Hillary Clinton:‘No Evidence’ DOJ Sought Required License to Send Guns to Mexico in ‘Fast and Furious’

CNS 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified in the House Foreign Relations Committee Thursday that there was "no record" that the Justice Department had given the State Department a "head up" about Operation Fast and Furious, in which guns were allowed to flow from the United States to drug traffickers in Mexico, and that the State Department had found "no evidence" that DOJ had applied for a license or waiver to send guns to a foreign country, which a member of the committee told her would have been required under U.S. law.
Clinton was responding to questions from Rep. Connie Mack (R.-Fla.), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs.
The federal Arms Export Control Act requires State Department involvement in any decision to send weapons across an international border. Under the act, it is illegal to "conspire to export, import, re-export or cause to be exported ... any defense article ... for which a license or written approval is required ... without first obtaining the required license or written approval from the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls."
Rep. Mack quoted this portion of the law in a letter he sent to Clinton on Wednesday, the day before she testified before the committee.
"I wanted to talk a little bit about Fast and Furious, and specifically at what point did the State Department learn of Operation Fast And Furious?" Mack asked Clinton on Thursday.
As CNSNews.com previously reported, President Barack Obama has expressed “complete confidence” in his attorney general, Eric Holder, who has come under fire for his congressional testimony concerning Operation Fast and Furious.
Testifying in the House Judiciary Committee on May 3, 2011, Holder was asked by House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) when he first learned about Operation Fast and Furious. Holder said: “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”


DOJ documents that were released later show that memos sent to Holder in July 2010 discussed Operation Fast and Furious.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has called for a special counsel to probe whether Holder’s testimony was truthful.

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