ATF Did Not Intentionally Allow Guns Into Mexico

The shorthand version of the Fast and Furious scandal goes something like this: ATF agents purposely allowed illegal guns to get into Mexico, then lost track of them, leading to horrific results. But a six-month investigation by Katherine Eban of Fortune magazine comes to a surprising conclusion: That so-called "gunwalking" strategy never existed. "Quite simply, there's a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal," she writes.

"Five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn." How the story morphed into its current version is the result of "distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies." Read the full Fortune piece here. At the National Review, Robert VerBruggen is skeptical about some of the conclusions. (More Eric Holder stories.)