Operation Fast and Furious/Issa memo

About
Darrell Issa issued a 44-page memorandum on 2012-05-03 with the subject "Update on Operation Fast and Furious". It is referred to in at least one other document as "Memorandum from Chairman Darrell Issa to Members of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform".

"take them down"
This memorandum is currently the closest thing to a source for the "" allegation:

One confidential witness told Congress that he overheard Scot Thomasson, chief ATF spokesman, say early on in the congressional inquiry into Fast and Furious: “We need to get whatever dirt we can on these guys [the whistleblowers] and take them down.”

This would seem to indicate that the testimony took place in a hearing to which there were other witnesses, and possibly under oath -- but since the testimony was "confidential" and no date is given, tracking it down may be quite difficult.

Dodson documents
Another allegation which has been repeated elsewhere is given thusly in the memo (links added):

On 2011-06-29, a reporter asked the Committee to comment on documents he had received related to Agent John Dodson during the time period when Fast and Furious occurred. The Department of Justice had yet to provide these documents to the Committee pursuant to the 2011-03-31, subpoena of ATF, but had apparently provided them to a reporter in an attempt to undermine Dodson’s credibility. The Committee worked with the reporter and his news organization to examine the claims the documents purportedly supported and made the argument that the documents were part of an underhanded strategy to smear a whistleblower. The news organization eventually decided against running the story.

Congressional investigators later determined that the individual who was behind the leaked documents was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, Dennis Burke – the Obama Administration political appointee who led the office in charge of Operation Fast and Furious. Burke later testified that the reporter contacted him, and that he believed the reporter had already seen the documents or had them read to him from someone else in the Department of Justice. Instead of e-mailing the documents to the reporter in Washington, Burke, who was in Arizona at the time, e-mailed them to a friend of his in Washington, who then printed out the documents and then delivered them to the reporter personally. These efforts successfully kept Burke’s fingerprints off of the leak until he publicly admitted his role more than two months after his August 2011 resignation as blame for Fast and Furious spread.

In other words,
 * a news organization received some documents regarding Agent John Dodson
 * the Committee had not yet received these documents
 * the Committee alleged that the documents were "leaked" in an attempt to undermine Dodson
 * Congressional investigators later determined that the leak came from Dennis Burke, in charge of F&F
 * Burke later testified, after resigning:
 * that the reporter had contacted him
 * that he believed the reporter was already aware of the contents of the documents
 * Burke had a friend deliver them to the reporter

The seems to confirm the allegations about Burke: on August 11, 2011, the OIG initiated an investigation of an allegation that a Department employee provided to a member of the media a copy of a May 2010 undercover operation proposal drafted by ATF Special Agent John Dodson. Burke subsequently admitted to the OIG that he provided the memorandum to a reporter at the reporter’s request.

Footnote #323 in the report adds a bit more: Burke resigned as U.S. Attorney in August 2011 and, through counsel, declined the OIG’s request to be interviewed about his involvement in drafting the February 4, 2011, letter to Sen. Grassley. In Chapter Six we noted three other incidents that are relevant to our assessment of Burke’s conduct. One of these incidents concerns Burke’s statements to the Terry family, members of whom told the OIG that in a meeting with Burke on March 10, 2011, he told them that the weapons found at Agent Terry’s murder scene were sold out of a Texas shop, not an Arizona shop. Yet, on December 15, 2010, Burke wrote an e-mail message to Monty Wilkinson in the Office of the Attorney General stating that “[t]he guns found in the desert near the murder [sic] [CBP] officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about – they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store.” Another is Burke’s admission to the OIG that he provided to a member of the media a copy of ATF Special Agent Dodson’s May 2010 undercover proposal, as we discussed in Chapter Four.

All of that seems to be clarification of the reasoning behind the report's conclusion: "We believe that Burke’s actions with respect to the February 4 letter were irresponsible." -- not that Burke acted irresponsibly or unethically in leaking the Dodson document, but that he acted irresponsibly in verifying the information he provided in the February 4 letter.

Links

 * 2012-05-03 Update on Operation Fast and Furious: the memo (PDF)