Obama: We’ll find those who ‘screwed up’ Fast and Furious operation

President Obama pledged Tuesday to hold those who “screwed up” in the Fast and Furious gun-tracking scandal responsible and said that he first became aware of the “upsetting” program through media reports.

“This investigation will be complete, people who have screwed up will be held accountable, but our overarching goal consistently has been to say we’ve got a responsibility not only to stop drugs from flowing north, we’ve also got a responsibility to make sure we are not helping to either arm or finance these drug cartels in Mexico,” Obama said in an interview on “Nightline.”

Republicans, including House Oversight Chairman Darrel Issa, have been demanding Attorney General Eric Holder and other administration officials turn over more information about the program. The operation, which allowed American guns to cross the border, has been linked to drug crimes in Mexico and the murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

{mosads}Issa has suggested that Holder has been intentionally withholding information from Congress and that he may have been aware of details of the operation earlier than he testified to Congress.

“His chief of staff had intimate details; we have notes in his handwriting that shows that the No. 2 and Eric Holder’s right hand had intimate details for a long time,” Issa said on CBS.

“One of the questions is, why wouldn’t you tell your boss about a program that had gotten so out-of-control that it had all kinds of people scurrying to try to stop it?”

But Obama defended Holder, saying he stood by his attorney general and he believed Holder was handling the investigation appropriately.

“This is not something we were aware of in the White House and the attorney general it turns out wasn’t aware of either. Obviously Eric Holder has launched a full investigation of this, it is not acceptable for us to allow guns to go into Mexico,” Obama said.

The president also defended programs by the Department of Justice targeted at preventing the trafficking of drugs and weapons across the border.

“Our whole goal has been to interdict aggressively in the flow of weapons and cash flowing south into Mexico because the Mexican president, President Calderon, has done a heroic job of trying to take on these transnational drug cartels.”

Still, the president denounced the methods of the Fast and Furious program and pledged to keep similar operations from happening again.

“It’s very upsetting to me to think that somebody showed such bad judgment that they would allow something like that to happen, and we will find out who and what happened in this situation and make sure it gets corrected,” Obama said.