Attorney General Eric Holder wasn’t the only Justice Department employee in Afghanistan on Wednesday. Joining the Attorney General on his one-day trip were Kevin Ohlson, Holder’s chief of staff; Bruce Swartz, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division; and Brian Tomney, Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General for Afghanistan Rule of Law matters.

Attorney General Eric Holder speaks at a press conference at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Getty)

Holder’s trip was kept tightly under wraps, all the way up until a news release announcing his arrival in Afghanistan hit reporters’ e-mail inboxes just after midnight Wednesday morning — the standard practice when high-ranking U.S. officials visit Afghanistan. No officials from the Office for Public Affairs accompanied Holder on the trip.

Justice Department officials could not immediately provide details about when Holder’s trip was planned, but under normal circumstances a trip like Holder’s would be arranged ahead of time to allow for security precautions. Officials said he departed the country late Wednesday.

Holder arrived at Bagram Air Base on Wednesday and traveled by helicopter to Kabul, the country’s capital. There he met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Minister of Justice Habibullah Ghalib and Attorney General Mohammad Ishaq Aloko.

The Attorney General held a news conference in Afghanistan but did not take questions from reporters.

Holder’s trip came the same day as militants allegedly associated with the Taliban set off a suicide car bomb and shot rocket-propelled grenades at the gate of the NATO air base in eastern Afghanistan. The attack was not believed to be related to Holder’s trip.

As Holder said in a statement, those on the trip aren’t the only Justice Department employees in the country.

“We have sent some of our most experienced federal prosecutors and law enforcement agents – from our Criminal Division, the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, the FBI, the DEA and the U.S. Marshals Service – to work here with their Afghan law enforcement counterparts,” Holder said in a written statement.

DOJ employees typically serve on one-year deployments to the region, which are funded by the State Department, according to a recent presentation by Tomney, one of the top Justice Department officials focused of DOJ activities in Afghanistan.

Some Justice Department lawyers work in the International Criminal Investigative Training and Assistance Program to provide training to Afghan prosecutors and police investigators. DOJ attorneys also advise the Afghan Attorney General’s Anti-Corruption Unit and Major Crimes Task Force, according to a Justice Department news release.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents are helping establish drug enforcement institutions in the country and combating drug trafficking organization that work for the insurgency, the news release said. A DEA spokesman said the agency does not typically reveal how many of its employees are stationed in a particular country.

FBI agents in the country do counterterrorism work and support investigations by Afghanistan’s Major Crimes Task Force, while the U.S. Marshals Service has boots on the ground advising and training Afghanistan’s Judicial Security Unit on witness and judicial security.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also trains canine teams that deploy to Afghanistan with U.S. military forces.

Three Drug Enforcement Administration officials were killed when their helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan Monday, USA Today reported.

The DEA agents died with ten soldiers and one civilian in a firefight that broke out as the American soldiers were leaving a raid on poppy fields in the Western part of Afghanistan, The Times of London reported. In addition to the 10 deaths, 14 Afghan service members, 11 U.S. service members and one U.S. civilian were injured in the crash, USA Today reported.

Attorney General Eric Holder released a statement Monday about the deaths of the DEA agents. “While the circumstances of this crash are still being investigated, I want to express my deepest condolences to the families of these heroic agents,” Holder said.

According to the Times of London, the helicopter was shot down among heavy fire during an extraction mission to retrieve soldiers engaged in a midnight raid on the compound of a prominent Afghan drug suggler.

The DEA has been working in Afghanistan to combat the country’s booming opium trade, which funds the fundamentalist Taliban. In 2007,  its Special Operations Division was given an almost $9 million boost funding boost to fight the opium trade in the country’s southern and western provinces, ABC News reported.

Afghanistan is the source of 90 percent of the world’s heroin, and much of the farms producing the poppies needed for heroin production are believed to be under control of the Taliban or Al Qaeda, ABC News reported.

The opium trade in Afghanistan is currently based in five provinces in the south, bordering Pakistan, and two provinces in the west, bordering Iran.

The DEA declined to comment on the specifics of the crash.

In addition to the helicopter crash that killed the DEA agents, two American helicopters collided on Monday in southern Afghanistan, killing four. Monday was the deadliest day for American troops in Afghanistan in four years, USA Today said.

The New York Times reported that the U.S. military was “98 percent sure that insurgent activity was not involved.”

UPDATE: The names of the DEA agents were released early Tuesday morning. Tickle the Wire posted a DEA news release identifying the agents killed:

“Special Agent Forrest N. Leamon. SA Leamon became a Special Agent in 2002. He served at the Washington Field Division and in the El Paso Field Division until 2007, when he joined the FAST team in Afghanistan. He lived in Woodbridge, VA and was 37 years old. He is survived by his wife and their unborn child.”

“Special Agent Chad L. Michael. SA Michael graduated from basic training in March 2004. He began his career with DEA in the Miami Field Division, and left there to join the FAST team in Afghanistan in August of this year. He lived in Quantico, VA and was 30 years old.”

“Special Agent Michael E. Weston. SA Weston has been a Special Agent with DEA since 2003. He was assigned to the Richmond, Virginia District Office until joining the Kabul Country Office in August of this year. He lived in Washington, DC and was 37 years old. He is survived by his wife.”

In a statement posted on the DEA Web site, Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart said the DEA’s “extremely tight family” was devastated by the loss of the agents. “No expressions of grief can adequately convey the depth of the collective sorrow that we feel for their loved ones,” Leonhart said.

A human rights group is claiming that an Afghan detained at the Guantanamo Bay  military prison was only about 12 years old when he was brought there by U.S. officials, Reuters reported today.

Official records indicate Mohammed Jawad, who was brought to the military brig almost seven years ago, was 16 or 17 when he came to Guantanamo Bay, Reuters said. His family does not have official documents that give his exact birth date, but Afghan human rights commissioner Nader Nadery said his group has determined that Jawad was born around 1991, according to Reuters.

The Defense Department has denied the claims, but Major Eric Montalvo, a Pentagon-appointed U.S. Marine Corps lawyer representing Jawad, wants him released, Reuters said.

“We have a child of Afghanistan that was wrongfully taken from this country and he needs to be returned,” Montalvo said at a press conference. “He was tortured, he was abused over seven years of custody.”