 |
| (AP photo) |
To Charles Grassley, a senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the questions seem pretty simple.
How many of the political appointees now in charge of terrorist detainee issues at the Obama Justice Department were, not too long ago, lawyers and activists working on behalf of those very detainees? Who are they? Have they removed themselves from cases involving their former clients?
The questions are particularly critical now, as Attorney General Eric Holder struggles to find a place to hold the trial of accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. If Holder goes ahead with a KSM trial somewhere in the United States, we’ll likely see other Guantanamo inmates being tried on the mainland, too.
“It’s a dangerous thing to bring them here,” Grassley says. “But if they’re coming, I want to know who made the decision, and when the decision was made, and I want to make sure that it’s being made by people who have independent judgment and don’t have a foregone conclusion about it.”
So far, Grassley is having a hard time getting the information he wants. His problems started on Nov. 18, 2009, when Holder appeared before the Judiciary Committee and Grassley asked him to reveal which department lawyers had represented which detainees. Grassley is still waiting for an answer.
“He said something like, ‘I have to think about it,’ ” Grassley says. “He must still be thinking about it two and a half months later.”
Specifically, Grassley asked Holder about lawyers like principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal. Katyal is well-known for representing Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni who learned jihad from Osama bin Laden himself and served as bin Laden’s driver and bodyguard until November 2001, when he was captured in Afghanistan, ultimately ending up at Guantanamo. Katyal organized a defense team for Hamdan, arguing that the accused terrorist only worked for bin Laden because he needed a job and didn’t really know much about al Qaeda’s activities. When questioning Holder, Grassley pointed to an article in the National Law Journal that reported “Justice officials say Katyal will still be able to work on detainee-related maters.”
Grassley also asked about Jennifer Daskal, who joined the Justice Department after working on behalf of Guantanamo detainees at the organization Human Rights Watch. In the past, Daskal, who has no prosecutorial experience, has lamented the U.S. military policy of allowing Gitmo inmates only one book in their cells at a time, and has fretted that a detainee who is a “self-styled poet” was given a pen or pencil only for short periods. Now, Daskal reportedly works on detainee issues at the Justice Department.
Such prior representation “creates a conflict of interest problem,” Grassley told Holder as he asked for a list of lawyers and cases. Holder replied that he would “consider” Grassley’s request but never specifically said he would provide the information.
So Grassley waits. On Monday, a department spokesman said, “The Justice Department is well aware of the request and will be providing a response to the senator shortly.” But lawmakers, made wary by long experience trying to get information out of various administrations, always wonder whether a “response” will actually be an “answer.” We’ll see.
In the meantime, other unanswered questions about the Justice Department’s terrorism policies are piling up on Holder’s desk. There are still questions about the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed decision, as well as the administration’s misbegotten effort to close Guantanamo. And a bipartisan group of senators wants to know who decided to cut short the interrogation of accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, granting him full American constitutional rights in the civilian justice system and killing the chance to gain potentially valuable intelligence about the al Qaeda group that sent Abdulmutallab to the United States on his deadly mission.
It is impossible to overstate how seriously Republicans view these issues, and, despite their weaknesses as the minority party, they are determined to get answers out of Holder. “He needs to go to Congress and say, ‘I made that decision. Here’s why,’ ” GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander said Sunday on Fox News. “And based on that, perhaps he should step down.”
So far, few other senators will go that far — Grassley won’t — but the demands for answers will only grow. Put them all together, and Holder is facing a very rough future.
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.