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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (344799)	1/22/2010 2:15:06 AM
From: KLP	5 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793834

On bombing suspect, tough questions for Eric Holder By: Byron York Chief Political Correspondent January 22, 2010 It seems like a pretty simple question. Who made the decision to charge Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused terrorist arrested for trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day, as an everyday criminal, as opposed to an enemy combatant? After all, Abdulmutallab was trained by al Qaeda, equipped with an al Qaeda-made bomb, and dispatched by al Qaeda to bring down the airliner and its 278 passengers. Even though the Obama administration has mostly abandoned the term "war on terror," the president himself has said clearly that the United States is at war with al Qaeda. So who decided to treat Abdulmutallab as a civilian, read him the Miranda warning, and provide him with a government-paid lawyer -- giving him the right to remain silent and denying the United States potentially valuable intelligence that might have been gained by a military-style interrogation? This week that simple question -- Who? -- became more complicated after several of the administration's top anti-terrorism officials testified on Capitol Hill. The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, said he wasn't consulted before the decision was made. The director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, said he wasn't consulted, either. The secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, said she wasn't consulted. And the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, said he wasn't consulted. "The decision was made by the agents on the ground," Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, referring to the officials who apprehended Abdulmutallab when the plane landed in Detroit. American agents questioned the accused terrorist briefly before he was taken to a hospital to be treated for burns suffered in the attempt to set off explosives hidden in his underwear. After that, Mueller testified, "in consultation with the Department of Justice and others in the administration," the agents read him his rights. And that was that. "Isn't it a fact, that after Miranda was given ... the individual stopped talking?" Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asked Mueller. "He did," Mueller answered. But Mueller declined to say who made the decision to grant Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent. The issue is enormously important because Abdulmutallab, newly trained by al Qaeda in the terrorist group's latest hot spot, Yemen, likely knows things that would be very useful to American anti-terrorism investigators. He's not some grizzled old terrorist who's been sitting in Guantanamo Bay since 2003 and doesn't have any new intelligence. He's fresh material. Yet he is protected by U.S. criminal law from having to answer questions. Why? Republicans on the Judiciary Committee increasingly believe there is only one person who can answer: Attorney General Eric Holder. It was Holder who made the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a criminal trial in New York. It is Holder who has expressed his desire to grant full American constitutional rights to foreign terrorists. It is Holder who is leading the administration's sputtering effort to move some Guantanamo inmates to the United States. And it is Holder who is apparently cutting other parts of the government out of crucial terrorism decisions like the treatment of Abdulmutallab. "These days, all roads lead to the attorney general," says one well-placed Republican source in the Senate. "They seem to have aggregated quite a bit of power inside Main Justice." The problem is, the Holder Justice Department appears to be handling terrorism issues from a defense-attorney perspective, and doing so without the input of the government's other terrorism-fighting agencies. That was the message of Wednesday's testimony from Blair, Leiter, Napolitano, and Mueller, all of whom were out of the loop on the Adbulmutallab decision. Their accounts left a number of Republican senators shaken; as the GOP lawmakers see it, the decision to read Abdulmutallab Miranda rights was a dreadful mistake, one that could have serious consequences down the line. There should be some accountability. So on Thursday all seven Republicans on the Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Holder asking for a full explanation: Who made the decision and why, and whether the administration now has "a protocol or policy in place for handling al Qaeda terrorists captured in the United States." Republicans were troubled by the decision even before Wednesday's testimony showed that major administration figures knew nothing about it. Now, the lawmakers want to know what happened, and they believe the only person who can tell them is Holder.] Byron York, The Examiner's chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blog posts appears on www.ExaminerPolitics.com ExaminerPolitics.com. Find this article at: washingtonexaminer.com

To: LindyBill who wrote (344799)	1/31/2010 2:11:35 AM
From: KLP	Respond to of 793834

Byron York: A setback for drive to punish Bush-era 'war criminals' By: BYRON YORK Chief Political Correspondent 01/30/10 10:31 AM EST One cherished goal of legal activists on the left is to punish the "war criminals" who helped shape terrorist interrogation policies during the Bush administration. Some of those activists now work in the Obama Justice Department and have been hoping the Department would find two Bush-era lawyers in particular, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, guilty of professional misconduct -- a move that would likely result in both men facing disbarment proceedings. The activists are sure to be disappointed in a new report by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, who say a still-unreleased report from the Department's Office of Professional Responsibility "clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the 'torture' memos of professional-misconduct allegations." More from Isikoff and Hosenball: While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other "enhanced" interrogation techniques, Newsweek has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors -- Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor -- violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed "poor judgment," say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action -- which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry. Isikoff and Hosenball say a Justice Department official declined to explain Margolis' reasons for making the change. But the authors say the official noted that Margolis is "a highly respected career lawyer who acted without input from [Attorney General Eric] Holder." Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com