(Analyst's note: Absolutely must read.)
Over at The American Spectator, the mysterious Prowler breaks new ground not just on the identities of the Justice Department lawyers who may have done (perfectly legal) work for suspected-terrorist detainees, but on why DoJ has been so unwilling to release any information on the issue. In particular, this is news to me:
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.
Wow. And wow again. If these people are leaking the CIA names, they are clearly engaged in illegal activity, bordering on treasonous in the non-legal sense of the word. For that matter, where have all the lefties been who screamed bloody murder when Robert Novak and Richard Armitage innocently leaked the name of utterly desk-bound, high-profile, arguably not even covert Valerie Plame? Inadvertently leaking Plame's name is far less of an offense than deliberately leaking the info about the CIA interrogators. Where are the calls for prosecutions? Where is the almighty Patrick Fitzgerald to put some more skins on the wall?
It is worth noting that some of what the Prowler reports tracks with what we reported here last week, which itself was an update of these two related editorials.
The Prowler also reports this, which expands upon and gives depth to our own earlier suppositions:
... 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."
This is big stuff. And it isn't going away anytime soon.
