Jewish World Review Sept. 7, 2009 / 18 Elul 5769

Political considerations produce contradictory justice

By Jonathan Gurwitz

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | If you're a terrorist who attacks the United States, you're entitled to a pardon. If you're a member of the intelligence community with the responsibility to protect the United States against terrorist attack, you're entitled to be the victim of prosecutorial double jeopardy. That is the reprehensible and incomprehensible record of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

As deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, Holder was responsible for securing Justice Department approval of President Bill Clinton's pardon of 16 members of the Puerto Rican terrorist group Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional. The FALN was responsible for more than 130 bombings in the United States between 1974 and 1983. The most infamous attack, the bombing of the historic Fraunces Tavern in New York in 1975, killed four people and injured scores of others.

Prior to 1999, the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney, the FBI and federal prosecutors were in unanimity opposing pardons for FALN terrorists. But as a January investigative report from the Los Angeles Times revealed, "Holder instructed his staff at Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney to effectively replace the department's original report recommending against any commutations, which had been sent to the White House in 1996, with one that favored clemency for at least half the prisoners."

Joseph Connor, whose father was murdered in the Fraunces Tavern bombing, notes that in 3,039 out of 3,042 prior cases, the Clinton administration denied requests for clemency. In this case, FALN terrorists serving fewer than 20 years of 35- to 105-year terms hadn't even sought pardons. So why the sudden urgency to change Justice Department policy in 1999 and grant them pardons?

As with Clinton's other controversial pardons, the answer has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with politics. Hillary Clinton was gearing up a campaign for a New York Senate seat, Al Gore one for the presidency, and the White House viewed the pardons as a way to ingratiate Team Clinton players with Puerto Rican voters.

Congress condemned the FALN pardons by votes of 95-2 in the Senate and 311-41 in the House. At his confirmation hearing in January, Holder continued to defend them as being "reasonable."

No doubt, the same sense of reason informed Holder's decision to appoint a federal prosecutor to re-investigate allegations of CIA detainee abuse in the war against al-Qaida. The CIA inspector general investigated those claims in 2003. Career prosecutors at the Justice Department and in the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of Virginia examined the evidence in 2005. That resulted in a single prosecution of a CIA contractor.

Yet now, Holder — with the blessing of President Barack Obama — wants to renew the possibility that the people who interrogated 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other hardened terrorists might go to prison. Why the sudden urgency to change Justice Department policy in 2009?

Again, the answer has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with politics. The rabid left still wants to claim its Bush administration scalps, the morale of the men and women in the intelligence community and the security of the nation be damned. And, as with the pardons of the FALN terrorists, Holder is happy to serve as Team Obama's political hatchet man.

Perhaps a compelling case can be made to go after those who went face to face with the terrorists who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. But Eric Holder has no business making that case.