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WASHINGTON — Seven former CIA directors are asking President Barack Obama to quash Attorney GeneralEric Holder's investigation into harsh CIA interrogations of terror suspects during the Bush administration. The request came in a letter Friday from CIA directors who served both Democratic and Republican presidents, including three who served former President George W. Bush. Holder announced in August that he was appointing an independent counsel to investigate incidents of potential abuse that were reported by the CIA inspector general to the Justice Department.

Seven former heads of the CIA wrote President Obama on Friday to ask him to end an investigation launched by former Attorney General Eric Holder into the actions of CIA interrogators who used "enhanced" techniques to question terror detainees.

By Jeremy Pelofsky Jeremy Pelofsky – 2 hrs 8 mins ago WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration has asked the U.S. Congress to extend three surveillance techniques for intelligence agencies tracking suspected militants that expire this year, according to a letter to lawmakers. Approved after the September 11 attacks in 2001 at the request of the Bush administration, techniques such as roving wiretaps and accessing all kinds of personal records drew criticism from civil liberties groups and some lawmakers who said they were unconstitutional and violated privacy rights...

The US government is just doing a wonderful job at bowing down to the Islamic community. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder went to a LA Mosque pledging to advance religious freedoms for Muslims. While some US military "leaders" are practically crawling on their knees begging Muslims to respect us. Now the CIA has joined in on the Islamic love fest.

As was the case with Obama’s US Attorney General Eric Holder reversing the conviction for overt voter intimidation by New Black Panthers—who supported Barack Obama in his presidential run—the logical question is “Will Obama’s Department of Justice block any and all investigations of ACORN?” Both ACORN and the New Black Panthers worked almost tirelessly to “elect” Obama—by any means necessary

NEW YORK - The Obama administration plans to issue new guidelines meant to provide prisoners at a U.S. detention center in Afghanistan greater latitude in challenging their detention, The New York Times reported in its Sunday edition. Citing Pentagon officials and advocates for detainees at the U.S.-run prison at Bagram Air Base, the newspaper said each of the approximately 600 detainees would be assigned a U.S. military official who would have the authority to look for evidence, including witnesses and classified material, for any detainee challenging his detention. The challenges would be heard by a military-appointed review board, the Times...

Last month, the Obama administration’s decision to dismiss a default judgment against the New Black Panther Party in a clear case of voter intimidation (caught on videotape and circulated on the internet) drew scrutiny from Congress and from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. That scrutiny has now resulted in one announced investigation by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) and set the stage for a battle between the administration and the Commission. In June, the Commission sent a letter of inquiry to the Justice Department demanding an explanation for the dismissal of the case against all but one...

The US Constitution and the entire American way of life hang in the balance. Yet it is clear that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is engaged in running interference for someone very likely to be an unconstitutional fraud, busily dismantling our sovereign nation while his high-dollar Ivy League lawyers play politics with the justice system. For months now, numerous efforts to smoke Barack Hussein Obama out into the open where he can become the “transparent” president he promised to be, have been thwarted by Obama’s Department of Justice. The American people have been categorically denied access to the courts or...

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has begun an inquiry into the dismissal in May of a civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party and two of its members who disrupted a Philadelphia polling place during last year's presidential elections. The inquiry was disclosed in an Aug. 28 letter to Rep. Lamar Smith, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee who first raised questions about the case's dismissal and asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., to make available the head of the department's Voting Section for a closed-door briefing about the decision. In the letter, Mary Patrice...

According to sources, Rep. Frank Wolf R.Va. and Rep. Lamar Smith R-Tx received a letter today from the Dept. of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility (DOJ) about the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense ( NBP), which was mysteriously dismissed by the DOJ after President Obama took office. Questions about this unusual dismissal have been asked by Messrs. Wolf ...

The Justice Department is urging a federal court to toss out a lawsuit in which prominent birthers' attorney Orly Taitz is challenging President Barack Obama's Constitutional qualifications to be president. In a motion filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, Calif., government lawyers did not directly rebut the conspiracy theory Taitz propounds that Obama was not born in Hawaii as he claims and as asserted by Hawaiian officials as well as contemporary newspaper birth notices. Instead, the federal attorneys argued that the suit is inherently flawed because such disputes can't be resolved in court and because the dozens...

South Phila. Native: ‘I Am A Believer In The Voting Rights Act’ Rep. Frank Wolf R- Va., told The Bulletin in an exclusive interview, that he fully intends to learn why Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department voluntarily dismissed a lawsuit — for which they already obtained a judgment — against two members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense for violation of the Voting Rights Act that occurred last Election Day in North Philadelphia. Mr. Wolf is the ranking member of the House subcommittee, which has jurisdiction of the Dept. of Justice (DOJ). He is an unapologetic staunch...

Attorny General Eric Holder noted it was hard to talk about race, but it was cowardly not to try. In that spirit, he should answer questions about the dismissal of a voter-intimidation case involving a black hate group in Philadelphia. On last presidential election day two black men in paramilitary uniforms, one wielding a nightstick, were reported harrassing voters at a polling place. The Justice Department was prepared to act. Samir Shabazz, head of the Philadelphia chapter of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, and Jerry Jackson, a party member, were deployed 15 feet from the polling place "in...

Besieged by leaks of several closely held secrets, the CIA has asked the Justice Department to examine what it regards as the criminal disclosure of a secret program to kill foreign terrorist leaders abroad, The Washington Times has learned. Two U.S. intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because of the sensitivity of the case, said the leak investigation involved a program that CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told Congress about in June and that surfaced in news reports just a month later. The vice chairman of the the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence declined...

Besieged by leaks of several closely held secrets, the CIA has asked the Justice Department to examine what it regards as the criminal disclosure of a secret program to kill foreign terrorist leaders abroad, The Washington Times has learned. Two U.S. intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because of the sensitivity of the case, said the leak investigation involved a program that CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told Congress about in June and that surfaced in news reports just a month later. The vice chairman of the the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence declined...

WASHINGTON -- It’s no surprise that former Vice President Dick Cheney is opposed to the Justice Department’s decision to investigate the torture of prisoners during the Bush-Cheney administration. After all, Cheney has acknowledged that he was "aware" of waterboarding (simulated drowning) of detainees to get them to talk. It’s fair speculation that the orders for this method of torture came from on high. And in the Bush-Cheney administration, no one was higher than the vice president. Cheney has blasted Attorney General Eric Holder’s appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate abuse of prisoners. The duty fell to veteran Connecticut lawyer...

In February, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. noted that it was hard to talk about race, but cowardly not to try. In that spirit, he should answer questions being raised about the dismissal of a voter-intimidation case involving a hate group in Philadelphia. If you missed the incident, it's understandable. It was a YouTube blip on a historic election day. On Nov. 4, two black men in paramilitary uniforms, one wielding a nightstick, were reported harassing voters at a polling place. It had no effect on Barack Obama's landslide win in the city. He doesn't condone the hate group...

DOJ to Hire 50 More Lawyers, Gear Up for Civil Rights Enforcement Drive Posted 3 hours, 13 minutes ago By Martha Neil The U.S. Department of Justice is gearing up for a renewed emphasis on traditional civil rights enforcement after a shift in focus during the administration of former President George W. Bush to a greater emphasis on religious rights, human trafficking and individual cases in which there was evidence of intentional discrimination. Under Attorney General Eric Holder, the DOJ is planning to bring more disparate-impact cases based on statistical evidence that minorities are treated less favorably in arenas ranging...

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency is refusing to make public hundreds of pages of internal documents about the agency’s defunct detention and interrogation program, saying such disclosures would jeopardize national security by revealing classified intelligence sources and operations. The C.I.A.’s argument to withhold the material, laid out Monday in a declaration to a federal court in New York, comes a week after the Obama administration declassified documents about abuses in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prisons and the Justice Department began investigating the actions of C.I.A. operatives.

WASHINGTON — Seven months after taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is reshaping the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by pushing it back into some of the most important areas of American political life, including voting rights, housing, employment, bank lending practices and redistricting after the 2010 census. As part of this shift, the Obama administration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly. President George W. Bush’s appointees had discouraged such tactics, preferring to focus on individual cases...

In the early days and weeks after September 11, 2001, a small cadre of men (and a few women) with vast amounts of intelligence experience reported to the Langley, Virginia headquarters of the CIA. These unsung heroes were then dispatched across the globe to run operations against the Al-Qaeda conspirators who leveled the World Trade Center and struck the nerve center of the US military. The FBI, a domestic law enforcement agency, did not have the ability or skills needed to track down and strike the attackers overseas. The Pentagon, with F22s, nuclear aircraft carriers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and battalions...

Law enforcement officers enforce all laws impartially. Stalinst thugs enforce selected laws selectively. The Wall Street Journal reported that Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the Central Intelligence Agency for alleged abuses of captured terror suspects such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. ...We are sure that Mr. Holder agrees that a civilized country's laws must apply to all: high and low, rich and poor, Republican and Democrat alike. Enforcement of a country's laws against one segment of society but not another is characteristic of Third World dictatorships, banana republics, and military juntas that prosecute, purge, and even...

During his interview with Chris Wallace today, former Vice President Dick Cheney was asked about the effect of Attorney General Holder's investigation of the CIA and enhanced interrorgation techniques: Well, you think, for example, in the intelligence arena. We ask those people to do some very difficult things. Sometimes, that put their own lives at risk. They do so at the direction of the president, and they do so with the -- in this case, we had specific legal authority from the Justice Department. And if they are now going to be subject to being investigated and prosecuted by the...

The Wall Street Jounral has a terrific editorial this morning on how valuable the CIA interrogation program was in uncovering life-saving intelligence. Though the Journal does not get into it, Binyam Mohammed was released outright by the Obama administration in February. He is now living freely in England. That's our new counterterrorism approach: Release the terrorist who planned mass-murder attacks against U.S. cities but investigate the CIA agents who prevented mass-murder attacks against U.S. cities. I suppose that's what happens when control of the Justice Department shifts from the lawyers who spent the last eight years going after the terrorists...

"Give me a break," "This is Obama's decision plain and simple"-Bill Sammon, hitting Obama for playing this phony game of Holder is independent from him..

The president has been playing the “Look, Ma—no hands!” game for the better part of a week, denying responsibility for the decision to name a special prosecutor to go after CIA operatives interrogating terrorists overseas. Democrats are ignoring the whole thing, now dimly aware that this is not the sort of thing the public likes. Conservatives are furious and taking the president to task for his refusal to take responsibility for the decision—or fire Attorney General Eric Holder if this isn’t what the president wanted. Michael Barone, recalling that Harry Truman sacked an attorney general, writes: Obama administration spokesmen are...

Poor Leon Panetta. It's hard not to feel bad for the guy. If the Obama administration is like one big, elaborate stage production of "Chicago," Panetta is playing invisible Amos Hart - "Mr. Cellophane" - to sheer, translucent, forgettable perfection. In less than a year, Panetta's CIA has been reduced to irrelevance and Panetta himself has either been ignored or emasculated by the very folks who were supposed to be his biggest supporters. For taking on a thankless job that typically only gets attention when there's a massive failure, this is the thanks he gets? When he was asked by...

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL * AUGUST 29, 2009, 5:04 A.M. ET Interrogating the CIA By REUEL MARC GERECHT A clever, streetwise classmate of mine at the Central Intelligence Agency's junior officer training program—a former Delta Force officer—quickly and rudely discovered that counterterrorism in the much-vaunted Reagan years wasn't a serious endeavor at Langley. He had original and provocative ideas on using physical force to scare the bejesus out of terrorist suspects who had American blood on their hands. Although the CIA was then filling up with operatives pretending to be engaged against a growing terrorist menace, Langley's counterterrorist data bank...

Early in 2002, Eric Holder, then a former deputy attorney general, said on CNN that the detainees being held at Guantánamo Bay were “not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention,” particularly “given the way in which they have conducted themselves.” Six years later, declaring that “Guantánamo Bay is an international embarrassment,” Mr. Holder said, “I never thought I would see the day when ... the Supreme Court would have to order the president of the United States to treat detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention.” So what changed? A lot of things, of course,...

When he served as deputy attorney general, now Attorney General Eric Holder gave a "neutral leaning positive" recommendation that led to President Bill Clinton's pardoning of gazillionaire fugitive Marc Rich, who was on the lam in Switzerland hiding from federal charges of fraud, evading more than $48 million in taxes, racketeering and trading oil with Iran in violation of a U.S. embargo. Holder also had a role in the 1999 Clinton pardons of 16 Puerto Rico independence terrorists -- members of the bomb-happy FALN or the splinter group Los Macheteros -- who had been convicted on such charges as bank...

Last week, the Drug War Chronicle reports, the Drug Enforcement Administration made its first arrests related to medical marijuana since Attorney General Eric Holder promised not to prosecute people who are complying with state law.

"Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." George Orwell's truth comes to mind as one reads that Eric Holder has named a special prosecutor to go after the "rough men" who, to keep us sleeping peacefully at night, allegedly went too far in frightening Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, engineer of the September 2001 massacres. Yet, it seems now indisputable that those CIA interrogators, with their rough methods, got vital intelligence that saved American lives, as Dick Cheney has consistently contended. According to The Washington Times, which reviewed the newly...

"I believe the explanation lies in the Obama administration’s fondness for transnationalism, a doctrine of post-sovereign globalism in which America is seen as owing its principal allegiance to the international legal order rather than to our own Constitution and national interests. "Recall that the president chose to install former Yale Law School dean Harold Koh as his State Department’s legal adviser. Koh is the country’s leading proponent of transnationalism. He is now a major player in the administration’s deliberations over international law and cooperation. Naturally, membership in the International Criminal Court, which the United States has resisted joining, is high...

Flashback to 9/11 and imagine the reaction if George Bush stood with the firemen amid the smoldering ruins and said the United States government will prosecute CIA interrogators for blowing cigar smoke in the face of the terrorist masterminds. The Bush administration would have been overthrown by the Honduran military. Seven years later and all common sense seems to be going up in smoke. Long gone are the images of Green Berets on horseback. Ranches, action heroes, and slap shots are out. Social media massages are in. The quitters can eat a hockey puck. The White House is white, not...

Savor the silence of America's self-serving champions of privacy. For once, the American Civil Liberties Union has nothing bad to say about the latest case of secret domestic surveillance -- because it was the ACLU that did the spying. Last week, The Washington Post reported on a new Justice Department inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guantanamo Bay detainees. According to the report, the pictures of covert American CIA officers -- "in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes" -- were shown to jihadi suspects tied...

AUGUST 28, 2009 The Fall Guy CIA Director Leon Panetta getting sacked by his own team. By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL In the game of political football that is today national security, spare a thought for CIA Director Leon Panetta. Quarterbacking is hard enough without getting sacked by your own team. President Barack Obama fought hard for the former California congressman during his uncertain February confirmation fight. That's about the last thing the president has done for his spy chief. Quite the opposite: If the latest flap over CIA interrogations shows anything, it's that Mr. Panetta has officially become the president's...

Outraged.

Here is a brief clip from an exclusive Fox News Sunday interview to air this weekend in which former Vice-President Dick Cheney said the approach of the Obama Administration on National Security should have been to go to those in the Bush Administration, the military, and the CIA and ask them "How have you kept America safe" since the September 11 attacks? Instead, Cheney says they are going after the very people who have helped to keep America safe. . . . . . (Watch Video)

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday said the Obama administration should be debriefing CIA interrogators about keeping the country safe rather than trying to punish them for doing their jobs. In an exclusive interview taped to air this weekend on "FOX News Sunday," Cheney called the Justice Department probe of interrogators an "outrageous political act" that will do long-term damage to the United States' capacity to protect the country. "We had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from al Qaeda. The approach of the Obama administration should be...

Among the president's cabinet appointments, the Attorney General is unique. Whereas the Secretary of Transportation is responsible for the nation's highways and airways, and the Secretary of Agriculture oversees the nation's farms, the Attorney General's charge is upholding the rule of law - the glue that holds together a self-governing people. In the latest skirmish in the Democratic Party's war on the CIA, Attorney General Eric Holder has failed to uphold this fundamental public trust. And for that, there should be consequences. Earlier this week, on the same day that the administration released a six-year-old report on terrorist interrogations, Holder...

Gingrich urges Obama to fire AG Holder @ 3:24 pm by Michael O'Brien President Obama should fire Attorney General Eric Holder for appointing a special prosecutor to investigate potential CIA abuses of terrorist detainees, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) wrote Friday. Gingrich, in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, said that the president should dismiss Holder unless the attorney general resigns. "In the latest skirmish in the Democratic Party's war on the CIA, Attorney General Eric Holder has failed to uphold this fundamental public trust. And for that, there should be consequences," Gingrich wrote. "If Holder and his senior...

The Holder Justice Department reportedly has decided to end its investigation of a pay-to-play regime in New Mexico involving one of Governor Bill Richardson's largest political donors. It was this investigation that cost Richardson the Secretary of Commerce post. According to (AP) the investigation "was killed in Washington" by top DOJ officials. Faithful readers know that I have no problem with top DOJ officials killing investigations as long as they don't so for improper reasons, such as a connection between a potential target (here Richardson) and the president (here Obama). However, (, Hans von Spakovsky) a former DOJ official himself,...

‘This is an administration that is determined to conduct itself by the rule of law. And to the extent that we receive lawful requests from an appropriately created court, we would obviously respond to it.” It was springtime in Berlin and Eric Holder, a well-known “rule of law” devotee, was speaking to the German press. He’d been asked if his Justice Department would cooperate with efforts by foreign or international tribunals to prosecute U.S. government officials who carried out the Bush administration’s post-9/11 counterterrorism policies. The attorney general assured listeners that he was certainly open to being helpful. “Obviously,” he...

‘This is an administration that is determined to conduct itself by the rule of law. And to the extent that we receive lawful requests from an appropriately created court, we would obviously respond to it.” It was springtime in Berlin and Eric Holder, a well-known “rule of law” devotee, was speaking to the German press. He’d been asked if his Justice Department would cooperate with efforts by foreign or international tribunals to prosecute U.S. government officials who carried out the Bush administration’s post-9/11 counterterrorism policies. The attorney general assured listeners that he was certainly open to being helpful. “Obviously,” he...

In the game of political football that is today national security, spare a thought for CIA Director Leon Panetta. Quarterbacking is hard enough without getting sacked by your own team. President Barack Obama fought hard for the former California congressman during his uncertain February confirmation fight. That's about the last thing the president has done for his spy chief. Quite the opposite: If the latest flap over CIA interrogations shows anything, it's that Mr. Panetta has officially become the president's designated fall guy. The title has been months in the making. Mr. Obama is contending with an angry left that's...

After vowing not to become involved in recriminations over the Bush anti-terror policies, President Obama has allowed his Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to dig up all the dirt he can find on the CIA and the anti-terror investigators whose aggressive questioning saved us from countless attacks. Why the switch? Because Obama needs to do something to appease the left that elected him. After refusing to pull out of Iraq and deciding to follow the Bush timetable for withdrawing and staying in Afghanistan and likely having to beef up our presence there, liberals might be wondering...

In an at-times-disjointed interview (no fault of his), Pat Caddell gets to the nub of the Justice Department conundrum: is Eric Holder running the administration, or is the president disingenuous when he denies responsibility for reactivating the investigation of CIA detainee-interrogation cases? Caddell goes after both Holder’s handling of the Black Panther case (dismissing a default judgment in an obvious case of physical intimidation of voters) and the naming of a special prosecutor to look at alleged detainee abuse—a move directly contrary to the president’s plea to look forward, not backward. Caddell favors the “rogue attorney general” theory. Andy McCarthy...

Smoke in the face. The sound of a drill. The threat to kill a terrorist’s family. A new inspector general’s report says that these techniques, plus waterboarding, were used — not widely, but sparingly — in CIA interrogations of terrorists such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the “mastermind of 9/11.” Mohammed broke under the pressure and disclosed important details about how the attack against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was planned and executed. Now, Attorney General Eric Holder is going to break the people who broke Mohammed. And by appointing a special prosecutor to do it, he’s also trying...

Forty-nine percent (49%) of U.S. voters disagree with the Justice Department’s decision to investigate the treatment and possible torture of terrorists during the Bush administration, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Thirty-six percent (36%) agree with Attorney General Eric Holder’s naming of a veteran prosecutor to probe the CIA’s handling of terrorists under the previous administration. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former high-ranking members of his administration won't be criminally charged in a yearlong federal investigation into pay-to-play allegations involving one of the Democratic governor's large political donors, someone familiar with the case said.