Holder admits nine Obama Dept. of Justice officials worked for terrorist detainees,

[darrels joy]

Holder admits nine Obama Dept. of Justice officials worked for terrorist detainees, offers no details

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
02/19/10 3:52 PM EST

Attorney General Eric Holder says nine Obama appointees in the Justice Department have represented or advocated for terrorist detainees before joining the Justice Department. But he does not reveal any names beyond the two officials whose work has already been publicly reported. And all the lawyers, according to Holder, are eligible to work on general detainee matters, even if there are specific parts of some cases they cannot be involved in.

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.

And what are they recused from, anyway? Very little. Holder writes that Katyal has not worked on any Guantanamo detainee matters but has participated in litigation involving detainees who continue to be detained at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan and in litigation involving [Ali Saleh Kahlah] al-Marri, who was detained on U.S. soil." As for Daskal, "she has generally worked on policy issues related to detainees," Holder writes. "Her detainee-related work has been fully consistent with advice she received from career department officials regarding her obligations."

As for everyone else, Holder lists no names and no cases, but in a paragraph filled with modifiers, he makes it clear that all the lawyers who had advocated for detainees are free to work on general detainee matters.

The senior Department officials referenced above, like other political appointees who are similarly situated, have recused from particular matters regarding specific detainees in which their former firms represent the detainee or another party and from decisions relating specifically to the dispositions of particular detainees represented by their former firms. These recusals pertain to decisions relating to particular matters involving specific parties who are or have been represented by their former law firms within the relevant time period.

However, as noted above, these senior officials have been authorized to participate in policy and legal decisions regarding detainee matters, in particular matters regarding specific detainees whom their prior employer did not represent, and in decisions relating to the disposition of such detainees. [emphasis added]

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.

Bottom line: Holder revealed no names beyond the two already publicly known. He revealed no cases from which Justice political appointees recused themselves. The letter, which will likely be interpreted on Capitol Hill as a thumb-your-nose statement, is sure to anger Republican senators more than satisfy them.


Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Holder-admits-nine-Obama-Dept-of-Justice-officials-worked-for-terrorist-detainees-offers-no-details-84799487.html#ixzz0g6k2OMHl

[SuperScout]

As far as I can tell, the entire DOJ is corrupted, starting with Eric Holder. Remember, this is the juy who recommended that Slick Willie pardon Rich (can't remember his first name) despite the protests of some honest people in the DOJ. Check the money trail - Rich - or his wife, who doubtless is the result of another notch in Slick Willie's bedpost - donated mega bucks to the Clinton Museum and Car Wash in Arkansas. Holder, like many of B.O.'s croinies and den of vipers, is part of that Chicago statist crowd of America-haters.

[darrels joy]

The next two names in the Gitmo Nine

By QHillyer on Feb. 26, 2010 into Water Cooler

Sometimes editorials are not well designed for breaking news, because the point is less to break the news than to make a persuasive argument about the news -- which means that the "news" part can get buried down where it fits the arc of the argument, rather than putting it up front. That is certainly the case in today's editorial, "Identifying the Gitmo Nine."

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa is rightly unhappy that the Justice Department won't divulge the names of the nine Justice Department lawyers who directly represented suspected-terrorist detainees, or their cases. Grassley identified two himself, Neal Katyal (an aside: Katyal is a very impressive guy and very charming and level-headed) and Jennifer Daskal. Well, we've identified two more of them: Deputy AG counsel Eric Columbus and Office of Legal Counsel lawyer Jonathan Cedarbaum.We also reminded people of a Legal Times report that named 14 DoJ attorneys who likely would hav to recuse themsevles from specific detainee cass because of the work of their former law firms. We also remind people that back in November we reported, in an exclusive, that Associate Attorney Genreal Thomas J. Perrilli had to recuse himself at least 39 times, and we named the names of the detainees involved.

Among others, Andy McCarthy of National Review especially has done yeoman's work explaining why this is all important. He also links internally to several other good sources -- links well worth following. Michelle Malkin in particular has been pounding the drums for more than a year about Attorney General Eric Holder's own conflicts in this area.

Anyway, now we have four names identified (Katyal, Daskal, Columbus, and Cedarbaum), with at least five more to go. And again, that doesn't include another substantial number who, like Mr. Perrilli and Mr. Holder, had law-firm-related recusals. As we noted in the November editorial, "the extent of the recusals raises questions about whether the attorney general has enough unbiased advisers around him to have made good judgments about how to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other detainees.... Columnist Charles Krauthammer justly called Mr. Holder's responses "utterly incoherent." If the incoherence stems from an inherent bias among President Obama's appointees at the Justice Department, senators and the American public have the right to know it."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblo...es-gitmo-nine/

[reconeil]

Everyone knows (Or at least should know?) that most in current Obama Administration pose
as Politically-Correct Diversity Adoring Nuts, while instead actually being Islamo/Enemy Friendly
& Pandering Dictatorial Rulers more so concerned about Muslim Sharia Law than anything else
(U.S. Laws & Constitution inclusive).

Besides, What's-The-Big-Deal that The Obama Appointed ruling god Eric Holder RULES the roost
just as SIMILARLY as His Boss? Hey,...just like old Barry or Barack hired all mini-dictators,
"His Barackness" can just as easily fire same. Wouldn't Jesse Jackson do just as well?

Betcha that Obama doesn't even need Pelosi's permission to kick Eric out & move him to
some other important policy making making positions, as was done with Adamently Staunch
Marxist Jones,...plus some other Democracy Embarrassments.

Neil

[darrels joy]

Cheney group provokes backlash

This morning's attack on Justice Department lawyers by Liz Cheney's group Keep America Safe is provoking a bit of a backlash, including from a senior prosecutor who faced off with some of them over detainees.

"This is the typically regressive fear tactic that you expect from anybody named Cheney," said Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor at the Bush era military commissions, who has been a critic of the commission system.

The group, Keep America Safe, and Congressional Republicans have targeted two well-known Justice Department appointees who worked on detainee cases in the Bush years and seven more unnamed lawyers.

Neal Katyal, who Davis faced off with in the Hamdan case, "was a very talented and dedicated attorney – he ws the perfect choice for [his position as deputy Solicitor General," said Davis. "To try to impugn his character or iimply he’s part of the 'Al Qaeda Nine' or whatever is just outrageous."

"Back in the 18th century after the Boston Massacre, we provided a zealous defense [to British soldiers], and a lot of people there have the same view," he said.

(Davis decried to the lack of change in the administration is handling terror suspects.

"It’s the same circus with the same clowns," he said.)

Liberals described the ad as McCarthyite.

“Joseph McCarthy himself couldn’t have done a better job of using fear and insinuations to smear his political enemies. Most Americans understand that McCarthyism was a shameful chapter in American history, but the Cheney wing of the Republican Party seems to have embraced Senator McCarthy’s utter lack of shame," said People For the American Way President Michael Keegan.

"This is plainly unacceptable in the United States," Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress, told my colleague Josh Gerstein this morning.

"Condemnation is not sufficient. This is pure McCarthyism."

Gerstein recalls that a senior Bush Administration official who attacked detainees' lawyers in similar terms drew a high-level rebuke and was forced out.

But the Justice Department's choice right now to disclose a number, but not the name, of former detainee lawyers is a tempting target for the right.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmi..._backlash.html

[reconeil]

Has anyone ever bothered checking-out whether The Top Prosecutor of SOLELY Republican
or Conservative types and/or Obama Top Hatchet Man Eric Holder has Muslim Terrorist Ties,
or was ever tied to, connected or affiliated with Legal Offices specializing in Defense of Islam?

Betcha such truths escaping about Eric would prove V-E-E-E-E-RY I-N-N-T-E-E-RESTING!!!

Neil

[darrels joy]

Exclusive: Unknown DOJ Lawyers Identified
Posted By Mike Levine On March 3, 2010 @ 2:07 PM

Tony West


A day after a conservative group released a video condemning the Justice Department for refusing to identify seven lawyers who previously represented or advocated for terror suspects, Fox News has uncovered the identities of the seven lawyers.

The names were confirmed by a Justice Department spokesman, who said "politics has overtaken facts and reality" in a tug-of-war over the lawyers' identities.

"Department of Justice attorneys work around the clock to keep this country safe, and it is offensive that their patriotism is being questioned," said Justice Department Spokesman Matt Miller.

The video by the group Keep America Safe, which dubbed the seven lawyers "The Al Qaeda 7," is the latest salvo in a lengthty political battle.

For several months, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has led an effort to uncover politically-appointed lawyers within the Justice Department who have advocated for Guantanamo Bay detainees or other terror suspects.

"The administration has made many highly questionable decisions when it comes to national security, " Grassley said in a recent statement.

"[Americans] have a right to know who advises the Attorney General and the President on these critical matters."

An extensive review of court documents and media reports by Fox News suggests many of the seven lawyers in question played only minor or short-lived roles in advocating for detainees. However, it's unclear what roles, if any, they have played in detainee-related matters since joining the Justice Department.

Before joining the Justice Department, Jonathan Cedarbaum, now an official with the Office of Legal Counsel, was part of a "firm-wide effort" to represent six Bosnian-Algerian detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, according to the web site of the firm WilmerHale.

That effort brought the case Boumediene v. Bush to the Supreme Court, which reaffirmed the right of detainees to challenge their detention.

But, according to a review by Fox News, Cedarbaum's name appears only once in court records of detainee-related cases. Specifically, he's named as part of the WilmerHale legal team in a 2007 filing with the Supreme Court, and he was joined in that filing by Eric Columbus, a former WilmerHale attorney who is now senior counsel in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General.

Alongside Cedarbaum in the Office of Legal Counsel now is Karl Thompson, who while working for the firm O'Melveny & Myers became one of seven attorneys to represent Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 and transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

But, according to court documents, Thompson was only part of Khadr's defense team for seven months, from October 2008 to May 2009.

More than five years before that, Joseph Guerra, now Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General at the Justice Department, was one of five lawyers from the firm Sidley Austin to help three civil liberties groups, including the self-described "conservative" Rutherford Institute, file a detainee-related brief with the Supreme Court.

The brief urged the justices to hear the case of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was held as an "enemy combatant" before the Bush Administration decided in 2006 to prosecute him in a civilian court..

Similarly, in November 2006, Tali Farhadian, now an official in the Office of the Attorney General, was an attorney with the firm Debevoise & Plimpton when she helped file a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, urging the federal appeals court to hear the case of Ali al-Marri, the only "enemy combatant" at the time being held on U.S. soil.

In addition, Beth Brinkmann, now Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department's Civil Division, was a partner with the firm Morrison & Foerster when she helped compile at least two Supreme Court briefs dealing with Guantanamo Bay detainees.

In 2007, she and others co-signed a Supreme Court brief by 20 former federal judges calling for further protection of detainees' rights, and the next year she co-signed a brief by two advocacy groups, including The Rutherford Institite, urging the Supreme Court to hear an appeal from al-Marri.

The most extensive detainee-related work by a current Justice Department official, though, may have been done by Tony West, the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Civil Division.

For several years, while working in Morrison & Foerster's San Francisco office, West represented "American Taliban" Johh Walker Lindh, a move that was hotly debated after West was nominated to the Justice Department in January 2009. West wasn't confirmed until April 2009.

In a recent letter to Grassley, Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich said nine Justice Department lawyers in total previously represented terror suspects, contributed to court briefs in detainee-related cases or otherwise helped advocate for detainees.

Weich acknowledged in the letter that Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal previously represented a Guantanamo Bay detainee and that National Security Division Attorney Jennifer Daskal previously worked for Human Rights Watch, which advocates on behalf of detainees.

Weich declined to identify the other lawyers, but he insisted that no political appointee at the Justice Department "would permit or has permitted any prior affiliation to interfere with the vital task of protecting national security, and any suggestion to the contrary is absolutely false."

He also said that any suggestions of a "conflict of interest" are "an apparent misapprehension" of legal standards, adding that all political appointees have taken pledges to meet ethical standards.

Asked whether any of the seven previously unidentified lawyers now work on detainee-related issues, Miller declined to comment.

An article in The National Law Journal shows that, as recently as December, Brinkmann represented the government a defamation case that had reached a federal appeals court.

As for the two lawyers who were named by Weich in his recent letter to Grassley, Daskal has "generally worked on policy issues related to detainees" while at the Justice Department, said Weich, adding that her detainee-related work "has been fully consistent with advice she received from career Department officials regarding her [ethical and legal] obligations."

Weich said Katyal "has not worked on any Guantanamo detainee matters, but has participated in litigation involving detainees who continue to be detained" elsewhere.

Still, the video released Tuesday includes the image of a recent Investors Business Daily headline wondering whether the Department of Justice could be called the "Department of Jihad."

"Why the secrecy?" asks the video from Keep America Safe, which is run by Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, Debra Burlingame, whose brother was killed in the 9/11 attacks, and Bill Kristol, a Fox News contributor.

Miller suggested it all comes down to politics.

"Each of the nine people referenced in the letter filed legal briefs that are available by using something as simple as Google," he said. "We will not participate in an attempt to drag people's names through the mud for political purposes."

The Obama Administration is not the first to hire lawyers who represented or advocated for terror suspects.

Pratik Shah, an assistant to the Solicitor General hired by the Bush Administration, was part of the WilmerHale team that put together arguments for the Boumediene v. Bush case.

Trisha Anderson, an adviser in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel who was also hired by the Bush Administration, was previously an attorney at Attorney General Eric Holder's former firm, Covington & Burling, where she helped represent 13 Yemeni detainees.

Varda Hussain, an attorney hired in 2008 with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, was an associate with the Washington-based firm Venable when she helped represent three Egyptians being held at Guantanamo Bay.

"Varda has spent over 500 hours in the past year fighting to bring due process to our clients," a firm newsletter said in 2006.

---

Article printed from Liveshots: http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com
URL to article: http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2...rs-identified/

[darrels joy]

Meet the DOJ Lawyers Who Defended Terrorist Detainees

BY Thomas Joscelyn

March 3, 2010 8:19 PM




As the controversy heats up over the DOJ lawyers who once represented, or advocated on behalf of, al Qaeda and Taliban members, it is worth taking a quick look at their body of work.

Neal Katyal is now the principal deputy solicitor general. Previously, Katyal was a law professor and represented Salim Hamdan before the Supreme Court. The finding for Hamdan: The court ended up throwing out the military commission system as it was first established by President Bush.
Congress then had to reauthorize the military commissions.

Katyal’s defenders have been quick to advocate on his behalf, claiming he is talented lawyer. Maybe so, but let’s look at his handling of the Salim Hamdan case, which was a victory for his client.

Hamdan is an admitted bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden. He swore allegiance to his master and faithfully served him from 1996 to 2001 -- as al Qaeda was plotting multiple acts of terror, including the September 11 attacks.

Katyal has called Hamdan a "simple driver." But Hamdan was not a "simple driver." He was captured with two SA-7 shoulder-fired missiles in his trunk while driving to a battlefield in Afghanistan. (See below.) Moreover, only the most trusted al Qaeda personnel would be allowed to serve bin Laden for so long -- protecting the terror master as he plotted to kill thousands of civilians.




It is troubling that Katyal would dismiss the seriousness of an al Qaeda agent’s record out of hand.

Katyal has made some other questionable comments about Hamdan and the military commissions as well. In a piece for Slate in December 2007, Katyal started off by lamenting the fact that Hamdan was not being tried in a regal Washingtonian court, but instead in a “rickety courtroom at Guantanamo.” Katyal then compared Hamdan to your average green-card holder in America. Of the military commissions he wrote:

These trials are not “equal justice”: For the first time since equality was written into our Constitution, America has created one criminal trial for “us” and one for “them.”The rules for the Guantanamo trials apply only to foreigners—the millions of green-card holders and five billion people on the globe who are not American citizens. An American citizen, even one who commits the most horrible and treasonous act (such as the detonation of a weapon of mass destruction), gets the Cadillac version of justice—a criminal trial in federal court. Meanwhile, a green-card holder alleged to have committed a far less egregious offense gets the beat-up Chevy: a military commission at Guantanamo. Before that commission, that noncitizen will have few of the very rights America has championed abroad, and he can be sentenced to death.

Katyal is flat out wrong when he says that the Bush administration’s military commissions were the “first time” America has attempted to dispense “justice” in such a manner. Military commissions (tribunals) have a long history in this country dating back to the founding. The Obama administration is even using them to try Gitmo detainees.

What’s worse is that Katyal didn't seem to understand that the “them” are al Qaeda. And only someone who cannot tell the difference between us and our terrorist enemies would compare al Qaeda members to “green-card holders.”

There is nothing wrong, in principle, with Katyal being a staunch critic of military commissions – the commissions certainly have their flaws. For example, Katyal’s own client received a ridiculously lenient sentence (basically amounting to time-served of five years plus a few months) after being found guilty of providing material support to al Qaeda. But Katyal went way beyond rational criticism of the system. In the same piece in which he compared his al Qaeda client to “green-card holders,” Katyal wrote: “The judges, to make matters worse, are military officers who have been hand-picked for this task. Some even said in speeches before being chosen that the Guantanamo system is fair and legal.”

The horror! Note that this same system, which was supposedly rigged to keep detainees locked up forever, basically freed Hamdan outright.
In his Slate piece, Katyal also lamented: “The trial in Guantanamo is explicitly proceeding based on the administration's belief that a detainee has no constitutional rights…”

Do “war on terror” detainees deserve full constitutional rights? My hunch is that most Americans would say no. And, ironically, so has Neal Katyal, when it comes to the detainees held at Bagram. Katyal has reportedly defended the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects as a member of the Obama administration.

This speaks well of Katyal as it shows he is capable of making a responsible national security argument. Katyal’s defenders say he has always seen a difference between Bagram and Guantanamo because, well, one is at an airbase in Cuba and the other is the middle of a warzone in Afghanistan.

But leave it to a lawyer to argue that the Constitution is under assault if detainees are tried by a military commission in Cuba, while everything is just fine if (all else equal) they are held indefinitely without habeas rights in Afghanistan.

One other note about Katyal: He has lamented the slow pace at which the military commissions moved during the Bush years. And they certainly did move at a snail’s pace. But as Time magazine has reported, Katyal helped build “a defense that delayed Hamdan's military tribunal for years as it gradually made its way through the courts.” That is, those delays are owed, in large part, to Katyal’s handiwork.

Another one of the DOJ lawyers who has advocated on behalf of detainees is Jennifer Daskal, who was a human rights activist. It is not clear why Daskal’s résumé qualifies her for a position working on detainee legal questions.

One of the detainees Daskal advocated for is Omar Khadr -- who allegedly threw a hand grenade that killed an Army medic. Another one of the DOJ lawyers named in recent press accounts worked on behalf of Khadr for a time as well.

Prior to joining the DOJ, Daskal was one of the human rights lawyers who openly urged President Obama to stop the military proceedings against Omar Khadr, calling him a “child soldier.”

Khadr was neither a child, nor a soldier, at the time he reportedly killed an Army medic. Khadr comes from a known al Qaeda family dedicated to Osama bin Laden. He was trained in al Qaeda camps and served a senior member of al Qaeda. There is even a video of Khadr manufacturing and placing IED's in Afghanistan. Khadr is a terrorist, not a soldier.

Khadr was 15 years old when he was taken into custody and is in his early 20s today. We regularly try 15 year olds for crimes as adults in America.

Moreover, Khadr only survived the raid he fought in because Army medics, other than the one he probably killed, saved his life. Khadr wouldn’t even be alive today if it weren’t for them. (For more on Daskal see Meghan Clyne’s New York Post column.)

Other lawyers now at the DOJ worked on the historic Boumediene case.

That case established the Gitmo detainees' right to challenge their detention in habeas corpus hearings. In effect, the habeas proceedings have taken sensitive national security and detention questions out of the hands of experienced military and intelligence personnel, and put them into the hands of federal judges with no counterterrorism training or expertise.

That lack of experience shows. For example, in one recent decision a federal judge compared al Qaeda's secure safe houses (where training, plotting and other nefarious activities occur) to “youth hostels.” The habeas decisions are filled with errors of omission, fact, and logic.

Still other lawyers did work on behalf of these well known terrorists: Jose Padilla (an al Qaeda operative dispatched by senior al Qaeda terrorists to launch attacks inside America in 2002), John Walker Lindh (the American Taliban), and Saleh al Marri (who 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sent to America on September 10, 2001 in anticipation of committing future attacks).

Now, we don’t know what assignments these lawyers have taken on inside government. But we do know that they openly opposed the American government for years, on behalf of al Qaeda terrorists, and their objections frequently went beyond rational, principled criticisms of detainee policy.

It is one thing to raise legal objections to detainee policy. It is quite another to compare a known al Qaeda member to your average “green-card holder,” or to claim that Omar Khadr’s rights as a “child” have been abused.




Source URL: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/meet-doj-lawyers-who-defended-terrorist-detainees