Justice Dept watchdog faults agency grenade probe
Source: AP-Excite
By ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal agents and prosecutors in Arizona made multiple errors in their investigation of a U.S. citizen who was suspected of smuggling grenade components to Mexico, including failing to arrest him when there was more than enough evidence to do so, the Justice Department watchdog said in a harshly critical report Thursday.
The inspector general's report found parallels between the investigation into Jean Baptiste Kingery by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and "Operation Fast and Furious," an ATF gun-running operation along the Southwest border that relied on flawed tactics and became a political firestorm for the Justice Department. Those similarities include poor supervision, weak oversight and a failure "to take or insist on overt enforcement action against the subjects of the investigations."
"Our reviews of both cases concluded that, in failing to act, they did not adequately consider the risk to public safety in the United States and Mexico created by the subjects' illegal activities," the report states.
In a statement, the Justice Department said that in the past six years it had taken "aggressive action" to ensure that the mistakes of the Kingery case "are not repeated."
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