2009
October 26. Department of Justice officials meet to discuss the problem of mounting violence in Mexico. They decide to change strategy, aiming to eliminate gun-trafficking pipelines. There is no mention of “gunwalking” during the meeting.
November. The operation is launched. It is designed and run by the ATF Phoenix field office.
In a gunwalking operation, guns bought by straw purchasers, individuals in America with clean records, for drug cartels are allowed to “walk” across the border into Mexico, instead of being seized by ATF agents.
The stated aim is for ATF agents to follow the paths of guns from straw purchasers through middlemen and into the hierarchy of the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel. The tracked weapons are to be used as evidence to pin larger crimes against the cartel as they work to break it up or at least eliminate the gun-trafficking routes. According to whistleblowers and investigators, however, agents never made the attempt to actually trace the guns.
2010
January. Agents with the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, a multi-agency network run by the Justice Department, are brought in to help. The manpower includes investigators from the Homeland Security Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The operation is soon named “Fast and Furious” by field agents because some suspects operate out of an auto-repair shop and street-race.
March. Some ATF agents are concerned that weapons distributed through gunwalking might be used for crimes in Mexico or even the United States.
October. The brother of the former state attorney general of Chihuahua, Mexico, is killed. The ATF learns that Fast and Furious weapons were found at the scene.
December 14. U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry is killed in a firefight while on patrol. The ATF would determine that two of the guns involved in the shooting came from Fast and Furious. The operation continues another six weeks.
Soon after Terry’s death, ATF agents speak with Senator Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to seek his help in stopping the operation.
