Gitmo has taken a back seat to other issues lately, so maybe it’s a strategical error on the AG’s part to come out and remind those whose attention has since been distracted from the issue that the place is in fact still open for business (although it’s not as if Holder has anything else to do).

In spite of that, the Attorney General wants everybody to know that he still hasn’t forgotten about following through with President Obama’s executive order to close Gitmo by January…. of 2010:

BRUSSELS (AP) — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that the Obama administration will do its utmost to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay before next year’s presidential elections despite political opposition.

Holder said at the European Parliament that even if the current administration fails to close it ahead of elections, it will continue to press ahead if it wins the November 2012 presidential vote.

I’m not sure how Holder’s renewed commitment will sit even with other members of the administration, who recently backed off a wildly unpopular and ill-conceived “civil trials for terrorist suspects” crusade. This would drag the “what will we do with the detainees if it closes” debate back into the conversation just as the election season is starting to heat up. Nothing will reel in the Illinois undecideds faster for Obama than by telling them he’s going to start keeping terrorists in their backyard.

In the spirit of bipartisanship, if the Obama administration is serious about putting Gitmo out of business, I’d like to offer a suggestion that is tried and true: Declare the prison a “green jobs” hub, loan it a half billion taxpayer dollars, then hire the detainees to manufacture and sell solar panels and windmill parts. The place would be shuttered before next summer.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

From the letter:

30 May 2011
2000 hours

The Conspiracy charge details 167 overt acts allegedly committed in furtherance of the 9/11 attacks…

Click on the link for a full list of charges.

Yeah, I know what you’re probably thinking… “Gitmo’s still open?”

From the Washington Post:

The Pentagon is considering allowing the families of detainees at Guantanamo Bay to visit them, an unprecedented step to ease the isolation of inmates who in some cases have been held at the U.S. facility for close to a decade, according to congressional aides.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which monitors conditions at the military prison in Cuba and facilitates videoconferences between detainees and their families, has been in serious discussions with the Pentagon about a visitation program, the aides said.

This idea isn’t as radical as when someone proposed Gitmo detainees be allowed conjugal visits from Code Pink, but it certainly has its potential security hazards.

Rep. Peter King wrote a letter to SecDef Gates and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs asking for an explanation.

Another question, provided the WaPo’s report is accurate, is simply where these family members would be kept. After all, there isn’t a Motel 6 down the road from Gitmo:

Because Guantanamo is off-shore, families would not necessarily need to enter the mainland United States to reach the prison, and the visits could be staged from a neighboring country willing to allow the families to move into and out of the base.

Good luck finding a country willing to do that. If one is found, it wouldn’t happen without a “little somethin’ for your trouble” expense on the part of the US. On the flip side, be wary of any country way too agreeable.

It’s a bad idea all the way around.

(h/t Ed Morrissey)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Osama bin Laden has been found, but the Obama administration’s search for the same page continues.

Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan was on Morning Joe earlier in the day and countered a New York Times article that said information obtained by waterboarding helped lead US forces to Osama bin Laden:

When directly asked by Mika whether waterboarding was involved he responded:

Not to my knowledge. The information that was collected over the course of nine years or so came from many different sources: human sources, technical sources, as well as sources that detainees provided. It was something as a result of the painstaking work that the analysts did. They pieced it all together that lead us to the compound last year and resulted in the very successful operation Sunday.

Later in the day, Brian Williams spoke with CIA Director Leon Panetta and asked him a similar question in an interview that appeared on the NBC Nightly News:

BRIAN WILLIAMS:
Turned around the other way, are you denying that water boarding was, in part, among the tactics used to extract the intelligence that led to this successful mission?

LEON PANETTA:
No, I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees. But I’m also saying that, you know, the debate about whether– whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always going to be an open question.

BRIAN WILLIAMS:
So finer point, one final time, enhanced interrogation techniques, which has always been kind of a handy euphemism in these post-9/11 years. That–

LEON PANETTA:
Right.

BRIAN WILLIAMS:
–in– includes water boarding?

LEON PANETTA:
That’s correct.

As for Eric Holder and whether or not “advanced interrogation techniques” helped get Bin Laden, the Attorney General said he didn’t know. This all must be especially traumatic for somebody who a while back couldn’t bring himself to say the words “radical Islam,” so let’s cut him a break for a while.

Did waterboarding help track down Osama bin Laden? So far from administration officials we have a no, a yes, and one “I don’t know.”

Which one of those answers will President Obama give when Steve Kroft asks him about it tomorrow for Sunday’s 60 Minutes? Will we get a little of all three? Will the question even be asked? As Eric Holder might say, I don’t know.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

The blabbermouth media formed a stampede over the weekend in a rush to publish a new round of Wikileaks documents on al Qaeda and Guantanamo Bay.

The Memeorandum round-up is here and the breathless tick-tock on how lib outlets stepped all over each other to get the “scoops” is here.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air says “Meh,” noting “these revelations don’t reveal much at all about AQ plots in the past, nor their operations today. The most recent data in either report is years old. They are both interesting for purposes of background information, but neither tells much of a story on its own or together that we didn’t already know.”

Let me give you a case in point: The New York Times’ story today on how Gitmo detainees coordinated suicide stunts to try to shut the facility down.

Against that backdrop, a collection of secret detainee assessment files obtained by The New York Times reveal that the threat of suicide has created a chronic tension at the prison — a tactic frequently discussed by the captives and a constant fear for their captors.

The files for about two dozen detainees refer to suicide attempts or threats. Others mention informants who pass on rumors about which prisoner had volunteered to kill himself next and efforts to organize suicide attempts. Two prisoners were overheard weighing whether it would create enough time for someone to end his life if fellow prisoners blocked their cell windows, distracting guards who would have to remove the obstructions.

While medical officials struggled to keep hunger strikers alive, other officials were on constant alert for signs of trouble. In May 2008, a detainee ordered fellow prisoners to “stop singing that song; we will sing it on Monday when our brothers leave.” His file noted: “It was assessed he meant planning suicide attempts.”

…Several later assessments of other detainees make references to the three suicides. One such file, for example, mentions in passing that a prisoner reported that another detainee had told him “he had been approached and recruited by the three detainees who had committed suicide.”

And Mr. Ahmed’s brother, Muhammaed Yasir Ahmed Taher, who was also a detainee until his repatriation in 2009, wrote to a family member depicting Mr. Ahmed “as a martyr,” according to an assessment. An analyst concluded that both brothers “viewed the suicide as a continuance of their jihad against the US.”

Gitmo sympathizers continue to characterize the suicides/suicide attempts as acts of desperation by poor, innocent potato farmers and bystanders. But these were clear acts of asymmetric warfare by cunning, cold-blooded jihadists versed in exploitation of Western sensibilities.

I said so all throughout 2005 and 2006, when the Close Gitmo cult was in full force during the Bush years.

Flashback June 2006: The Gitmo suicide was staged

Flashback June 2006: The Gitmo suicide stunt

Flashback July 2006: Gitmo suicide pact, boo-freaking-hoo part deux

Flashback June 2005:

The mainstream media and international human rights organizations have relentlessly portrayed the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as a depraved torture chamber operated by sadistic American military officials defiling Islam at every turn. It’s the “gulag of our time,” wails Amnesty International. It’s the “anti-Statue of Liberty,” bemoans New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.

Have there been abuses? Yes. But here is the rest of the story — the story that the Islamists and their sympathizers don’t want you to hear.

According to recently released FBI documents, which are inaccurately heralded by civil liberties activists and military-bashers as irrefutable evidence of widespread “atrocities” at Gitmo:

A significant number of detainees’ complaints were either exaggerated or fabricated (no surprise given al Qaeda’s explicit instructions to trainees to lie). One detainee who claimed to have been “beaten, spit upon and treated worse than a dog” could not provide a single detail pertaining to mistreatment by U.S. military personnel. Another detainee claimed that guards were physically abusive, but admitted he hadn’t seen it.

Another detainee disputed one of the now-globally infamous claims that American guards had mistreated the Koran. The detainee said that riots resulted from claims that a guard dropped the Koran. In actuality, the detainee said, a detainee dropped the Koran then blamed a guard. Other detainees who complained about abuse of the Koran admitted they had never personally witnessed any such abuse, but one said he had heard that non-Muslim soldiers touched the Koran when searching it for contraband.

In one case, Gitmo interrogators apologized to a detainee for interviewing him prior to the end of Ramadan.

Several detainees indicated they had not experienced any mistreatment. Others complained about lack of privacy, lack of bed sheets, being unwillingly photographed, the guards’ use of profanity, and bad food.

If this is unacceptable, “gulag”-style “torture,” then every inmate in America is a victim of human rights violations. (Oh, never mind, there are civil liberties chicken littles who actually believe that.)

Erik Saar, who served as an army sergeant at Gitmo for six months and co-authored a negative, tell-all book about his experience titled Inside the Wire, inadvertently provides us more firsthand details showing just how restrained, and sensitive to Islam — to a fault, I believe — the officials at the detention facility have been.

Each detainee’s cell has a sink installed low to the ground, “to make it easier for the detainees to wash their feet” before Muslim prayer, Saar reports. Detainees get “two hot halal, or religiously correct, meals” a day in addition to an MRE (meal ready to eat). Loudspeakers broadcast the Muslims’ call to prayer five times a day.

Every detainee gets a prayer mat, cap and Koran. Every cell has a stenciled arrow pointing toward Mecca. Moreover, Gitmo’s library — yes, library — is stocked with Jihadi books. “I was surprised that we’d be making that concession to the religious zealotry of the terrorists,” Saar admits. “[I]t seemed to me that the camp command was helping to facilitate the terrorists’ religious devotion.” Saar notes that one FBI special agent involved in interrogations even grew a beard like the detainees “as a sort of show of respect for their faith.”

Unreality-based liberals would have us believe that America is systematically torturing innocent Muslims out of spite at Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, our own MPs have endured little-publicized abuse at the hands of manipulative, hate-mongering enemy combatants. Detainees have spit on and hurled water, urine and feces on the MPs. Causing disturbances is a source of entertainment for detainees who, as Gen. Richard Myers points out, “would turn right around and try to slit our throats, slit our children’s throats” if released.

The same unreality-based liberals whine about the Bush administration’s failure to gather intelligence and prevent terrorism. Yet, these hysterical critics have no viable alternative to detention and interrogation — and there is no doubt they would be the first to lambaste the White House and Pentagon if a released detainee went on to commit an act of mass terrorism on American soil.

Guantanamo Bay will not be the death of this country. The unseriousness and hypocrisy of the terrorist-abetting Left is a far greater threat.

Same as it ever was.

Buzz out of Washington this morning is that the Obama administration has signaled it will end efforts to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian trial and instead will use the Gitmo military tribunal system pursued by, yes, George W. Bush.

AG Eric Holder is reportedly holding a 2pm Eastern press conference.

Here’s a blurb from CBS:

Attorney General Eric Holder today will announce that self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be tried in a military commission, CBS News has learned. A source says the commission will be held at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Trying Mohammed in a civilian court and closing the Guantanamo prison were once some of the Obama administration’s top priorities, but political realities have hamstrung both goals.

Holder previously recommended that Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 plotters be tried in New York City, but he scrapped that plan in the wake of public consternation.

Not just “political realities.”

Homeland security realities.

Public safety realities.

Intelligence realities.

Wartime realities.

Reality realities.

Reality bites. Sanity wins. For now.

Flashback to November 2009, when Obama/AG Holder embarked on their futile mission to treat Mohammed like your common domestic criminal.

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said today that it is highly likely that terrorists will attack New York City as a consequence of the Obama administration’s decision to send five alleged Sept. 11 plotters there for trial in federal court.

During a question and answer period following a speech to a conservative legal group, Mukasey was asked about the possibility that there might be an escape by one or more prisoners.

“The [Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan] is a very secure place….Is it secure? Of course, it’s secure. They’re not going to escape,” Mukasey told a conference of the Federalist Society. “The question is not whether they’re going to escape. The question is whether, not only that particular facility, but the city [at] large, will then become the focus for mischief in the form of murder by adherents of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed–whether this raises the odds that it will. I would suggest to you that it raises them very high.”

Mukasey said the men now to be tried in New York should have been left before military commission proceedings at Guantanamo that were already in progress.

“The plan seems to be to abandon the view that we’re in a war,” Mukasey said. “I can’t see anything good coming out of this. I certainly can’t see anything good coming out of it very quickly. And it think it would have been far preferable to try these case in the venue that Congress created for trying and where they were about to be tried.”

And this:

The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday. Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but “would explain what happened and why they did it.”

The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center. Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, is a nephew of professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Mohammed, Ali and the others will explain “their assessment of American foreign policy,” Fenstermaker said.

“Their assessment is negative,” he said.

Chalk up another “Emily ‘Never Mind’ Litella” Moment for feckless Team Obama:

***
Not coincidentally, Obama’s national security ratings have fallen to a new low.

Twitter users are having a field day with #Obama2012slogans. The latest in response to the Khalid retreat:

“Next Time I Really Am Closing Gitmo.”

Jan. 22, 2009 Obama’s executive order on closing Gitmo.

**

I’ve written extensively over the years on the perils of civilian trials for terrorists. See here and here and here for a refresher course in the Ally McBeal approach to terror.

Previous Obama Gitmo retreat/trial posts…

11/17/2010 The DoJ’s Civil Trial Balloon Pops; Update: Bush’s Fault, of Course

3/4/2010 National security flip-flop: Obama to retreat on KSM/Gitmo detainee civilian trials…for now

1/28/2010 Retreat: White House plays jihadi musical chairs

***

2:10pm Eastern AG Holder press conference. He says he embarked on shutting down Gitmo and forcing civilian trials with an “open mind.”

Pretends to speak for the 9/11 families — who raised their voices most loudly against KSM trial in New York City.

Says the Bush-era military tribunals will be fair and just, after all…

Whines about congressional restrictions based on national security/public safety concerns.

Still intends to close Gitmo.

Whines about critics trying to “score political points.”

Whines about “needless” debate.

Peppered with questions about his contradictory views on military tribunals and his condescension towards Americans who criticized civilian trial plans, a testy Holder cuts and runs.

Eric Holder: Honorary Fleebagger of the Day.

Via the Globe and Mail:

Omar Khadr, the only Canadian, only child soldier and only Guantanamo Bay detainee charged with battlefield homicide in the killing a U.S. soldier, pleaded guilty to all terrorism and murder charges on Monday.

“Yes” said Mr. Khadr, when Army Col Patrick Parrish, the military judge asked him if he understood what he was doing.

Wearing a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie, the tall, burly and bearded Mr. Khadr, was sworn in shortly after 9 a.m. Within minutes it became clear that the long, much-disrupted legal process at his war crimes trial was coming to a plea-bargained end. In less than an hour, the hearing was over.

With his head bowed in the courtroom Mr. Khadr only rarely looked up to meet the judge’s gaze as Col. Parrish read through a long list of questions detailing the charges. Mr. Khadr assented to knowing that he was attacking civilians, that he wanted to kill U.S. troops that he planted mines and that he received one-on-one terrorist training from an al-Qaeda operative.

By 9:15 a.m. barely 10 minutes after the proceeding began, Mr. Khadr had quietly answered “yes” to the long list of questions from the judge, all designed to establish absolutely his willingness to agree to the details of the charges.

He agreed, for instance, that he was an “alien, unprivileged, enemy belligerent,” unqualified therefore to shoot back or engage in combat hostilities with U.S. or other coalition forces. He said he understood he was guilty of “murder in violation of the laws of war” and that he was a member of al-Qaeda.

No tears for Khadr. Save them for Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer and his surviving family.

Flashback:

[Omar]is in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay for his alleged role in an ambush of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan last summer. Omar is accused of lobbing the hand grenade that killed Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, a 28-year-old medic with the U.S. Special Forces.

“That wasn’t a panicky teen-ager we encountered that day,” Sergeant First Class Layne Morris of South Jordan, Utah, who lost his right eye in the ambush, told the Boston Globe last month. “That was a trained al-Qaida who wanted to make his last act on earth the killing of an American.”

Speer left behind a wife and two children, ages 3 and 11 months. Just days before his murder, Speer had selflessly walked into a minefield to rescue two wounded Afghan children.

***

SFC Christopher Speer memorial page.

When the jack-booted era of Bush/Cheney came to a close I thought such human rights nightmares had ended, but apparently this kind of thing is still allowed in a so-called civilized society. Let’s just call it what it really is: Dairyboarding!

Detainees’ diets at Guantanamo Bay have been a controversial issue for some time and now the U.S. prison is said to be rationing ice cream.

The frozen dessert is allegedly being tightly measured, with only one ice cream allowed for each of its 147 detainees.

Journalist for The Miami Herald, Carol Rosenberg, photographed a refrigerator at Guantanamo, with two signs reading ‘DETAINEE FOOD ONLY’ and ‘Only 1 Ice Cream For each detainee!’

Even worse, Gitmo insiders tell me that if a detainee is thought to have information that could save lives, they’re threatened with being denied Magic Shell for up to a week. I’ve even heard that a US soldier once forced a detainee to watch as he tried to flush a pint of Chunky Monkey down a toilet, though I have yet to confirm that.

How must it makes detainees feel every time they see the US president, who not only promised to close Gitmo but to also declare life necessities such as ice cream to be a human right, publicly mocking those suffering under Gitmo’s frozen dessert limit:

Unbelievably cruel taunting.

This isn’t the Hope & Change I didn’t vote for.

(h/t Free Republic)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing this morning with corruptocrat AG Eric Holder. C-SPAN is streaming it live here.

Holder should have worn an Olympic gymnast’s outfit. After boasting last month that bin Laden would be killed and that he’d be reading Miranda rights to his corpse, Holder now says capturing him remains his preference and goal.

Speaking of flip-flops, Keep America Safe notes that while Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein expressed support for the KSM civilian trial this morning, she was lambasting Holder’s NYC trial plans in January.

Democrat Sen. Russ Feingold keys off Feinstein for more suck-uppage on Holder’s Gitmo civilian trials plan: “Continued strength on your continued actions on this regard.”

On closing Gitmo, Holder vows “We will close” it, but he doesn’t know when.

The civilian trials for Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other high-value Gitmo detainees is still “not off the table” — and he tells the panel that he has an alternate list of trial locations.

Do tell, Mr. Holder.

***

10:37am Eastern. Sen. Grassley presses Holder on refusal to disclose names of political appointees at DOJ with national security conflicts of interest/previous representation of detainees. Pressing Obama on lack of transparency. Notes that while Fox News obtained the names, Holder did not produce the names directly in response to Grassley’s request.

Yes or no: Will you disclose those names to me?

Holder decries [Keep America Safe] ads questioning conflicts of interest. “I will not allow these kids” to be dragged through the mud. “I will not be a part of that.” Invokes John Adams.

In other words: The answer is no.

Grassley moves on to lack of a central database to keep track of recusals like private law firms have. “Why shouldn’t the DOJ have some centralized system of conflicts [tracking] as private firms have?”

Holder: “That is something we can consider at the Department.”

Duly noted.

Grassley continuing to grill Holder on joke of transparency and lack of FOIA responses to the public.

“I can assure you the president is sincere and I am sincere.”

Three must-read items following up on themes and stories I’ve been covering for you since day one of the reign of corruptocrat AG Eric Holder at Obama’s DOJ:

In August 2009, I reported on the ACLU’s spying project: Operation CIA Paparazzi and hit again on the story here.

The Washington Times reports today that the DOJ and CIA are at war over a probe of the ACLU’s blabbermouth program unmasking the CIA interrogators and secretly photographing them in their homes — pics which they shared with their jihadi suspect clients.

The CIA and Justice Department are fighting over a secret investigation into a controversial program by legal supporters of Islamist terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay that involved photographing CIA interrogators and showing the pictures to prisoners, an effort CIA officials say threatens the officers’ lives.

The dispute prompted a meeting Tuesday at CIA headquarters between U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald and senior CIA counterintelligence officials. It is the latest battle between the agency and the department over detainees and interrogations of terrorists.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. angered many CIA officials and Republicans in Congress by reopening an investigation last August into whether CIA interrogators acted illegally in questioning senior al Qaeda detainees.

According to U.S. officials familiar with the issue, the current dispute involves Justice Department officials who support an effort led by the American Civil Liberties Union to provide legal aid to military lawyers for the Guantanamo inmates. CIA counterintelligence officials oppose the effort and say giving terrorists photographs of interrogators has exposed CIA personnel and their families to possible terrorist attacks.

As part of the disagreement, a senior Justice Department national security official removed himself from the counterintelligence probe last week after opposing CIA security worries.

Donald Vieira, a former Democratic counsel on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who in September became chief of staff at the Justice Department’s National Security Division, recused himself from the counterintelligence investigation into the recent discovery of photographs of CIA interrogators in the possession of defense lawyers at the prison in Cuba.

John Adamses, my foot.

On a related front, Debra Burlingame and Thomas Joscelyn have an explosive piece in the WSJ on Gitmo’s Indefensible Lawyers (background on the national security stone wall here.) Make sure you read the whole thing.

It will make this piece all the more snort-worthy: “AG Holder: DOJ ‘On The Right Path’ Toward Open Government.”

You know who should be feeling really, really stupid and sorry right now?

The 19 Republican Senators who voted to confirm Eric Holder as the nation’s attorney general despite his long track record of putting political interests of the public interest at the expense of public safety, conflicts of interest, and his own admissions of screwing up, then moving up.

Now, we learn that it just happened to conveniently slip Holder’s mind to mention during the Senate confirmation process that he had contributed to a legal brief with the use of federal courts in fighting terrorism on behalf of al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla:

“The brief should have been disclosed as part of the confirmation process,” Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller said in a statement. “In preparing thousands of pages for submission, it was unfortunately and inadvertently missed.”

Oopsy-doopsie!

GOP Sen. Sessions is “deeply concerned.” Unfortunately, Sen. Sessions was one of the 19 GOP Senators who misguidedly gave Holder the benefit of the doubt and voted to confirm him.

It’s not like they hadn’t been forewarned of Holder’s “forgetfulness.”

Let me remind you that before his confirmation, Holder “forgot” to mention that disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich had appointed him to probe corruption in the state’s casino licensing decisions. Holder pocketed $300,000 and — surprise, surprise — concluded that no corruption existed. Refresher:

Before Eric Holder was President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be attorney general, he was Gov. Blagojevich’s pick to sort out a mess involving Illinois’ long-dormant casino license.

Blagojevich and Holder appeared together at a March 24, 2004, news conference to announce Holder’s role as “special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board” — a post that was to pay Holder and his Washington, D.C. law firm up to $300,000.

Holder, however, omitted that event from his 47-page response to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire made public this week — an oversight he plans to correct after a Chicago Sun-Times inquiry, Obama’s transition team indicated late Tuesday.

“Eric Holder has given hundreds of press interviews,” Obama transition spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said in a statement. “He did his best to report them all to the committee, but as he noted in the questionnaire itself, some were undoubtedly missed in the effort to reconstruct a list of them.”

Holder signed the questionnaire on Sunday — five days after Blagojevich’s arrest for allegedly putting Obama’s U.S. Senate seat up for sale. The Judiciary Committee asked him to provide lists and “copies of transcripts or tape recordings of all speeches or talks delivered by you” and “all interviews you have given to newspapers, magazines or other publications.”

The March 2004 Chicago news conference where Holder and Blagojevich spoke was widely covered because of a controversial 4-1 Gaming Board vote earlier that month to allow a casino to be built in Rosemont. That vote defied the recommendation of the board’s staff, which had raised concerns about alleged organized-crime links to the Rosemont casino’s developer.

What else has Holder “forgotten” to tell us?

***

Andy McCarthy: Zing!

If not for the vigilant work of Keep America Safe, the corruptocrat Attorney General Eric Holder’s national security stone wall on DOJ’s terror lawyers would still be standing.

Asking politely, in respectful tones with bowed heads and stooped spines, did not get the DOJ to cough up the names.

It took relentless pressure and synergistic conservative media scrutiny, which reached a tipping point when Keep America Safe ran a hard-hitting ad about the “al Qaeda 7,” to uncover the names. (Thomas Joscelyn has your must-read backgrounder here. Power Line has an intense debate over the fairness of the ad (see here and here.)

Now, instead of asking why the most transparent administration ever didn’t just disclose the identities of those lawyers for the American public and instead of getting to the bottom of why Holder sought to protect them from exposure, Keep America Safe is under attack by the ACLU, some Bush administration lawyers, and the ABA for being too “divisive.”

Well, hell, yes, the planned Gitmo closure, civilian trials for high-value jihadi suspects, and transparency-undermining Eric Holder’s interest-conflicted DOJ are “divisive” topics.

If we’ve learned anything from the last year, it’s that you won’t get anywhere with the hardball Chicagoans-on-the-Potomac through conciliation and mooooderation. This is an ideological battle that requires fierceness and fortitude — the willingness to combat the Left’s reckless ideas and underhanded tactics instead of capitulating to them whenever the civility mavens start whining about “tone.”

The DOJ terror lawyers’ defenders complain that it is unfair to question their motives and loyalty. There wouldn’t have been so many questions in the first place had Eric Holder simply divulged the names when Sen. Grassley asked him to do so months ago.

The predictable cries of “McCarthyism” are rising. The demand for public disclosure is now being characterized as a “witch hunt.” Exactly as the Obama White House would have it: Demonize dissent. Freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.

Thank you, Keep America Safe, for taking the flak, keeping watch, and keeping American informed.

I want to take you back to November 13, 2009, less than four short months ago.

That was the day corruptocrat Attorney General Eric Holder announced he was bringing 9/11 jihadi mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohamed and other Gitmo detainees to NYC for civilian trials. As I noted the day the news broke, it was a Friday. The president was flying off to Asia. Congress was not in session. It was the perfect time to drop a bombshell on the American people. Here is what I wrote at the time:

If this White House thought Tea Party activists were an “angry mob,” wait until they see the backlash from 9/11 family members and their supporters nationwide. We’re not going to sit down and shut up about the reckless, security-undermining Obama 9/10 agenda and conflict-of-interest-ridden AG Eric Holder.

Call them out.

Well, another Friday is upon us. President Obama will be flying off to Asia in a few weeks. Congress is tied up with health care. And now, the White House is retreating in the face of vigilant, unrelenting pressure from 9/11 families and national security groups.

AG Eric Holder, meet the undercarriage of Barack Obama’s bus. Thumpity-thump, via WaPo:

President Obama’s advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City.

The president’s advisers feel increasingly hemmed in by bipartisan opposition to a federal trial in New York and demands, mainly from Republicans, that Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators remain under military jurisdiction, officials said. While Obama has favored trying some terrorism suspects in civilian courts as a symbol of U.S. commitment to the rule of law, critics have said military tribunals are the appropriate venue for those accused of attacking the United States.

…The administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the president’s legal advisers are finalizing their review of the cases of Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators. Asked about the process, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that “no decisions have been made.”

Privately, administration officials are bracing for the ire of disappointed liberals and even some government lawyers should the administration back away from promises to use civilian courts to adjudicate the cases of some of the 188 detainees who remain at Guantanamo.

“Even some government lawyers.” Yeah, thanks to Fox News, conservative media/blog pressure, and the 9/11 families backlash against Holder’s national security stone wall, we know which ones.

Along with KSM, the Gitmo detainees whom Holder had planned to dump in Big Apple courtrooms were Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni; Walid bin Attash, also a Yemeni; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, a Pakistani who is Mohammed’s nephew; and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a Saudi. They were first arraigned in June 2008.

Now, here’s the catch:

If Obama accepts the likely recommendation of his advisers, the White House may be able to secure from Congress the funding and legal authority it needs to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and replace it with a facility within the United States. The administration has failed to meet a self-imposed one-year deadline to close Guantanamo…

…Top Obama advisers have been negotiating with Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) — a vocal critic of trying the Sept. 11 suspects in civilian court — in pursuit of a deal that would secure his help in closing Guantanamo…

To close the detention center at Guantanamo, the administration needs funding to acquire and refurbish a prison in the United States, probably a state-owned maximum-security facility in Thomson, Ill. Because Congress has barred the transfer to the United States of all detainees except those destined for prosecution, the White House needs legal authority to move prisoners it plans to hold in some form of indefinite detention.

An interagency review of all cases at Guantanamo Bay concluded that about 50 prisoners will have to be held in some form of prolonged detention without trial, because the evidence against them was obtained through the use of harsh interrogation methods or because its revelation in court would compromise intelligence gathering. The government says the detainees are too dangerous to release.

So, even as they pull back from civilian trials in NYC, Obama is still trying to bring the Gitmolympics home to Illinois.

Keep calling them out. Keep America Safe.

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Reminder – KSM’s confession. Pass it on:

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Andy McCarthy calls a head fake:

The real agenda here is to close Gitmo. That’s the ball to keep your eye on. The Post is trying to soften the opposition to shuttering the detention camp by portraying beleaguered, reasonable Obama as making a great compromise that will exasperate the Left. The idea is to strengthen Sen. Lindsey Graham’s hand in seeking reciprocal compromise from our side.

This, however, is a matter of national security, not horse-trading over a highway bill. You don’t agree to do a stupid thing that endangers the country just because your opposition has magnanimously come off its insistence that you do two stupid things that endanger the country.

If a deal to grant military commissions in exchange for closing Gitmo happens, it is a major win for the Obama Left and an enormous loss for public safety.

We were headed inexorably toward military commissions for the 9/11 plotters. We don’t need to cut a bad deal to get it. Congress was not going to approve funding to transport trained terrorists to the U.S., nor to hold civilian trials. As I said, we’ve already got military commissions for some enemy combatants, and if we play this out, we are likely to get them for most if not all of the combatant war crimes trials. And we are likely to get them at Gitmo — the best place to have them, and the place on which the public has expended hundreds of millions of dollars to construct a safe, humane, fastidiously Islamo-friendly prison with state-of-the-art trial facilities.

Sgt. Tim Sumner: of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Secure America warns:

Last June was the last time the White House hosted a conference call with family members of the victims of 9/11 and the Cole bombing. During that call, the briefer said Senator Patrick Leahy would propose changes in the Military Commission Act, using the “Warner-McCain-Graham bill of 2006.”

Only, no such bill ever existed. Yet it did reveal that Senator Graham was already secretly negotiating with the White House. The actual bill was one by Senator John Warner, with no co-sponsors, that four Republicans voted in committee to allow to be brought to the Senate floor as a substitute amendment for the Military Commissions Act. When the substitute was put forward, even Warner voted against it (as did Graham) and both McCain and Snowe did not vote.

We have been conned before by this White House so do not believe everything you read in the newspaper. We need to soon hear from Senator Graham the details of what he is proposing.

A day after a conservative group released a video condemning the Justice Department for refusing to identify seven lawyers who previously represented or advocated for terror suspects, Fox News has uncovered the identities of the seven lawyers.

The names were confirmed by a Justice Department spokesman, who said “politics has overtaken facts and reality” in a tug-of-war over the lawyers’ identities.

“Department of Justice attorneys work around the clock to keep this country safe, and it is offensive that their patriotism is being questioned,” said Justice Department Spokesman Matt Miller.

The video by the group Keep America Safe, which dubbed the seven lawyers “The Al Qaeda 7,” is the latest salvo in a lengthty political battle.

For several months, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has led an effort to uncover politically-appointed lawyers within the Justice Department who have advocated for Guantanamo Bay detainees or other terror suspects.

“The administration has made many highly questionable decisions when it comes to national security, ” Grassley said in a recent statement. “[Americans] have a right to know who advises the Attorney General and the President on these critical matters.”

An extensive review of court documents and media reports by Fox News suggests many of the seven lawyers in question played only minor or short-lived roles in advocating for detainees. However, it’s unclear what roles, if any, they have played in detainee-related matters since joining the Justice Department.

Fun fact: Assistant Attorney General Tony West, who works in DOJ’s Civil Division, represented “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh for several years.

Read the whole thing. You have a right to know. Now you do, thanks to the news organization that the White House communications team has spent the last year trying to delegitimize.

Viva transparency!

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Related: Last month, I posted the must-watch video on KSM’s confession. So many people clicked over that the site went down. It’s back up and ready for viewing/sharing. Pass it on: