Talk:ATF gunwalking scandal

Timeline of operation

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This CNN article published today, October 2, 2018, lists the Operation timeline in detail: Operation Fast and Furious Fast Facts. Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 00:43, 3 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

Judge upends settlement in Fast and Furious documents case

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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/22/fast-and-furious-documents-case-926645 Terrorist96 (talk) 21:46, 29 October 2018 (UTC)Reply

Statements about GPS in lede not developed in article

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The second paragraph of the lede makes this specific assertion: "Each weapon was equipped with a GPS unit initially installed by El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), later purchased at a local electronics shop by the ATF. Critically, the GPS battery life was only a few days and the GPS weapon 'tracker' signal was routinely lost especially in car trunks. This lack of technical sophistication and failure of GPS as a tracker, were the major reasons for Fast and Furious failure as an ATF operation."
This is a fairly detailed series of claims, yet none of them are further developed in the main body of the article. This is strange. Usually the lede of an article is a summary of information that is to follow, but clearly that doesn't happen here. There is no mention of the GPS units, EPIC, local electronics shops, etc., in the main body.
Also, according to the first sentence, the GPS units were "...initially installed..." but also "...later purchased...", which is nonsensical. One can't install something before purchasing it.
Furthermore, the solitary source cited in the paragraph is John Dodson's book The Unarmed Truth: My Fight to Blow the Whistle and Expose Fast and Furious. This is problematic since it requires anyone trying to find the source to purchase the book, or perhaps find it in a library. When a WP source is being cited, and information from it is being paraphrased or summarized, but it is inaccessible on-line, there should be a direct quote provided in a reference pop-out when hovering over the citation (I can't recall what the term is for this), but no such thing is provided here. Not even a page number is provided. So we are left wondering if the assertion is indeed supported by the source material. This, of course, presumes that the book is indeed an accurate, reliable source, which is by no means guaranteed. The multiple uncertainties introduced by this make the assertions contained in this paragraph questionable.
To be clear: I have no specific doubts about the information; it may be completely accurate. But the way in which it is presented as definitive and unquestioned does not support the reader's confidence in the assertions. It should be cleaned-up and properly sourced, as well as further developed in the main body, or it should be moved down into the main body, and couched as something less than definitive. Bricology (talk) 19:16, 8 April 2024 (UTC)Reply