Justice Department Accused of ‘Reckless Technique’

 In a report issued Tuesday by two powerful Republicans in Congress, the Justice Department was accused of conducting an operation that allowed nearly 1,000 guns to flow illegally into Mexico, including two that were eventually found at the scene of the murder of an American Border Patrol agent.

The report, by Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Representative Darrell Issa of California, said the 2009 operation in Arizona by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, called Fast and Furious, was intended to shift the focus of enforcement efforts toward criminal organizations south of the border and away from straw purchasers who knowingly buy guns for others.

The legislators criticized the effort as using what they described as a “reckless investigative technique that street agents call ‘gun-walking.’ ” The technique involved long periods of surveillance in which agents watched loads of legally bought weapons move from straw purchasers to third parties, hoping that the transactions would lead them to bigger criminal targets.

Instead, the legislators said, guns were routinely lost, and fewer than two dozen people were ultimately arrested — all of them accused of being straw purchasers. The legislators say A.T.F. agents were routinely ordered to stand down rather than interdict guns from people they suspected of trafficking weapons.

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