I have been musing over this lately. What if the fast and the furious was not an anti gun running operation, but a means to sell guns to cartels that work with the US government. They put "tracking devices" on them, that would not work, that everyone knew would not work, so that if the program got caught, it would be written off as "gubmeernent incompetence" an excuse that everyone could live with and forget about.

The problem is why would they need to sell the guns so quickly? was it an experiment to see if people would buy into the excuse? did they have other operations that are "failing" too, but will also write off as incompetence?