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While Boehner and Cantor would make the final decision on postponing a vote, aides to the speaker and Issa said the chairman and his staff would conduct any upcoming negotiations
-- as they have been doing throughout the year. The Issa aides believe that a few hundred pages of documents may satisfy them, providing that those records tell the story of how the Justice Department came to understand that it gave Congress false information on Feb. 4, 2011. The department said then that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives made every effort to interdict weapons moving from Arizona to Mexico. More than 10 months later, the department retracted that statement after it became clear that the guns were not intercepted but allowed to "walk" to Mexico in hopes that officials could track them to drug lords. The most tragic occurrence in the flawed operation came when agents in Arizona lost track of several hundred weapons, and two of the guns that "walked" were found at the scene of the slaying of U.S. border agent Brian Terry. The flaws were exposed by whistle-blowers who contacted Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. On Tuesday, Holder offered to give lawmakers a briefing on the withheld documents but insisted that this action satisfy Issa's subpoena for the records and negate the need for a committee contempt vote. Issa rejected the offer, saying it was an attempt to force an end to the committee's investigation. The wiretap approval process is important to Issa because, he contends, the Justice Department gave only a cursory look at applications for wiretaps on targets in Fast and Furious.
One Issa aide said the committee negotiators were looking for the administration to "generate good will that will potentially change the atmosphere on getting a deal." Another aide added, "But we have to see the documents."
[Associated
Press;
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