The federal agents who visited Scott Taylor’s rural Pennsylvania gun shop in early January 2010 — to conduct the store’s first inspection in more than three decades — found thousands of violations of firearm sales laws.

Taylor couldn’t properly account for more than 3,000 guns he had bought or sold during the previous three years, according to agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. These and other violations led ATF to revoke his license to sell guns in November 2011. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Far from it.

Taylor blamed the infractions on his poor health and a computer crash that wiped out his business records. The gun shop, located in the basement of his Biglerville, Pa., home, remains open 14 months later while Taylor appeals the ATF action in federal court. Taylor had no comment. His lawyer, Scott L. Braum, said the violations have been corrected and “no rational person would expect them to reoccur in the future.”

A controversial process

The ATF case against Taylor’s Trading Post — one of a dozen reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity — offers a rare look inside the federal government’s contentious and, some critics say, weak-kneed, procedure for policing gun dealers nationwide.

Some dealers don’t see an ATF inspector for eight years or more. By law, ATF can inspect dealers once a year only and may revoke a license only when it believes the dealer “willfully” violated gun control laws. Some revoked dealers have handed their business off to a relative, or stayed open while their cases lumbered through the courts. Others have converted their inventory to a “personal” collection, which they can then sell without doing background checks of prospective buyers.

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday held Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal contempt of Congress for failing to provide documents related to a failed gun-tracking operation. It is the first time a sitting Cabinet member has been held in contempt.

The vote was 255-67, with more than 100 Democrats boycotting. They said the contempt resolution was a political stunt.

African-American lawmakers led the walkout as members filed up the aisle and out of the chamber to protest the action against Holder, who is the nation's first black attorney general. Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California joined the boycott, saying Republicans had gone "over the edge" in their partisanship.

Seventeen Democrats voted with Republicans in favor of the contempt vote, while two Republicans — Reps. Scott Rigell of Virginia and Steven LaTourette of Ohio — joined other Democrats in voting No.

The National Rifle Association pressed hard for the contempt resolution, leaning on members of both parties who want to stay in the NRA's good graces. Attorney General Eric Holder said afterward the vote was merely a politically motivated act in an election year

Republicans cited Holder's refusal to hand over — without any preconditions — documents that could explain why the Obama administration initially denied that a risky "gun-walking" investigative tactic was used in Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed hundreds of guns to be smuggled from Arizona to Mexico.

The vote on a criminal contempt resolution sent the matter to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who is under Holder. A separate vote on civil contempt will allow the House to go to court in an effort to force Holder to turn over the documents.

In past cases, courts have been reluctant to settle disputes between the executive and legislative branches of government.

The now-infamous Fast and Furious gun trafficking probe is returning to center stage as part of an “only in Washington” passion play — a fight over executive privilege. But the breathless showdown expected today on the floor of the House — and the accompanying rhetoric — obscures some important context about the botched investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has been investigating Fast and Furious for months. The Justice Department has given the panel 7,600 documents on the case, but Issa and his investigators want other documents they believe to be crucial. President Obama, however, has countered by asserting executive privilege over some of the material. And so the House will likely vote on a contempt of Congress recommendation against Attorney General Eric Holder. No sitting attorney general has ever faced a contempt vote.

Against that backdrop, a standard narrative has emerged about Fast and Furious, describing the operation as a seemingly ludicrous effort that allowed hundreds of firearms to “walk” to the Mexican drug cartels by way of so-called straw purchasers.

Indeed, there is much about Fast and Furious to question — but it’s simplistic to view the probe in isolation. A look behind the curtain reveals a more complex back story — a story about a rudderless, under-staffed agency responding to Justice Department pressure, while dealing with inadequate laws, paltry sentences and disinterested U.S. Attorneys.

Much of that context was detailed by the Center for Public Integrity during the early days of the Fast and Furious scandal, and it’s still both relevant and illuminating today.

We invite you to read our earlier piece.  

Attorney General Eric Holder and a House chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, have squared off over the Justice Department's flawed gun-smuggling probe.

Issa, R-Calif., is demanding the department turn over documents about how it handled congressional inquiries after problems with Operation Fast and Furious came to light.

At the start of Thursday's hearing, Issa said the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will do what is necessary to force the Justice Department to produce the information.

The attorney general says he will consider Issa's demand.

Issa has threatened a contempt of Congress ruling against Holder for failing to turn over the congressionally subpoenaed documents. The lawmaker alleges the Justice Department is engaging in a cover-up.

The Justice Department on Wednesday rejected an assertion by a House committee chairman that top Justice officials are covering up events surrounding a flawed gun-smuggling probe, Operation Fast and Furious.

Rep. Issa made the accusation in a letter threatening to seek a contempt of Congress ruling against Attorney General Eric Holder for failing to turn over congressionally subpoenaed documents that were created after problems with Fast and Furious came to light.

In Fast and Furious, agents lost track of about 1,400 weapons they were tracking after they were sold to low-level straw purchasers believed to be supplying Mexican drug gangs and other criminals. Another 700 firearms connected to suspects in the investigation have been recovered, some from crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S., including a murder scene in Nogales, Ariz., where border agent Brian Terry was slain.

Attorney General Eric Holder faced sharp questions from congressional Republicans Tuesday about a controversial gun-trafficking case that was the subject of an iWatch News investigation this spring. But Holder firmly rebuffed requests to oust a Justice Department official involved in overseeing the case.

The venue for these pointed exchanges was a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about “Operation Fast and Furious,” an ill-conceived anti-gun-trafficking probe conducted by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The gun investigation allowed thousands of weapons to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

As the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News reported in March, federal prosecutors and the ATF permitted some 2,000 guns to be purchased and retained by suspected “straw” buyers with the expectation they might cross the border and even be used in crimes while the case was being built. The bureau had previously been criticized for focusing on lowly straw buyers rather than high-level traffickers.

ATF officials were hoping to follow the guns in hopes of making cases against higher-level traffickers. The decision was met by strong objections from some front-line agents who feared they were allowing military-style weapons to “walk” into the hands of drug lords and gun runners, internal agency memos show.

As the United States commemorated the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, terrorism experts stepped up warnings that authorities must look beyond the usual sources of terror, to the lone wolves stirring with anger and seeking out big-impact weapons.

Isolated and underestimated, lone wolves might go unnoticed even as they try to get chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons – collectively known as CBRN – that can spread terror and spark psychological chaos.

Anders Breivik is the latest of the lone wolves and a point of concern among terrorism experts. His devastating attack in Norway in July spurred researchers to mine his 1,500-page treatise in search of evidence that unconventional, free-agent terrorists may now have greater potential to inflict damage and ignite panic.

Breivik’s manifesto was more than just the ramblings of a lone nut.

“Dismissing Breivik’s “[weapons of mass destruction] idea” as unrealistic is dangerous and overlooks important nuances that give his warnings about greater weapons added validity. Moreover, his writings might spur other extremists, according to a little-noticed report from the Washington, D.C.-based Federation of American Scientists.

Acknowledging the threat

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, in an interview on ABC News last week, said one of the biggest challenges she had seen as DHS secretary, “is movement toward the home-grown violent extremist. The person who, for whatever reason, decides to attack his fellow citizens,

She warned citizens to be vigilant of “the lone actor that we may not know about, who may already be in the United States and so it requires us to be vigilant and the public be vigilant.”

The fallout from a controversial federal probe that allowed weapons to be smuggled into Mexico dramatically intensified Tuesday with the reassignment of the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the resignation of the Phoenix U.S. attorney who oversaw the operation.

Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson, who himself criticized the so-called Fast and Furious investigation for allowing so many weapons to cross the border, will take a less visible job, as senior adviser on forensic science policy issues at the Justice Department.

There was no word on the future of Dennis Burke, who resigned suddenly as U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona. In addition, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley, who worked on the case, was reportedly reassigned within the Phoenix federal prosecutor’s office.

Melson will be replaced as acting ATF director by B. Todd Jones, the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota and the chair of the Attorney General Advisory Committee, which counsels Attorney General Eric Holder on policy, management and operational issues. Jones will continue to serve as a U.S. Attorney even after he becomes the ATF acting director on Wednesday, the Justice Department said.

Melson, a former U.S. attorney and Justice Department official, took over as acting director in April 2009.

The Fast and Furious operation has been the source of turmoil since it was revealed earlier this year that ATF agents spent 15 months watching men suspected of working for a Mexican drug cartel buy firearms at Arizona gun shops without making arrests. The suspects bought nearly 2,000 firearms, approximately 200 of which were later recovered from crime scenes in Mexico.

The Coast Guard’s chronic overspending and mismanagement of its Deepwater fleet modernization program mean that it’s time for Congress to withhold funding unless the service submits prompt quarterly reports assessing the risks of all its major projects, the Government Accountability Office says.

The Deepwater project to build new ships and aircraft could wind up $5 billion over its $24.2 billion baseline budget, but that may be only the tip of the iceberg, the GAO said. That’s because the Coast Guard has yet to revise its cost estimate for a new offshore patrol cutter, and to incorporate extra costs and schedule changes.  A $24.2 billion cost baseline set in 2007 for Deepwater is “no longer… achievable“ and the reliability of cost estimates is in question, the report said.

“Congress should consider enacting a permanent statutory provision that requires the Coast Guard to submit a quarterly report within 15 days of the start of each fiscal quarter on all major Coast Guard acquisition projects and require the report to rank for each project the top five risks,” the GAO said. To ensure timely reports, Congress could withhold the Coast Guard’s acquisition budget until “after the 15th day of any quarter of any fiscal year until the report is submitted.”

In 2007, the Coast Guard took back managing the Deepwater project from Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, saying it had relied too heavily on contractors to do the work of the government. The Coast Guard then set a $24.2 billion cost baseline, which an earlier GAO study found was exceeded by $3.8 billion as of last year.

Republicans sought to move blame for the botched Fast and Furious gun smuggling sting from the Mexican border all the way back up to the White House in a contentious House hearing Tuesday.

While GOP lawmakers were largely unable to get six agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to name names, the House investigators did manage to produce an email linking the ATF's troubled Phoenix field division to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. William Newell, the former ATF special- agent-in-charge of the Phoenix office who helped concoct the Fast and Furious plan, sent an email to Kevin O’Reilly, a long-time friend of his in the White House, detailing his office's plans for explaining ATF's broader border enforcement efforts to the press. O'Reilly was until recently director of North American affairs for the National Security Council. 

“You didn’t get these from me…” Newell wrote on the morning of September 3, 2010. He then went on to explain to O’Reilly the two internal media briefing documents he’d attached about the ATF's border enforcement strategy, known as Gun Runner. By this time the Fast and Furious investigation had already allowed more than a thousand guns to be bought by suspected straw buyers for the Sinoloa Mexican drug cartel.

GOP members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and a staff report released by the panel tried to tie Fast and Furious not only to the White House and ATF leaders, but also to Justice Department executives. The report said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer was "clearly" aware of Fast and Furious months before it became public. A Justice Department spokeswoman, however, said details of the investigation were unknown to senior Justice officials.