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US Attorney Dennis Burke and Fast and Furious

A very interesting article on his background. As a Senate aide,

"And he began working on gun control. DeConcini said Burke helped draft the Anti-Drug Assault Weapons Limitation Act of 1989. A five-year battle ensued, ending with President Bill Clinton signing the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which made it a federal offense to possess certain semiautomatic rifles manufactured after the law's passage.

DeConcini said Burke fostered the measure in concert with a key figure in the White House, policy analyst Rahm Emanuel, who years later would become chief of staff for President Obama. Emanuel now is mayor of Chicago.

"Dennis was the one who worked with everyone on the Judiciary Committee to line up these members and votes," DeConcini said. "Dennis had all these pictures of these guns -- the Streetsweepers and the AK-47s. And it passed by one vote. A lot of it was not my eloquence on the bill, it was stuff that Dennis had done."

The law was adopted shortly before Burke left his Senate job for a position in the Clinton White House as a senior policy analyst for law enforcement and drug issues, again working with Emanuel.

According to preserved e-mails, Burke continued handling firearm issues, discussing whether executive orders could be used to extend the Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act requirement for background checks.
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During a news conference in 2010, Burke complained that scores of guns from Arizona were being recovered in Mexico. "We have a huge problem here. We have now become the gun locker of the Mexican drug cartels." What Burke did not mention was that his prosecutors had allegedly instructed ATF agents to let some of those weapons "walk" across the border.

In fact, just one month after Burke's appointment as U.S. attorney was confirmed by the Senate, Operation Fast and Furious was secretly launched in Arizona.
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In an April 2010 e-mail to a colleague, Burke predicted that the operation would have a huge public impact: "It's going to bring a lot of attention to straw purchasers of assault weapons," he wrote. "Some of these weapons bought by these clowns in Arizona have been directly traced to murders of elected officials in Mexico by the cartels, so Katie-bar-the-door when we unveil this baby.""

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