Doug Book, FloydReports.com

Several months ago, Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Charles Grassley began an investigation of Project Gunrunner, the disgraceful ATF program of deliberately “walking” guns across the southern border and into the waiting hands of Mexican drug cartel members.

The senator was alerted by ATF whistleblowers, who became fed up after weapons traced to the Project were found at the scene of the December 2010 killing of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

And how has Acting ATF Director, Kenneth Melson, a vehement gun-grabber, answered Senator Grassley’s requests for information about Project Gunrunner? He has informed agents that they “are in no way obligated to respond” to questions from Congress.

In an e-mail to ATF Deputy Director Billy Hoover acquired through an FOIA request, Grassley discovered that agents were also told to “refer congressional staff who seek information…to the ATF’s office of Congressional Affairs” as agents are, after all, “not authorized to disclose non-public information.”

In an April 8th letter to Melson, Senator Grassley made it quite clear that no one at the ATF “may attempt to prohibit or prevent ‘any other officer or employee of the Federal Government from having…communication…with any Member [or] committee…of the Congress.’”

Thus, any retaliation against agents who assisted the Grassley investigation must stop immediately, under threat of legal action.

But further along in the Grassley letter comes the bit which had to make Melson hit the speed dial to Eric Holder. “George Gillette, through and in conjunction with his legal counsel, is cooperating with this investigation.”

As Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix ATF field office, Gillette ran the Arizona portion of Project Gunrunner….

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