DOJ

9/11, Debra Burlingame, DOJ, James Cole, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Military Commissions

Urgent Action Alert: nomination of Deputy Attorney General James Cole Must Be Stopped

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Urgent Action Alert for [today]! A message from Debra Burlingame of 911 Families for a Safe and Strong America.

Dear 9/11 Families and Friends:

President Obama has nominated James Cole to be the Deputy Attorney General (DAG) at the the Department of Justice. This is a critically important position. While Attorney General Eric Holder is the nominal head of the Justice Department, it is the deputy attorney general who actually runs the day-to-day operations of the entire department. For instance, it was Mr. Holder who, as DAG during the Clinton administration, orchestrated the Sept. 1999 clemencies of 16 terrorists belonging to the FALN, a Puerto Rican separatist group that carried out 146 bombings which killed 9 people and maimed NYPD bomb squad officers. Mr. Holder also facilitated and pushed through the pardon of fugitive Marc Rich, who made billions of dollars engaging in illegal oil trades on behalf of Iranian ayatollahs. Today, the DAG has a pivotal role in formulating and executing decisions dealing with the policy issues surrounding the capture, detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected Islamic terrorists.

So who is James Cole? As a partner at the law firm of Bryan Cave, he represented Prince Naif Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family and one of the defendants in the 9/11 lawsuit filed on behalf of 9/11 Families against the government of Saudi Arabia and other Saudi individuals by the law firm of Motley Rice. Prince Naif ran the Al Haramain Foundation, a Saudi charity designated in 2004 by the U.S. Treasury Department as a facilitator of terrorism which diverted charitable funds to Al Qaeda both before and after Sept.11, 2001.

Additionally, in 2006, Mr. Cole was also appointed as an independent overseer of insurance giant AIG. The whistleblower non-profit, Government Accountability Project, has come out against his nomination due to the gross irregularities that happened while he was charged with oversight responsibilities prior to its 2008 collapse. See http://www.whistleblower.org/blog/31-2010/529-aig-monitor-james-cole-wrong-choice-for-deputy-attorney-general

In light of this history, it is impossible to fathom how Mr. Cole can ethically carry out his duties and responsibilities as the de facto head of the Justice Department while U.S. troops are fighting terrorists who receive funding and support from organizations associated with the Saudi government and their proxies. This is a direct conflict of interest. Given Saudi NGOs’ continued involvement in terrorist facilitation world-wide and their connection to the Saudi royal family, this conflict of interest will cripple Mr. Cole’s ability to ethically perform his duties as head of a department charged with investigating and prosecuting terrorist facilitators associated with or working for the Saudi government.

Below is an op-ed published by Mr. Cole just two days before the first anniversary of 9/11, in which he compares 9/11 to drug crimes, ordinary murder, rape and mafia-type crimes, saying that the “war on drugs” is actually “a longer term and far more devastating disaster for our country in terms of the number of people affected…” Ironically, Mr. Cole says that the only factor which distinguishes those crimes and the “tragedies of Sept. 11? is that “foreign organizations, possibly even foreign governments, were involved in the planning, funding and carrying out of the Sept. 11 attacks.”

Further, Mr. Cole has gone on record opposing military commissions for any detainees, stating that military commissions are an inferior form of justice which do not provide defendants with adequate due process protections. In light of the fact that the Obama administration continues to drag its feet on an announcement regarding the forum and venue for the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other admitted 9/11 conspirators, Mr. Cole’s nomination is an alarming signal. The public is overwhelmingly opposed to holding these trials in New York federal court. Clearly, the administration needs to hear from us again.

Mr. Cole is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Tuesday, June 15. The hearing, calendared so quickly after the announcement of Mr. Cole’s nomination, appears calculated to capitalize on the media’s attention on the oil spill crisis in the Gulf, and to limit our ability to mount public objection.

I urge all 9/11 family members and friends who were disappointed that the administration opposed the 9/11 Families’ opportunity to have their day in court in the Saudi lawsuit, to contact the President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and members of Congress, and express your adamant objection to Mr. Cole’s nomination to Deputy Attorney General.

Respectfully,

Debra Burlingame
Co-founder, 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America
www.911familesforamerica.org
media@911familiesforamerica.org

See the 9/11 Families Legal Complaint: http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/1239.pdf

9/11, Barack Obama, DOJ, Eric Holder, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, KSM

AG Eric Holder inflated terror case convictions

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One difference between the man now heading the Justice Department and most of those he touted as “hundreds of successful prosecutions for terrorism” is at least the latter paid some price for deceiving or endangering the American people. Friday’s document dump (first leaked to friendly media by the DOJ) is further evidence of what Attorney General Eric Holder previously withheld that refutes his public statements and prior testimony before Congress. Senator Jeff Sessions and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy summarize it correctly:

“The contention that the civilian criminal justice system is always an effective tool against terrorism, though wrong, is not a frivolous argument. But it is diminished when posited by unserious people — and the people running this Justice Department are embarrassing themselves. Finally today, after months of delay, DOJ officials released what they claim is the back-up for Attorney General Holder’s oft-repeated and outlandish claim that there are “hundreds” of convicted “terrorists” incarcerated in federal prisons, which “fact” supposedly shows that civilian justice processes are our best method of trying, convicting and securely detaining terrorists. The Friday data dump is a joke. No wonder they waited til everyone was headed out of town to dump it.” — Andrew McCarthy

And:

“The information provided today confirms what Republicans have been saying all along — and removes perhaps the last remaining pillar underneath the Attorney General’s collapsing argument for the civilian trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed. It is clear why the Attorney General was so reluctant to provide it. The Attorney General assured senators that KSM’s trial in New York City was ‘in the best interests of the American people in terms of safety.’ He justified that assertion by claiming that 300 terrorists were already safely convicted and in prison. In other words, the Attorney General was saying we’ve done this 300 times before and we can do it again. But we now know this is simply not true. The great majority of the terrorism cases cited by the Attorney General are in no way comparable to KSM’s case. Most of the convictions in this list are for far lesser offenses, such as document fraud and immigration violations, while only a small handful concern conduct even remotely similar to a mass-casualty terrorist attack. And none are on the level of KSM, who masterminded 9/11.” — Senator Jeff Sessions

Eric Holder claimed during his January 15, 2009 confirmation hearing to have learned while the DAG from his mistakes in the handling of the FALN and Marc Rich pardons. Obviously, he mostly learned he could make them with impunity and even bigger ones in furtherance of the political objectives of President Obama as the Attorney General of the United States.