This story has been slow to gain traction even though there is an on going Congressional investigation in the States. Plus it involves the death of several Mexicans and at least one AFT officer in the States. This all with weapons purchased with taxpayers money and then allowed to be transported across the Mexican border.
The reasons vary from supposedly wanting to track them to the buyers to wanting to plant evidence of American guns being smuggled into Mexico in order to enact stricter gun control laws. There even has been the suggestion that the CIA was somehow pulling the strings because they faviour one crime family over the others. What is clear is that both AFT agents and FBI agents were involved and so far they can trace the chain of command to 3 people in the Justice Department who answer to the Attorney General and 3 people in the White House who answer directly to the President. Both the Attorney General and the President deny any knowledge.
Most of the whistle blowers have been ATF agents who weren't allowed to stop the guns from going across the border and started making noise when one of their own agents was gunned down States side with one of these weapons. It is there opinion that the exercise was purely political in motive because the government wanted evidence to use as a basis to inact stricter gun laws.
The good news in all of this is that it appears that every american gun store that was used to purchase these weapons reported the suspicious nature of the transactions to the AFT. They did this with no law in place that compeled them to. They did this while the purchaser was still in the store and were instructed to let the transaction take place.
The bad news is that over 1000 weapons are still unaccounted for and are turning up at crime scene in Mexico. This has been front page news in Mexico. Needless to say they are none to happy with the States.
Bloggers have been carrying this story for some time. Of the major networks only Fox and suprisingly ABC has carried some of this story. Pretty remarkable considering the Congressional hearings taking place and how much time the networks has to devote to Michael Jackson's doctor's case.
This link is great because the guy has put together every news piece he has been able to find on the story and he up dates it a couple times a week:
http://reasonedpolitics.blogspot.com...and-batfe.html