The Justice Department's Office of Inspector General has released a report on the problems with Project Gunrunner, a Justice Department initiative that aims to prevent weapons from being smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border and given to Mexican drug cartels.

Although officials have claimed that Project Gunrunner has been a success, the report says that the programs suffers from several "significant weaknesses," including a lack of cooperation between the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF)--which runs the project--and the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). For example, ATF and ICE do not share intelligence about illegal gun trafficking, nor do they conduct joint investigations with one another, the report said.

The report also noted that the two agencies do not notify each other about what cases they are working on. In addition, the report criticized ATF for failing to cooperate with Mexican law enforcement officials in executing Project Gunrunner and for distributing leads about illegal gun purchases that are untimely and thus of little use to investigators. The report attributed the problems with Project Gunrunner to several factors, including a lack of funding from Congress and a lack of gun laws that ban weapons trafficking.

Critics also say that ATF has been ineffective in stopping the smuggling of weapons across the U.S.-Mexico border because President Obama has yet to appoint a director for the agency.