'Fast and Furious' report slaps 14 at Justice, ATF

Report on Holder does not ask why he did not know anything.

From CNN.com -- More than a dozen Justice Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives officials faced punishment Wednesday after a long-awaited report on the botched gun probe known as "Operation Fast and Furious." That probe and a previous investigation were marked by "a series of misguided strategies, tactics, errors in judgment and management failures" that allowed hundreds of weapons to reach Mexican drug cartels, the Justice Department's independent inspector general concluded. Within minutes of the report's release, Justice announced rthat former acting ATF chief Kenneth Melson was retiring and another official, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, had resigned. Weinstein and Melson were among 14 people who "bore a share of responsibility for ATF's knowing failure in both these operations to interdict firearms illegally destined for Mexico, and for doing so without adequately taking into account the danger to public safety that flowed from this risky strategy," the report states. Weinstein failed to pass along key information about the flawed tactics being used in Fast and Furious, while Melson and other ATF officials didn't properly supervise the probe, the report states. The controversy fueled Republican accusations of a cover-up by the Obama administration and led to an unprecedented vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. The report found that Holder was not informed of the controversial ATF operation until 2011, after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed. In a written statement on the findings, Holder said the inspector-general's report upholds "what I, and other Justice Department officials, have said for many months now" -- that the tactics used pre-dated the Obama administration and that Justice Department leaders didn't try to hide the facts from lawmakers. Read more

'Fast and Furious' report slaps 14 at Justice, ATF