On Sunday, the New York Times published what Power Line’s Scott Johnson rightly calls a hagiographic profile of Attorney General Eric Holder in the context of his decision to bring 9/11 co-conspirators to New York to stand trial. That decision has come under unrelenting criticism, of course. But the Times piece portrays Holder as an-above-the-fray actor who just wants to do his best to honor the law and restore the Justice Department’s honor after the supposedly scandal-plagued Bush years. Some would disagree with that take on Holder. (See, for example, Holder’s role in the Marc Rich pardon scandal. Clearly, Mr. Holder knows how to play the political game to the detriment of the law.)
Still, even in this mostly fawning portrait a few passages stand out and, when put together, tell an important story the Times wasn’t really interested in exploring more fully. Consider these sentences with respect to Holder’s role in closing Guantanamo (emphasis added):
Asked why he wanted to be attorney general, Mr. Holder did not mention national security issues; instead he said he took the job to put a department he loves on track after scandals during the administration of President George W. Bush. Still, just after Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the president asked Mr. Holder to lead the effort to resolve the fate of the detainees at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
It was not the first time Mr. Obama had entrusted him with a crucial matter.
Why was a lawyer with little to no national security experience put in charge of the process of closing Guantanamo?
The Times doesn’t pursue this line of inquiry.
Next we are left to ask: Does Mr. Holder actually know anything about the Taliban or al Qaeda?
There is not much, if anything, in his résumé that suggests he does. So, then, why was he put in charge of overseeing the evaluation of cases–which were really built as intelligence dossiers, not criminal justice files–against men who are by and large Taliban and al Qaeda members?
Now, I’m sure some will see this as a politically-motivated attack. It isn’t intended to be. Quite frankly, the Bush administration made all sorts of mistakes in its detainee transfer decisions and policies. (See, for instance, here and here.)
But it does say something about the Obama administration’s reflexive criminal justice mindset that it would appoint what the Times itself calls a “crucial matter” to a lawyer with no experience in this area.
And, are Holder and his attorney-laden task forces coming to different conclusions about individual detainees than those reached by more experienced military and intelligence personnel? (See, for example, here, here, and here.) That would make for an interesting story, but the Times and most of the media aren’t, apparently, devoting any resources to it.
In the Times piece, we find this anecdote (emphasis added):
Soon after, he told subordinates to recalibrate their thinking about terrorism issues. “It’s a new day,” Mr. Holder said.
What, exactly, about the Christmas Day terrorist plot made it “a new day”? The Times and Holder don’t say, but this is mildly troubling. Elsewhere in the Times piece we learn that Holder is a student of history. Were he and his team really ignorant of the readily available, and extensive, history of al Qaeda’s attacks on airliners–so much so that he viewed this as something “new”?
As the Democrats have told us repeatedly in recent weeks, it is not as if this was the first time the U.S. had captured a terrorist shortly after he had tried to blow up an airliner on behalf of al Qaeda. The Richard Reid shoe-bomb plot had similarly failed in December 2001. The Democrats say that the Obama administration’s handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is the same as the Bush administration’s handling of Reid–a point that conveniently ignores the entire evolution of how terrorism cases were handled during the Bush years, including the implementation of the military commission system months after Reid was detained. (The commission system, which has had its own problems, simply was not up and running at the time of Reid’s arrest.)
Regardless, did Holder and his DOJ really think that the Christmas Day plot marked the beginning of something “new”? Is it too much to infer that Holder–the administration official thrust into the middle of all these key national security decisions–really hadn’t been thinking all that hard about them?
That doesn’t seem to be a bridge too far, especially when Holder’s own comments are considered.
The Times piece concludes by noting that the administration is waffling on Holder’s decision to try 9/11 conspirators like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal courts. What will Holder do if his decision is reversed?
That seems about right.
Thomas Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
