title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In January 1981, Heritage published the "Mandate for Leadership", a comprehensive report aimed at reducing the size of the federal government, providing public policy guidance to the incoming Reagan administration, including more than 2,000 specific suggestions to move the federal government in a conservative direction. The report was well received by the White House, and several of its authors went on to take positions in the Reagan administration. Reagan liked the ideas so much that he gave a copy to each member of his cabinet to review. Approximately 60% of the 2,000 proposals were implemented or initiated by the end of Reagan's first year in office. Ronald Reagan later said that the Heritage Foundation was a "vital force" in the successes during his presidency.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: Heritage was influential in developing and advancing of the so-called "Reagan Doctrine", a Reagan administration foreign policy initiative in which the U.S. provided military and other support to anti-communist resistance movements fighting Soviet-aligned governments in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua and other nations during the final years of the Cold War.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: Heritage also advocated the development of new ballistic missile defense systems for the United States. Reagan adopted this as his top defense priority in 1983, calling it the Strategic Defense Initiative. By mid-decade, The Heritage Foundation had emerged as a key organization in the national conservative movement, publishing influential reports on domestic and defense issues, as well as pieces by prominent conservative figures, such as Bob Dole and Pat Robertson. In 1986, "Time" magazine called Heritage "the foremost of the new breed of advocacy tanks". During the Reagan and Bush administrations, The Heritage Foundation served as the President's brain trust on foreign policy.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: The Heritage Foundation remained an influential voice on domestic and foreign policy issues during President George H. W. Bush's administration. It was a leading proponent of Operation Desert Storm against Iraq, and – according to Frank Starr, head of the "Baltimore Sun"s Washington bureau – the foundation's studies "laid much of the groundwork for Bush administration thinking" about post-Soviet foreign policy. In domestic policy, the Bush administration agreed with six of the ten budget reforms contained in "Mandate for Leadership III" and included them in their 1990 budget proposal. Heritage also became involved in the culture wars of the 1990s with the publication of "The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators" by William Bennett. The Index documented how crime, illegitimacy, divorce, teenage suicide, drug use and fourteen other social indicators had become measurably worse since the 1960s.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: Heritage continued to grow throughout the 1990s and its journal, "Policy Review", hit an all-time-high circulation of 23,000. Heritage was an opponent of the Clinton health care plan of 1993. President Clinton's welfare reforms were analogous with Heritage's recommendations and were adopted in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. In 1995, Heritage published the first Index of Economic Freedom, co-authored by policy analyst Bryan T. Johnson and Thomas P. Sheehy. In 1997, the Index became a joint project between the Heritage Foundation and "The Wall Street Journal".


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In 1994, Heritage advised Newt Gingrich and other conservatives on the development of the "Contract with America", which was credited with helping to produce a Republican majority in Congress. The "Contract" was a pact of principles that directly challenged both the political status-quo in Washington and many of the ideas at the heart of the Clinton administration.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: The Heritage Foundation supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to a 2004 study in the journal "International Security", the Heritage Foundation confused public debate by challenging widespread opposition to the Iraq War by international relations scholars and experts by contradicting them "with experts of apparently equal authority... this undermined the possibility that any criticisms [of the war] might be seen as authoritative or have much persuasive effect." The organization defended the Bush administration's Guantanamo Bay practices.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In 2005, "The Washington Post" criticized the Heritage Foundation for softening its criticism of Malaysia following a business relationship between Heritage's president and Malaysia's prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. The Heritage Foundation denied any conflict of interest, stating its views on Malaysia changed following the country's cooperation with the U.S. after the September 11 attacks in 2001, and changes by Malaysia "moving in the right economic and political direction."


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: The health insurance mandate in the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is an idea hatched in 1989 by Stuart Butler at Heritage in a publication titled "Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans". This was also the model for Mitt Romney's health care plan in Massachusetts.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In December 2012, an announcement was made that Senator Jim DeMint would resign from the Senate to head the Heritage Foundation. Pundits predicted his tenure would bring a sharper, more politicized edge to the foundation. DeMint's eventual ouster in 2017 led some, such as Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.), to believe Heritage sought to pare back its partisan edge and restore its reputation as a pioneering think tank.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: On May 10, 2013, Jason Richwine, who co-authored the think tank's controversial report on the costs of amnesty, resigned his position following intensive media attention on his Harvard PhD thesis from 2009 and comments he made at a 2008 American Enterprise Institute forum. Richwine argued that Hispanics and Blacks are intellectually inferior to Whites and have trouble assimilating because of a supposed genetic predisposition to lower IQ.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: A 2011 study on poverty in America was criticized for what critics called an overly narrow definition of poverty. Criticism was published in opinion editorials in "The New Republic", "The Nation", the Center for American Progress, and "The Washington Post".


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: A 2013 study by Heritage senior fellow Robert Rector on the 2013 Senate Immigration Bill (Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013) was criticized for its methodology by critics from across the political spectrum. Notably, outlets like "Reason" magazine and the Cato Institute criticized the report for failing to employ dynamic scoring despite Heritage's support for such methodology in analyzing other policy proposals. The study was also criticized because its co-author, Jason Richwine, said in his 2009 doctoral dissertation that immigrants' IQs should be considered when crafting public policy.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In July 2013, following disputes over the farm bill, the Republican Study Committee of 172 conservative U.S. House members reversed a decades-old tradition of access by barring Heritage Foundation employees from attending its weekly meeting in the Capitol, but continues cooperation through "regular joint events and briefings".


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In September 2015, the foundation stated publicly that it had been targeted by hackers and had experienced a breach in which donors' information was taken. "The Hill" publication compared the attack to another notable data breach at the Office of Personnel Management a few months before. The identity of those that attacked the foundation and their motivations are unknown.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: The Heritage Foundation had a major influence on Donald Trump's presidential transition and administration. The foundation had a powerful say in the staffing of the administration, with CNN noting during the transition that "no other Washington institution has that kind of footprint in the transition." One reason for the Heritage Foundation's disproportionate influence relative to other conservative think tanks is that other conservative think tanks had members who identified as "never-Trumpers" during the 2016 election whereas the Heritage Foundation signaled early on to Trump that it would be supportive of him. At least 66 foundation employees and alumni were given positions in the administration.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In 2014, the Heritage Foundation began building a database of approximately 3,000 conservatives who they trusted to serve in a hypothetical Republican administration for the upcoming 2016 election. According to individuals involved in crafting the database, several hundred people from the Heritage database ultimately received jobs in government agencies, including Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos, Mick Mulvaney, Rick Perry, Jeff Sessions and others who became members of Trump's cabinet. Jim DeMint, president of the Heritage Foundation from 2013 to 2017, personally intervened on behalf of Mulvaney who would go on to head the Office of Management and Budget, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and later become acting White House Chief of Staff.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In 2021, after Trump lost re-election, the Heritage Foundation hired Chad Wolf, Ken Cuccinelli and Mark Morgan, all three of whom played a prominent role in the immigration policies of the Trump administration. It also hired former Vice President Mike Pence. Shortly thereafter, Pence published an op-ed on a Heritage Foundation website which made false claims of fraud in the 2020 election, as well as numerous false claims about For the People Act, a Democratic bill to expand voting rights.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In 2021, the Heritage Foundation shifted from its traditional style of conservatism to firebrand, Trump-style conservatism. Right-wing figures and Trump allies frequently criticized Heritage Foundation positions under the leadership of Kay Coles James in 2020 and 2021, prompting her to step down in March. She was replaced by Kevin Roberts, the head of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and member of Texas Governor Greg Abbott's COVID-19 task force.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: The Heritage Foundation has been considered one of the world's most influential think tanks. The 2020 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report ranks Heritage as sixth among the "top ten think tanks in the United States" and thirteenth worldwide.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: Heritage published a 1981 book of policy analyses, "Mandate for Leadership", that offered specific recommendations on policy, budget, and administrative action for all Cabinet departments. The Heritage Foundation also publishes "The Insider", a quarterly magazine about public policy. Until 2001, the Heritage Foundation published "Policy Review", a public policy journal; the journal was then acquired by the Hoover Institution. From 1995 to 2005, the Heritage Foundation ran Townhall.com, a conservative website that was subsequently acquired by Camarillo, California-based Salem Communications.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: Under Jim DeMint's leadership, the process involved in publishing policy papers changed at the Heritage Foundation. Whereas previous senior staff reviewed policy papers by authors, DeMint and his team heavily edited policy papers or shelved them. In response to this, several scholars at the foundation quit.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: Internationally, Heritage publishes the annual "Index of Economic Freedom", which measures a country's freedom in terms of property rights and freedom from government regulation. The factors used to calculate the "Index" score are corruption in government, barriers to international trade, income tax and corporate tax rates, government expenditures, rule of law and the ability to enforce contracts, regulatory burdens, banking restrictions, labor regulations, and black market activities. A British-born academic, Charles W. L. Hill, after discussing the international shift toward a market-based economic system and Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom", said "given that the Heritage Foundation has a political agenda, its work should be viewed with caution."


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In 2002, Heritage began publishing its annual "Index of Dependence" report on federal government programs in five areas (housing; health care and welfare; retirement; higher education; and rural and agricultural services) that, in its view, constrain private sector or local government alternatives and impact the dependence of individuals on the federal government. The 2010 Heritage report concluded that each year the number of Americans who pay nothing in federal personal income taxes had increased, while the number who rely on government services increased. The 2010 report stated that in the previous eight years, the index of government dependence has grown by almost 33 percent. Heritage's conclusions have been questioned; Rex Nutting of "MarketWatch" wrote in 2012 that the report was "misleading" and "alarmist"; that the percentage of Americans "dependent" upon government had remained essentially the same as it was in the 1980s; and that a small increase was attributable to the Great Recession and an aging population with proportionally more retirees.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: The Heritage Foundation's blog, "The Foundry", was phased out in 2014 and replaced with "The Daily Signal".


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In 2005, Heritage established the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom in honor of the former British prime minister. Thatcher herself maintained a long relationship with The Heritage Foundation. Shortly after leaving office, Thatcher was honored by Heritage at a September 1991 dinner. Seven years later, Thatcher delivered the keynote address during Heritage's 25th anniversary celebration. In 2002, Thatcher was again honored by Heritage as the recipient of its annual Clare Boothe Luce Award.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In November 2011, the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) co-hosted a debate among the candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination on foreign policy and national defense. The first presidential debate to be sponsored by either Heritage or AEI, During the debate, Heritage fellows Edwin Meese and David Addington were among the moderators. Conservative commentator Michael Barone praised the debate as "probably the most substantive and serious presidential debate of this election cycle."


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: The Heritage Foundation rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. The Heritage Foundation is one of many climate change denial organizations that have been funded by ExxonMobil. The Heritage Foundation strongly criticized the Kyoto Agreement to curb climate change, saying American participation in the treaty would "result in lower economic growth in every state and nearly every sector of the economy." They projected that the 2009 cap-and-trade bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, would result in a cost of $1,870 per family in 2025 and $6,800 by 2035; on the other hand, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projected that it would only cost the average family $175 in 2020.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: The Heritage Foundation has promoted false claims of voter fraud. Hans von Spakovsky who heads the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation has played an influential role in making alarmism about voter fraud mainstream in the Republican Party, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud. His work, which claims voting fraud is rampant, has been discredited.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: Following the 2020 presidential election—in which President Donald Trump made baseless claims of fraud after he was defeated for reelection—the Heritage Foundation launched a campaign in support of Republican efforts to make state voting laws more restrictive. Heritage, through its political arm, Heritage Action for America, planned to spend $24 million over two years across eight key states to support efforts to restrict voting, in coordination with the Republican Party and allied conservative outside groups, such as Susan B. Anthony List, American Legislative Exchange Council and State Policy Network. Almost two dozen election bills introduced by Republican state legislators in early 2021 were based on a Heritage letter and report. Heritage also mobilized in opposition to H.R. 1./S. 1, a Democratic bill to establish uniform nationwide voting standards (including expanded early and postal voting, as well as automatic and same-day voter registration), reform campaign finance law, and prohibit partisan redistricting. In 2021, Heritage Action spent $750,000 on television ads in Arizona to promote the false claim that "Democrats ... want to register illegal aliens" to vote, even though the Democrats' legislation creates safeguards to ensure that ineligible people cannot register. In April 2021, Heritage Action boasted to its private donors that it had successfully crafted the election reform bills that Republican state legislators introduced in Georgia and other states.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In 2021, the Heritage Foundation said that one of its two priorities (along with tightening voting laws) was to push Republican-controlled states to ban or restrict critical race theory instruction. The Heritage Foundation sought to get Republicans in Congress to put anti-critical race theory provisions into must-pass legislation such as the annual defense spending bill.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In 2022, the Heritage Foundation published a study, without peer review, alleging that transgender youth healthcare is associated with increased suicide rates among trans youth. It was at odds with the conclusions of peer-reviewed studies, which the foundation's researcher said did not properly control for pre-existing mental states. LGBT advocates and some doctors criticized the study as misleading and flawed.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: Heritage Action opposed the $40 billion military aid package for Ukraine passed in May 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, breaking from its previous positions of support for such aid. The Heritage Foundation's foreign policy director at the time, Luke Coffey, said he was ordered to retract his earlier statements supporting aid to Ukraine. Coffey subsequently left the Heritage Foundation.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In 1973, businessman Joseph Coors contributed $250,000 to establish The Heritage Foundation and continued to fund it through the Adolph Coors Foundation. In 1973, it had trustees from Chase Manhattan Bank, Dow Chemical, General Motors, Pfizer, Sears and Mobil.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: In 1980, The Heritage Foundation reportedly received a $2.2 million donation from South Korea's National Intelligence Service, then known as the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: Heritage is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization as well as a BBB Wise Giving Alliance accredited charity funded by donations from private individuals, corporations and charitable foundations. As a 501(c)(3), Heritage is not required to disclose its donors and donations to the foundation are tax-deductible. Heritage is a grantee of the Donors Trust, a nonprofit donor-advised fund. As of 2010, Heritage reported 710,000 supporters.


title: The Heritage Foundation

text: For the fiscal year ending December 31, 2011, Charity Watch reported that Edwin Feulner, past president of The Heritage Foundation, received the highest compensation in its top 25 list of compensation received by charity members. According to Charity Watch, Feulner received $2,702,687 in 2013. This sum includes investment earnings of $1,656,230 accrued over a period of 33 years.


title: Jonathan Silverman

text: Jonathan Elihu Silverman (born August 5, 1966) is an American actor, known for his roles in the comedy films "Brighton Beach Memoirs", "Weekend at Bernie's", and its sequel "Weekend at Bernie's II".


title: Jonathan Silverman

text: Silverman was born in Los Angeles, California, to a Jewish family. He is the son of Devora (née Halaban) and Hillel Emanuel Silverman, a rabbi. He is the grandson of famous Conservative Rabbi Morris Silverman. His mother is from Jerusalem, where her family has lived since the establishment of Israel. He graduated Beverly Hills High School in 1984 and is friends with David Schwimmer, who was a classmate.


title: Jonathan Silverman

text: Silverman is known for his roles the films "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" (1985), "Brighton Beach Memoirs" (1986) (a film version of the first play of Neil Simon's Eugene Trilogy), "Caddyshack II" (1988), "Weekend at Bernie's" (1989), "Little Sister" (1992), and


title: Jonathan Silverman

text: "Little Big League" (1994), He played the role of Eddie in "Beethoven's Big Break", as well as starred in the film "Jam" (2006).


title: Jonathan Silverman

text: Silverman began his career on television, with a recurring role on the sitcom "Gimme A Break!" from 1984 to 1986. From 1995 to 1997, Silverman played the title role in the television NBC sitcom "The Single Guy". In the 2000s. Silverman was a main cast member on the sitcoms "In Case of Emergency". and "Significant Mother". He has also made guest appearances on "Friends" (in the episode "The One with the Birth"), "", "Psych", "Hot in Cleveland", and "White Collar". In 2014, he guest starred on "" as a controversial standup comedian.


title: Jonathan Silverman

text: Silverman has been married to actress Jennifer Finnigan since 2007; the two met at a barbecue in 2004. He and Finnigan have a daughter, Ella Jack, born on September 29, 2017.


title: Jonathan Silverman

text: In 2004, Silverman was a participant in the first-ever US television advertising campaign supporting donations to Jewish federations. The program featured "film and television personalities celebrating their Jewish heritage and promoting charitable giving to the Jewish community" and included Greg Grunberg, Marlee Matlin, Joshua Malina, and Kevin Weisman.


title: Questionnaire

text: A questionnaire is a research instrument that consists of a set of questions (or other types of prompts) for the purpose of gathering information from respondents through survey or statistical study. A research questionnaire is typically a mix of close-ended questions and open-ended questions. Open-ended, long-term questions offer the respondent the ability to elaborate on their thoughts. The Research questionnaire was developed by the Statistical Society of London in 1838.


title: Questionnaire

text: Although questionnaires are often designed for statistical analysis of the responses, this is not always the case.


title: Questionnaire

text: Questionnaires have advantages over some other types of surveys in that they are cheap, do not require as much effort from the questioner as verbal or telephone surveys, and often have standardized answers that make it simple to compile data. However, such standardized answers may frustrate users as the possible answers may not accurately represent their desired responses. Questionnaires are also sharply limited by the fact that respondents must be able to read the questions and respond to them. Thus, for some demographic groups conducting a survey by questionnaire may not be concretely feasible.


title: Questionnaire

text: A distinction can be made between questionnaires with questions that measure separate variables, and questionnaires with questions that are aggregated into either a scale or index.


title: Questionnaire

text: Questionnaires with questions that measure separate variables, could, for instance, include questions on:


title: Questionnaire

text: Questionnaires with questions that are aggregated into either a scale or index include for instance questions that measure:


title: Questionnaire

text: Usually, a questionnaire consists of a number of questions that the respondent has to answer in a set format. A distinction is made between open-ended and closed-ended questions. An open-ended question asks the respondent to formulate his own answer, whereas a closed-ended question asks the respondent to pick an answer from a given number of options. The response options for a closed-ended question should be exhaustive and mutually exclusive. Four types of response scales for closed-ended questions are distinguished:


title: Questionnaire

text: A respondent's answer to an open-ended question is coded into a response scale afterward. An example of an open-ended question is a question where the testee has to complete a sentence (sentence completion item).


title: Questionnaire

text: In general, questions should flow logically from one to the next. To achieve the best response rates, questions should flow from the least sensitive to the most sensitive, from the factual and behavioural to the attitudinal, and from the more general to the more specific.


title: Questionnaire

text: There typically is a flow that should be followed when constructing a questionnaire in regards to the order that the questions are asked. The order is as follows:


title: Questionnaire

text: Screens are used as a screening method to find out early whether or not someone should complete the questionnaire.


title: Questionnaire

text: Warm-ups are simple to answer, help capture interest in the survey, and may not even pertain to research objectives.


title: Questionnaire

text: Skips include questions similar to "If yes, then answer question 3. If no, then continue to question 5."


title: Questionnaire

text: Difficult questions are towards the end because the respondent is in "response mode." Also, when completing an online questionnaire, the progress bars lets the respondent know that they are almost done so they are more willing to answer more difficult questions.


title: Questionnaire

text: Classification, or demographic question should be at the end because typically they can feel like personal questions which will make respondents uncomfortable and not willing to finish survey.


title: Questionnaire

text: Within social science research and practice, questionnaires are most frequently used to collect quantitative data using multi-item scales with the following characteristics:


title: Questionnaire

text: While questionnaires are inexpensive, quick, and easy to analyze, often the questionnaire can have more problems than benefits. For example, unlike interviews, the people conducting the research may never know if the respondent understood the question that was being asked. Also, because the questions are so specific to what the researchers are asking, the information gained can be minimal. Often, questionnaires such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, give too few options to answer; respondents can answer either option but must choose only one response. Questionnaires also produce very low return rates, whether they are mail or online questionnaires. The other problem associated with return rates is that often the people who do return the questionnaire are those who have a very positive or a very negative viewpoint and want their opinion heard. The people who are most likely unbiased either way typically do not respond because it is not worth their time.


title: Questionnaire

text: One key concern with questionnaires is that they may contain quite large measurement errors. These errors can be random or systematic. Random errors are caused by unintended mistakes by respondents, interviewers, and/or coders. Systematic error can occur if there is a systematic reaction of the respondents to the scale used to formulate the survey question. Thus, the exact formulation of a survey question and its scale is crucial, since they affect the level of measurement error.


title: Questionnaire

text: Further, if the questionnaires are not collected using sound sampling techniques, often the results can be non-representative of the population—as such a good sample is critical to getting representative results based on questionnaires.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: William I (Willem Frederik, Prince of Orange-Nassau; 24 August 1772 – 12 December 1843) was a Prince of Orange, the King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: He was the son of the last Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, who went into exile to London in 1795 because of the Batavian Revolution. As compensation for the loss of all his father's possessions in the Low Countries, an agreement was concluded between France and Prussia in which William was appointed ruler of the newly created Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda in 1803; this was however short-lived and in 1806 he was deposed by Napoleon. With the death of his father in 1806, he became Prince of Orange and ruler of the Principality of Orange-Nassau, which he also lost the same year after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and subsequent creation of the Confederation of the Rhine at the behest of Napoleon. In 1813, when Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Leipzig, the Orange-Nassau territories were returned to William and he was asked as well to become the Sovereign Prince of the United Netherlands. He proclaimed himself King of the Netherlands on 16 March 1815. In that year, William I concluded a treaty with King Frederick William III in which he ceded the Principality of Orange-Nassau to Prussia in exchange for becoming the new Grand Duke of Luxembourg. In 1839, he furthermore became the Duke of Limburg as a result of the Treaty of London. After his abdication in 1840, he styled himself "King William Frederick, Count of Nassau".


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: King William I's parents were the last stadtholder William V, Prince of Orange of the Dutch Republic, and his wife Wilhelmina of Prussia. Until 1806, William was formally known as William VI, Prince of Orange-Nassau, and between 1806 and 1813 also as Prince of Orange. In Berlin on 1 October 1791, William married his maternal first cousin (Frederica Louisa) Wilhelmina of Prussia, born in Potsdam. She was the daughter of King Frederick William II of Prussia. After Wilhelmina died in 1837, William married Countess Henriette d'Oultremont de Wégimont (28 February 1792, in Maastricht – 26 October 1864, in ), created Countess of Nassau, on 17 February 1841, also in Berlin.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: As eldest son of the William V, Prince of Orange, William was informally referred to as "Erfprins" (Hereditary Prince) by contemporaries from his birth until the death of his father in 1806 to distinguish him from William V.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: Like his younger brother Prince Frederick of Orange-Nassau he was tutored by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler and the Dutch historian Herman Tollius. They were both tutored in the military arts by general Prince Frederick Stamford. After the Patriot revolt had been suppressed in 1787, he in 1788–89 attended the military academy in Brunswick which was considered an excellent military school, together with his brother. In 1790 he visited a number of foreign courts like the one in Nassau and the Prussian capital Berlin, where he first met his future wife.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: William subsequently studied briefly at the University of Leiden. In 1790 he was appointed a general of infantry in the States Army of which his father was Captain general, and he was made a member of the Council of State of the Netherlands. In November 1791 he took his new bride to The Hague.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: After the National Convention of the French First Republic had declared war on the stadtholder of the Dutch Republic in February 1793, William was appointed commander-in-chief of the "veldleger" (mobile army) of the States Army (his father remained the nominal head of the armed forces). As such he commanded the troops that took part in the Flanders Campaign of 1793–95. He took part in the battles of Veurne and Menin (where his brother was wounded) in 1793, and commanded during the siege of Landrecies (1794), whose fortress surrendered to him. In May 1794 he had replaced general Kaunitz as commander of the combined Austro-Dutch forces on the instigation of Emperor Francis II who apparently had a high opinion of him. William was vicorious at the Battles of Gosselies and Lambusart, but the French armies ultimately proved too strong, and the allied leadership too inept, and thus the allies were finally defeated at the Battle of Fleurus (1794). The French first entered Dutch Brabant which they dominated after the Battle of Boxtel. When in the winter of 1794–95 the rivers in the Rhine delta froze over, the French breached the southern Hollandic Water Line and the situation became militarily untenable. In many places Dutch revolutionaries took over the local government. After the Batavian Revolution in Amsterdam on 18 January 1795 the stadtholder decided to flee to Britain, and his sons accompanied him. (On this last day in Holland his father relieved William honorably of his commands). The next day the Batavian Republic was proclaimed.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: Soon after the departure to Britain the Hereditary Prince went back to the Continent, where his brother was assembling former members of the States Army in Osnabrück for a planned invasion into the Batavian Republic in the Summer of 1795. However, the neutral Prussian government forbade this.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: In 1799, William landed in the current North Holland as part of an Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland. The Hereditary Prince was instrumental in fomenting a mutiny on the Batavian naval squadron in the Vlieter, resulting in the surrender of the ships without a fight to the Royal Navy, which accepted the surrender in the name of the stadtholder. Not all the local Dutch population, however, was pleased with the arrival of the prince. One local Orangist was even executed. The hoped-for popular uprising failed to materialise. After several minor battles the Hereditary Prince was forced to leave the country again after the Convention of Alkmaar. The mutineers of the Batavian fleet, with their ships, and a large number of deserters from the Batavian army accompanied the retreating British troops to Britain. There William formed the King's Dutch Brigade with these troops, a military unit in British service, that swore oaths of allegiance to the British King, but also to the States General, defunct since 1795, "whenever those would be reconstituted." This brigade trained on the Isle of Wight in 1800 and was eventually used by the British in Ireland.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: When peace was concluded between Great Britain and the French Republic under First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte the Orange exiles were at their nadir. The Dutch Brigade was dissolved on 12 July 1802. Many members of the brigade went home to the Batavian Republic, thanks to an amnesty. The surrendered ships of the Batavian navy were not returned, due to an agreement between the stadtholder and the British government of 11 March 1800. Instead the stadtholder was allowed to sell them to the Royal Navy for an appreciable sum.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: The stadtholder, feeling betrayed by the British, left for Germany. The Hereditary Prince, having a more flexible mind, went to visit Napoleon at St. Cloud in 1802. He apparently charmed the First Consul, and was charmed by him. Napoleon raised hopes for William that he might have an important role in a reformed Batavian Republic. Meanwhile, William's brother-in-law Frederick William III of Prussia, neutral at the time, promoted a Franco-Prussian convention of 23 May 1802, in addition to the Treaty of Amiens, that gave the House of Orange a few abbatial domains in Germany, that were combined to the Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda by way of indemnification for its losses in the Batavian Republic. The stadtholder gave this principality immediately to his son.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: When Napoleon invaded Germany in 1806 and war broke out between the French Empire and Prussia, William supported his Prussian relatives, though he was nominally a French vassal. He received command of a Prussian division which took part in the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt. The Prussians lost that battle and William was forced to surrender his troops rather ignominiously at Erfurt the day after the battle. He was made a prisoner of war, but was paroled soon. Napoleon punished him for his betrayal, however, by taking away his principality. As a parolee, William was not allowed to take part in the hostilities anymore. After the Peace of Tilsit William received a pension from France in compensation.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: In the same year, 1806, his father, the Prince of Orange died, and William not only inherited the title, but also his father's claims on the inheritance embodied in the Nassau lands. This would become important a few years later, when developments in Germany coincided to make William the Fürst (Prince) of a diverse assembly of Nassau lands that had belonged to other branches of the House of Nassau.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: But before this came about, in 1809 tensions between Austria and France became intense. William did not hesitate to join the Austrian army as a "Feldmarschalleutnant" (major-general) in May 1809 As a member of the staff of the Austrian supreme commander, Archduke Charles he took part in the Battle of Wagram, where he was wounded in the leg.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: Tsar Alexander I of Russia played a central role in the restoration of the Netherlands. Prince William VI (as he was now known), who had been living in exile in Prussia, met with Alexander I in March 1813. Alexander promised to support William and help restore an independent Netherlands with William as king. Russian troops in the Netherlands participated with their Prussian allies in restoring the dynasty. Dynastic considerations of marriage between the royal houses of Great Britain and the Netherlands, assured British approval.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: After Napoleon's defeat at Leipzig (October 1813), the French troops retreated to France from all over Europe. The Netherlands had been annexed to the French Empire by Napoleon in 1810. But now city after city was evacuated by the French occupation troops. In the ensuing power vacuum a number of former Orangist politicians and former Patriots formed a provisional government in November 1813. Although a large number of the members of the provisional government had helped drive out William V 18 years earlier, it was taken for granted that his son would have to head any new government. They also agreed it would be better in the long term for the Dutch to restore him themselves, rather than have the Great Powers impose him on the country. The Dutch population were pleased with the departure of the French, who had ruined the Dutch economy, and this time welcomed the prince.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: After having been invited by the Triumvirate of 1813, on 30 November 1813 William disembarked from and landed at Scheveningen beach, only a few yards from the place where he had left the country with his father 18 years before, and on 6 December the provisional government offered him the title of King. William refused, instead proclaiming himself "Sovereign Prince of the Netherlands". He also wanted the rights of the people to be guaranteed by "a wise constitution".


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: The constitution offered William extensive (almost absolute) powers. Ministers were only responsible to him, while a unicameral parliament (the States General) exercised only limited power. He was inaugurated as sovereign prince in the New Church in Amsterdam on 30 March 1814. In August 1814, he was appointed Governor-General of the former Austrian Netherlands and the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (more or less modern-day Belgium) by the Allied Powers who occupied that country, ruling them on behalf of Prussia. He was also made Grand Duke of Luxembourg, having received that territory in return for trading his hereditary German lands to Prussia and the Duke of Nassau. The Great Powers had already agreed via the secret Eight Articles of London to unite the Low Countries into a single kingdom. It was believed that a united country on the North Sea would help keep France in check. With the de facto addition of the Austrian Netherlands and Luxembourg to his realm, William had fulfilled his family's three-century dream of uniting the Low Countries.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: Feeling threatened by Napoleon, who had escaped from Elba, William proclaimed the Netherlands a kingdom on 16 March 1815 at the urging of the powers gathered at the Congress of Vienna. His son, the future king William II, fought as a commander at the Battle of Waterloo. After Napoleon had been sent into exile, William adopted a new constitution which included many features of the old constitution, such as extensive royal powers. He was formally confirmed as hereditary ruler of what was known as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands at the Congress of Vienna.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: The States General was divided into two chambers. The "Eerste Kamer" (First Chamber or Senate or House of Lords) was appointed by the King. The "Tweede Kamer" (Second Chamber or House of Representatives or House of Commons) was elected by the Provincial States, which were in turn chosen by census suffrage. The 110 seats were divided equally between the North and the South, although the population of the North (2 million) was significantly less than that of the South (3.5 million). The States General's primary function was to approve the King's laws and decrees. The constitution contained many present-day Dutch political institutions; however, their functions and composition have changed greatly over the years.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: The constitution was accepted in the North, but not in the South. The under-representation of the South was one of the causes of the Belgian Revolution. Referendum turnout was low, in the Southern provinces, but William interpreted all abstentions to be "yes" votes. He prepared a lavish inauguration for himself in Brussels, where he gave the people copper coins (leading to his first nickname, "the Copper King").


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: The spearhead of King William's policies was economic progress. As he founded many trade institutions, his second nickname was "the King-Merchant". In 1822, he founded the Algemeene Nederlandsche Maatschappij ter Begunstiging van de Volksvlijt, which would become one of the most important institutions of Belgium after its independence. Industry flourished, especially in the South. In 1817, he also founded three universities in the Southern provinces, such as a new University of Leuven, the University of Ghent and the University of Liège. The Northern provinces, meanwhile, were the centre of trade. This, in combination with the colonies (Dutch East Indies, Surinam, Curaçao and Dependencies, and the Dutch Gold Coast) created great wealth for the Kingdom. However, the money flowed into the hands of Dutch directors. Only a few Belgians managed to profit from the economic growth. Feelings of economic inequity were another cause of the Belgian uprising.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: William was also determined to create a unified people, even though the north and the south had drifted far apart culturally and economically since the south was reconquered by Spain after the Act of Abjuration of 1581. The North was commercial, Protestant and entirely Dutch-speaking; the south was industrial, Roman Catholic and divided between Dutch and French-speakers.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: Officially, a separation of church and state existed in the kingdom. However, William himself was a strong supporter of the Reformed Church. This led to resentment among the people in the mostly Catholic south. William had also devised controversial language and school policies. Dutch was imposed as the official language in (the Dutch-speaking region of) Flanders; this angered French-speaking aristocrats and industrial workers. Schools throughout the Kingdom were required to instruct students in the Reformed faith and the Dutch language. Many in the South feared that the King sought to extinguish Catholicism and the French language.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: In August 1830 Daniel Auber's opera "La muette de Portici", about the repression of Neapolitans, was staged in Brussels. Performances of this show seemed to crystallize a sense of nationalism and "Hollandophobia" in Brussels, and spread to the rest of the South. Rioting ensued, chiefly aimed at the kingdom's unpopular justice minister, Cornelis Felix van Maanen, who lived in Brussels. An infuriated William responded by sending troops to repress the riots. However, the riots had spread to other Southern cities. The riots quickly became popular uprisings. An independent state of Belgium emerged out of the 1830 Revolution.


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: The next year, William sent his sons William, the Prince of Orange, and Prince Frederick to invade the new state. Although initially victorious in this Ten Days' Campaign, the Dutch army was forced to retreat after the threat of French intervention. Some support for the Orange dynasty (chiefly among Flemings) persisted for years but the Dutch never regained control over Belgium. William nevertheless continued the war for eight years. His economic successes became overshadowed by a perceived mismanagement of the war effort. High costs of the war came to burden the Dutch economy, fueling public resentment. In 1839, William was forced to end the war. The United Kingdom of the Netherlands was dissolved by the Treaty of London (1839) and the northern part continued as the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It was not renamed, however, as the "United"-prefix had never been part of its official name, but rather was retrospectively added by historians for descriptive purposes (cf. Weimar Republic).


title: William I of the Netherlands

text: Constitutional changes were initiated in 1840 because the terms which involved the United Kingdom of the Netherlands had to be removed. These constitutional changes also included the introduction of judicial ministerial responsibility. Although the policies remained uncontrolled by parliament, the prerogative was controllable now. The very conservative William could not live with these constitutional changes. This, the disappointment about the loss of Belgium, and his intention to marry Henrietta d'Oultremont (paradoxically both "Belgian" and Roman Catholic) made him wish to abdicate. He fulfilled this intent on 7 October 1840 and his eldest son acceded to the throne as king William II. William I died in 1843 in Berlin at the age of 71.


title: Swamp

text: A swamp is a forested wetland. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in creating this environment. Swamps vary in size and are located all around the world. The water of a swamp may be fresh water, brackish water, or seawater. Freshwater swamps form along large rivers or lakes where they are critically dependent upon rainwater and seasonal flooding to maintain natural water level fluctuations. Saltwater swamps are found along tropical and subtropical coastlines. Some swamps have hammocks, or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodic inundation or soil saturation. The two main types of swamp are "true" or swamp forests and "transitional" or shrub swamps. In the boreal regions of Canada, the word swamp is colloquially used for what is more formally termed a bog, fen, or muskeg. Some of the world's largest swamps are found along major rivers such as the Amazon, the Mississippi, and the Congo.


title: Swamp

text: Swamps and marshes are specific types of wetlands that form along waterbodies containing rich, hydric soils. Marshes are wetlands, continually or frequently flooded by nearby running bodies of water, that are dominated by emergent soft-stem vegetation and herbaceous plants. Swamps are wetlands consisting of saturated soils or standing water and are dominated by water-tolerant woody vegetation such as shrubs, bushes, and trees.


title: Swamp

text: Swamps are characterized by their saturated soils and slow-moving waters. The water that accumulates in swamps comes from a variety of sources including precipitation, groundwater, tides and/or freshwater flooding. These hydrologic pathways all contribute to how energy and nutrients flow in and out of the ecosystem. As water flows through the swamp, nutrients, sediment and pollutants are naturally filtered out. Chemicals like phosphorus and nitrogen that end up in waterways get absorbed and used by the aquatic plants within the swamp, purifying the water. Any remaining or excess chemicals present will accumulate at the bottom of the swamp, being removed from the water and buried within the sediment. The biogeochemical environment of a swamp is dependent on its hydrology, affecting the levels and availability of resources like oxygen, nutrients, water pH and toxicity, which will influence the whole ecosystem.


title: Swamp

text: Swamps and other wetlands have traditionally held a very low property value compared to fields, prairies, or woodlands. They have a reputation for being unproductive land that cannot easily be utilized for human activities, other than hunting, trapping, or fishing. Farmers, for example, typically drained swamps next to their fields so as to gain more land usable for planting crops, both historically, and to a lesser extent, presently. On the other hand, swamps can (and do) play a beneficial ecological role in the overall functions of the natural environment and provide a variety of resources that many species depend on. Swamps and other wetlands have shown to be a natural form of flood management and defense against flooding. In such circumstances where flooding does occur, swamps absorb and use the excess water within the wetland, preventing it from traveling and flooding surrounding areas. Dense vegetation within the swamp also provides soil stability to the land, holding soils and sediment in place whilst preventing erosion and land loss. Swamps are an abundant and valuable source of fresh water and oxygen for all life, and they are often breeding grounds for a wide variety of species. Floodplain swamps are an important resource in the production and distribution of fish. Two thirds of global fish and shellfish are commercially harvested and dependent on wetlands.


title: Swamp

text: Historically, humans have been known to drain and/or fill swamps and other wetlands in order to create more space for human development and to reduce the threat of diseases borne by swamp insects. Wetlands are removed and replaced with land that is then used for things like agriculture, real estate, and recreational uses. Many swamps have also undergone intensive logging and farming, requiring the construction of drainage ditches and canals. These ditches and canals contributed to drainage and, along the coast, allowed salt water to intrude, converting swamps to marsh or even to open water. Large areas of swamp were therefore lost or degraded. Louisiana provides a classic example of wetland loss from these combined factors. Europe has probably lost nearly half its wetlands. New Zealand lost 90 percent of its wetlands over a period of 150 years. Ecologists recognize that swamps provide ecological services including flood control, fish production, water purification, carbon storage, and wildlife habitats. In many parts of the world authorities protect swamps. In parts of Europe and North America, swamp restoration projects are becoming widespread. The United States government began enforcing stricter laws and management programs in the 1970s in efforts to protect and restore these ecosystems. Often the simplest steps to restoring swamps involve plugging drainage ditches and removing levees.


title: Swamp

text: Conservationists work to preserve swamps such as those in northwest Indiana in the United States Midwest that were preserved as part of the Indiana Dunes.


title: Swamp

text: The largest swamp in the world is the Amazon River floodplain, which is particularly significant for its large number of fish and tree species.


title: Swamp

text: The Sudd and the Okavango Delta are Africa's best known marshland areas. The Bangweulu Floodplains make up Africa's largest swamp.


title: Swamp

text: The Mesopotamian Marshes is a large swamp and river system in southern Iraq, traditionally inhabited in part by the Marsh Arabs.


title: Swamp

text: In Asia, tropical peat swamps are located in mainland East Asia and Southeast Asia. In Southeast Asia, peatlands are mainly found in low altitude coastal and sub-coastal areas and extend inland for distance more than along river valleys and across watersheds. They are mostly to be found on the coasts of East Sumatra, Kalimantan (Central, East, South and West Kalimantan provinces), West Papua, Papua New Guinea, Brunei, Peninsular Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak, Southeast Thailand, and the Philippines (Riley "et al.",1996). Indonesia has the largest area of tropical peatland. Of the total tropical peat swamp, about are located in Indonesia (Page, 2001; Wahyunto, 2006).


title: Swamp

text: The Vasyugan Swamp is a large swamp in the western Siberia area of the Russian Federation. This is one of the largest swamps in the world, covering an area larger than Switzerland.


title: Swamp

text: The Atchafalaya Swamp at the lower end of the Mississippi River is the largest swamp in the United States. It is an important example of southern cypress swamp but it has been greatly altered by logging, drainage and levee construction. Other famous swamps in the United States are the forested portions of the Everglades, Okefenokee Swamp, Barley Barber Swamp, Great Cypress Swamp and the Great Dismal Swamp. The Okefenokee is located in extreme southeastern Georgia and extends slightly into northeastern Florida. The Great Cypress Swamp is mostly in Delaware but extends into Maryland on the Delmarva Peninsula. Point Lookout State Park on the southern tip of Maryland contains a large amount of swamps and marshes. The Great Dismal Swamp lies in extreme southeastern Virginia and extreme northeastern North Carolina. Both are National Wildlife Refuges. Another swamp area, Reelfoot Lake of extreme western Tennessee and Kentucky, was created by the 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes. Caddo Lake, the Great Dismal and Reelfoot are swamps that are centered at large lakes. Swamps are often associated with "bayous" in the southeastern United States, especially in the Gulf Coast region. A baygall is a type of swamp found in the forest of the Gulf Coast states in the USA.


title: Swamp

text: The world's largest wetlands include significant areas of swamp, such as in the Amazon and Congo River basins. Further north, however, the largest wetlands are bogs.


title: Suicide by cop

text: Suicide by cop or suicide by police is a suicide method in which a suicidal individual deliberately behaves in a threatening manner, with intent to provoke a lethal response from a public safety or law enforcement officer.


title: Suicide by cop

text: There are two broad categories of "suicide by cop". The first is when someone has committed a crime and is being pursued by the police and decides that they would rather commit suicide than be arrested. These people may not otherwise be suicidal but may simply decide that life is not worth living if they are incarcerated and thus will provoke police to kill them. The second version involves people who are already contemplating suicide and who decide that provoking law enforcement into killing them is the best way to act on their desires. These individuals may commit a crime with the specific intention of provoking a law enforcement response.


title: Suicide by cop

text: The idea of committing suicide in this manner is based on trained procedures of law enforcement officers, specifically the policy on the use of deadly force. In jurisdictions where officials are readily capable of deadly force, often by being equipped with firearms, there are usually set circumstances where they will predictably use deadly force against a threat to themselves or others. This form of suicide functions by exploiting this trained reaction. The most common scenario is pointing a firearm at a police officer or an innocent person, which would be expected to provoke an officer to fire on them. Many variants exist; for example, attacking with a knife or other hand weapon, trying to run an officer or other person over with a car, or trying to trigger a real or presumed explosive device.


title: Suicide by cop

text: This concept hinges on the person's state of mind, and their desire to end their own life, which can be difficult to determine post mortem. Some cases are obvious, such as pointing an unloaded or non-functioning gun, such as a toy gun, air gun, airsoft gun, or starter's pistol, at officers, or the presence of a suicide note. Some suspects brazenly announce their intention to die before they act; however, many cases can be more difficult to determine, as some suspects with the desire to die will actually fire live ammunition and even kill people before being killed themselves. Many law enforcement training programs have added sections to specifically address handling these situations if officers suspect that the subject is attempting to goad them into using lethal force.


title: Suicide by cop

text: Many modern cases that pre-date the formal recognition of the phenomenon have been identified or speculated by historians as matching the pattern now known as suicide by cop. According to authors Mark Lindsay and David Lester, Houston McCoy, one of the two Austin Police Department officers who shot and killed Charles Whitman, the "Texas Tower Sniper", believed that Whitman could have shot him and fellow officer Ramiro Martinez, but "he was waiting for them, and wanted to be shot." The 1976 death of Mal Evans, road manager, assistant, and a friend of the Beatles, who aimed an air gun at police and refused to put it down, was theorized as a possible example of this phenomenon. Some historians believe that Giuseppe Zangara, the man who killed Chicago mayor Anton Cermak in a possible attempt to assassinate then President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, might have been attempting suicide by police. In 2018, Alek Minassian, the perpetrator of the Toronto van attack, claimed to have attempted suicide by cop when apprehended by police after his attack, requesting to be killed and claiming he was armed with a gun, a declaration which was false.


title: Suicide by cop

text: The phenomenon has been described in news accounts from 1981, and scientific journals since 1985. The phrase has appeared in news headlines since at least 1987. It did not become common until the early 2000s. The phrase seems to have originated in the United States, but has also appeared in the UK, where a jury first determined someone committed suicide by cop in 2003.


title: Suicide by cop

text: Some of the first research into suicide by cop was completed by Sgt. Rick Parent of the Delta Police Department. Parent's research of 843 police shootings determined that about 50% were victim precipitated homicide. Police defined victim precipitated homicide as "an incident in which an individual bent on self-destruction, engages in life threatening and criminal behavior to force law enforcement officers to kill them."


title: Suicide by cop

text: The first formally labeled "Suicide by Cop" case in English legal history was a judgment made on May 9th, 2003 by the Reverend Dr. William Dolman while serving as a London coroner between 1993 and 2007. It set a legal precedent and the judgment, as a cause of death, has been a part of English law since.


title: Suicide by cop

text: A 2009 study in the United States of the profiles of 268 people who committed suicide by cop found that


title: Suicide by cop

text: In "To Kill a Mockingbird", Tom Robinson, a despondent black man who is imprisoned for a rape he did not commit, is shot 17 times and killed while trying to escape from prison in front of the prison guards.<ref name="Temple_2/17/2015"></ref>


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Gunwalking, or "letting guns walk", was a tactic used by the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office and the Arizona Field Office of the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which ran a series of sting operations between 2006 and 2011 in the Tucson and Phoenix area where the ATF "purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them". These operations were done under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, a project intended to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico by interdicting straw purchasers and gun traffickers within the United States. The Jacob Chambers Case began in October 2009 and eventually became known in February 2010 as Operation Fast and Furious after agents discovered Chambers and the other suspects under investigation belonged to a car club.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: The stated goal of allowing these purchases was to continue to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher-level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels, with the expectation that this would lead to their arrests and the dismantling of the cartels. While federal prosecutor Emory Hurley allegedly told agents they had no choice but to let guns "walk" because agents lacked probable cause to arrest buyers, the tactic of allowing obvious straw purchasers to give guns to criminal organizations was questioned during the operations by ATF field agents and cooperating licensed gun dealers. During Operation Fast and Furious, the largest gunwalking probe, the ATF monitored the sale of about 2,000 firearms, of which only 710 were recovered . A number of straw purchasers have been arrested and indicted; however, as of October 2011, none of the targeted high-level cartel figures had been arrested.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Guns tracked by the ATF have been found at crime scenes on both sides of the Mexico–United States border, and the scene where United States Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in December 2010. The gunwalking operations became public in the aftermath of Terry's murder. Dissenting ATF agents came forward to Congress in response. According to Humberto Benítez Treviño, former Mexican Attorney General and chair of the justice committee in the Chamber of Deputies, related firearms have been found at numerous crime scenes in Mexico where at least 150 Mexican civilians were maimed or killed. Revelations of gunwalking led to controversy in both countries, and diplomatic relations were damaged.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: As a result of a dispute over the release of Justice Department documents related to the scandal, on June 28, 2012, in a vote largely along party lines in a Republican-controlled House, Attorney General Eric Holder became the first sitting member of the Cabinet of the United States to be held in contempt of Congress. At Holder's request, President Barack Obama had invoked executive privilege for the first time in his presidency in order to withhold documents that "were not generated in the course of the conduct of Fast and Furious." In 2016, a federal court ruled that the records in question were not covered by privilege; a House lawsuit to try to recover the records was settled and the matter dropped in April 2019, after control of the House had shifted to Democrats.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: ATF gunwalking operations were, in part, a response to longstanding criticism of the bureau for focusing on relatively minor gun violations while failing to target high-level gun smuggling figures. U.S. firearms laws currently govern the possession and transfer of firearms and provide penalties for the violation of such laws. “Gun trafficking”, although not defined by statute, essentially includes the movement or diversion of firearms from legal to illegal markets. A 2009 GAO report on efforts to combat arms trafficking to Mexico notes that straw purchasing is not in itself illegal, although it is illegal to provide false information in connection with a purchase.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Four federal statutes govern U.S. commerce of firearms domestically and internationally. Many states supplement these federal statutes and have firearms laws of their own that are stricter. For example, some states require permits to obtain firearms and impose a waiting period for firearm transfers. Domestic commerce and importations into the United States are generally regulated under the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) and the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA). The exportation of firearms from the United States is regulated by the Arms Export Control Act of 1976 and, to a lesser extent, the Export Administration Regulations (EAR).


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Defendants are often prosecuted and convicted under provisions of statutes such as the GCA that make it unlawful for certain persons to be in possession of firearms, govern the transaction process of obtaining firearms (e.g., straw purchases), and contain penalties for the use of a firearm in a crime of violence or a drug trafficking crime, or penalties for knowingly or fraudulently smuggling goods that would be contrary to U.S. law and regulation.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: In a 2012 case in San Juan, Texas, under existing 1968 Gun Control Act provisions on straw purchasing (Title 18 United States Code, Section 924(a)(1)(A)), straw purchaser Taisa Garcia received 33 months and buyer Marco Villalobos received 46 months, plus two years supervision after release. In another Texas gun trafficking case, Oscar Bravo Hernandez received a sentence of 84 months for buying and sending to Mexico at least 55 firearms from a ring of nine straw purchasers who received sentences from 51 months for the most involved down to three years probation for the least involved.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: According to twenty-year ATF veteran Jay Wachtel, letting guns "walk" has been a practice done in a controlled manner that involved surveillance and eventual seizure of the weapons. "The idea was that you would follow it long enough until you were sure you had enough probable cause" to initiate an arrest, Wachtel said. According to ATF field agents involved in Operation Fast and Furious, a part of Project Gunrunner, "ATF agents were trained to interdict guns and prevent criminals from obtaining them" and not to allow guns to walk and then disappear. ATF agents assigned to Phoenix from other districts to work on Fast and Furious were critical of the operation.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: There have been allegations of gunwalking in at least 10 cities in five states. The most widely known and controversial operations took place in Arizona under the ATF's Phoenix, Arizona field division.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: The first known ATF gunwalking operation to Mexican drug cartels, named Operation Wide Receiver, began in early 2006 and ran into late 2007. Licensed dealer Mike Detty of Mad Dawg Global informed the ATF of a suspicious gun purchase that took place in February 2006 in Tucson, Arizona. In March, he was hired as a confidential informant working with the ATF's Tucson office, part of their Phoenix, Arizona field division.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: With the use of surveillance equipment, ATF agents monitored additional sales by Detty to straw purchasers. With assurance from ATF "that Mexican officials would be conducting surveillance or interdictions when guns got to the other side of the border", Detty would sell a total of about 450 guns during the operation. These included AR-15s, semi-automatic AK-pattern rifles, and Colt .38s. The majority of the guns were eventually lost as they moved into Mexico.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: As the later DOJ OIG Report documented, under Wide Receiver coordination of ATF Tucson with the ATF Mexico City Office (MCO) and with Mexican law enforcement had been haphazard. Discussions of getting tracking devices from Raytheon were not followed up. ATF field agents and the cooperating gun dealer had been told by ATF supervisors that the guns were being interdicted before they could reach Mexico, but only 64 of the 474 guns had actually been seized. The kingpin sought by walking the guns, Israel Egurrola-Leon, turned out to be the target of a larger drug case Operation Iron River run by OCDETF. After Operation Wide Receiver was ended, several attorneys at the Phoenix USAO who reviewed the Wide Receiver cases for prosecution found the cases had been so poorly managed that they were reluctant to bring any of them to trial.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: At the time, under the Bush administration Department of Justice (DOJ), no arrests or indictments were made. After President Barack Obama took office in 2009, the DOJ reviewed Wide Receiver and found that guns had been allowed into the hands of suspected gun traffickers. Indictments began in 2010, over three years after Wide Receiver concluded. , nine people had been charged with making false statements in acquisition of firearms and illicit transfer, shipment or delivery of firearms. As of November, charges against one defendant had been dropped; five of them had pleaded guilty, and one had been sentenced to one year and one day in prison. Two of them remained fugitives.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Another, smaller probe occurred in 2007 under the same ATF Phoenix field division. The Fidel Hernandez case began when the ATF identified Mexican suspects who bought weapons from a Phoenix gun shop over a span of several months. The probe ultimately involved over 200 guns, a dozen of which were lost in Mexico. On September 27, 2007, ATF agents saw the original suspects buying weapons at the same store and followed them toward the Mexican border. The ATF informed the Mexican government when the suspects successfully crossed the border, but Mexican law enforcement were unable to track them.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Less than two weeks later, on October 6, William Newell, then ATF's Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the Phoenix field division, shut down the operation at the behest of William Hoover, ATF's assistant director for the office of field operations. No charges were filed. Newell, who was Phoenix ATF SAC from June 2006 to May 2011, would later play a major role in Operation Fast and Furious.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: The Hernandez case was referenced in a briefing paper prepared for Attorney General Michael Mukasey prior to his meeting with the Mexican Attorney General Medina Mora on November 16, 2007. The paper stated, "ATF has recently worked jointly with Mexico on the first-ever attempt to have a controlled delivery of weapons being smuggled into Mexico by a major arms trafficker" and that "the first attempts at this controlled delivery have not been successful". The paper also stated, "ATF would like to expand the possibility of such joint investigations and controlled deliveries—since only then will it be possible to investigate an entire smuggling network, rather than arresting simply a single smuggler."


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Investigators regarded the Hernandez Case as an example of "controlled delivery" with surveillance and involvement of Mexican authorities rather than gunwalking or failure to attempt interdiction.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: The 2008 Alejandro Medrano case involved both ATF SAC William Newell and cooperating Tucson gun dealer Mike Detty of Operation Wide Receiver. ATF Phoenix allowed about 100 guns to be taken into Mexico over the objections of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel who became aware of the case. Phoenix ATF SAC Newell acknowledged to ICE "that letting guns cross the border was part of ATF's plan". In August 2010, Medrano was sentenced to 46 months, his associate Hernan Ramos received 50 months and their fellow conspirators received prison terms from 14 to 30 months, but the target, a Sinaloa Cartel kingpin, Javier Elenes Ruiz, nicknamed "Rambo," remained untouched inside Mexico.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: On October 26, 2009, a teleconference was held at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. to discuss U.S. strategy for combating Mexican drug cartels. Participating in the meeting were Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, acting ATF Director Kenneth E. Melson, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Michele Leonhart, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Robert Mueller and the top federal prosecutors in the Southwestern border states. They decided on a strategy to identify and eliminate entire arms trafficking networks rather than low-level buyers. Those at the meeting apparently did not suggest using the gunwalking tactic, but Phoenix ATF supervisors would soon use it in an attempt to achieve the desired goals.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: The strategy of targeting high-level individuals, which was already ATF policy, would be implemented by Bill Newell, special agent in charge of ATF's Phoenix field division. In order to accomplish it, the office decided to monitor suspicious firearms purchases which federal prosecutor Emory Hurley claimed lacked sufficient evidence for prosecution, as laid out in a January 2010 briefing paper. This was said to be allowed under ATF regulations and given legal backing by U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona Dennis K. Burke. It was additionally approved and funded by a Justice Department task force. However, long-standing DOJ and ATF policy has required suspected illegal arms shipments to be intercepted.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: The operation began on October 31, 2009, when a local gun store reported to the Phoenix ATF that four individuals had purchased multiple AK-47 style rifles. In November 2009, the Phoenix office's Group VII, which would be the lead investigative group in Fast and Furious, began to follow a prolific gun trafficker. He had bought 34 firearms in 24 days, and he and his associates bought 212 more in the next month. The case soon grew to over two dozen straw purchasers, the most prolific of which would ultimately buy more than 600 weapons. The effort would come to be called Operation Fast and Furious for the successful film franchise, because some of the suspects under investigation operated out of an auto repair store and street raced.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Under the previous Operation Wide Receiver, there had been a formal ATF contract with the cooperating gun dealer and efforts were made to involve the ATF Mexico City Office (MCO) and Mexican law enforcement. Under Operation Fast and Furious, at Newell's insistence the cooperating gun dealers did not have contracts with ATF, and MCO and Mexican police were left in the dark.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: According to internal ATF documents, the operation was initially run in conjunction with the Phoenix DEA Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF). On January 26, 2010, ATF formally applied to the Justice Department in Washington for funding through the OCDETF program. When it won approval and received additional funding, Operation Fast and Furious was reorganized as a Strike Force that included agents from the ATF, FBI, DEA, and the ICE component of the Department of Homeland Security, which would be run through the U.S. Attorney's office rather than the ATF. This new Strike Force designation allowed the operation to take advantage of sophisticated surveillance techniques such as federal wiretaps, which would require court orders and interaction from Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C. since federal law requires certain individuals to review evidence and certify the necessity of such techniques.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: The dealers involved became concerned as months went by and the same individuals they reported to ATF as suspected straw purchasers returned and repeatedly bought identical weapons. As they later told the DOJ OIG, their previous experience was that after they reported a suspected straw to ATF, they did not see the straw again unless subpoenaed to testify against the straw at trial. One cooperating dealer expressed his concerns in a series of emails in April and June 2010 to GS David Voth, who assured the dealer that ATF was monitoring the suspects using a variety of techniques that he could not discuss in detail.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: The tactic of letting guns walk, rather than interdicting them and arresting the buyers, led to controversy within the ATF. As the case continued, several members of Group VII, including John Dodson and Olindo Casa, became increasingly upset at the tactic of allowing guns to walk. Their standard Project Gunrunner training was to follow the straw purchasers to the hand-off to the cartel buyers, then arrest both parties and seize the guns. But according to Dodson, they watched guns being bought illegally and stashed on a daily basis, while their supervisors, including David Voth and Hope MacAllister, prevented the agents from intervening.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: However, other accounts of the operation insist that ATF agents were prevented from intervening not by ATF officials, but rather by federal prosecutor Emory Hurley, who stated agents did not have sufficient evidence to arrest suspected straw-buyers. According to some reports, many agents insisted they were prevented from making arrests because prosecutors were unwilling to engage in what could become a potentially contentious political battle over Second Amendment rights during an election year, particularly given the difficult nature of prosecuting straw buyers, and the weak penalties associated with it, even if successful. Instead, prosecutor Hurley instructed ATF agents not to make arrests, but rather continue collecting evidence in order to build a stronger case. One tactic proposed for doing so was a wiretap of suspected straw-buyers, in an attempt to link the suspects to criminal activities taking place on the Mexican side of the border. Between March 20 and July 30, 2010, nine wiretaps were sought and approved by Justice Department officials, resulting in a significant delay in concluding the case.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: One of the central targeted individuals was Manuel Fabian Celis-Acosta. By December 2009, Celis-Acosta was being investigated by the ATF, which had placed a secret pole camera outside his Phoenix home to track his movements. Around this time, apparently by chance, ATF agents discovered Celis-Acosta was also a potential criminal target of the DEA, which was operating a wire room to monitor live wiretaps in order to track him. On April 2, 2010, Celis-Acosta was arrested on possession of cocaine and found in possession of a weapon purchased by Uriel Patino, who had already purchased at least 434 guns from cooperating gun dealers in the Phoenix area. By this time, about a dozen ATF agents regularly surveilled Celis-Acosta as he recruited 20 friends and family to buy guns for him and regularly traveled to Texas to obtain funds from cartel associates to purchase firearms. On May 29, 2010, Celis-Acosta was detained in Lukeville, Arizona with 74 rounds of ammunition and 9 cell phones. He was then released by the chief ATF investigator on Fast and Furious, Hope MacAllister, after he promised to cooperate with her to find two specific Sinaloa cartel associates. After the redetention and arrest of Celis-Acosta in February 2011, the ATF learned that the associates they were after were FBI/DEA paid informants, and one of them was Celis-Acosta's financier. Since they were informants, they were unindictable under Operation Fast and Furious.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Later, the DOJ inspector General concluded: "We did not find persuasive evidence that agents sought to seize firearms or make arrests during the investigative stage of the case and were rebuffed by the prosecutor. ...We found that the lack of seizures and arrests was primarily attributable to the pursuit of a strategic goal shared by both the [Phoenix] ATF and the U.S. Attorney's Office—to eliminate a trafficking organization—and the belief that confronting subjects and seizing firearms could compromise that goal."


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: By June 2010, suspects had purchased 1,608 firearms at a cost of over US$1 million at Phoenix-area gun shops. At that time, the ATF was also aware of 179 of those weapons being found at crime scenes in Mexico, and 130 in the United States. As guns traced to Fast and Furious began turning up at violent crime scenes in Mexico, ATF agents stationed there also voiced opposition.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: On the evening of December 14, 2010, U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and others were patrolling Peck Canyon, Santa Cruz County, Arizona, from the Mexican border. The group came across five suspected illegal immigrants. When they fired non-lethal beanbag guns, the suspects responded with their own weapons, leading to a firefight. Terry was shot and killed; four of the suspects were arrested and two AK-pattern rifles were found nearby. The Attorney General's office was immediately notified of the shooting incident by email. The rifles were traced within hours of the shooting to a Phoenix store involved in the Fast and Furious operation, but the bullet that killed Terry was too badly damaged to be conclusively linked to either gun. Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler and Deputy Chief of Staff Monty Wilkinson were informed about the guns, but they didn't believe the information was sufficiently important to alert the Attorney General about it or to make any further inquiry regarding the development.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: After hearing of the incident, Dodson contacted ATF headquarters, ATF's chief counsel, the ATF ethics section and the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General, none of whom immediately responded. He and other agents then contacted Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa (R–IA), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who would become a major figure in the investigation of gunwalking. At the same time, information began leaking to various bloggers and Web sites.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: On January 25, 2011, Burke announced the first details of the case to become officially public, marking the end of Operation Fast and Furious. At a news conference in Phoenix, he reported a 53-count indictment of 20 suspects for buying hundreds of guns intended for illegal export between September 2009 and December 2010. Newell, who was at the conference, called Fast and Furious a "phenomenal case," while denying that guns had been deliberately allowed to walk into Mexico.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Altogether, about 2,000 firearms were bought by straw purchasers during Fast and Furious. These included AK-47 variants, Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles, .38 caliber revolvers, and FN Five-sevens. , 389 had been recovered in the US and 276 had been recovered in Mexico. The rest remained on the streets, unaccounted for. , the total number of recovered firearms was 710. Most of the guns went to the Sinaloa Cartel, while others made their way to El Teo and La Familia.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Although most weapons were purchased by suspects under investigation by the program, there have been reports of at least one instance of ATF agents being directly involved in the transfer of weapons. On April 13, 2010, ATF Agent John Dodson, with assistance from Agents Casa and Alt, directed a cooperating straw purchaser to give three guns to Isaiah Fernandez, a suspected gun trafficker, and had taped the conversations without prosecutor approval.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: After being instructed by his superiors to obtain approval from prosecutors (albeit retroactively), Dodson's proposal was later rejected by his immediate superior David Voth, although he later received permission from Voth's supervisor after submitting a written proposal for the program. On June 1, 2010, Dodson used $2,500 of ATF funds to purchase six AK Draco pistols from local gun dealers, which he then gave to Mr. Fernandez, who reimbursed him for the expense of the guns, plus $700 for his assistance. Two days later, Agent Dodson went on a scheduled vacation without interdicting the weapons. As a result, the weapons were never recovered, no arrests were ever made, and the case was closed without charges being filed.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: According to the DOJ OIG report, Agent Dodson, as the undercover posing as a straw buyer, was not expected to surveil the weapons after hand-off to Fernandez. Other ATF agents followed the weapons to a storage facility; then surveillance was terminated without interdiction. The Fernandez case was dropped from Fast and Furious after it was determined that Fernandez was not connected to Mexican cartels and had ceased buying guns for resale.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Since the end of Operation Fast and Furious, related firearms have continued to be discovered in criminal hands. As reported in September 2011, the Mexican government stated that an undisclosed number of guns found at about 170 crime scenes were linked to Fast and Furious. Reflecting on the operation, Attorney General Eric Holder said that the United States government is "...losing the battle to stop the flow of illegal guns to Mexico," and that the effects of Operation Fast and Furious will most likely continue to be felt for years, as more walked guns appear at Mexican crime scenes.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: In April 2011, a large cache of weapons, 40 traced to Fast and Furious but also including military-grade weapons difficult to obtain legally in the US such as an anti-aircraft machine gun and grenade launcher, was found in the home of Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, a prominent Sinaloa Cartel member, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Torres Marrufo was indicted, but evaded law enforcement for a brief time. Finally, on February 4, 2012, Marrufo was arrested by the Mexican Police.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: On May 29, 2011, four Mexican Federal Police helicopters attacked a cartel compound, where they were met with heavy fire, including from a .50 caliber rifle. According to a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, this rifle is likely linked to Fast and Furious.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: There have been questions raised over a possible connection between Fast and Furious and the death of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata on February 15, 2011. The gun used to kill Zapata was purchased by Otilio Osorio in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas (outside the area of responsibility for the ATF Phoenix field division which conducted Fast and Furious), and then smuggled into Mexico. Congressional investigators have stated that Osorio was known by the ATF to be a straw purchaser months before he purchased the gun used to kill Zapata, leading them to question ATF surveillance tactics and to suspect a Texas-based operation similar to Fast and Furious.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: In addition to Otilio Osorio, a Texas-based drug and gun trafficker, Manuel Barba, was involved in trafficking another of the guns recovered in the Zapata shooting. The timeline of this case, called "Baytown Crew", shows guns were allowed to walk during surveillance that began June 7, 2010. On August 20, 2010, Barba received a rifle later recovered in the Zapata ambush and sent it with nine others to Mexico. The warrant for Barba's arrest was issued February 14, 2011, the day before Zapata was shot. On January 30, 2012, Barba, who claimed to be working with Los Zetas in illegally exporting at least 44 weapons purchased through straw buyers, was sentenced to 100 months in prison.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: On November 23, 2012, two firearms linked to the ATF were found at the scene of a shootout between Sinaloa cartel members and the Mexican military. One of the weapons was a Kalashnikov style WASR-10 rifle trafficked by Fast and Furious suspect Uriel Patino, and the other was an FN Herstal pistol originally purchased by an ATF agent. Mexican beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez and four others were killed.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: One of the nineteen guns Mexican authorities said they found at the hideout of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, after his January 2016 capture, was associated with the Fast and Furious operation. The Justice Department confirmed that the .50-caliber rifle was bought in July 2010 in a straw purchase by someone not known to the ATF at the time, and stated the weapon was not associated with any other crime. In a letter to Congressional leaders, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik, head of the Justice Department's legislative affairs office, wrote, "ATF and the department deeply regret that firearms associated with Operation Fast and Furious have been used by criminals in the commission of violent crimes, particularly crimes resulting in the deaths of civilians and law enforcement officials."


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: In the U.S. Congress, Representative Darrell Issa (R–CA–49), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Senator Chuck Grassley (R–IA), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, led investigations of gunwalking operations. There were investigations by the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General and others.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: On January 27, 2011, Grassley wrote a letter to ATF Acting Director Kenneth E. Melson requesting information about the ATF-sanctioned sale of hundreds of firearms to straw purchasers. The letter mentioned a number of allegations that walked guns were used in the fight that killed Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. A second letter from Grassley on January 31 accused the ATF of targeting whistleblowers.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: On February 4, 2011, after review and comment from dozens of officials in the Justice Department Criminal Division, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix, and ATF Headquarters, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich sent a response to Grassley regarding his two letters. Weich said claims "...that (the) ATF ‘sanctioned’ or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them to Mexico [are] false. ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.” On February 28, Attorney General Eric Holder requested that the Department of Justice's Inspector General begin an investigation of Fast and Furious.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: On March 22, 2011, President Barack Obama appeared on Univision and spoke about the gunwalking controversy. He said that neither he nor Attorney General Holder authorized Fast and Furious. He also stated, "There may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made, and if that's the case then we'll find out and we'll hold somebody accountable."


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: On May 3, 2011, Attorney General Holder testified to the House Judiciary Committee that he did not know who approved Fast and Furious, but that it was being investigated. He also stated that he "probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks," a claim which would later be questioned as explained below.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: In June, ATF Agent Vince Cefalu, who helped to publicize Fast and Furious, was served with termination papers, in a move by the agency he described as politically motivated retaliation. He had been at odds with ATF management since he filed a complaint over tactics in an unrelated case in 2005. The ATF denied that the firing was retaliation, and Cefalu's termination letter noted that he leaked documents to the Internet and showed a "lack of candor" in other operations.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: On June 14, 2011, a preliminary joint staff report was released by Representative Issa and Senator Grassley. Among the findings: agents were told to stand down rather than interdict weapons, they complained about the strategy and were ignored, and Fast and Furious led to increased violence and death in Mexico. Agents were panicked, certain that "someone was going to die".


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Representative Issa continued to hold hearings in June and July where ATF officials based in Phoenix and Mexico, and at headquarters in Washington, testified before the committee. ATF agent John Dodson stated that he and other agents were ordered to observe the activities of gun smugglers but not to intervene. He testified:


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: In August, three important Fast and Furious supervisors were transferred to new management positions at ATF headquarters in Washington: William Newell and David Voth, field supervisors who oversaw the program from Phoenix, and William McMahon, an ATF deputy director of operations. The transfers were initially reported as promotions by the "Los Angeles Times", but the ATF stated that they did not receive raises or take on greater responsibilities. In late August, it was announced that Acting ATF Director Melson had been reassigned to the Justice Department, and U.S. Attorney Burke announced his resignation after being questioned by Congressional investigators earlier that month.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: In October, documents showing that Attorney General Holder's office had been sent briefings on Fast and Furious as early as July 2010, prompted questions about his May statement that he wasn't sure of the exact date, but had known about it for only a few weeks. The briefings were from the National Drug Intelligence Center and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer. The Justice Department said that those briefings were about a different case started before Holder became Attorney General, and that while he had known about Fast and Furious, he didn't know the details of the tactics being used.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: On October 31, 2011, after the release of subpoenaed documents, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer stated he found out about gunwalking in Operation Wide Receiver in April 2010, and that he wished he had alerted the deputy or the attorney general at the time. The following day, in testimony before the Senate Judicial Committee in a hearing on International Organized Crime, when asked if he had reviewed the letter before it was sent to Senator Charles Grassley on February 4, 2011, denying gunwalking, Breuer replied, "I cannot say for sure whether I saw a draft of the letter that was sent to you. What I can tell you, Senator, is that at that time I was in Mexico dealing with the very real issues that we're all so committed to."


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: On November 8, 2011, Holder stated for the first time in Congressional testimony that gunwalking was used in Fast and Furious. He remarked that the tactic is unacceptable, and that the operation was "flawed in its concept and flawed in its execution". He further stated that his office had inaccurately described the program in previous letters sent to Congress, but that this was unintentional. Reiterating previous testimony, he said that he and other top officials had been unaware that the gunwalking tactic was being used. Holder stated that his staff had not shown him memos about the program, noting, "There is nothing in any of those memos that indicates any of those inappropriate tactics that are of concern. Those things were not brought to my attention, and my staff, I think, made the correct decision in that regard."


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: That same month, ex-US Attorney Burke admitted to leaking sensitive documents about ATF agent and whistleblower Dodson. Senator Grassley expressed concern that the Justice Department was using Burke as a scapegoat to protect higher officials and vowed to continue his probe.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: On December 2, 2011, the Justice Department formally withdrew its statement of February 4, 2011, denying gunwalking, due to inaccuracies.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Later that month, documents showed that some ATF agents discussed using Fast and Furious to provide anecdotal cases to support controversial new rules about gun sales. The regulation, called Demand Letter 3, would require 8,500 firearms dealers in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas that "have a significant number of crime guns traced back to them from Mexico" to report multiple rifle sales.


title: ATF gunwalking scandal

text: Investigations by Congress and the DOJ Inspector General continued into 2012. In January, Patrick Cunningham, who was the criminal division chief at the Phoenix office of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona and has since resigned, asserted his innocence and his constitutional right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying. Cunningham worked directly under Burke during Fast and Furious. He was subpoenaed because of the role he might have played in the operation, and in the letter sent from the DOJ to Senator Grassley in February 2011 that claimed the ATF did not allow weapons to be trafficked to Mexico.