Attorney General Eric Holder has been slow to provide information to Republican lawmakers — and sometimes Democrats, too — about some of his most controversial decisions: the plan to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York, the decision to grant full American constitutional rights to accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the effort to shut down the Guantanamo terrorist detention facility. Holder has been so slow to respond to some congressional inquiries that all the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee recently sent a letter to chairman Patrick Leahy asking that Holder appear before the committee “without delay.”
No word from Leahy on whether he’ll call Holder soon. But now we learn that Holder has been talking extensively — to the New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer. In a long profile, Holder tells Mayer that his approach to terrorism is the truly tough way of dealing with America’s enemies, as opposed to the “macho bravado” of pundits and lawmakers on the right. And Holder believes that trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in an American civilian court will be “the defining event of my time as attorney general.” From the article:
On January 11th, a few weeks before his plans for a trial [in Manhattan] fell apart, Holder flew to Boston, to preside over the installation of a new U.S. Attorney. That evening, he returned to Washington in the Justice Department’s Gulfstream jet. Holder, who had jokingly lamented that such perks wouldn’t last forever — “I’m missing it already!” — sat down, put on headphones, and blasted one of his favorite songs, Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.” Holder, who is fifty-nine, seemed determined not to let the tensions of Washington politics poison his mood. He was equally determined not to capitulate on the idea of holding a 9/11 trial. “I don’t apologize for what I’ve done,” he told me at one point. “History will show that the decisions we’ve made are the right ones.” Holder said that he regarded trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a courtroom as “the defining event of my time as Attorney General.” But, he added, “between now and then I suspect we’re in for some interesting times”…
Late last month, at home, in Northwest Washington, Holder addressed those who have suggested that he and Obama are too weak to take on terrorism. “This macho bravado — that’s the kind of thing that leads you into wars that should not be fought, that history is not kind to,” he said. “The quest for justice, despite what your contemporaries might think, that’s toughness. The ability to subject yourself to the kind of criticism I’m getting now, for something I think is right? That’s tough.” He paused, and added, “This is something that can get a rise out of me, the notion that somehow Eric Holder and Barack Obama, this Administration, is not tough. We have the welfare of the American people in our minds all the time. We’ll fight our enemies, and we’ll do that which is necessary, and we won’t turn our backs on the values and traditions that have made this country great. That is what is tough.”
The entire article is here.
