A flip-flop which puzzled me now makes sense

As Moe Lane documented in August, the DEA (the front line outfit in the War on Drugs) is a major partner in the “Fast and Furious” scandal, and wants to avoid at all costs being the fall guy:

It would appear that the DEA does not want to be the fall guy in Operation Fast & Furious*, either: DEA head Michele M. Leonhart admitted in a letter to Senator Grassley (Judiciary) and Rep. Issa (Oversight) that her organization was in fact involved in the investigation, and provided support for it. This is a significant admission by Ms. Leonhart, given that (as Bob Owens** of Pajamas Media reminds us) there is an existing allegation by the former head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives (BATFE) Phoenix office that the DEA was a full partner in the proceedings.

The DEA is, of course, under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department…

But the scandal (especially the DEA’s role in it) will not go away. As Bob Owens documented yesterday, there is simply no avoiding the simple fact that the DEA figures largely in the “Fast and Furious” scandal now threatening to engulf the Obama administration. According to Congressman Issa, Fast and Furious was “a joint operation in which DEA knew more than ATF”:

In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa revealed for the first time that the Drug Enforcement Administration was far more involved in running the operation than the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives:

It wasn’t an ATF operation. They were part of that. It was a joint operation in which DEA knew more than ATF.

This directly conflicts with prior statements by DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart — she claimed that the DEA only played a supporting role and that her DEA agents in El Paso and Phoenix were only “indirectly involved in the ATF operation through DEA-associated investigative activity.” She further absolved her agency by claiming that “DEA personnel had no decision-making role in ATF operations” associated with Fast and Furious.

The DEA’s higher-profile role will not absolve ATF personnel for their roles in carrying out the plot politically, but it could potentially make a difference in future criminal proceedings if ATF agents on the front lines of the operation thought they were participating in a legitimate law enforcement operation.

Unfortunately for the Department of Justice, the higher level of collusion between different federal law enforcement agencies that report to the attorney general make it even more unlikely that Eric Holder and other senior DOJ personnel were unaware of the real goal of the operation.

Considering that Holder may ultimately have to be thrown under the bus, this puts Obama and his crew in the tricky position of how to run the most efficient damage control operation possible — one which will minimize political fallout.

If the DEA is in fact the primary culprit, then making them the fall guy is a no-brainer. But what about the political implications? Doing something hostile to the DEA poses inherent problems for Obama, because the agency is a major independent fiefdom, with the president only theoretically its boss. People who ascribe imaginary dictatorial powers to “The One” forget that American presidents have long since ceased to be literally in charge of the Executive Branch of government. The President is an elected figurehead whose literal power is a bit like that of the Queen of England, who could theoretically dissolve Parliament but if she did it would be fatal to the monarchy.

So it would behoove him to proceed very, very cautiously against the sainted warriors who keep us all safe from marijuana, and who have mega millions to spend on things like political advocacy:

The 2010 DEA budget was directed toward three of five major goals of U.S. drug eradication:^[14]

• Demand reduction ($3.3 million) via anti-legalization education, training for law enforcement personnel, youth programs, support for community-based coalitions, and sports drug awareness programs.

• Reduction of drug-related crime and violence ($181.8 million) funding state and local teams and mobile enforcement teams.

• Breaking foreign and domestic sources of supply ($1.0149 billion) via domestic cannabis eradication/suppression; domestic enforcement; research, engineering, and technical operations; the Foreign Cooperative Investigations Program; intelligence operations (financial intelligence, operational intelligence, strategic intelligence, and the El Paso Intelligence Center); and drug and chemical diversion control.

A lot of people have been marveling over Obama’s wholesale 180 degree flip-flop on his previously declared hands-off stance towards medical marijuana. In fact, as I read the details, I was baffled, because so many Americans are sick of the drug war and sympathetic to medical marijuana legalization that the hands-off policy that was Obama’s campaign promise would seem to carry minimal political cost. So I kept asking myself why? Why would this lefty community organizer, who is the most pot-friendly president America has ever had, be so willing to betray a significant campaign promise which would not have carried much of a cost. Why has the president become “just another drug warrior“?

And as Glenn Reynolds asks, why the silence on the left?

If the DEA is destined to be made the official Fast and Furious fall guy, I am beginning to understand why. The DEA is a hard-core group of of anti-marijuana fanatics, who see any softening of the nation’s marijuana laws as a dire threat to their turf. Whether seen in terms of overall seizure tonnage, numbers of people arrested or in prison, the term “drugs” translates arithmetically into marijuana. It is no exaggeration to say that from the DEA’s political and bureaucratic standpoint, marijuana is the backbone of the war on drugs. A president who messes around with marijuana literally messes with their bread and butter.

If the DEA feels they are being made the fall guy by a president who has already betrayed them by a pot-friendly stance, I think it is reasonable to assume that they would respond by hitting the trenches, and going after him politically with everything they have.

But if he has carefully covered his tracks by being a DEA-friendly and DEA-compliant president, then they, the DEA, will be ingrates who will not sound credible if they accuse the president of betrayal in the war on drugs.

This is of course speculation on my part. But I cannot think of a better explanation for the puzzling question of why Obama has thrown medical marijuana has been thrown under the bus. And become just another drug warrior.

I’m no longer puzzled.

(The president’s fast and furious ass covering now makes infinite sense.)