Every party in the ATF that has been identified in the press as being involved in the gun smuggling Fast asd Furious operation has been moved around to a different location.
“Thimblerig”, which we now call a shell game, was originally played with thimbles, a pea, and a number of shills who would cluster around the operator to lend an air of legitimacy, to shield the process from eyes that might be able to tell what is really going on, and to go through the motions of either clumsily guessing correctly or clumsily wrongly so that the mark (that’s us), cannot tell what is really going on.
The key in the classic form is that the mark (us) invests his money and hopes and earnestness in going along with the process and trying to follow the movements to make the correct choice. The key part of the play is that it doesn’t really matter what the mark ends up choosing.
The master manipulator of the Fast and Furious program wasn’t under any of the thimbles.