WHEN ERIC HOLDER SAYS “TRUST ME”….DON’T
Editorials The War On Terror On Trial
Justice: Attorney General Holder’s testimony on Wednesday provided no credible rationale for sending the 9/11 conspirators into the civilian federal court system. This is 100% politics.
Steam was pouring out of Eric Holder’s ears after Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., quoted from former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy’s National Review article this week. McCarthy described Holder as “a lawyer whose firm is among those responsible for the litigation-driven delay that became a lawfare triumph for al-Qaida.”
And he pointed out that once the administration Holder serves took over, “Obama shut down the (military) commission despite the jihadists’ efforts to conclude it by pleading guilty … so that we can instead endure an incredibly expensive and burdensome civilian trial that will take years to complete.”
While he was at it, Kyl pulverized Holder’s contention that civilian courts would make conviction easier.
“How could you be more likely to get a conviction in federal court, when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has already asked to plead guilty before a military commission and be executed?” Kyl asked, eliciting a round of applause for himself in the hearing room.
Holder’s beside-the-point retort was that he didn’t know or care what was in Khalid’s mind.
The attorney general had to suck in the steam, however, when the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings concluded in the afternoon. That was when he was forced to stand quietly in the hearing room and endure an earful from the mother of one of the victims of United Flight 93.
C-SPAN eavesdropped as the gutsy, heartbroken woman told Holder that he and the president were making a big mistake in having KSM and his four co-conspirators tried in federal court in New York City.
The president and Holder are giving the 9/11 terrorist plotters “very eloquent access to all those media sources in the United States,” the 9/11 mother told him to his face. “I am afraid that the theatrics are going to take over.”
Holder’s response: “Trust me.”
Trust a Justice Department that puts politics before national security?
In many respects, the theatrics already have taken over. We are seeing a terrorism policy for trial lawyers: Let us prove to you that the federal judicial system can handle anything you throw at it. Of course, it will take us many hours of work, which we will be only too happy to bill you for — “you” mostly being the U.S. taxpayer.
Let us also prove to you that activist judges in a place as liberal as New York City are capable of doling out harsh punishment to infamous terrorists.
The judge who sentences Khalid to death will be tough to defeat as a Supreme Court nominee, no matter his or her record in other areas.
When Khalid plays P.T. Barnum at the three-ring circus that the Holder Justice Department sets in motion a few blocks from ground zero, it won’t matter that “failure is not an option,” as Holder promised the committee on Wednesday.
It won’t matter that anger over trying him on U.S. soil in U.S. courts, as if he were a U.S. citizen, will lessen “when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him,” as the president promised in an NBC News interview Wednesday during his Asian trip.
The nightmare scenario of a hung jury, or some ACLU-smitten judge along the way acquitting one of them on a technicality, may be unlikely. But the very length of the trials — after waiting so many years for justice already — will be an al-Qaida propaganda victory.
The trials are sure to be used by Khalid and the others, and their attorneys, as a PR bonanza.
Even ultraliberal New York Gov. David Paterson has blasted the president for choosing New York City because he knows any and every landmark from Grand Central to the Empire State Building will have to be considered a possible target for terrorism.
Pat Buchanan, a frequent critic of GOP anti-terror policies, made a salient point in his column this week: From British spies during the War of Independence to John Wilkes Booth’s pro-Confederate collaborators to Nazi saboteurs caught on U.S. soil during World War II, we have tried those who make war against America in military, not civilian, courts.
“When and where did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed acquire his right to a trial by a jury of his peers in a U.S. court?” Buchanan asked. “What makes KSM special?”
When Holder says “trust me,” is he really speaking to the left-wing base of the Democratic Party? Those liberals are the ones who want to see the discovery phase of Khalid’s civilian trial reveal as much as possible about the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation techniques — in effect placing the post-9/11 global war on terror on trial.
Is that what makes KSM — and the opportunity he provides — so special to this administration?
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