Arab-Americans criticized federal law enforcement officials Wednesday, saying that prosecutors have unfairly targeted them, The Detroit Free Press reported.

In a meeting at the Lebanese-American Heritage Club in Dearborn, Mich., several Arab-Americans said they were concerned by the recent prosecutions of two men: Muthana Al-Hanooti, who allegedly worked for the regime of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, and Tim Attallah, an attorney who was charged in May in connection with an investigation into a motorcycle gang.

Local, state and federal law enforcement officials attended the meeting, which was part of a statewide program called BRIDGES — Building Respect in Diverse Communities — that was founded after the Sept. 11 attacks to increase communication between the community and law enforcement.

“We’re very disturbed by what’s happened,� Suehaila Amen, a community advocate, said at the meeting.

Imad Hamad, co-chair of BRIDGES and head of the Michigan office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, also raised the case of the death of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, a Muslim leader suspected of dealing in stolen goods who was killed during a shootout with FBI agents, saying Arab-Americans “can’t help but think who could be next.�

U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Barbara McQuade said her office does not target people based on their ethnicity.

“Our focus is on activity and not on anyone’s ethnicity,� McQade said.

“We focus on individuals involved in criminal activity or threats to national security to the United States,� Andrew Arena, special agent in charge of the Detroit FBI office, told the paper after the meeting.

Arena reiterated that the agency does not target people based on their religion or ethnicity.

“Terrorists are from all walks of life, and there are different groups out there,� Arena said.

Keep America Safe’s video on the Justice Department lawyers who previously worked on behalf of detained terrorism suspects has prompted quite a discussion, but John C. Yoo didn’t think the debate was necessary, reported the New York Times.

“What’s the big whoop?� said Yoo, the former DOJ Office of Legal Counsel official whose memorandums on torture and presidential power were used to justify controversial interrogation policies of the George W. Bush administration.

“The Constitution makes the president the chief law enforcement officer. We had an election. President Obama has softer policies on terror than his predecessor.

“He can and should put people into office who share his views,� Yoo told The Times. Once the American people know who the policy makers are, Yoo said, “they can decide whether they agree with him or not.�

The video aroused not only liberal outrage directed at the producers of the short film, but also division among conservative legal scholars, according to The Times. The video was produced by Keep America Safe, a conservative interest group in Washington, D.C., run by Liz Cheney, the daughter of the former vice president.

Conservative members of the Federalist Society, the 25-year-old policy group devoted to conservative and libertarian legal ideals, have criticized the video, and said it violated the American legal principle that even unpopular defendants deserve a lawyer.

A letter issued by the Brookings Institution criticizing the “shameful series of attacks� on government lawyers was signed by several former Republican administration officials and conservative legal figures, including Kenneth W. Starr, the former special prosecutor, Charles D. Stimson, who resigned from the second Bush administration after suggesting that businesses might think twice before hiring law firms that had represented detainees, Peter D. Keisler, a former acting attorney general, and Larry D. Thompson, a former deputy attorney general.

Richard A. Epstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago who once taught Liz Cheney, said he found it “appalling� to see people equating work on detainee cases with a dearth of patriotism.

“You don’t want to give the impression that because you oppose the government on this thing, that means you’re just one of those lefties — which I am not,� he told The Times.

David M. McIntosh, a former member of Congress and a founder of the Federalist Society, agreed that a lawyer should not be judged by his clients, but he said it was legitimate to examine the agenda of the lawyers.

“Was the person acting merely as an attorney doing their best to represent a client’s case, or did they seek out the opportunity to represent them or write an amicus brief because they have a political or personal agenda that made them more interested in participating in those cases?� he said.

If the commitment to the cases is ideological, McIntosh said, it is reasonable to ask, “Is that the best attorney for the Justice Department?�

Attorney General Eric Holder has taken a lot of heat for his decision to try the accused Sept. 11 plotters in a civilian court. But if the White House changes course and returns the suspects to military commissions, Holder may be in an even worse position, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Attorney General Eric Holder (photo by Ryan J. Reilly).

According to DOJ officials, Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four alleged co-conspirators in civil courts was predicated in part on President Barack Obama’s speech at the National Archives last year, the Journal said. “First, whenever feasible, we will try those who have violated American criminal laws in federal courts—courts provided for by the United States Constitution,” Obama said in May.

Justice Department officials admitted to the Journal that they failed to sufficiently reassure local residents after Holder’s announcement, but expressed frustration that the White House blocked Holder and others from publicly speaking out in defense of the decision.

According to the paper, Holder told friends he thought he had Obama’s support for the civilian trials. But White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel opposed the idea, the Journal said.

According to the Journal, White House officials said they were now leaning toward a military trial for KSM and the alleged co-plotters as part of an effort to cut a deal with lawmakers on closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is a key player in the deal and has said his support for closing Guantanamo is conditional on military trials for Mohammed and the others. However, there are still doubts about winning support from several Democrats, administration officials and congressional aides said.

The American Civil Liberties Union blasted the potential reversal in a full-page ad in the New York Times on Sunday. Anthony Romero, the ACLU’s executive director, told the Journal that a reversal would undermine the Justice Department’s reputation as non-partisan.

“Any reversal would clearly indicate that the decisions of the Justice Department are much more politicized than we were led to believe,” Romero said. “This Justice Department needs to show more incontrovertibly that it stands on its own two feet.”

David Iglesias, the former U.S. Attorney for New Mexico who was dismissed in the U.S. attorney firings in 2006, shot back at former White House adviser Karl Rove Tuesday, calling the former Bush official’s allegations “a complete fabrication,” reported the Washington Independent.

In his memoir “Courage and Consequencesâ€� released Tuesday by Simon and Schuster, Rove said he did not put Iglesias’ name on the DOJ firing list. But Rove did cop to forwarding three complaints about Iglesias to the Justice Department. The complaints alleged that Iglesias of failed to investigate claims of voter fraud in Albuquerque after the 2004 election, “bungled” a high-profile corruption case involving state treasurers and that he declined to file an indictment against several prominent state Democrats allegedly involved in a kickback scheme until after the November 2006 election.

Iglesias took issue with Rove’s assertion that he “bungled” the corruption investigation, noting state treasurer Michael Montoya plead guilty and he won a conviction against a second treasurer, Robert Vigil.

But Iglesias saved his most harsh criticism for Rove’s description of the kickback scheme, which involved construction contracts for a courthouse in Bernalillo County.

“That’s a complete fabrication,” Iglesias told the Independent. “That indictment didn’t get filed until three weeks after I left office — in March 2007. Look, here’s where Rove’s lack of knowledge of DOJ policy hurts him factually. It’s standing policy that you can’t file an indictment right before an election if you think it will effect the outcome. But I’m sure Rove heard from local Republicans that I was intentionally keeping my powder dry.”

Iglesias also denied that he had planned to run for the Senate in 2006. Rove suggested in his memoir that the prosecutor held off on the indictment because he wanted to run for the Senate seat and needed the support of local Democrats.

Read Iglesias’ complete response at the Independent.

Several conservative attorneys, former Justice Department officials and policy specialists released a joint statement Monday decrying the recent attacks on DOJ attorneys who represented Guantánamo Bay terrorism detainees.

“To suggest that the Justice Department should not employ talented lawyers who have advocated on behalf of detainees maligns the patriotism of people who have taken honorable positions on contested questions and demands a uniformity of background and view in government service from which no administration would benefit,� the statement said.

The statement is signed by a number of Bush administration officials, including former Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Peter Keisler, former U.S. Attorney for Eastern District of Virginia Chuck Rosenberg and former Associate White House Counsel Bradford Berenson.

Former Solicitor General Kenneth Starr and David Rivkin, the Deputy Director, Office of Policy Development during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, also signed on.

The statement notes that, “People come to serve in the Justice Department with a diverse array of prior private clients; that is one of the department’s strengths.”

The statement, authored by Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, also argues that detainees should have access to counsel and be afforded the right of habeas corpus.

“Good defense counsel is thus key to ensuring that military commissions, federal juries, and federal judges have access to the best arguments and most rigorous factual presentations before making crucial decisions that affect both national security and paramount liberty interests. To delegitimize the role detainee counsel play is to demand adjudications and policymaking stripped of a full record.�

One of the signatories was Charles “Cully” Stimson, a former Pentagon official who is now with The Heritage Foundation. Interestingly, Stimson in January 2007 commented in a radio interview that he found it “shocking” that a number of U.S. law firms had represented Guantánamo detainees, according to American Constitution Society blog. Stimson also suggested that some of the firms were not forthcoming about who was paying for the representation, telling Federal News Radio the firms should be pressed on the matter.

“Some will maintain they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, that they’re doing it pro bono, and I suspect they are; others are receiving monies from who knows where, and I’d be curious to have them explain that,â€� Stimson said.

Full Statement

Below is the full statement written by Brookings Senior Fellow Benjamin Wittes and the names of people who signed the statement:

“The past several days have seen a shameful series of attacks on attorneys in the Department of Justice who, in previous legal practice, either represented Guantanamo detainees or advocated for changes to detention policy. As attorneys, former officials, and policy specialists who have worked on detention issues, we consider these attacks both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications.

“The American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients is at least as old as John Adams’s representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston massacre. People come to serve in the Justice Department with a diverse array of prior private clients; that is one of the department’s strengths. The War on Terror raised any number of novel legal questions, which collectively created a significant role in judicial, executive and legislative forums alike for honorable advocacy on behalf of detainees. In several key cases, detainee advocates prevailed before the Supreme Court. To suggest that the Justice Department should not employ talented lawyers who have advocated on behalf of detainees maligns the patriotism of people who have taken honorable positions on contested questions and demands a uniformity of background and view in government service from which no administration would benefit.

“Such attacks also undermine the Justice system more broadly. In terrorism detentions and trials alike, defense lawyers are playing, and will continue to play, a key role. Whether one believes in trial by military commission or in federal court, detainees will have access to counsel. Guantanamo detainees likewise have access to lawyers for purposes of habeas review, and the reach of that habeas corpus could eventually extend beyond this population. Good defense counsel is thus key to ensuring that military commissions, federal juries, and federal judges have access to the best arguments and most rigorous factual presentations before making crucial decisions that affect both national security and paramount liberty interests. To delegitimize the role detainee counsel play is to demand adjudications and policymaking stripped of a full record. Whatever systems America develops to handle difficult detention questions will rely, at least some of the time, on an aggressive defense bar; those who take up that function do a service to the system.�

Benjamin Wittes

· Senior Fellow and Research Director in Public Law, The Brookings Institution

· Member, Hoover Task Force on National Security and Law

Robert Chesney

· Charles I. Francis Professor in Law, University of Texas School of Law

· Nonresident, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution

Matthew Waxman

· Associate Professor, Columbia Law School

· Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs

· Member, Hoover Task Force on National Security and Law

David Rivkin

· Partner, Washington, D.C. Office, Baker & Hostetler L.L.P.

· Former Deputy Director, Office of Policy Development, Department of Justice, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations

· Former Associate General Counsel, Department of Energy

Lee Casey

· Partner, Baker & Hostetler L.L.P.

· Former Attorney-Adviser Office of Legal Counsel & Office of Legal Policy, U.S. Department of Justice

Philip Bobbitt

· Herbert Wechsler Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the Center for National Security, Columbia Law School

· Member, Hoover Task Force on National Security and Law

Peter Keisler

· Former Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division

· Former Acting Attorney General, Department of Justice

Bradford Berenson

· Partner, Sidley Austin, L.L.P.

· Adjunct Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Kenneth Anderson

· Professor of Law, American University School of Law

· Research Fellow, The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University

· Member, Hoover Task Force on National Security and Law

John Bellinger III

· Partner, Arnold & Porter LLP

· Adjunct Senior Fellow in International and National Security Law, Council on Foreign Relations

· Former Legal Adviser to the Department of State and former Legal Adviser to the National Security Council

Philip Zelikow

Kenneth W. Starr

· Duane and Kelley Roberts Dean, Pepperdine University School of Law

Larry Thompson

· Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General

Charles “Cully” D. Stimson

· Senior Legal Fellow, The Heritage Foundation

· Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs

Chuck Rosenberg

· United States Attorney, Eastern District of Virginia (2006-2008), Southern District of Texas (2005-2006)

Harvey Rishikoff

· Professor of Law, National Defense University, National War College

Orin Kerr

· Professor, George Washington University Law School

Daniel Dell’Orto

· Former Principal Deputy General Counsel, U.S. Department of Defense

· Former Acting General Counsel, U.S. Department of Defense

For the past three years, the U.S. District Court in Delaware has been down one judge out of four and the court will lose another judge in July, The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., reported Sunday.

The judicial vacancy was created in December 2006 when Judge Kent Jordan left to take a position on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. The impending vacancy is due to Judge Joseph J. Farnan Jr.’s decision, announced earlier this year, that he will step down this summer.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) submitted three candidates to fill the judicial vacancy almost a year ago, along with three names for the U.S. Attorney slot for Delaware, but the Obama administration has not yet announced a nominee for either position, according to The News Journal.

“Justice is not being done,” Wilmington attorney Thomas S. Neuberger told the newspaper. “Justice delayed is justice denied. Despite the heroic efforts of the remaining judges, plaintiffs and defendants are left languishing. It is a disaster here.”

According to the newspaper, Chief District Judge Gregory M. Sleet reached out to federal courts in New Jersey and Pennsylvania more than a year and a half ago seeking help for his court to deal with its case load.

Former U.S. Attorney Colm F. Connolly had been the Bush administration’s pick to fill Jordan’s vacancy, but his nomination stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee and died when President Obama was elected in November 2008.

“The process is broken,” Connolly said. “It is one more example of how out of touch our elected officials are in Washington.”

Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) said the wait is “too long, and with Judge Farnan’s retirement, this court will face further unnecessary burden.” Castle added that the previous nominees have been well qualified “and there is no good reason for this process to continue to experience such lengthy delay.”

President Obama “has moved swiftly to fill vacancies considered to be judicial emergencies, and the pace of nominations overall has significantly increased in the new year,” White House spokeswoman Moira Mack stated in an e-mailed response to the newspaper.

A spokeswoman for Vice President Joseph Biden, who is from Delaware, also said the Justice Department is currently vetting candidates for the judgeship.

Connolly’s former first assistant, David Weiss, continues to run the U.S. Attorney’s office as it awaits a nominee from the White House.

If there has been no action on filling the court vacancy by July, Weiss said, ”there is no doubt that would be devastating.”

“However,” he added, “I’m very hopeful that will not be the case.”

The United Kingdom’s High Court granted an injunction to stop the Serious Fraud Office’s settlement with BAE Systems, BBC News reported Tuesday.

Two British activist groups, The Corner House and Campaign Against Arms Trade, asked for the injunction last month so they could apply for a judicial review of the settlement, arguing that there should be a more thorough investigation of the corruption case.

Under the settlement announced Feb. 5, BAE agreed to pay fines of £30 million in the U.K.

The injunction is in force until March 20, when the High Court is slated to decide whether to grant the two activist groups the permission to review the settlement, according to the BBC.

The company also reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to pay a $400 million fine. In a hearing Monday, BAE admitted to defrauding the U.S. government and impeding its lawful functions.  That gave the judicial stamp of approval to the settlement.

Read our previous story here.

The “al Qaeda Seven” video released Tuesday has prompted quite a discussion.

(Keep America Safe)

Made by Keep America Safe, the conservative non-profit founded by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol, the video released Tuesday slams Attorney General Eric Holder for not naming seven current Department of Justice attorneys who represented alleged terrorist detainees before joining the administration.

Here’s what some people are saying on the Web:

Smear Campaign. Over at the Washington Independent, Spencer Ackerman writes, “Grassley knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s taking one of the strengths of the American justice system — the fact that everyone is entitled to legal representation — and implying that it’s unseemly. It’s a testament to the weakness of his character that he will never forthrightly accuse these attorneys of what he’s implying — sympathy with accused terrorists — in a way that they could refute. What a pathetic excuse for a man. Those of us in the media have an obligation to call this smear campaign what it is.�

Holder is trying to hide something. Rich Trzupek of Big Journalism wrote, “The proposition that Holder’s attorneys should somehow be exempt from this kind of close examination, particularly when they are engaged in a war on terror that threatens our very way of life, is ludicrous.

“But then, the idea that we can prosecute that war effectively while treating terrorists to the legal niceties that one affords the local pickpocket is equally ludicrous. If Obama and Holder are determined to use the justice system to prosecute religious zealots bent on injustice, the least they can do is to ensure that the prosecutors involved in this quixotic effort have their heart in it. By refusing to even name the Al Qaeda 7, much less address their qualifications and motivations, Obama and Holder have demonstrated once again that national security won’t stand in the way of political correctness in this brave new hopey/changey era. It won’t be long, I fear, before we will pay the price their spectacular naiveté.�

There is no ethical breach. NYU law professor Stephen Gillers told the TPMmuckraker that “It is not a conflict of interest under the rules of any U.S. jurisdiction for a government lawyer who has represented detainees in private practice to work on detainee issues at the Justice Department.”

“They, and a lawyer who has represented detainees, can work in the same field for government so long as they stay away from the specific matters on which they worked in private life,” Gillers added.

But we can’t really know that. A poster at National Review Online Daniel Foster said he doubted that DOJ attorneys are subject to ethics and disclosure rules as required.

“Of course, the issue of whether the unnamed attorneys are acting ethically can’t even be properly posed until we know who they are,â€� Foster wrote.

Listen to the United States Supreme Court. On Think Progress, a liberal blog supported by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Faiz Shakir wrote, “Many on the right have conveniently neglected to mention that the United States Supreme Court sided with the Obama attorneys. One of the targeted attorneys is Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, the lawyer who won Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the case that struck down the Bush administration’s military commissions system. Another target, Justice Department lawyer Jennifer Daskal, had signed her name to an amicus brief in the Boumediene v. Bush case arguing that Gitmo detainees be accorded habeas corpus rights to challenge their convictions. The Supreme Court sided with Daskal’s position.

“So the bottom line is that, having been on the losing side of these Supreme Court decisions, the right wing has decided to continue its vindictive fight by smearing the lawyers who prevailed in their advocacy for the rule of law.�

Foxes guarding the hen house. David Davenport of the Hoover Institute said in an op-ed piece for the San Francisco Chronicle that conflicts of interest is not the only problem. “Second is the appearance of bias or an agenda, that the hens have taken over what is supposed to be the foxes’ den. The Department of Justice is supposed to be prosecuting terrorists, not coddling them. What are we to think if the organized crime unit brings in nine mob lawyers? At least one of these nine was with a human rights advocacy group and has no prosecutorial experience. For an administration that preaches pragmatism and not ideology, it’s at least a question mark, if not a black mark.â€�

(Creative Commons)

J.D. Salinger’s skeletons will get to stay in the closet.

Unlike other famous authors of the time, the FBI never opened an investigative file on Salinger, the famed recluse and author of “The Catcher of the Rye,� who died in January at age 91. The information, reported Monday by the Associated Press, came in response to an AP Freedom of Information Act request.

The famous recluse who spent his waning years in New Hampshire was not actively involved in politics for years, according to AP.

Other authors have not been so lucky as to escape FBI scrutiny. The FBI stalked Norman Mailer throughout his career, amassing a 171-page file, which was released a year after Mailer’s death in November 2008 as the result of a Washington Post FOIA request. The bureau also compiled information on dozens of writers from poet Allen Ginsberg to playwright Tennessee Williams.

Attorney General Eric Holder promised coordination with Dominican authorities to capture Puerto Rican drug trafficking fugitive Jose Figueroa Agosto and his Dominican girlfriend Sobeida Felix, Dominican Today reported Monday.

In a meeting in Brazil with Radhamés Jiménez, the Justice Minister of Dominican Republic, Holder said the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Marshals would do all they could to assist in the arrest of the couple, who are on the Dominican Republic’s Most Wanted list.

Agosto escaped from prison in Puerto Rico in 1999. Felix, an associate of Agosto’s, was arrested in October on money laundering charges. She was released on a RD$5 million bail, but failed to show up for a court hearing in November. Both are believed to be in the Dominican Republic.

Last Friday, a man purporting to be Agosto called a Dominican morning radio program to offer RD$30 million for the heads of Dominican Drugs Control Agency Chief Rolando Rosado and Police Chief Rafael Guzmán, according to Dominican Today.

Holder was in Brazil for several days last week to attend a meeting of the Ministers or Attorneys General of the Americas. During the meeting with Jiménez, Holder also praised the Dominican Republic for its effort to combat drug trafficking and organized crime, according to the paper.