REPORT COULD DETAIL CHAIN OF DECISIONS IN GUNWALKER

The Justice Department’s internal investigator is poised to release a long-awaited report on Operation Fast and Furious that could answer some of the big remaining questions about the controversial Arizona gun-trafficking investigation.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz and his staff have taken more than a year to look into the operation, in which hundreds of guns were allowed to flow from Phoenix-area gun stores to suspected criminals in Mexico. If the current schedule holds, the report will be released before Horowitz testifies at a House Oversight Committee hearing on Tuesday (See story on C2).

The committee itself has issued several reports about Operation Fast and Furious, the most recent a 209-page account put out July 31. But in that report, the authors complain that congressional investigators have not had the same access to interview people or review documents that the inspector general had.

Now the many critics of the operation wonder if it will resolve any of the key questions on the gun-trafficking investigation that was revealed after the killing of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. On Dec. 14, 2010, the Tucson Sector agent was shot and killed west of Rio Rico, and the group of suspected bandits who shot at agents left two guns purchased by a Fast and Furious suspect.

In a written statement, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who initially revealed the “gun-walking” aspect of Fast and Furious, said Terry’s family members “deserve better than the treatment they’ve thus far received from the Justice Department.-[source]