The report finds that Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who leads the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, told Holder about the Firearms Trafficking Working Group (FTWG) in an Aug. 19, 2009, memo of recommendation.

“The FTWG’s mission was to formulate a plan to improve the U.S. government’s efforts in stemming the illegal flow of weapons, which was fueling escalating violence along both sides of the Southwestern border,” the report reads. “The working group’s first recommendation was that the ‘attorney general and secretary of Homeland Security should form an interagency Southwest Border (‘SWB’) firearms trafficking strategy group.’ According to the Justice Department, ‘the deputy attorney general responded to the specific proposals in this memorandum by forming the Southwest Border Strategy Group, which he chaired.’”

Shortly thereafter, then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, the No. 2 official in the Department of Justice, drafted and disseminated a new planning document titled “Strategy for Combating the Mexican Cartels.”

In that document, Ogden laid the groundwork for the Obama administration’s senior-level political support of gunwalking.

“[M]erely seizing firearms through interdiction will not stop firearms trafficking to Mexico,” Ogden wrote in that memo, obtained by congressional investigators and released along with the report Tuesday.