Israel Matzav: The fox guards the henhouse at the Justice Department

Sunday, February 21, 2010

The fox guards the henhouse at the Justice Department

It's no great secret in Washington that President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have little taste for prosecuting the war on terrorism. Still, you have to wonder how they thought they could be this blatant without anyone noticing.

The Washington Examiner's Byron York reports that Holder has admitted that nine (count 'em) Obama appointees in the Justice Department have represented terrorists in court in the past. Holder didn't name any names beyond two who have already been exposed, but he says that all nine can work on matters relating to terrorist detainees even if they cannot be involved in certain specific cases (as an attorney, you're not allowed to switch from one side of a case to another just because you have switched employers).

Holder’s admission comes in the form of an answer to a question posed last November by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. Noting that one Obama appointee, Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, formerly represented Osama bin Laden’s driver, and another appointee, Jennifer Daskal, previously advocated for detainees at Human Rights Watch, Grassley asked Holder to give the Senate Judiciary Committee “the names of political appointees in your department who represent detainees or who work for organizations advocating on their behalf…the cases or projects that these appointees work with respect to detainee prior to joining the Justice Department…and the cases or projects relating to detainees that have worked on since joining the Justice Department.”

In his response, Holder has given Grassley almost nothing. He says nine Obama political appointees at the Justice Department have advocated on behalf of detainees, but did not identify any of the nine other than the two, Katyal and Daskal, whose names Grassley already knew. “To the best of our knowledge,” Holder writes,
during their employment prior to joining the government, only five of the lawyers who serve as political appointees in those components represented detainees, and four others either contributed to amicus briefs in detainee-related cases or were otherwise involved in advocacy on behalf of detainees.
Holder says other Obama appointees, like Holder himself, came from law firms which represented detainees but did no work on behalf of the terrorist prisoners. But other than Katyal and Daskal, Holder does not reveal any names of any Obama appointees, nor does he mention the cases they worked on.

York's full article is here. This line from his report is quite noteworthy:

Finally, it is possible that there are more than nine political appointees who worked for detainees. Holder tells Grassley that he did not survey the Justice Department as a whole but instead canvassed several large offices within the organization.

Well, maybe he ought to survey them.

Paul Mirengoff (who I believe is a trial lawyer himself) adds:

No one familiar with the legal community will be surprised by Holder's disclosure. Among many liberal lawyers, representing terrorist detainees has come to be viewed as a badge of honor. (When a lawyer in the Bush Justice Department demurred, he was widely condemned.) For some liberal lawyers who represent corporations, providing free legal services to terrorist detainees is proof that they became lawyers to help the "oppressed" after all; not just to help corporations squirm out of difficulty.

In my view, it isn't dishonorable, under most circumstances, for non-military lawyers to assist in representing terrorist detainees before a military tribunal. But the urge to do so is evidence of a mindset that, if transported to the Justice Department, would tend to produce bad policy and legal decisions with respect to dealing with terrorism and terrorists.

Like going after CIA agents whose interrogations of terrorists helped protect the country against attack; trying the 9/11 mastermind in New York City; and reading the Miranda warning to a freshly captured terrorist.

Yes, those all fit right in, don't they? America is in good hands. What could go wrong?