By
The Prowler
Spectator.org
One reason for the ongoing battle between Sen.
Chuck Grassley and the Department of Justice over the
identities of as many as 13 to 16 current Obama Administration political
appointees who provided legal counsel to suspected or convicted terrorists and
enemy combatants being held in detention, is not so much what these lawyers did
before joining the administration. Rather, says a Department of Justice source,
it stems from the administration's own attempts to identify any official paper
or email trails of those DOJ attorneys that would reveal not just past but
current efforts -- since their appointment, in other words -- to influence
administration or department policies on the legal treatment of suspected or
indicted terrorists and enemy combatants.
The most intensive review of documents
over the past several weeks, says the source, has focused on the little known
Law and Policy office, which resides in the National Security Division inside
the department. The NSD, parts of which had previously resided inside the
Criminal Division, also houses an Office of Intelligence Policy and Review.
"When some of these political appointees came into the Administration, I think
it was safe to say that there was keen interest on their part to influence
policy here," says the source. "At the highest level, people want to know how
big a mess this really is. Were there emails or memos shared among the political
appointees or the NSD staff that could create problems for us, for example."
Grassley has for months been requesting
the names and positions of all Obama Department of Justice attorneys -- almost
all of them political appointees -- who prior to joining the administration
worked directly or indirectly for suspected terrorists or enemy combatants. On
February 19, Grassley received a five-page letter from Attorney General
Eric Holder's office claiming that at least nine lawyers at the
department either represented detainees or worked on amicus briefs on detainees'
behalf. But the letter did not reveal the names of those lawyers.
But DOJ sources say there may be as many
as 16 political appointees -- including Holder -- who represented detainees,
worked on or signed onto amicus briefs on detainees' behalf, or provided legal
counsel to organizations that actively sought to reverse Bush Administration
anti-terrorist and detainee policies. These groups included the leftist
organizations Human Rights Watch and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in
Washington (CREW). Those names, sources say, may include:
• Associate Attorney General
Thomas Perrelli, a partner at Jenner & Block and former classmate of
Barack Obama's at Harvard who was brought in to serve as chief counsel to Deputy
Attorney General David Ogden.
• Brian Hauck and
Donald Verrilli, both of whom worked with Perrelli at Jenner &
Block, are also senior officials at DOJ; Hauck is counsel to the associate
attorney general; Verrilli's portfolio as associate deputy attorney general
includes advising on national security matters.
• Lanny Breuer, Holder's
former partner at Covington & Burling, and current head of the DOJ's criminal
division.
• Tony West, assistant
attorney general for the Civil Division, who represented "American Taliban"
John Walker Lindh, and has strong ties to leftist former
Democrat House member and current Oakland mayor, Ron Dellums.
• NSD attorney Jennifer Daskal,
who served as a senior counsel for Human Rights Watch.
• Principal deputy solicitor general
Neal Katyal, who served as lead counsel for the Guantanamo Bay
detainees in the Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
(Both Daskal and Katyal were cited by
Grassley's staff in a letter to Holder on this issue back in November.)
• James Garland, another
Covington & Burling former partner, who is now Deputy Chief of Staff and
Counselor to the Attorney General. Garland's duties do not involve national
security matters, but he is tasked with advising Holder on all matters related
to criminal prosecutions and civil matters that aren't covered by national
security. In that capacity, he may have been involved in deciding how the
Christmas Day bomber, Umar Abdulmutallab was dealt with once it
was determined he would be tried in criminal court.
Others may include John Bies
(another Covington refugee), and Stuart Delery, Chief of Staff
and Counselor to the Deputy Attorney General (and a former partner at Wilmer
Hale, the home of former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick,
who in 1995 put in place the policies that limited the ability of criminal
investigators from accessing intelligence agency materials to investigate and
possibly prevent terrorist acts). More junior advisers to senior officials at
DOJ, as designated by the "counsel" title as compared to the more senior
"counselor," are Eric Columbus, Senior Counsel to the Deputy
Attorney General (a Wilmer alum), who worked on the Supreme Court case,
Boumediene v. Bush, which established that detainees had the right to
access U.S. courts, Chad Golder, Counsel to the Deputy Attorney
General (Wilmer associate), and Aaron Lewis, counsel to the
Attorney General (another Covington alum). Jonathan Cedarbaum,
deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel (who served as
a Chief of Staff to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia). Another senior political appointee with an interest in the issues
in question may be Rajesh De, the Deputy Assistant Attorney
General in the Office of Legal Policy, who prior to joining a D.C. law firm
worked on the 9/11 Commission as a legal counsel.
Ironically, say DOJ sources, while Holder and
his staff continue to work hard to protect the identities of those attorneys who
provided legal advice to suspected or convicted terrorists, several of the
attorneys in question are believed to have been instrumental in the efforts of
Human Rights Watch and CREW to leak to the media and Democrat supporters on
Capitol Hill, the names of CIA interrogators of enemy combatants and suspected
terrorists, as well as the locations of foreign-based U.S. secure holding
facilities and various interrogation techniques used on terror suspects and
enemy combatants.