Shadow war.

When I wrote the post below -- "Yogi Berra was right. Rumor of a big, bad ATF bust early next week." -- around midnight last night, I was acutely aware of the slippery ground upon which this shadow war for the truth of Operation Gunwalker and the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry is being fought.

Rumors can be -- and often are -- floated like dye in the sewer, just to see where it goes to close down leaks. Given the high stakes of the games being played behind the scenes by the White House and their Justice Department minions desperate to stop the truth from coming out, this is certainly a concern. But when a rumor -- any rumor -- comes from multiple sources, sources which have always been right in the past, sources who do not know each other, it is less likely to be disinformation dye and more likely to be the real turd.

But I must say that sewer dye was on my mind when I wrote the "rumor" announcement. Were this just about intelligence gathering and protecting sources -- even multiple sources -- the prudent thing to do would have been to stay silent, watch and wait. But it is not. Nor is this rumor about something trivial, like the length of ATF attorney James P. "Little Jim" Vann's penis. It is not even something merely scandalous like whether ATF "subject of interest" Ramsey A, Bear, in pursuit of whom the ATF wasted millions, was real (he wasn't). This is about something that can get a whole lot of people killed very quickly -- ATF agents and innocents as well. This is about something that, handled with all the skill that ATF has shown in the past when under pressure, could inadvertently start another American civil war.

What if the rumor is true and this brilliant plan turns into a botched shit storm like the incredibly misnamed "Trojan Horse" (the initial raid plan for Waco) and people get killed? No more free Wacos, remember? I've got a moral responsibility to try to prevent that.

It's not like the ATF street agents themselves are not thinking thoughts along these lines.