While FT often has interesting articles, the particular one above is full of regurgitated ideological propaganda from people who flat out lie to achieve their objectives.
One example follows: "Longtime critics of the ATF, from a libertarian banker I recently dined with to National Rifle Association director Wayne LaPierre, claim to believe the corruption runs much deeper. They say Fast and Furious proves the agency has been funneling guns to Mexican criminal organizations. Why the ATF would be doing this -- and making official policy of it -- is never part of the argument."
The last sentence in the above quote from the article is simply false.
The conspiracy theory justification that the above ideological propoganda claims does not exist is quite well known. It goes like this:
Obama came to power with a gun control agenda. Obama's gun control agenda had zero chance of passing Congress. Congress had broad bipartisan support against gun control legislation.
Obama therefore followed a regulatory agenda to have the executive branch simply issue regulations which had the following characteristics: Congress would never pass them as law and the regulations were never authorized by law. In order to give these regulations a chance of passing federal court challenge the Obama administration needed facts to justify these regulations as reasonable and necessary under an emergency public safety justification.
Obama's Justice Department, in 2009, sent a U.S. Attorney ( a member of the U.S. Justice Department ) to the Southwest United States to implement a secret gun walking program where the United States government recruited legal gun shop owners in the Southwest United States to, at the request of the United States Government, take actions that violated the gun shop owner's conscience, violated the gun shop owner's policies, and also violated ATF regulations, by selling multiple military grade weapons ( multiple during a single sale )to suspected straw purchasers that the U.S. Government represented to the Gun Shop Owners were straw purchasers and the U.S. Government also represented that the guns were to be tracked by law enforcement, for purposes of recovering the guns and arresting both the straw purchaser and the real purchasers. All of this, except the motivation of the Obama Administration in sending the U.S. Attorney down there, is a matter of public record.
What happened next is also a matter of public record. During the Obama Administration, and as part of the Fast and Furious program started by the Obama administration, guns, multiple guns per purchase, multiple military grade guns per purchase, were allowed to be purchased by "straw purchasers" at the specific request of the U.S. Government. Shortly after the purchase all surveillance of nearly 100% of such guns by law enforcement was ended and the guns were simply allowed to be "walked" over the border into Mexico by criminals who were not being tracked.
These military grade guns then started showing up in Mexico, identified by serial number, at the site of organized crime mass murders. Depending on which U.S. government documents you use somewhere between 100 and 300 people were murdered at murder locations where these weapons were identified by serial number.
All of the above is also a part of the public record.
Unlike with past U.S. government "gun tracking operations" the Mexican government was never given advanced warning that a specific gun was crossing the border and where and when it would cross, nor was the Mexican government informed the U.S. government had any knowledge about who purchased these guns in the United States or how they came to be in the hands of criminals in Mexico, after they were found at a murder scene, until after the Fast and Furious operation was exposed by whistle blowers and the U.S. Congress's investigation. The United States government merely played dumb with the Mexican government regarding these guns before Congress exposed the false statements by the Justice Department regarding this program's existence.
After the murder of a U.S. government agent in the United States by criminals with some of these guns in their possession, whistle blowers within the Obama administration tipped off the U.S. Congress that the U.S. government was allowing guns to "walk into Mexico at the request of the U.S. government". When the U.S. Justice Department was confronted by Senators and other Members of Congress by these facts about gun walking during the Obama Administration, the U.S. Justice Department called the whistle blowers liars and denied the facts both in writing to Congress and in sworn testimony to Congress.
After a substantial period of time ( 10 months ) and after additional whistle blowers provided documents that proved the U.S. Justice Departments claims were false. The U.S. Justice department admitted, in writing, that the U.S. Justice department's previous statements of fact were "incorrect".
All the above is "on the public record" except the speculation on the motives of the Obama Administration as to why: The Obama Administration initiated the Fast and Furious program, continued to run it for an extended period of time, and gave false information to the Mexican government and the U.S. Congress about the very existence of this program for over 10 months after the initial false information was first given to Congress.
Now the more interesting parts of the Fast and Furious public record, which is seldom discussed - and is why the Second Amendment protection political groups, like the National Rifle Association are so interested in this investigation:
During the regulatory process, and the subsequent court challenges, the Obama administration Justice department used records of the "non-existent" Fast and Furious program to falsely claim that Gun Dealers in the Southwest United States, not the United States government, were responsible for allowing straw purchasers to buy multiple guns per sale and that these same guns were found at mass murder scenes in Mexico.
The immediately above statements of fact are the argument the National Rifle Association used to convince 21 Democrats in the United States Congress to vote for the Contempt authorization that allows the U.S. Congress to sue the Obama Administration in Federal Court to force the release of all documents related to "Fast and Furious".
The size, scope, who in the Obama Administration initiated Fast and Furious, for what purpose it was initiated, who concealed the existence of Fast and Furious, and what the information Fast and Furious collected was used for are reasonably believed to be contained in the documents that the Justice Department refuses to turn over to Congress. An internal Inspector General investigation, controlled by the Obama Administration, was given access to more than 100,000 documents as part of a never ending secret review of the Fast and Furious program, but the Justice Department has refused to allow the Congress to see those same documents and instead insists that the Congress, unlike the Inspectors Generals office, only needs less than 8K documents, said 8K documents being hand picked by the Justice Department. The Justice Department also claims the the Obama Administration has the right to pick and choose what documents the Obama Administration will allow Congress to review in response to a legal subpena from Congress. In this case the Justice Department chose to exclude over 90% of the documents the Inspector General was given access to for review of the same Fast and Furious program.
I am not sure your point in linking to that article, but if it was to demonstrate that elites lie to coverup the truth and have no fear of getting caught in a lie, then it is a great example.
If it was also to point out that the U.S. Attorney General of the United States has no interest in identifying and prosecuting, or otherwise holding accountable, people who contributed to the murder of a United States Border patrol agent, then, again, it is a great example.