Photo: Breitbart
On April 27, Attorney General Eric Holder defended a federal judge’s decision to read confessed terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights after only 16 hours of interrogation, saying: “Everything was done appropriately, and we got good leads.” Holder’s statement confirmed earlier reports that he had foreknowledge of, but failed to object to, U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler’s decision to “mirandize” Tsarnaev.
Judge Bowler’s sudden appearance at Tsarnaev’s hospital bedside prompted alarm from the FBI agents who were questioning him. Holder is correct that the FBI had managed to obtain “good leads”; what he does not acknowledge is the leads they might yet have uncovered.
The failure to insist on as full an interrogation as possible fits a pattern of Holder standing up for terrorists’ rights despite the danger to American lives.
During his confirmation hearings in 2009, Holder came under scrutiny for his role as President Bill Clinton’s Deputy Attorney General in granting clemency to terrorists from the radical Puerto Rican radicals in the FALN organization. As the Los Angeles Timesreported, Holder “instructed his staff at Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney to effectively replace the department’s original report recommending against any commutations.”
The FALN case was not the only troubling evidence of Holder’s sympathy for terrorists. Holder served as senior partner in the Covington and Burling law firm, which took on the cases of 17 Yemeni terror detainees being held at the Guantánamo Bay prison. Holder also represented Chiquita Brands International in a plea bargain over payments to the AUC, a Columbian terrorist paramilitary organization, as Michelle Malkin noted in 2009.
In 2010, Liz Cheney and her Keep America Safe organization pointed out that Holder’s Department of Justice (DOJ) included nine lawyers who had previously represented Al Qaeda terror suspects. Critics charged, falsely, that Cheney was arguing that terrorists did not deserve lawyers. She did not dispute their right to counsel, but did question whether those who volunteered to provide it could be trusted with the nation’s security.
Indeed, over and over again, Holder has placed his left-wing political agenda ahead of national security. He insisted on trying 9/11 master plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court in New York City until he was forced to back down under political pressure. Shortly after the 2012 election, Holder seized the opportunity to bring Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law to New York City for a civilian trial, again regardless of the risk.
One of Holder’s top priorities at the DOJ was to investigate the CIA for interrogations of terrorists conducted under the administration of President George W. Bush. Ultimately, Holder decided not to bring any charges, but the investigation had reportedly damaged morale at the intelligence agency. Intelligence-gathering from terror detainees has since become a repeated source of trouble, from the Christmas Day bomber in 2009 to Tsarnaev.
The Conservatives at Breitbart have the full article
