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.
