My opinion only: I think it was an overly ambitious plan to try and show how guns were getting across the border, smuggled in either direction, by "placing them in circulation" so to speak, then keeping track of them. A plan like this is FAR easier said than done, as we well know; and many line personnel in ATF were vehemently against the program idea for just that reason: the guns getting lost and no way to track them, as well as being used in crimes because of them going right into bad guys' hands. The program made absolutely no sense due to its impossibility to manage. Even with the line-agents disagreeing heavily, the plan was put forward........this is what makes people believe that there's some sort of hidden agenda with it. That, as well as other agencies not being informed of the plan of the US Government putting assault weapons into bad guy circulation; a plan that wasn't found out until a US Border Patrol agent was killed in AZ by one of these exact weapons that was recovered. Other weapons that were involved in the program, identified by serial number, have been found at various crime scenes in Tucson and Phoenix, as well as surrounding cities. Attorney General Eric Holder, who claimed no knowledge of the operation, is in possibility of being held in contempt of Congress, as it's now known he had signed off on it; a fact that makes people wonder what the Administration knew about this operation and when they knew of it.