The Bureau Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) “stonewalled” agents on the botched “Operation Fast and Furious” operation, which involved handing over weapons to Mexican gangs without tracking their whereabouts.

CNN reports:

Washington (CNN) — U.S. officials kept their Mexican counterparts in the dark about a widely criticized gun-trafficking probe even as rising numbers of weapons reached the hands of Mexico’s drug cartels, a congressional committee reported Tuesday.

The Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also held back key details about “Operation Fast and Furious” from agents based in Mexico City when they raised alarms, according to the report.

“Not only were they stonewalled by their colleagues, they were actively thwarted in their attempts to find out what was happening,” the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee concluded.

The botched operation, under the leadership of Attorney General Eric Holder, involved the handing-over of more than 2,000 weapons to Mexican drug cartels. Those weapons have now been found at crime scenes, including one at which an American border patrolman was murdered.

The decision by the Justice Department to stonewall, “prolonged the flow of weapons from this straw purchasing ring into Mexico,” the report concluded. Apparently “senior leadership” at ATF decided that sharing critical information could compromise the department’s task of handing over weapons to drug cartels.

The report found that ATF agents didn’t learn the full details of the operation until it was shutdown in Junary, following the murder of Border Agent Brian Terry in December 2010. The operation had begun in the first year of the Obama Administration, under the leadership of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Some say the operation was the result of incompetence. Others point to past efforts by the administration and anti-gun liberals to use violence in Mexico, and along America’s border, to push for tighter gun control. Certainly more gun violence, even if it resulted from actions by the government, would help support the anti-gun case.

Whatever the original intent of the operation, Eric Holder’s Justice Department has subsequently done everything possible to stop information from being shared with relevant officials. The Justice Department has stonewalled congressional investigators, kept ATF agents out of the loop, and passed-off any blame to lower-ranking patsies.

Canino and his then-boss, Darren Gil, were told to “stand down” about the Phoenix-based operation by ATF leaders in Washington, the report states.

“According to ATF leadership, not only was everything ‘under control,’ but everyone in ATF and DOJ were well aware of the investigation in Phoenix,” the report states.

The Justice Department knew and approved of the operation. And yet the murders and violence that resulted only came to be known publicly thanks to ATF whistleblowers who approached Congress with the information. The Obama Administration has since retaliated against one whistleblower, John Dodson, firing him.