Operation Fast and Furious

A real U.S. government program deliberately let thousands of guns cross into Mexican drug cartel hands to track them — then lost track of most of them, and one turned up at the scene of a federal agent's murder.

Operation Fast and Furious was a real, documented ATF operation from 2009-2011 that allowed illegally purchased firearms to be transferred to Mexican drug cartel associates, intended to track the weapons to higher-level cartel figures. The operation lost track of most of the roughly 2,000 firearms involved, and two weapons connected to the program were found at the scene of the 2010 murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, triggering a major congressional investigation and scandal.

✓documented

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Quick facts

→Operation Fast and Furious was conducted by the ATF's Phoenix field office between 2009 and 2011, allowing licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to known or suspected illegal straw purchasers connected to Mexican drug cartels.
→The stated operational goal was tracking the weapons to higher-level cartel figures to build broader prosecution cases, but the ATF lost track of the majority of the estimated 2,000 firearms involved.
→Two weapons connected to the operation were recovered at the scene of the December 2010 murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, directly connecting the program's failure to a federal agent's death.
→A subsequent congressional investigation resulted in Attorney General Eric Holder being held in contempt of Congress in 2012 over the Department of Justice's handling of document requests related to the operation.

Entities on file

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Operation Fast and Furious (organization)

Real 2009-2011 ATF operation that lost track of firearms transferred to Mexican cartel associates; two recovered weapons were connected to Border Patrol agent Brian Terry's 2010 murder.

→ provided weapons recovered at the murder scene of → Brian Terry✓documented

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Brian Terry (person)

U.S. Border Patrol agent killed in December 2010; weapons connected to Operation Fast and Furious were recovered at the scene.

No outgoing connections on file.

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