The Washington Business Journal says DOJ recently upped its lease to occupy the entire building. Does this mean the entire Criminal Division will now be moving to the new Northeast location? If you know email us at tips@mainjustice.com.

Attorney General Eric Holder dodged questions at an Appropriations subcommittee hearing today on whether he will prosecute the former Justice Department lawyers who wrote memos that authorized harsh interrogation methods against terrorism suspects.

Republicans and Democrats peppered Holder with questions regarding what actions he may take against memo authors Steven Bradbury, Jay Bybee and John Yoo at a hearing that was supposed to be about the Justice Department’s fiscal 2010 budget. Earlier this week, Obama didn’t rule out prosecutions but said it was Holder’s decision.

Holder reiterated throughout the hearing that Justice would not prosecute CIA officials who were following orders and “acted on good faith.� He said he intends to keep politics out of any possible investigation of the memos.

“I will not permit the criminalization of policy differences,â€� Holder said. He added: “If I see evidence of wrongdoing, I will pursue it to the fullest extent of the law.â€�

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) met with Holder on Tuesday to urge him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the memo authors. The American Civil Liberties Union gave a petition to Justice today that calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor.

Former members of the Bush administration including former Vice President Dick Cheney have called on the Obama administration to declassify and release documents that they said show the harsh interrogation methods produced important results.

Holder said he would not play “hide and seek� with any such documents, but added he was unsure if they exist.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is enjoying a reputational Renaissance as the political debate rages around the Central Intelligence Agency interrogation techniques. Under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, the Bureau was tarnished for its politically motivated spying on people like civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. But with FBI Director Robert Mueller’s strong moral and legal compass, the Bureau is coming up roses in the current controversy.

It’s long been known that the FBI objected to the use of “harsh interrogation” methods against high-value al-Qaeda detainnees. See the DOJ Inspector General’s 435-page report on the inter-agency conflicts here. But an April 17 New York Times story highlighted the disagreement, noting that when the FBI – using traditional “rapport building” techniques — questioned al-Qaeda detainee Abu Zubaydah in 2002, he gave up the single most important bit of information: That Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the organizer of the 9/11 attacks. The CIA later took over with the waterboarding. Former Vice President Dick Cheney argues that the waterboarding and other techniques yielded valuable information and has asked for documents to be declassifed to prove it.

UPDATE: We should have mentioned earlier former FBI agent Ali Soufan’s op-ed piece in the New York Times in which the veteran of the USS Cole bombing investigation described how he did it (without torture). And Greg Sargent’s piece in The Plum Line recalling FBI Director Bob Mueller’s 2008 comments that he didn’t believe any attacks on the U.S. had been disrupted using information gleaned by torture.

Ron Suskind, author of the 2006 book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” which outlined some of the interrogation techniques, appeared on the Rachel Maddow last night and praised the FBI. View the show here:

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to move Ronald Weich, nominee for Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs, to the Senate for confirmation.

Weich is a long-time Senate staffer who most recently worked for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

The nominee received few questions when he went before the committee earlier this month for a hearing on his nomination.

The Justice Department isn’t taking any special action to remove William Welch II, head of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, from the case against former lobbyist Kevin Ring, despite U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle’s comments Monday that the DOJ should “clean upâ€� his role in the proceedings and “wallâ€� him off from the case.

It remains unclear what – if any – action Justice could or will take on Welch, since the Ring case is already at an advanced stage, and Huvelle did not issue a direct order regarding Welch’s involvement. Welch is not a line prosecutor on the case, but the indictment was issued with his name on it, an indication of his supervisory role.

Welch will not be present at future court proceedings regarding the case, DOJ spokesperson Laura Sweeney told Main Justice, referring to comments made by Michael J. Leotta, an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, DOJ Criminal Division prosecutor Nathaniel B. Edmonds and Public Integrity Section prosecutor Michael Ferrara at the court hearing Monday. Welch is still the head of the Public Integrity Section, she said.

Welch oversaw the indictment last September of Ring, who worked with lobbyist Jack Abramoff.  Among the charges against Ring is that he lied to an internal investigator hired by Abramoff’s former employer, the law firm Greenberg Traurig. That investigator was Henry F. Schuelke III, who was ordered by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to investigate Welch and others for the Justice Department’s handling of the Ted Stevens. Ring’s lawyers raised the issue in a court hearing on Monday of whether Schuelke has a conflict of interest, since he could be called to testify about the charges Welch brought against Ring. Huvelle however said she didn’t see a conflict.

May 29 will be the final day Ring lawyers Richard Hibey, Andrew Wise, Matthew Reinhard and Timothy O’Toole can file motions before the case proceeds to jury interviews.

CQ Spytalk columnist Jeff Stein, who broke the news that an NSA wiretap had picked up Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif) reportedly offering to help two pro-Israel lobbyists accused of spying against the U.S. with their case, reveals more about the internal government battles over the issue.

Stein writes:

Intelligence officials, angry that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had blocked an FBI investigation into Democratic Rep. Jane Harman’s interactions with a suspected Israeli agent, tipped off Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, that Harman had been picked up on a court-ordered National Security Agency wiretap targeting the agent.

Their briefing of Pelosi flouted Gonzales’s order to keep the matter quiet, because he wanted Harman’s support for the Bush adminstration’s warrantless wiretapping program, Stein reports. Under long-standing protocol, congressional leaders are informed when a lawmaker is under federal investigation.

Harman is a former ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. She was reportedly caught on the 2005 wiretap offering her assistance to the accused spies in exchange for help from an Israeli diplomat with fundraising in her bid to win the chairmanship of the panel after an expected Democratic election sweep in 2006.

Read Stein’s full story here.

What at first glance looked like members of the Obama administration not being on the same page is — in classic Washington manner — turning out to be a whole lot more. As reported earlier, despite White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s indication that “those who devised the [enhanced interrogation] policy” should not be prosecuted, President Obama said that the decision lies with Attorney General Eric Holder.

We now know what occurred in the time between those two statements. Scott Horton reports there was significant fallout from senior lawyers at the Department of Justice. Department lawyers were “incensed” at Emanuel’s remarks because they saw it as an assault on the independence of the Department — an independence that Obama had pledged to restore.  And they believed it treated the question of prosecution of lawmakers as a political issue, as opposed to an issue of law enforcement, Horton reports. It was all very Bush deja-vu, and it is what apparently helped prompt Obama’s response.

President Obama laughs as Eric Holder jokes about their rivalry on the basketball court at Holder's installation ceremony in March at George Washington University. (Getty Images)

Horton doesn’t name his sources. But we do know that Holder was the key figure who wanted the memos released, and he’s pledged to bring professionalism back to Justice. And it was his bureaucracy that won this political fight.

Another intriguing clue to the inter-agency battling: The day before the memos were released, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Central Intelligence Agency was poised to prevail over the DOJ in its argument that the memos should be heavily redacted before release. But the Journal story was flatly contradicted the very next day, when Obama released the memos largely intact. It’s our educated guess that the Journal’s sources came from the DOJ, and the story was leaked in order to build outrage (which it did) and pressure Obama to release the memos without heavy redactions (which he did).  Looks like Obama gets to see Holder show off his New York game after all.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) urged Attorney General Eric Holder at a meeting yesterday to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate former Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel lawyers including Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, authors of the memos released last week that detail the harsh interrogation methods authorized by the Bush administration for use against terrorism suspects, Nadler spokesperson Ilan Kayatsky said today.

Also this week, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said his committee will hold hearings on the memos following the Office of Professional Responsibility report on the DOJ lawyers behind the letters.

Conyers gave a warning in the Huffington Post yesterday to the lawyers who he said knew they were breaking the law when they authored the memos: “We’re coming after these guys.â€�

Nadler told the Huffington Post on Monday that Bybee, who is a judge in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, “ought to be impeached.�

“It was not an honest legal memo,â€� Nadler, chairman of Judiciary’s Constitution, civil rights, and civil liberties subcommittee, told the Huffington Post. “It was an instruction manual on how to break the law.”

Under investigation by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan’s court for mishandling evidence in the Sen. Ted Stevens case, three Public Integrity Section lawyers and one Assistant U.S. Attorney in Alaska have engaged high-powered legal help, the BLT reports.

Especially interesting: Ken Wainstein, who helped run the National Security Division and later served as President Bush’s homeland security advisor. Wainstein will represent Joseph Bottini, an Alaska-based prosecutor. Wainstein is said to be close to Mary Patrice Brown, the new head of the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, the ethics watchdog that is conducting a parallel investigation into the botchced Stevens case. And Bob Luskin, who’s representing Public Integrity Section trial lawyer Nick Marsh, also represented Karl Rove in Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s‘ identity to the press.

The BLT also reports that Steptoe & Johnson’s Brian Heberlig is representing PIN prosecutor Edward Sullivan.

Read the official DOJ annoucement below:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   AT
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2009
WWW.USDOJ.GOV

ANTITRUST DIVISION SENIOR LEADERSHIP NAMED

WASHINGTON— The Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division today announced the appointment of its new leadership team including the Chief of Staff, four Deputy Assistant Attorneys General, and a Special Counsel for Competition Policy.  Two Deputies will oversee civil matters, one Deputy will oversee economic analysis and one Deputy will oversee international, policy and appellate issues.
“This is an outstanding team of dedicated and highly regarded professionals who are well respected within their fields of expertise,� said Christine A. Varney, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department’s Antitrust Division.  “This dynamic team of individuals has the vision, intellect and experience to ensure that the Antitrust Division aggressively pursues all areas of antitrust enforcement in order to protect American consumers from anticompetitive harm.�
The leadership team includes:

Sharis Arnold Pozen, Chief of Staff and Counsel.
Before she came to the Department in February 2009, Pozen was a partner at Hogan & Hartson’s Antitrust, Competition, and Consumer Protection Group where she worked from1995 to February 2009, on a variety of antitrust matters in the technology and healthcare industries, and served as Practice Group Director for the Washington, D.C. office.  She has counseled clients on a wide range of antitrust and consumer protection matters as well as issues pertaining to mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and trade association matters.  Prior to joining Hogan & Hartson, Pozen worked for five years at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as an Attorney Advisor to then Commissioners Varney and Yao, as Assistant to the Director of the Bureau of Competition, and as staff attorney.  Pozen received her B.A. from Connecticut College in 1986 and her J.D. from Washington University in 1989.

Molly S. Boast, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Matters
Boast, who is expected to arrive at the Department in May, is a seasoned antitrust veteran with extensive antitrust and management experience.  Since 2001, she has been a partner at the New York law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP where she leads the antitrust practice group. From July 1999 to June 2001, Boast was Senior Deputy Director and Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition.  During that time, she had management responsibility for merger and civil nonmerger Commission litigation and investigations, and has experience in competition issues in the energy and pharmaceuticals industries.  Boast also served as the FTC’s representative to the European Community/FTC/Department of Justice Mergers Working Group.  From 1987 to 1999, she worked at the New York law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae where she was head of the litigation department and a member of the firms’ Steering Committee.  She has served in various positions within the American Bar Association’s Sections of Antitrust and Litigation.  Boast received her B.A. in 1970 from the College of William and Mary, her M.S. in 1971 from the Columbia University School of Journalism, and her J.D. in 1979 from the Columbia University School of Law.

William Cavanaugh Jr., Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Matters
Cavanaugh, who is expected to arrive at the Department in May, is a highly experienced and lauded antitrust litigator.  Since 1985, Cavanaugh has been with the New York law firm of Patterson, Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP where he has served as the firm’s Co-Chair, Chair of the Litigation Department and a Litigation Partner since 1991.  He has extensive trial and litigation experience in complex antitrust, patent and commercial matters.  From 1981 to 1985, Cavanaugh was a Litigation Associate handling complex product liability, insurance coverage and general commercial matters at the New York law firm of Rivkin Radler LLP.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, was named as one of the Best Lawyers in America for Antitrust Law and Commercial Litigation, and was named as one of New York’s  “Super Lawyers� for Antitrust Litigation.  He received his B.S. in 1977, from St. John’s University and his J.D. in 1980 from St. John’s University School of Law.

Carl Shapiro, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economic Analysis
Shapiro, who arrived at the Department in March, is a leading scholar in economics and brings to the Department a wealth of experience on issues, including patents, intellectual property and licensing, network economics, and unilateral effects in mergers.  Shapiro is taking a leave of absence from the University of California at Berkeley, where he is Transamerica Professor of Business Strategy in the Haas School of Business and a Professor of Economics.  He has been at the Haas School of Business since 1990.  Shapiro was previously the Antitrust Division’s Economics Deputy from August 1995 to June 1996, where he provided economic analysis on a variety of antitrust cases, including Microsoft, NASDAQ and several mergers.  Shapiro had been a Senior Consultant with CRA International, an economic consulting company.  He was vice-chair of the American Bar Association Antitrust Section’s Economics Committee from 1995-1998.  Shapiro taught at the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Economics at Princeton University for 10 years. He has published one book, “Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy,� and numerous articles in the areas of industrial organization, competition policy, patents, network economics and the economics of innovation and competitive strategy.  Shapiro received his Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1981. He also earned B.S. degrees in mathematics and economics from MIT as well as an M.A. in mathematics from UC Berkeley.

Philip J. Weiser, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for International, Policy and Appellate Matters
Weiser, who is expected to arrive at the Department in July, is an Antitrust Division veteran, and is currently a Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the University of Colorado, where he has taught since January 1999, in the School of Law and in the Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program.  During his tenure at the Department, Weiser will be on a leave of absence from the University of Colorado.  Weiser has also served as a visiting Professor at the New York University School of Law (2008) and the University of Pennsylvania School of Law (2006).  From August 2001 to June 2002, he was a Law and Public Affairs Program Fellow at Princeton University, one of only six law Professors selected as a scholar-in-residence.  Weiser is the Founder and Executive Director of Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship, which focuses on spurring interdisciplinary engagement, facilitating community outreach, and supporting interest in the intersection of technology, policy and business.  From September 1996 to August 1998, Weiser was a Senior Counsel to Joel Klein, Assistant Attorney General of the Department’s Antitrust Division, where he advised Klein on antitrust policy in the telecommunications industry as well as participated in civil investigations.  He served this fall as the lead agency reviewer of the FTC for the Presidential Transition Team, serves as the co-Chair of the Colorado Innovation Council,  was a Special Master for the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, and was a Special Counsel to Cablevision Systems Corporation.  Weiser clerked for Justices Byron R. White (Ret.) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the U.S. Supreme Court from September 1995 to August 1996.  He also clerked for Judge David M. Ebel, Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, from September 1994 to August 1995.  He has published two books and numerous articles on and has regularly taught in the areas of competition policy and technology law.  Weiser graduated with high honors from Swarthmore College in 1990 and with high honors from the New York University School of Law in 1994.

Gene Kimmelman, Chief Counsel for Competition Policy and Intergovernmental Relations
Kimmelman, who arrived at the Department in April, was most recently Vice President for Federal and International Affairs at Consumers Union (CU). During his tenure at CU, from 1995 to 2009, he directed CU’s federal and international policy programs.  Kimmelman has extensive knowledge of deregulation, market structure and consumer protection issues.  He is a recognized expert in a wide variety of areas, including telecommunications, Internet/media policy, product liability and antitrust law.   He has represented consumers during the break up of AT&T, consideration of the Telecommunications Act  of 1996,  major media and telecommunications mergers, and at numerous congressional hearings.  Prior to his employment at CU, from 1993 to 1995, Kimmelman served as Chief Counsel and Staff Director for the Antitrust Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.  Previous to that, from 1984 to 1993, he was Legislative Director for the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) where he directed their legislative and regulatory programs.  In 1981, he began his career as a staff attorney for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch.  Kimmelman received his B.A. from Brown University in 1977 and his J.D. from the University of Virginia in 1981.  He studied in Denmark as a Fulbright Fellow at Copenhagen University’s graduate program on the public sector.