Tucson, Ariz.-The Canyon Del Oro High School auditorium in Tucson, Ariz. was packed full of at least 500 people last night as anxious tea party members waited to hear from ATF whistleblower Vince Cefalu, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu and Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar about the Obama Justice Department’s Operation Fast and Furious. The theme of the night? Accountability.  

“The only thing I have ever asked is to put all the cards on the table. Tell the truth,” ATF whistleblower Vince Cefalu said.

Cefalu was heavily involved in Operation Fast and Furious and has been an ATF agent for over 20 years. He has watched the bureau become a political entity rather than fulfilling its obligations as a law enforcement agency.

“We should not concern ourselves with any administration’s agenda,” Cefalu said. "It [Operation Fast and Furious] defies logic, common sense, it defies our core beliefs, our training and our experience as ATF agents.”

When Cefalu started speaking out against his superiors within ATF about the way Operation Fast and Furious was being conducted, putting high powered weapons into the hands of ruthless drug cartels and then losing track of them, he was approached within 24 hours and told to stop. He was also threatened and told if he didn’t shut his mouth, he would be relocated to North Dakota, a long way from where he had been working along the southern border with Mexico.

“To think that they could do this sort of operation knowing there could be a dead ATF agent at the ends of those guns made me nauseous,” he said.

Despite threats from his superiors, Cefalu blew the whistle about Operation Fast and Furious anyway, which has landed him under review for what he describes as “a proposal for removal for telling the truth.“

“Unchecked power corrupts,” he said, adding that there are no longer checks and balances within ATF.

In his speech, Cefalu made the larger argument that this is a major government corruption problem, not only surrounding Operation Fast and Furious, but about a runaway government that doesn't answer to the people, saying ATF agents and the Department of Justice shouldn’t be able to say no to Congress when asked for documentation surrounding operations within the Bureau. The Obama Justice Department has been stonewalling the House Oversight Committee in its investigation into Operation Fast and Furious since day one.

Pinal County