The next unneeded firestorm came with Holder’s decision to release classified Justice Department memos on the CIA terrorist interrogation program and reopen criminal investigations into the conduct of CIA interrogators. Holder overrode the objections of five CIA directors, including Leon Panetta. According to The Post, “Before his decision to reopen the cases, Holder did not read detailed memos that [career] prosecutors drafted and placed in files to explain their decision to decline prosecutions.” If he had bothered to do so, he could have predicted the eventual outcome: The special prosecutor he appointed came to the same conclusion as the career prosecutors under the Bush administration and found no criminal wrongdoing by the CIA officials involved in the agency’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program. After two years of wasted resources and needless controversy, Holder came up empty.
Then came Holder’s order to read Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (who goes on trial this week) a Miranda warning after just 50 minutes of questioning – an order the attorney general gave without even consulting chief intelligence or national security officials. Holder’s administration colleagues were forced to argue (implausibly) that Miranda was really not an impediment to effective interrogation – only to have Holder undercut them few months later when he admitted that this was not true, and asked Congress to fix the Miranda law to allow longer interrogations. Not only did Holder’s Miranda decision cost America valuable intelligence, the ensuing controversy helped propel Scott Brown to victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, costing Obama his filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. According to Brown’s chief strategist, internal polls showed the treatment of enemy combatants was a more potent issue in the election than was health care.
Then there was Holder’s catastrophic attempt to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotters in federal court in New York City. According to The Post, Holder made the decision alone, at 1 a.m., while eating Chips Ahoy cookies at his kitchen table. He did so without first consulting New York officials, who responded with outrage — as did the general public. In the face of the bipartisan backlash, the administration was forced to backtrack, and it soon announced the resumption of military commission trials at Guantanamo for Mohammed and other terrorists.
This only scratches the surface of ill-fated Holder initiatives. He also provoked a political firestorm by withdrawing a lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party for violations of the Voting Rights Act, over the objections of six career lawyers at Justice. And then there was his decision to sue Arizona over its popular immigration law, over the objections of three Arizona Democrats engaged in tough reelection fights (two of whom lost their seats).
Many of these debacles stem from Holder’s failure to do due diligence: He failed to consult the intelligence community before giving the Christmas bomber a Miranda warning; he failed to read the memos in which career prosecutors explained why CIA prosecutions were a legal dead end; he failed to consult New York officials about trying Mohammed in their city; he failed to conduct even a cursory review before pushing Obama to announce the closure of Guantanamo; he failed to read the Arizona immigration law before publicly opposing it. One such failure is a mistake; this many is a pattern of gross incompetence.
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