on identifying members of trafficking networks,” House Oversight
and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa wrote in a May 3 memo to other members of his committee, summarizing what the committee had learned about Fast and Furious.
“The
Office of the Deputy Attorney General shared this strategy with the
heads of many Department components, including ATF,” said Issa.
The next month, November 2009, the ATF in Arizona moved forward with the new strategy by creating Operation Fast and Furious.
Attorney General Eric Holder testifying in the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 12, 2012. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
“Members
of the ATF Phoenix Field Division, led by Special Agent in Charge Bill
Newell, became familiar with this new strategy and used it in creating
Fast and Furious,” Issa wrote in his May 3 memo. “In mid-November 2009,
just weeks after the strategy was issued, Fast and Furious began. Its
objective was to establish a nexus between straw purchasers of firearms
in the United States and Mexican drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs)
operating on both sides of the United States-Mexico border.”
“Straw
purchasers,” Issa explained, “are individuals who are legally entitled
to purchase firearms for themselves, but who unlawfully purchase weapons
with the intent to transfer them to someone else, in this case DTOs or
other criminals.”
Remarkably,
under Operation Fast and Furious, the ATF deliberately allowed guns to
move south across the U.S.-Mexico border and into the hands of the drug
cartels. Weapons were allowed to be sold to straw purchasers with the
intent of tracing the guns to the cartels.
“During
Fast and Furious, ATF agents used an investigative technique known as
‘gunwalking’--that is, allowing illegally purchased weapons to be
transferred to third parties without attempting to disrupt or deter the
illegal activity,” Issa wrote in the May 3 memo. “ATF agents abandoned
surveillance on known straw purchasers after they illegally purchased
weapons that ATF agents knew were destined for Mexican drug cartels.”
The
purpose of the operation was to trace the guns recovered from crimes
scenes “to their original straw purchaser, in an attempt to establish a
connection between that individual and the DTO.”
U.S. Border Agent Brian A. Terry, shot and killed on Dec. 14, 2010, near Rio Rico, Arizona. (AP Photo)
The ATF Phoenix Field Division applied to Justice Department headquarters to become an“Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force” (OCDETF) case.
In preparing their application in early January 2009, the ATF in
Phoenix wrote a memo explaining the investigative technique of Fast and
Furious.
The
application for Fast and Furious was approved and, in January 2010, as
Issa stated in his memo, it “became a prosecutor-led OCDETF Strike Force
case, meaning that ATF would join with the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration, Internal Revenue
Service, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement under the leadership
of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona.”
In other words, it was under the leadership of Dennis Burke.
“Although
ATF was the lead law enforcement agency for Fast and Furious, its
agents took direction from prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office,”
Issa says in his May 3 memo. “The lead federal prosecutor for Fast and
Furious was Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley, who played an integral
role in the day-to-day, tactical management of the case.”
Issa states in his memo that Burke’s U.S. attorney’s office made it more difficult for ATF agents to interdict guns.
“Many
ATF agents working on Operation Fast and Furious came to believe that
some of the most basic law enforcement techniques used to interdict
weapons required the explicit approval of the U.S. Attorney’s Office,
and specifically from Hurley,” Issa wrote. “On numerous occasions,
Hurley and other federal prosecutors withheld this approval, to the
mounting frustration of ATF agents. The U.S. Attorney’s Office chose not
to use other available investigative tools common in gun trafficking
cases, such as civil forfeitures and seizure warrants, during the
seminal periods of Fast and Furious.”
“The
U.S. Attorney’s Office advised ATF that agents needed to meet
unnecessarily strict evidentiary standards in order to speak with
suspects, temporarily detain them, or interdict weapons,” Issa said.
“ATF’s reliance on this advice from the U.S. Attorney’s Office during
Fast and Furious resulted in many lost opportunities to interdict
weapons.”
A
report on Fast and Furious released by House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee Democrats in January 2012, indicates that on Jan. 5,
2010, officials from the ATF Phoenix office met with Assistant U.S.
Attorney Hurley and determined that the gun-trafficking investigation
should continue because it wasn't ready for prosecution. The Democrat
report quotes a briefing paper prepared by the ATF three days after the
meeting--which would be Jan. 8, 2010--that says U.S. Attorney Burke was
briefed on the matter and agreed that the investigation should continue.
"Investigative
and prosecutions strategies were discussed and a determination was made
that there was minimal evidence at this time to support any type of
prosecution," said the ATF briefing paper, "therefore, additional
firearms purchases should be monitored and additional evidence continued
to be gathered. This investigation was briefed to United States
Attorney Dennis Burke, who concurs with the assessment of his line
prosecutors and fully supports the continuation of this investigation."
(AP Photo)
Eight days after this briefing paper was produced, on Jan. 16, 2010,straw buyers bought three assault-weapon rifles,
two of which would figure prominently in the unraveling of the program.
They were the weapons that would later be found at the scene of the
murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
On.
Nov. 24, 2010, just a few weeks before Terry was murdered, Burke--who
had begun his career in public service working to enact an
assault-weapons ban--had an email exchange with another U.S. attorney
about an investigation he was working on that involved "straw purchasing
of assault weapons."
“What
a great investigation. What is the ETI (estimated time of indictment!)”
U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan for the Western District of Washington
said to Burke in an email.
Burke
responded, “Would love to chat. We are about to indict around
[REDACTED] clowns for a Gun Trafficking to Mexico operation. It's a
T-III investigation that we have been working w/ATF for a long time and
IRS is all over some money laundering charges. It’s going to bring a lot
of attention to straw purchasing of assault weapons. Some of the
weapons bought by these clowns in Arizona have been directly traced to
murders of elected officials in Mexico by the Cartels, so
Katie-bar-the-door when we unveil this baby.”
The e-mail exchange, with the subject line “Gun Shows,” did not specifically mention Operation Fast and Furious.
Operation
Fast and Furious was halted after Dec. 14, 2010 after two of the guns
that a straw buyer had been allowed to purchase during the operation
ended up at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.
Fast and Furious later became the subject of a congressional
investigation, and an investigation by the Justice Department’s Office
of Inspector General.
Former President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
On Dec. 14, the same day of Terry's murdered, Burke sent an emailreplying to an e-mail from Monty Wilkinson,
Attorney General Holder's deputy chief of staff. In this email, Burke
said his office had a large firearms trafficking case that he wanted to
discuss. In a follow up e-mail the next day--Dec. 15, 2010--Burke
alerted Wilkinson that Agent Terry had been murdered. Wilkinson
responded, “Tragic, I’ve alerted the AG, the Acting DAG, Lisa, etc.”
The
exchanges between Burke and Holder's deputy chief of staff at the time
of Agent Terry's murder are reported the report published by the
committee Democrats.
"Several hours later on December 15, 2010, U.S. Attorney Burke learned that
Agent Terry had been murdered," says the Democratic report. "He alerted Mr. Wilkinson, who replied, 'Tragic,
I’ve alerted the AG, the Acting DAG, Lisa, etc.'"
"Later that same day, U.S. Attorney Burke
learned that two firearms found at Agent Terry’s murder scene had been
purchased by a suspect in Operation Fast and Furious," says the
Democratic report. "He sent an email to Mr. Wilkinson forwarding this
information and wrote: 'The guns found in the desert near the murder
[sic] BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk
about—they were AK-47’s purchased at a
Phoenix gun store.' Mr. Wilkinson replied, 'I’ll call tomorrow.'
Despite
this email from Wilkinson, Burke told the committee he did not recall
actually having such a phone conversation, and the Department of Justice
told the committee that Wilksonson does not recall making the call.
Also Attorney General Holder himself testified that his deputy chief of
staff never told him about the tie between the gun-trafficking
investigation and Agent Terry's murder.
"In
his interview with Committee staff, U.S. Attorney Burke stated that he
did not recall having any subsequent conversation with Mr. Wilkinson
that 'included the fact that Fast and Furious guns were found at the
scene' of Agent Terry’s murder," the Democrat report said.
"In
a November 2011 hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator
Charles Grassley asked Attorney General Holder, 'Did Mr. Wilkinson say
anything to you about the connection between Agent Terry’s death and the
ATF operation?'"
The
Democratic report says: "Attorney General Holder responded, 'No, he did
not.” In a January 27, 2011, letter to the Committee, the Department
stated that Mr. Wilkinson 'does not recall a follow-up call with Burke
or discussing this aspect of the matter with the Attorney
General.'"
Brian Terry's murder caused an apparent change of plans for the Justice Department.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
“Washington-based
Justice Department officials had earlier discussed bringing Attorney
General Eric Holder to Phoenix for a triumphant press conference with
Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke to herald the conclusion of the
Department’s flagship firearms trafficking case,” said a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee memo from May 3, 2012.“In
the aftermath of Agent Terry’s death, the task of announcing
indictments at a press conference fell to ATF Phoenix Division Special
Agent in Charge William Newell and Burke. Holder did not attend.
“At
the press conference on January 25, 2011, Newell triumphantly announced
the indictment of 20 members of an arms trafficking syndicate that had
been supplying weapons to the Sinaloa Cartel, Mexico’s largest and most
powerful cartel led by the notorious Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman,” the May
3 memo said.
Days later, on Feb. 4, 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich responded to Grassley denying
that the Justice Department “sanctioned” the sale of guns to people
they believed were going to deliver them to Mexican drug cartels.
As
the scandal began to build by that summer, Brian Terry’s
mother--Josephine Terry--testified at the hearing of the House Oversight
Committee. The mother of the slain Border Patrol agent told the
committee that Burke informed the family of the agent’s death, but did
not provide details about Operation Fast and Furious.
“He
was just trying to explain to us exactly what happened and--roundabout
way--we really never got anything out of the visit that he did have,”
Josephine Terry told the committee on June 15, 2011. Asked how she found
out about Fast and Furious, she responded, “Most of it I heard is from
the media. We haven't really got anything direct--phone calls or nothing
from anybody.”
At
the same hearing, Weich, who wrote the Feb. 4, 2011 letter to Grassley,
told the committee, “Everything that we say is true to the best of our
knowledge at the time we say it. As more facts come out, obviously our
understanding of the situation is enhanced.”
On
June 29, 2011, a reporter asked the Oversight Committee about leaked
documents related to whistleblower ATF Agent John Dodson.
Attorney General Eric holder speaks to
reporters following his meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday,
June 19, 2012. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
“Congressional
investigators later determined that the individual who was behind the
leaked documents was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona,
Dennis Burke--the Obama Administration political appointee who led the
office in charge of Operation Fast and Furious,” said Issa's May 3
Oversight Committee memo.
“Burke
later testified that the reporter contacted him, and that he believed
the reporter had already seen the documents or had them read to him from
someone else in the Department of Justice. Instead of e-mailing the
documents to the reporter in Washington, Burke, who was in Arizona at
the time, e-mailed them to a friend of his in Washington, who then
printed out the documents and then delivered them to the reporter
personally,” Issa said in his May 3 memo. “These efforts successfully
kept Burke’s fingerprints off of the leak until he publicly admitted his
role more than two months after his August 2011 resignation as blame
for Fast and Furious spread.”
On
Aug. 18, 2011, House Oversight Committee staff interviewed Burke. They
asked him: “To your knowledge as the U.S. Attorney for the District of
Arizona, did the highest levels of the Department of Justice authorize
[the] non-interdiction of weapons, cutting off of surveillance, as an
investigative tactic in Operation Fast and Furious?”
Burke responded, “I have no knowledge of that.”
The committee also asked, “Did you ever authorize those tactics?”
Burke answered, “No.”
During
that same Aug. 18, 2011 interview, the committee staff asked Burke:
“And did anyone ever—from the Department of Justice, Main Justice I will
call it--ever tell you that you were authorized to allow weapons to
cross the border when you otherwise would have had a legal authority to
seize or interdict them because they were a suspected straw purchase or
it was suspected that they were being trafficked in a firearms scheme?”
Burke answered, “I have no recollection of ever being told that.”
Twelve
days after this interview, on Aug. 30, 2011, Burke resigned as U.S.
attorney. Burke’s assistant U.S. attorney, Emory Hurley, the lead
prosecutor in Operation Fast and Furious, also resigned, as did ATF
Director Melson.
During an Oct. 19, 2011 hearing of
the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley asked Burke's old
boss, Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano, “Have you had any
communications with Mr. Burke about Operation Fast and Furious?”
Napolitano said, “No.”
Grassley followed up: “So you then obviously didn’t talk to him, anything about Agent Terry's death?”
Napolitano said that after Agent Terry was
killed, “I went to Arizona a few days thereafter to meet with the FBI
agents and the assistant U.S. attorneys who were actually going to look
for the shooters. At that time, nobody had done the forensics on the
guns and ‘Fast and Furious’ was not mentioned. But I wanted to be sure
that those responsible for his death were brought to justice, and that
every DOJ resource was being brought to bear on that topic. So I did
have conversations in--it would have been December of '09 [actually
2010]--about the murder of Agent Terry. But at that point in time,
there, nobody knew about Fast and Furious.”
Dennis K. Burke, former U.S. Attorney for Arizona in charge of Operation Fast and Furious.
It
was not until Dec. 2, 2011 that the Justice Department withdrew its
Feb. 4, 2011 letter from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to
Grassley in which DOJ had denied that gun-walking had occurred.
The
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has subpoenaed about
100,000 documents from the Department of Justice. The department has
produced about 7,600 documents. The committee believes that is
insufficient.
Last
week, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted on a
resolution of contempt against Attorney General Holder for withholding
documents that the committee has subpoenaed.
Just
hours before the vote, on June 20, Deputy Attorney General James Cole
notified the committee that President Barack Obama was invoking
executive privilege to deny the committee access to the documents.
On
June 28, the full House of Representatives voted, 256-67, with 17
Democrats joining the Republican majority, to hold Attorney General Eric
Holder in contempt of Congress for refusing to release the documents
requested by the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
On ABC’s This Week,
on June 24, reporter Jake Tapper asked House Oversight and Government
Reform Chairman Issa: “You really think that there's a possibility that
they were sending guns across the border not because they were trying to
get people in the Mexican drug cartels, not because they were trying to
figure out drug--I mean, gun trafficking--but because they were trying
to push gun control?”
Rep.
Issa said: “Two things quickly. First of all, this was so flawed that
you can't believe they expected to actually get criminal prosecutions as
a result of it. So the level of flaw--flaw--flaw, if that's a word,
here is huge.”
“But
here's the real answer as to gun control," said Issa. "We have e-mails
from people involved in this that are talking about using what they're
finding here to support the--basically assault weapons ban or greater
reporting.”
“So
chicken or egg?" asked Issa. "We don't know which came first; we
probably never will. We do know that during this--this Fast and Furious
operation, there were e-mails in which they're saying we can use this as
part of additional reporting or things like assault weapons ban. So the
people involved saw the benefit of what--what they were gathering.
Whether or not that was their original purpose, we probably will never
know.
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