Posted on 05/07/2010 9:33:48 AM PDT by jazusamo
In last week's cover story, Jennifer Rubin described the run around she received in response to her Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for documentation of recusals by Justice Department lawyers who previously represented Guantanamo detainees. The official responsible for documents from the top offices at DOJ--the attorney general, deputy attorney general, and associate attorney general--told Rubin the documents were not in a readily accessible place, that three individual attorneys' offices would need to be searched, and it would take a total of eight to eleven months to produce them. However, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has now managed to obtain one of these documents--an apparently complete list of the recusals by Thomas Perrelli, the associate attorney general (the number three attorney in the Justice Department). Covering cases and clients Perrelli or his former law firm (Jenner & Block) worked on, it is six pages long and includes a list of forty-one cases involving former or current Guantanamo detainees.
The document is reproduced here (pdf). In an e-mail, Jennifer Rubin explains its significance:
1. It’s a stonewall. The document, I am told, was sent to hundreds of Department attorneys and is readily accessible on the Justice Department's computer server which these attorneys and FOIA officers can review. It would have taken only a few minutes to search for and pull up the document. (Similar lists may exist for the attorney and deputy attorney general as well.) Furthermore, the document is directly responsive to the FOIA request. There is no rational explanation for why such a document could not be promptly released. The "most transparent administration in history" is quite obviously hiding the ball.
2. The number of cases and their importance in the war on terror are staggering. As the number three man in the Justice Department, one of Perrelli's key responsibilities is supervision of the civil division which has been handling hundreds of habeas corpus cases from Guantanamo. That the administration would have selected someone who is effectively benched from key national security cases raises a key question: who is supervising these cases and making Department policy? As I detailed in my article, many key members of the civil division have also been recused from detainee cases. The attorney general was presumably recused from cases he or his firm (Covington and Burlington) worked on, as was the now-departed number two person in Justice (who previously worked for Wilmer Hale, which also represented detainees). Are key decisions of the Justice Department being made by low-level attorneys with no accountability to the higher appointees?
3. The same concern I raised with regard to attorneys in the civil division--whether attorneys with involvement in so many detainees cases should be making policy or handling any matter pertaining to terrorist and terror suspects, even if they have recused themselves from individual cases in which they had been involved--is especially acute when an official at this level has connections to dozens of cases. Has Perrelli, for example, also recused himself from additional cases in which common witnesses appear? Has he recused himself from policy decisions that would affect the outcome in the cases from which he’s recused himself? We don't know--because the Justice Department's stonewall continues.
1. It’s a stonewall.
No, it’s a LIE.
And prosecutable, at least in theory!!!
A phony in the White House and his Phony pals appointed to high ranking jobs.
It’s just what I expected when I saw Obama was elected.
Mrs. O is hiding the documents in her caboose.
This article simply makes two things clear enough for even retards to understand.
The first is that there is no criminality attached to violation of the FOIA. It seems beyond ironic that the criminals at our national highest justice department do not feel bound by the laws that apply only to the rest of us lesser citizens. That is a crime in itself, beyond either incompetence or conspiracy.
Don't RICO laws apply to all criminals? Including government employees and appointees?
The second thing is that Government has not yet been clearly persuaded that they are the servants, and we the taxpaying citizens, are the masters.
How do we remind them so the lesson sticks? Two things are
This Sunday, Attorney General Eric Holder will make his Sunday show debut on ABC's "This Week" and NBC's "Meet the Press." Beyond the obvious issues relating to the war on terror and the attempted attack in Times Square, here are five questions that are worth posing to the attorney general:
1. Has he recused himself from Guantanamo cases and if so which ones? On those cases who is the person with ultimate responsibility?2. His #3 man Thomas Perrelli has recused himself from over forty cases involving Gitmo detainees and top officials in the civil division are also recused. Who then is supervising and responsible for the ongoing litigation including dozens of habeas corpus cases?
3. TWS's cover story last week documented over five months of stonewalling by Holder's office and the offices of the deputy and associate attorney general in delaying release of documents relating to conflicts of interest by attorneys who previously represented detainees. Why won't he promptly release the information so we can be assured the attorneys are adhering to the highest ethical standards?
4. How can we be assured that attorneys who litigated on behalf of Guantanamo detainees will provide the American people with the most vigorous representation in the cases the government is still prosecuting?
5. The Department's advice on release of the detainee abuse photos was overridden by the president. Was that advice, in retrospect, too sympathetic to the ACLU? Should we be concerned that the attorneys in the Department of Justice shade their advice or are unduly sympathetic to the positions which they used to litigate?
HA HA HA! You're killing me.
Both are excellent points.
My concern is when faced with people like Obama and Holder and a Congressional majority that support them it’s not really clear how they can be stopped in a reasonble period of time.
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If these people won’t answer or refuse to answer questions under oath from congressional panels, why do you think they will answer questions from the media, or even the public. In their minds, they are answerable to NO ONE! Its the socialist way! They run the show...phooey on the “people”.
Might I suggest the following:
“Covertly taken photos of CIA interrogators that were shown by defense attorneys to al Qaeda inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison represent a more serious security breach than the 2003 outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the agency's former general counsel said Wednesday.”
“U.S. officials close to the CIA-Justice probe said photographs of the CIA officers were found last year in the cell of Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, an alleged financier of the Sept. 11 plot. Officials said the photographs appeared to have been taken by private investigators for the John Adams Project, which is jointly backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.”
True, they won’t answer them but the very fact they won’t will show millions they are the frauds that they are. The enemedia support the left and don’t report on congressional panels if it reflects badly on the left.
Better to ask the questions on national TV and let them show everyone the phonies they are.
Yep, and the people responsible for that should spend many years in a federal slammer, but they won’t.
OK, so tell me if I got his right.
We are finding it difficult to prosecute the terrorist because the current prosecutors are former lawyers of the actual Gitmo detainees?
And we found this out because of documents that were ordered released via the freedom of information act are slowly being given but we only have one document so far.
Documents that are easily accessible via computer records, but the Justice Dept does not want these released because then it will get out about how many former terrorist lawyers are now working for the Dept of Justice.
Prosecutors by the way that are still more sympathetic to the terrorists then they are to the rule of constitutional law. Unless, of course, they are appointed to prosecute Tea Party members and militia members who are American citizens.
Is that about it in a nut shell?
There has just been a bill introduced which would require government-held public information to be posted online but I won't hold my breath that it'll go anywhere.
EDITORIAL: Obama fails the transparency test--Tester bill would force government openness
Impeach Holder!
Free the Long Form!
Hang the Czars!
Disband the IRS!
BTTT
Bump! [Added to Monster Ping — link in profile.]
Domestic enemies control the gates to the city.
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