Mexico Demands Answers Over “Fast and Furious”

Here's more, from the NY Post:

Mexico’s foreign minister announced in a video posted on Twitter that he sent a note to the US Embassy asking for answers about an ill-fated gun-running scheme dubbed “Fast and Furious” during the Obama administration, according to a report.

“The [Mexican] government requests that it be provided with all the information available regarding the ‘Fast and Furious’ operation,” Marcelo Ebrard said, Reuters reported.

He cited former US Attorney General Eric Holder as saying Mexican authorities knew about the 2009-2011 scheme, which allowed people to buy arms illegally in the US and take them to Mexico, so they could be tracked to drug cartel bosses and lead law enforcement there.

The scheme hoped to limit gun smuggling across the border.

A review of the operation found that only 710 out of about 2,000 firearms were recovered as of February 2012, according to the Office of the Inspector General.

In 2011, Holder – who was the attorney general between 2009 and 2015 — had requested the OIG to conduct a review of the operation.

Last week, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his government would send a note to Washington for information on the operation, as his regime digs for possible corruption under previous administrations.

It was the first time Ebrard or Obrador made direct reference by name to a key US official connected to the program since the matter resurfaced in Mexico a week ago.

Reuters has more to report:

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his government would send a diplomatic note to Washington for information on the 2009-2011 operation known as ‘Fast and Furious,’ a topic that has resurfaced in recent days amid a debate over historic U.S.-Mexico cooperation on security and possible corruption under previous administrations. 

Setting out to stop cross-border gun smuggling, the U.S. scheme allowed people to illegally buy arms in the United States and take them to Mexico so that the weapons could be tracked and lead law enforcement officials to drug cartel bosses. Some weapons were later blamed for gangland slayings in Mexico. 

“How could this be? A government that invades in this way, that flagrantly violates sovereignty, international laws,” Lopez Obrador said at his daily news conference. 

To avoid a repeat, the matter needed to be cleared up, said Lopez Obrador, who noted that President Donald Trump had last year been “respectful” to Mexico in discussions over joint co-operation following two major security incidents. 

Mexican politicians are still arguing over how much its government knew about ‘Fast and Furious’ at the time. 

Lopez Obrador brought up the gun-running scheme on Monday when discussing the case of Genaro Garcia Luna, Mexico’s security minister from 2006-12, who was arrested in the United States in December and charged with drug-trafficking offenses. As security minister, Garcia Luna had spearheaded a crackdown on drug gangs, launched under former President Felipe Calderon. 

Roberta Jacobson, a former American ambassador to Mexico appointed under U.S. President Barack Obama, had suggested both governments knew about possible corruption by Garcia Luna in an interview with Mexican magazine Proceso published at the weekend. 

Lopez Obrador has used the arrest of Garcia Luna to argue that corruption was rampant in past Mexican governments.