Stephen Hayes thinks he has Eric Holder dead to rights, quoting a 2002 CNN interview in which Holder says that interrogating a detainee with a lawyer present is “harder,” referring to “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh.
CNN's Paula Zahn asked: “How much pressure should they put on this man to get information out of him as they interrogate him?”
Holder said: “Well, I mean, it's hard to interrogate him at this point now that he has a lawyer and now that he is here in the United States. But to the extent that we can get information from him, I think we should.”
I'll see Hayes' Holder and raise him a former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey. In the same year, Mukasey ruled as a federal judge that detainees had a right to counsel and that “the interference with interrogation would be minimal or nonexistent.” So at best, we have Holder being to the right of Mukasey in 2002, and Mukasey being to the left of Holder. They’ve both changed their minds.
What hasn't changed though, is that conservatives were dead silent as the Bush administration proceeded to try terrorists in civilian courts all through their two terms in office. Holder’s statement yesterday, that “the practice of the U.S. government, followed by prior and current Administrations without a single exception, has been to arrest and detain under federal criminal law all terrorist suspects who are apprehended inside the United States,” remains accurate. Hayes himself forgot to raise a note of protest at the 145 trials of terrorists conducted over eight years of Bush. He was apparently too busy fabricating a nonexistent link between Iraq and al-Qaeda and fluffing Dick Cheney.
Lindh's case differs from that of Abdulmutallab in that Lindh was an actual enemy combatant captured fighting for the Taliban in a zone of active military combat. Why wasn’t Hayes calling for Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation when he recommended Lindh be given a civilian trial?
Again, the Obama administration hasn’t handled the Abdulmutallab case any differently than the previous administration would have. The only difference is the presence of knee-jerk conservative hysteria.
— A. Serwer
