CNN 2012-07-03

 To begin tonight's <Keeping the Modest>, with stunning 1 last minute developments in the Fast and Furious story. Just hours away from tomorrow's house vote on whether to cite Attorney General Eric Holder 2 for contempt of congress, a heavily researched story suggest that the scandal at the center of tomorrow's vote may not be a scandal at all or at least not the scandal we’ve been led to believe it is. Here's what we thought we knew about the ATF operation known as Fast and Furious. So-called straw buyers for Mexican drug cartels were allowed to buy guns in the southwest. Then those guns, thousands of them, were allowed to walk or be smuggled 3 into Mexico with an eye toward

tracing their way through the cartels. Instead, as we, the house oversight 4 committee another news organization, were led to believe, the ATF lost track of those weapons. Some made it back into the country, two were found at the scene where border agent Bryan Terry was gunned down. That was the story as we and nearly everyone thought we knew. Now tonight though, after six months of reporting, Fortune Magazine's Katherine Eban reveals a very different Fast and Furious. The bottom line, letting guns walk was not, I repeat, not part of the plan. She writes five law-enforcement agents directly involved in the Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic 5. She goes on to say they insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite, they say they seized weapons whatever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors 6 and weak laws which stymied 7 them at every turn. The house oversight committee is slamming the story we'll get to that in just a moment. However, committee chairman Darrel Issa declined to come on this program to elaborate. Committee member John xxxx joined us in just a little bit. 
 
A: Fortune contributor Katherine Eban joins us now. It's nice to see you. The premise 8 of your article is that there was no gun walking in Fast and Furious, which completely contradicts really the central arguments that we've seen in the political sphere now for months. 
 
 
B: That’s right. After six months of investigation 9 what became clear to me is that the thing is that Congress was holding up as centerpieces of proof that guns had been walked were in fact misconstrued, incorrect, resulted from other motives 10, other reasons, that there were alternate explanations, and that really this was a case of cherry picking, of you know, small phrases, sentences, without any of the context really that you need in order to understand what actually happened in Phoenix 11 groups 7. 
 
 
A: So why back in November of 2011 would the attorney general Eric Holder say that in fact the tactic happened and it was unacceptable. Let me play it a little bit. 
 
 
Attorney General：Instance of so called gun walking is simply unacceptable, regrettably this tactic was used as a part of fast and furious which was launched to combat gun trafficking and violence on our southwest border. 
 
 
A: It's that very testimony 12 that many people of course have connected to and said he's admitting gun walking in fast and furious. In fact what he's saying there under oath completely contradicts what's in your article. 
 
 
B: Right, well this is where we get to a very murky 13 point because the letter that the justice department ended up retracting 14 was a letter which said ATF always attempts to interdict 15 weapons. Well that wasn't the case in the John Dodson's investigation. 
 
 
A: Why has no one in the department of Justice said in Fast and Furious there was no gun walking. Period. End of the story. That's what the article says. But they have not said that, why not?
 
 
B: I don't know exactly why. One sense is that you know when a scandal first broken, Congress made these allegations. The justice department went to other political folks to ask what happened. They never went to Dave Voth, the group supervisor 16, and said “set us down and tell us what exactly happened”. In fact he was never even questioned of even any detailed 17 by ATF. And to this day has not been. So there's a sense that the justice department immediately wanted to deal with the potential political repercussions 18 without necessary grappling with the substantive 19 question of what actually happened. Now I think they would say that they have turned to the inspector 20 general to do a thorough investigation. And they are withholding 21 judgement pending 22 that review. But in fact I think anyone watching Eric Holder testifying would conclude that he believes that that guns were walked. 
 
 
A: The focus now of course as we look at the contempt hearings for the attorney general, the question is why not turn over the documents. Mean that has become kind of a central question in your research. Can you answer that question?
 
 
B: I can't answer that question because I don't know what's exactly in those documents. But what's interesting is that those documents are not about the substance of what occurred in Phoenix. Those documents are about the internal deliberations within the justice department about how to respond to the congressional inquiry 23.