"...puts me in mind of Condi Rice producing daily briefings she sent to George W. Bush about the possibility of planes flying into the WTC buildings. Bush had been saying he never imagined such a scenario, and then Rice covered her ass by showing the memos from weeks before the event."

Fine, but in that situation we are talking about a possibility of an event occurring. Also, bringing down the buildings was not an act that the US government had control over.

With Fast and Furious, we are talking about events that had already occurred, were well-understood, and were under the control (=direction) of a branch of our federal government.