Mark Levin provided a lecture on history last night to President Barack Obama about the law and the decisions made by Lincoln, FDR, and others when American lives hung in the balance. “If we get hit again, that blood is on Obama’s hands.”
It makes no logical difference that Bybee could have foreseen that the result of his incorrect legal advice would be the commission of a crime. Gorelick could have foreseen that the consequences of her incorrect legal advice would permit the commission of a crime (just read her memo … and you will see that the warning signs of pending terrorist plots were clear). While there may be differing levels of culpability, both results were foreseeable. … — William A. Jacobson, Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School, Ithaca, NY
Eric Holder should join Jamie Gorelick in the dock, if Jay Bybee, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, and Stephen Bradbury are prosecuted. In 1997, he replaced Gorelick as the Deputy Attorney General. Three times during his tenure, Holder was made fully aware that intelligence sharing with the Criminal Division was not taking place. In 1997, he allowed the very working group he had formulated to not make a single serious recommendation; then he disbanded the group without action:
In June 1996, a memorandum was drafted for the Attorney General to issue emphasizing that contacts between intelligence and criminal agents were not prohibited. … This draft memorandum (961) was never issued, however. … By September 1997, according to Daniel S. Seikaly, Director of the Executive Office for National Security (â€ÂEONSâ€Â), the Director of the FBI had complained to the Attorney General that, despite the July 1995 memorandum, OIPR was preventing the FBI from contacting the Criminal Division. … According to a memorandum Seikaly wrote at the time, the Attorney General was “anxious†to see the problem resolved. … Deputy Attorney General Holder instructed Seikaly to convene a working group consisting of representatives from OIPR, the FBI, and the Criminal Division to address the issue. … Seikaly concluded that the Attorney General’s memorandum was not being followed, indeed that both OIPR and the FBI “were ignoring the procedures out of an abundance of caution.†… One suggestion was “simply to ask the Attorney General to … reassert the validity of the Procedures,†(id) but there was some sentiment that it would be inappropriate for the Attorney General to issue a memorandum that essentially said “And we really mean it this time.†… In the end, the working group was disbanded without recommendation and no significant action was taken.  Bellows Report, page 722, (pdf reader required)
As stated in Chapter 3 of the 9/11 Commission Report, in both 1999 and 2000, “[S]eparate reviews concluded independently that information sharing was not occurring, and that the intent of the 1995 procedures was ignored routinely,†yet again, Holder took no action.
Let’s free all the memos.
On January 15, 2009, I called Congress’s Legislative Archive. In the course of our conversation over my minor question, I asked if that (about Civil Aviation) was the last staff monograph and the person thought it was. He took my phone number and called me back 10 minutes later with an answer to one minor question. Then, unexpectedly, he called me back 30 minutes later to say there remained one item that had not even been scheduled for review; it had not been totally redacted. Eight Department of Justice memos are currently being withheld, along with the 9/11 Commission’s Staff Monograph about ‘the Wall.’
If we are going to criminalize the legal opinions of lawyers that sought to save lives during the Bush administration, we should prosecute Eric Holder and Jamie Gorelick for 2,975 counts of negligent homicide. Instead, President Obama should take his lessons from Lincoln, FDR, George W. Bush, and Justice Robert Jackson who defended our nation, not from those whose negligence left America defenseless.
Poor Rush,Can't even enjoy the dam superbowl this year.And it took two government motor's to beat one Ford Fusion... 
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While the Clinton administration may not have orchestrated 911 they certainty acted like orchestrated ostriches. The Gorelick wall provided the legacy that GW inherited which hamstrung his Administration for 9 months preceding 911. This was the pre 911 established dug-in standard that became the single biggest correction achieved by the Patriot Act but that Act itself was a conglomerate of recommendations provide by none other than the NSC’s Millennium After Action Review for the preceding Administration. That Administration not only failed to follow its own recommendations but it also never provided the memos for the Bush Administration’s AG when in fact those same recommendations, astoundingly, became the very foundation of the Patriot Act that has protected us since 911. Everyone understands that implementing tough tactics instigates criticism and I suspect that the Clinton Administration, in is chronic quest for popularity, while besieged by sex and other scandals, was more concerned with ratings than national security.
Personally I can never be comfortable with the 911 commission findings as it lacked material destroyed by Mr. Berger and was, itself, infested with the same people doing the investigation that should have been part of the investigation as deposed witnesses.
The Clinton Administration not only bore witness to the 93 WTC attack, it also experienced bombings of our east African embassies, the Khobar Towers and the USS Cole and yet treated each and all of these incidents with the aplomb of disconnected events unfit to necessitate anything more than pinprick military responses. They conducted the main battles in our courts where our soldiers were attorneys. This, along with the failure to procure and act on intelligence, begot 911.
The chief job of the Commander-In-Chief is national security, not the economy, not social engineering and certainly not the procurement of international and domestic popularity based upon ill defined concepts of hope and change that seem to trump a deliberately crafted ill-defined history of American monumental achievements and accomplishments which represent, not only our history, but also traditions and heritage which relate to our exceptional constitutionally protected naturally acquired liberties and freedoms.
For a nation that fire bombed the civilian German city of Dresden, dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese civilian centers, abandoned and permitted millions of Vietnamese and others to undergo atrocities by the NVA and Cambodian re-educators and also left thousands to die and/or be captured, executed and tortured at the Bay of Pigs, under democrat Administrations or the auspices of congressional democrats such as Ted Kennedy it is mind boggling that the present use of interrogation techniques on a relatively tiny number of proven high value targets, for the sole intent of protecting thousands, now deserves judgment by the Hague or other international courts and is the subject of consideration to beget special domestic congressional probes with the unbelievable purpose of procuring indictments for methods, that were not only approved on a bi-partisan basis, but which do not represent any violation of law, including Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. You have to first create the law, which itself would violate the separation of powers and then apply it ex post facto. It is amazing how the same people, who supposedly laud justice, consider the smallest minority a minority of one, for non-citizens in these instances, yet support group property rights that throw the individual under the bus to achieve unjust egalitarian outcomes that destroy real self-evident truths and rights in other instances. Even more unbelievable is that this whole smoke and mirrors charade about water boarding, created by the apostles of the Bush derangement syndrome, is clearly designed to stigmatize the previous Administration as some rouge, derelict Constitutional, Geneva Convention and War Powers Act secret sleuth violator for the sole purpose of creating American self-loathing and guilt and thereby detract from the current Administration’s failure to commit to procedures and practices that have been solidly proven to protect America. Last July, it was Obama who blamed America for the shift in Islam that he believed was due to the failure of the West to work with many of these governments to ensure that there is bottom up economic growth. It is his belief that the problem, with Islam is, stunningly, us. In reality it is they who are the rogue derelicts. I suspect that part of the moral solution is the abandonment of the basic tenants of self-defense.
During wartime Lincoln and FDR did what they knew was right, including the internment of over one hundred thousand Japanese Americans; they suffered no recriminations. When American lives are threatened certainly those that may be responsible must be interned. Typhoid Mary spent over a quarter century in isolation on an island off the coast NY because of the danger she posed for other Americans. Moreover, the new Castle Doctrine laws, passed by many states, recognizes that a person who uses deadly force, because he or she perceives imminent danger, has a presumption of innocence. The concept that American lives could be saved by the use of harsh interrogation tactics, even if it results in the death of the captive, has a lot in common with Castle Doctrines but, most of all, is rooted in the ageless tradition, history and necessity of self-preservation through self-defense. If Americans perish, the knowledge that high value captives possessed specific information to prevent a tragedy leaves those who failed to obtain that info as culpable and guilty as the captives themselves.
Would those who criticize us for invading Iraq (who are the same as those that critique harsh interrogation tactics) have felt better if harsh interrogation techniques debunked the concept that we faced an immediate WMD threat and thereby prevented the invasion? What side of that Catch 22 would they fall on? After 911 all bets are forever off because no President can afford to see American children burnt to a crisp, shredded beyond recognition with nails and ball bearings imbedded in their skulls.
Today we live in a World where huge oceans and small arms are insignificant defenses because modern physics, chemistry and biology could change international sociology in 30 minutes. Ultimately if the Obama Administration fails to grasp this concept the succeeding Administration will be voted in on the basis of a scenario that I have no desire to contemplate.