The Brian Terry Exception

Quick turnaround in federal probes absent in shameful murder case
By Robert J. Nieves, Friday, July 6, 2012

Anyone who has spent time in Washington knows government runs on process. There is a procedurefor everything, and this is especially true in federal law enforcement, where lives are at risk every day. I should know, I spent most of my adult life as an agent with Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

As chief of major investigations in the 1990s, I managed DEA's highly sensitive undercover operationstargeting the Medellin and Cali cartels.

We routinely coordinated with our colleagues in theDepartment of Justice (DOJ) and enjoyed great success. Agent safety always was paramount in our discussions, and we were successful, in large part, because we followed procedures for the review of sensitive undercover operations.

Before commencing a sensitive operation, the field office had to prepare an operations plan detailing
the activities it intended to pursue and the goals of the operation. Once the op plan was received, it was
vetted in DEA headquarters to include coordination with any foreign office impacted by the proposal,
the U.S. Embassy and host-nation counterparts. After vetting, the plan would be presented to Justice for
approval, which included a meeting attended by the field managers, the U.S. Attorney's Office, DEA
headquarters and a deputy assistant attorney general from the Justice Department's Criminal Division.

This careful and tedious review and approval process was carried out by the Sensitive Activities
Review Committee (SARC). Only after a successful SARC review would the DEA administrator and the
deputy assistant attorney general from the Criminal Division authorize and approve the operation.  If
an operation was particularly sensitive, the approval process would rise to the level of the attorney
general.

I am aware that the FBI has a similar review committee for sensitive undercover operations.
Wouldn't the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a Justice law enforcement
bureau, have similar procedures for obtaining approval for sensitive undercover operations like
Operation Fast and Furious? It defies logic to assume that the Department of Justice would give ATF a
pass on the review-committee process in a matter as serious as allowing automatic weapons to be
delivered to Mexican drug-smuggling cartels.

Equally illogical is the behavior of the  department's "independent" inspector general (IG). He has had
the Fast and Furious case for 14 months but hasn't issued a report of initial findings. At one point in my
career, I was an inspector in DEA's Office of Professional Responsibility. This office is similar in many
relevant respects to that of Justice's inspector general. I have never heard of any case that took 14
months for a report on initial findings to be issued.

Why is the Fast and Furious case taking so long? Is the IG incompetent, or is he being told to delay the
issuance of his report? Either way, the family of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry loses. His parents are
being denied access to the facts surrounding the death of their son, who was killed with one of the Fast
and Furious weapons. To put this in perspective, the FBI issued its first report on the Kennedy
assassination, one of the most complex and controversial cases in U.S. history, just 17 days after the
event.

We recently learned about Secret Service agents consorting with prostitutes in Colombia. During a
nationally televised TV appearance, President Obama called the agents who partied with the
prostitutes "knuckleheads." Mr. Obama told Jimmy Fallon: "What these guys were thinking, I don't
know. That's why they're not there anymore," a reference to the fact that a mere two weeks after the
event, two agents had been fired and several others had been removed from their positions.

What about the Justice and ATF knuckleheads who approved Fast and Furious?  What were they
thinking? Have any of them lost their jobs? More than 18 months have passed, and no one at Justice or
ATF who approved this fiasco has been fired - and this case doesn't involve Colombian prostitutes.
This is a case where one of their own, Terry, a federal agent, was killed by weapons provided by ATF -
a tragic case of "friendly" fire by proxy.

One of my bosses at DEA once told me, "Bad news is not fine wine; it does not get better with age." He
couldn't have been more correct. If there is bad news at Justice or in the IG's reports, better to air it now.
Otherwise, everyone will wonder if the information being hidden is another of Washington's
"inconvenient truths."

Now that the president has placed the mantle of executive privilege over the Justice reports, the Terry
family and the families of countless numbers of murdered Mexican citizens may have to wait decades
to know the truth.

There is something very, very wrong with the way the Terry case is being handled. Take that as gospel
from a former fed who wants nothing but the truth to come out so federal agents everywhere can learn
from mistakes made and know the Department of Justice still has their backs. But even more important,
Justice needs to come clean so the Terrys can know exactly what happened to their son.

A few months ago, Mr. Obama commented on the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, saying, "You know if
I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon." Then he added a statement that made me think of my own
children: "You know, I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this
with the seriousness it deserves, and we are going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened."

It's a shame our president doesn't feel the same way about Brian Terry. I have a daughter and two sons.
One of my sons is a federal agent. He looks a lot like Brian Terry.

Robert J. Nieves is a partner in the firm BERG Associates. He retired from DEA in 1995 as the chief of
international operations.

The Outrage Piles On

In the Are You Kidding Me Catagory
President Barack Obama says his biggest mistake since getting to the White House three and a half years ago has been his tendency to tackle the job as national policy issue rather than continuation of the inspiration he brought out in the 2008 campaign. What?!?!? Obama say's: ".........the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times." Mitt Romney said it best when he said: "Being president is not about telling stories. Being president is about leading, and President Obama has failed to lead." Well, you can't lead from a golf course nor while on expensive tax payer funded vacations.

16,000 New IRS agents to enforce Obamacare
Why in the world would Obama need to hire 16,000 more IRS agents to enforce a law that is supposed to be good for us? The truth is simply because the law is an anchor around the collective necks of American citizens and small businesses. People are going to revolt. If Obama gets re-elected, after 4 more years of his marxist-socialist bent policies and usurpations of the Constitution and massive over reach of executive power, one of two things wil happen: 1 - The American people will be s pissed that the election of any Democrats in the new two decades will be impossible, or, 2 - this Country will be no more.

Small Businesses should thank the Government for their Success.
In Roanoke, VA this past Friday, Obama declares small businesses shoud be thanking the government for their successes since "you didn't build it, someone else did". WHAT?!?! His class warfare rethoric picks up speed, pulling the entitlement chain on people and rallying the Democrat base who are the people who demand everyone else pay for them. The problem is that under Obama these people have grown to a large amount of the American population.

Obama touting Jobs Created. Obama and some of this administration flunkies were talking about the 80,000 jobs created in the past month. With 23 million Americans out of work and the real unemployment rate at around 18%, these numbers are dismal. What they don't want you to know is that 30% of these jobs are temp jobs without benefits! And around 25% of all the jobs created since 2008 are Government jobs,.....and remember these government jobs do not create any product or commodity.

Obama Taken to School by Navy Vet

This venerable and much honored WW II vet is well known in Hawaii for his seventy-plus years of service to patriotic organizations and causes all over the country. A humble man without a political bone in his body, he has never spoken out before about a government official, until now. He dictated this letter to a friend, signed it and mailed it to the president we believe sometime in October 2009.




Dear President Obama,

My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year. People meeting me for the first time don't believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert. I enlisted in the U. S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos'n Mate.

Now I live in a "rest home" located on the western end of Pearl Harbor , allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country. One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direct even to the head man.

So here goes. I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do, but you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish. I can't figure out what country you are the president of. You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies like: " We're no longer a Christian nation" " America is arrogant" - (Your wife even announced to the world," America is mean- spirited. " Please tell her to try preaching that nonsense to 23 generations of our war dead buried all over the globe who died for no other reason than to free a whole lot of strangers from tyranny and hopelessness.)

I'd say shame on the both of you, but I don't think you like America, nor do I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do, for the obvious gifts this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House. After 9/11 you said," America hasn't lived up to her ideals." Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000 farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British? Or maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man, that 500,000 men died for in the Civil War? I hope you didn't mean the ideal 470,000 fathers, brothers, husbands, and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for in WWII, because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us around, because we stand for freedom.

I don't think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than discrimination. You know the one that a whole lot of white people understood when they helped to get you elected. Take a little advice from a very old geezer, young man. Shape up and start acting like an American. If you don't, I'll do what I can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue .

You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their people like slaves. And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more. You mean you don't want us to do what you did when that white cop used force to subdue that black college professor in Massachusetts , who was putting up a fight?

You don't mind offending the police calling them stupid but you don't want us to offend Muslim fanatics by calling them what they are, terrorists. One more thing. I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life, but you're the Commander-in-Chief now, son. Do your job. When your battle-hardened field General asks you for 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him. But if you're not in this fight to win, then get out.

The life of one American soldier is not worth the best political strategy you're thinking of. You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge ever presented to any president. You're not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated economy. That's not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who we are as Americans is our big fight now. And I sure as hell don't want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle...

Sincerely, Harold B. Estes