What's The Truth About Fast And Furious?

Fortune:

Quite simply, there's a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.
Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time.
How Fast and Furious reached the headlines is a strange and unsettling saga, one that reveals a lot about politics and media today. It's a story that starts with a grudge, specifically Dodson's anger at Voth. After the terrible murder of agent Terry, Dodson made complaints that were then amplified, first by right-wing bloggers, then by CBS. Rep. Issa and other politicians then seized those elements to score points against the Obama administration, which, for its part, has capitulated in an apparent effort to avoid a rhetorical battle over gun control in the run-up to the presidential election. (A Justice Department spokesperson denies this and asserts that the department is not drawing conclusions until the inspector general's report is submitted.)

Unfortunately, I am not surprised that this case may have been so grossly mischaracterized, but yet, it is still amazing.  My first rule of politics is to never believe what Fox News is reporting until you come across actual facts which say the same thing.  That tends to be an accurate way to get through life.  And the idea that NRA bullshit is what leads to this is totally unsurprising.  Also not a shock-Arizona is a total wingnut crazy place.

However, when my friend asked me last weekend what I thought about Fast and Furious, I assumed the storyline was accurate, and I said that the Justice Department has been mismanaged for years and years and is too political.  I still think that is true, but this story, if accurate, manages to put Republicans in a worse light than normal.  Anymore, that is getting to be a really tough thing to do.