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Lieberman panel seeks info on Awlaki's '02 catch-n-release Stonewalled by the Justice Department in its efforts to get to the bottom of intelligence lapses that led to the Fort Hood massacre, the Senate Homeland Security Committee has broadened its probe to look into why Justice a year after 9/11 withdrew an arrest warrant for the radical American-born imam who corresponded with the Fort Hood terrorist. WND has learned that the chief counsel for the Senate panel, led by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., has requested an interview with a federal agent who shortly after 9/11 attacks worked with the Joint Terrorism...

WASHINGTON — Pentagon officials on Tuesday agreed to release some documents subpoenaed by the Senate Homeland Security Committee but still refuse to send witnesses to testify about the soldier accused in last fall’s deadly shooting at Fort Hood. Leslie Phillips, spokeswoman for the committee, in an e-mail called the decision “an affront to Congress’s Constitutional obligation to conduct independent oversight” and said that committee chairman Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., is weighing further legal action. But lawmakers may be limited in what they can do to force the Pentagon to comply with the subpoena, according to legal experts. At issue is...

The Obama administration said Tuesday it would provide more information to Congress about the Fort Hood shootings but continued to defy a subpoena request for witness statements and other documents. After days of negotiations, the Pentagon and Justice Department informed a Senate committee that they would not comply with congressional subpoenas to share investigative records from the Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood, Tex., which killed 13 people.

What and when did US Army brass know about Maj. Nidal Hassan’s extremist views and his ties to a key jihadist cleric — and why didn’t they act before he gunned down 13 soldiers at Fort Hood six months ago? It’s a simple question — and a very significant one, to boot. But neither the Pentagon nor the Justice Department wants that information made public. Which is why the two top senators on the Homeland Security Committee — Joe Lieberman (I/D-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) — have subpoenaed stonewalling Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Attorney General Eric Holder. “We have...

Gitmo Lawyer "Completely Shocked" His Terrorist Client Returned to Terrorism BY John McCormack March 26, 2010 11:34 AM Newsweek follows up on Tom Joscelyn and Bill Roggio's story on the Gitmo detainee who's returned to the battlefield after being released by the Obama administration: A Guantánamo detainee released last December has now returned to the battlefield to fight with Taliban insurgents, according to three U.S. counterterrorism officials who have reviewed intelligence reports on the matter. If the reports are accurate, the detainee, known as Abdul Hafiz, would be the first Guantánamo inmate released by the Obama administration to have returned...

Two weeks after a conservative group disparaged Justice Department lawyers who previously represented terror suspects, Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday weighed in for the first time, calling such lawyers "patriots." “Those who reaffirm our nation’s most essential and enduring values do not deserve to have their own values questioned,” Holder told a group of lawyers who offer "pro bono," or voluntary, legal services. "Let me be clear about this: Lawyers who provide counsel for the unpopular are, and should be treated as what they are: patriots." The crowd, gathered to honor Holder with an award from the Washington-based Pro...

Attorney General Eric Holder failed to tell the Senate about seven legal briefs he signed when lawmakers considered his nomination to his current job, according to a letter released on Friday.Two of the briefs involved appeals to the Supreme Court for Jose Padilla, who sought release from a military prison in South Carolina where he was being held after then-President George W. Bush designated him an "enemy combatant." Padilla was held in a military brig for three years before his case was moved to a criminal court in Miami, where he was convicted on charges of offering his services to...

A day after Republicans on Capitol Hill said they were "deeply concerned" over news that, during his confirmation process, Attorney General Eric Holder failed to disclose work on a terrorism-related legal brief, the Justice Department revealed Friday that the problem was wider than previously known. "It has come to our attention that some but not all briefs submitted to the Supreme Court by or on behalf of Attorney General Holder … [were supplied] in the course of his confirmation process last year," Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which vets judicial nominees....

During his confirmation last year, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. failed to notify the Senate that he had signed several briefs urging courts to reject President George W. Bush’s claim that he had the power to imprison an American citizen as an “enemy combatant,” the Justice Department acknowledged Thursday. The briefs should have been disclosed as part of the confirmation process,” said Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman. “In preparing thousands of pages for submission, it was unfortunately and inadvertently missed. In any event, the attorney general has publicly discussed his positions on detention policy on many occasions, including...

Jennifer Daskal is a radical far left American lawyer who serves as senior counsel for Human Rights Watch, and focuses on issues of terrorism, criminal law and immigration. She is also currently a political hire at Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, which is seeking to prosecute terror suspects through the criminal justice system instead of through military tribunals. In 2008, Daskal claimed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was tortured and recommended that his guilty plea be thrown out of court. Now this radical is working for the Obama Administration. It figures.Human Rights Watch reported: ---Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others announced...

The Obama administration bluntly urged the Congress Thursday to steer clear of directing where terrorism suspects should be prosecuted, pushing back against efforts to require military rather than civilian trials. A bipartisan group of senators has offered legislation aimed at forcing the administration to prosecute terrorism suspects, like the self-professed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in special military commission trials instead of traditional criminal courts. Attorney General Eric Holder ordered Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators to be tried in a criminal court in Manhattan. But concerns by some lawmakers about security costs and granting full...

War On Terror: The Justice Department employs nine lawyers previously involved in the defense of terrorist detainees. This is a colossal conflict of interest. Just whose side are they on? From the dropping of a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party to the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammed in a civilian court within blocks of where the World Trade Center once stood, the actions and attitudes of the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder toward the thugs and terrorists who threaten us has grown curiouser and curiouser. We may now have a clue as...

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 EDITORIAL: Does Justice lack ethics? THE WASHINGTON TIMES The rot at the Department of Justice grows more evident every day. Already being hit for botched decisions about terrorist trials and for dropping a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party, the department is taking another huge blow. On Friday, Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis excoriated the department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) for an attempted railroad job against two George W. Bush administration appointees who crafted rules for interrogating captured terrorists. The 69-page memorandum by Mr. Margolis makes the ethics of OPR look worse...

The White House wants to play Transparency Olympics with the Tea Party movement. President Obama's Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin dared Tea Party activists and conservatives last week to "push the administration to make its policies more open" and make it a "political competition … to see who can be more radical in their openness," The Hill reported. So, let's start by knocking down Attorney General Eric Holder's national security stonewall at the Department of Justice, shall we? Let the sun shine in. For more than a year, I've been writing about the looming national security and conflict-of-interest problems posed...

A number of lawyers who work on terrorist issues at the Justice Department represented terrorist detainees before joining the Obama administration. At a hearing three months ago, Sen. Charles Grassley raised the possibility of a conflict with Attorney General Eric Holder. Grassley, a senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, posed three simple questions: Who are they, who did they represent, and what are their duties at the Justice Department today? At the time, Grassley knew from press reports that two high-ranking department officials now working on detainee issues had previously worked for detainees: Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal...

How do you fast track your chances to work for the Department of Justice? Defend terrorists. After months of stalling, Attorney General Eric Holder has finally (sort of) admitted that at least nine of President Obama's appointees have either represented or advocated for Guantanamo detainees But Mr. Holder is still refusing to name any of the now DOJ lawyers who worked on behalf of terrorists except for two who were already known.

Andrew C. McCarthy February 5, 2010 Holder on Holder AG is unconvincing about ‘his’ decisions on Christmas bomber.  Attorney General Eric Holder has responded to criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of the Christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, with an “all’s well that ends well” letter to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. Holder’s missive vigorously defends what he says was his decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal defendant, to impose peacetime law-enforcement protocols on his interrogation, and to charge him in civilian court. He argues that the use of the criminal-justice system has been vindicated because the terrorist is...

THE WASHINGTON TIMES The U.S. attorney general should read up on the history of terrorism. He might learn something. On Wednesday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. sent a five-page letter to Sen. Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, detailing his rationale for treating purported Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a criminal suspect rather than a terrorist detainee. The attorney general's defense betrays significant misreading of how the United States has dealt with terrorism in recent decades. Mr. Holder incredibly claims that policies treating terrorists as criminals "were not criticized when employed by previous Administrations [and] have been and remain...

AG Eric Holder said he knows we are at war during his November 18, 2009 testimony before the Senate Judicary Committee concerning his decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other four 9/11 conspirators in federal court. Unfortunately, Mr. Holder does not walk that talk. (See video of Fox News report here.) Attorney General Eric Holder says he made the decision to charge the Christmas Day terror suspect in the civilian system with no objection from all the other relevant departments of the government. In a letter to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, the attorney general says that the...

Holder: I Made Decision To Charge Botched Bomber WASHINGTON (CBS) ― Attorney General Eric Holder said that he made the decision to charge the Christmas Day terror suspect in the U.S. civilian system. The Obama administration has come under recent attack by Republicans that the Nigerian man who attempted to blow up a Northwest airliner on U.S. soil on Christmas Day should have been tried as a terrorist instead of having the same rights as a U.S. citizen in court. Republicans have said the move to try Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in civilian court gives him the right to withhold information,...