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: