Mike Detty - Guns Across the Border: How and Why the U.S. Government Smuggled Guns into Mexico: The Inside Story

Disclaimer

The factual information presented herein is based on the experiences and recollections of the author.

However, the conversations reported within the text are written from memory and only represent the authors best recollection. These recollections are not intended to be statements of material facts, but rather the authors opinion of what was said and his interpretation of what those words meant.

Neither the author nor publisher claims that the words spoken during those conversations are accurately recorded herein. We apologize in advance for any omissions or errors in content or meaning.

All the people and events depicted are real. Some of the names have been changed for the protection of the individual.

Copyright 2013 by Mike Detty

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file. ISBN: 978-1-62087-599-5

Printed in the United States of America

A FTER BREAKING THE story of the Justice Departments Operation Fast and Furious scandal nationally on CBS News, I had only scratched the surface. There were scores of leads to follow. Many were unverifiable or dead-ends, but one source who had an interesting story and, more importantly, provable evidence was Mike Detty. Through Detty, we were able to report early on that the secret gunwalking by federal agents dated at least as far back as the Bush Administration. Thats when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) began using Detty as a paid confidential informant. At the ATFs request, Detty sold a frightening arsenal of weapons from a makeshift showroom in his living room to traffickers for Mexican drug cartels. When I met Detty, the Justice Department was reviving the old Bush-era cases for prosecution, even as the Obama-era Fast and Furious scandal exploded. A foolhardy strategy that was tinkered with and apparently abandoned under Bush appeared to be resumed and expanded under Obama. But nobody was ready to own up to it yet. Besides Fast and Furious and Wide Receiver, there was Too Hot to Handle, Castaway, and an array of other cases spanning states including Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Texas, and New Mexico. Like other gun dealers who assisted the ATF in this confidential effort, Detty felt betrayed and cast aside when he learned his efforts werent helping the ATF arrest bad guys after all. Instead, he had inadvertently assisted them, thanks to the ATF. From his photographs to the paper trail and even audio recordings, Dettys story describes a piece of the gunwalking saga from a personal perspective that only he can tell.

Sharyl Attkisson

Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter

In 2012, Sharyl Attkisson was awarded the Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism as well as the Murrow Award for Excellence in Investigative Reporting for her work on Fast and Furious.

Mike is a firearms dealer and a gun writer, and he was the confidential informant at the heart of Operation Wide Receiver, an abortive attempt to track straw purchasers buying firearms on behalf of Mexican drug cartels with the ostensible purpose of identifying and bringing down trafficking organizations. As in the later notorious Operation Fast and Furious, some of the guns escaped ATF surveillance and were smuggled across the border.

In recounting the role he played, Detty explains key similarities and differences between the two operations, debunks some common knowledge, and provides a first-hand account of his dealings with key playersboth in the criminal underworld and in law enforcementand in doing so reveals the flaws and foul-ups on both sides that make a real-life narrative so much more interesting than the way were used to seeing such characters portrayed in fiction. In other words, dont expect Scarface meets CSI.

Detty first came onto my radar in March 2011. Hed noticed the work Id been doing with colleague Mike Vanderboegh and our whistleblower contacts to get the Fast and Furious story noticed by the media and those tasked with government oversight in Congress. He informed me about Wide Receiver and told me that hed sold guns as a CI to cartel straw purchasers for years.

Most of the buys were late-night meetings at my house where I used my living room as a showroom, Detty told me. These meetings often involved the bad guys, their bodyguards, and me alone in the house while agents listened to what was going on via the transmitter I wore.

During these three years I took over eight hundred pages of notes, he continued. I also have a digital copy of every phone call that I made or received from the bad guys.... When ATF discovered that I was keeping a journal and making copies of everything that I turned over to them, I went from Hero to Zero overnight.

This book is the result of those notes. And it checks out with much that has been subsequently proven.

People come to me all the time with stories they want my help gaining wider attention for, and theyre invariably one-sided, where theyve done everything right and been screwed over by people who did everything wrong, and corroboration to establish their credibility is often problematic, if not nearly impossible. Thats why, in August 2011, knowing Detty had already been approached by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Justice, I brought him together with an investigator working for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform with whom Id previously communicated on Fast and Furiousrelated information.

In Mikes case, the information he provided, which became the source for numerous Gun Rights Examiner reports, checked out, with much of it substantially corroborated by the September 2012 OIG report.

Reading the manuscript for this book has been fascinating for meI recognize a more fleshed-out version of a story Mike had allowed me to share that brought the picture into clearer focus. I also recognize instances, where, frankly, I wanted to shout at him, ask him how he could possibly believe those he was setting up wouldnt want to get even and that his handlers wouldnt screw him over, and demand to know what the hell it was he thought he was doing.