Apparently three guys who were, pardon the expression, balls-deep in Project Gun Walker (aka Operation Get a Bunch of Mexican Police and Citizens, as Well as American Law Enforcement, Killed For No Apparent Reason) have been promoted, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Here are some highlights from the article.  Bolded commentary is mine:

Reporting from Washington— The ATF has promoted three key supervisors of a controversial sting operation that allowed firearms to be illegally trafficked across the U.S. border into Mexico.

All three have been heavily criticized for pushing the program forward even as it became apparent that it was out of control. At least 2,000 guns were lost and many turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and two at the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.
Maybe the promotions are a pre-emptive strike to try to keep them from quitting and suing the BATFE for their anguish over the heavy criticism?

The three supervisors have been given new management positions at the agency's headquarters in Washington. They are William G. McMahon, who was the ATF's deputy director of operations in the West, where the illegal trafficking program was focused, and William D. Newell and David Voth, both field supervisors who oversaw the program out of the agency's Phoenix office.

McMahon and Newell have acknowledged making serious mistakes in the program, which was dubbed Operation Fast and Furious.
Oh.  I guess they're being promoted because they showed integrity by owning up to their mistakes?

"I share responsibility for mistakes that were made," McMahon testified to a House committee three weeks ago. "The advantage of hindsight, the benefit of a thorough review of the case, clearly points me to things that I would have done differently."
I would have thought that common sense, not to mention the repeated objections of agents and gun dealers involved, would have pointed you to things you should have done differently.  The fact that he needs hindsight to figure out that Gunwalker was a horrible idea makes me question why he's being promoted.  This guy is clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed.  Then again, by "would have done differently", I'm sure he means "cover my tracks better", rather than "not sell guns directly to violent criminals in Mexico so that they could use them to massacre Mexican citizens and American LEOs".

McMahon was promoted Sunday to deputy assistant director of the ATF's Office of Professional Responsibility and Security Operations — the division that investigates misconduct by employees and other problems.

Kenneth E. Melson, the ATF's acting director, said in an agency-wide confidential email announcing the promotion that McMahon was among ATF employees being rewarded because of "the skills and abilities they have demonstrated throughout their careers."
Wait, what?  We're taking a guy who was directly and actively involved with one of the biggest scandals in BATFE history and putting him in charge of the Internal Affairs division?  On a side note, is it not pathetic that I can't unequivocally state that Gunwalker was THE biggest scandal in BATFE history?  This isn't even clearly the worst thing these clowns have done.  They've got so much stupidity and lawlessness on the books that an international incident involving illegal weapons trafficking by the agency tasked with controlling firearms isn't even the clear-cut "worst" thing they've done.  It's just up there WITH the worst.  Sheesh

Newell was the special agent in charge of the field office for Arizona and New Mexico, where Fast and Furious was conducted. On Aug. 1, the ATF announced he would become special assistant to the assistant director of the agency's Office of Management in Washington.
Is that a job title from an Orwell book?  Then again, maybe this promotion isn't as bad as it sounds.  Perhaps in typical bureaucratic fashion, the "Special Assistant to the Assistant Director of the Head Cook and Bottle Washer" is actually the chief coffee getter and bagel buyer for the Washington office...  God, I hope so--but I think we all know it just ain't so!

Voth was an on-the-ground team supervisor for the operation, and last month he was moved to Washington to become branch chief for the ATF's tobacco division.
Well at least we got one of these clowns away from the firearms.  Stay tuned for Project Skoal Walker, where the BATFE deliberately allows chewing tobacco laced with arsenic to be sold to Canadian citizens in order to, um, to...  To, uh, kind of do whatever it was that Gunwalker was going to do?

The program ran from November 2009 to January 2011, with the aim of identifying Mexican drug cartel leaders by allowing illegal purchases of firearms and then tracking those weapons. Nearly 200 were recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, and in December two semiautomatics were found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's slaying in Arizona.

No cartel leaders were arrested.
But I guess we already knew that, didn't we?  And of course, there are also rumblings that nearly every single one of the buyers the BATFE would have arreste as a result of this program were actually unindictable, due to being on the payroll of another government agency.  But hey, at least we got rid of a lot of those damned Mexicans, right?  Right?  Anybody?

Is corruption this bad in our government today!

These guys should be in jail! Not promoted!  Makes me sick!!!!

 

They're now saying that "only" 1,418 weapons were lost due to "Fast and Furious". Of those, some 59 have been recovered at 12 crime scenes (to include Terry's crime scene). I don't care if it was 1 or 1,418, ATF should have never let those guns walk... period.

Only fourteen hundred, you say?  Well, then, I take back all those nasty, sarcastic I made about those kind gentlemen.  Honestly, who doesn't accidentally let Mexican drug cartels have more firepower than all of the guns on Pearl Harbor and Hickam combined from time to time?  [/sarcasm]

It defies belief that these guys aren't in prison.  On second thought, I don't want to lock them up in prison, because that's crazy expensive.  Let's just extradite them to Mexico and let them do their time in a Mexican prison.  With all the networking they were able to do with the drug cartels during Gunwalker, I'm sure they'll have plenty of friends there, anyway.

If anybody's interested, Sean Hannity's doing a show about Gunwalker right now.

If anybody's interested, Sean Hannity's doing a show about Gunwalker right now.

Ah, that is just FOX trying to lay blame on the democrats, the president, and his help.

None of this really happened, and if it did, nobody knew about it until after folks got killed.