Yahoo Reports: Congressional Republicans grilled Attorney General Eric Holder Thursday over a botched gun-smuggling sting in Mexico, with one lawmaker comparing Holder to Nixon-era Attorney General John Mitchell and another saying “heads should roll.”
“I have no intention of resigning,” said Holder, who has headed the Justice Department since early 2009.
“I’m the attorney general who put an end to these misguided tactics,” he said, defending his handling of an episode that has become an embarrassment for the Obama administration.
The 2009-2010 sting, dubbed “Fast and Furious,” involved selling weapons to “straw buyers” and then tracking them as they made their way south of the border to violent Mexican drug cartels, with the goal of finding top cartel leaders.
But federal agents rarely pursued the weapons as planned. An estimated 2,000 guns went missing. Several hundred have been recovered, while many have been found at crime scenes on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Obama has shown no signs of moving to sack Holder or his subordinates. Republicans eager to score political points against the White House have been investigating for months.
“Some heads should roll,” Republican Representative Jim Sensenbrenner said at an occasionally combative hearing before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.
Republican Representative Darrell Issa said “Fast and Furious” was “failed and flawed from the beginning.”
He pressed Holder on why Justice Department documents given to investigators about Fast and Furious have included no e-mails from Holder.
“Don’t you think it’s a little conspicuous?” he asked.
Holder said the department’s response to investigators’ inquiries has been “unprecedented” and “responsive.”
