Is there a CIA Angle to Operation Fast and Furious?

The ATF program that allowed guns to 'walk' into Mexico was ill-conceived at best and nefarious at worst. At this point, that is not in dispute. There is no way that putting guns in the hands of Mexican drug cartels could have ended well. Aside from needing to find out who authorized the operation at the highest levels of the Department of Justice, we still need to learn what the motive was. As the scandal has been playing out, it's looking increasingly like a gun control agenda may have been responsible. The ATF has already started cracking down on responsible gun store owners despite that same ATF instructing gun store owners to sell the weapons to straw purchasers.

There is now another theory being put forward. Did the CIA intentionally put guns in the hands of one cartel so it could fight a more powerful cartel?

Via the Washington Times:

According to a CIA insider, the agency had a strong hand in creating, orchestrating and exploiting Operation Fast and Furious.

The CIA’s motive is clear enough: The U.S. government is afraid the Los Zetas drug cartel will mount a successful coup d’etat against the government of Felipe Calderon.

Founded by ex-Mexican special forces, the Zetas already control huge swaths of Mexican territory. They have the organization, arms and money needed to take over the entire country.

Former CIA pilot Robert Plumlee and former CIA operative and DEA Director Phil Jordan recently said the brutally efficient Mexican drug cartel has stockpiled thousands of weapons to disrupt and influence Mexico’s national elections in 2012. There’s a very real chance the Zetas cartel could subvert the political process completely, as it has throughout the regions it controls.

In an effort to prevent a Los Zetas takeover, Uncle Sam has gotten into bed with the rival Sinaloa cartel, which has close ties to the Mexican military. Recent court filings by former Sinaloa cartel member Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, currently in U.S. custody, reveal that the United States allowed the Sinaloas to fly a 747 cargo plane packed with cocaine into American airspace - unmolested.

The CIA made sure the trade wasn’t one-way. It persuaded the ATF to create Operation Fast and Furious - a “no strings attached” variation of the agency’s previous firearms sting. By design, the ATF operation armed the Mexican government’s preferred cartel on the street level near the American border, where the Zetas are most active.

Though this is a very interesting new angle, if true, I find it hard to believe it was the only motivation for the operation. The gun control agenda just seems to make the most sense. In that, this new find would only compound the problems for the administration.

If the CIA put guns in the hands of the Sinaloa cartel so it could fight the more powerful Los Zetas cartel, it might explain why neither the ATF agents in Mexico nor the Mexican government was made aware of the operation. Still, whatever the CIA was doing in this regard, the other motives are still on the table.

To be sure, Operation Fast and Furious suited the ATF’s needs. It was all too willing to let guns walk to increase its power, prestige and budget in Washington. It actively recruited so-called straw purchasers and happily used American gun dealers as pawns. And it was only one agency in a mosaic of federal agencies helping the CIA actualize its covert plans.

The fact that Operation Fast and Furious was part of the CIA’s black-bag job in Mexico does not excuse the ATF for violating the very federal laws it was created to enforce; for contributing to the deaths of hundreds of innocent citizens, including a Border Patrol agent trying to live up to his oath; or for being unrepentant, uncooperative and unresponsive to the wishes of the American people for honesty, integrity and loyalty to the U.S. Constitution.

This operation increasingly looks to have been an extremely comprehensive plan that involved several agencies in addition to the ATF: The DEA, IRS, ICE, DOJ, and now apparently the CIA.

These realities only seem to point even more to the White House.

Read it all.