Attorney General Eric Holder will travel to Uganda and Egypt for meetings with foreign leaders next week, Justice Department officials said Friday.

Attorney General Eric Holder (file photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

The purpose of the trip will be to “discuss joint U.S.-Africa efforts to promote peace, development and justice, including cooperation on fighting terrorism,” according to the Justice Department.

Holder will attend a meeting of the African Union and meet with leaders of various African nations in Kampala, Uganda on Sunday. He will travel to Cairo, Egypt on Monday and meet with Egyptian officials on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he will host a roundtable discussion with regional reporters at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

A spokeswoman said she could not say which Justice Department officials would be traveling with the Attorney General until after the trip is concluded.

The trip marks Holder’s second visit overseas in recent months. On June 30, Holder flew to Afghanistan, where he met with top officials and sized up the country’s justice system.

Holder’s trip was announced less than two weeks after two attacks in Uganda during the World Cup, which were believed to have been carried out by the Somali Islamist group al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate.

Newsweek Managing Editor Daniel Klaidman is among a handful of journalists who has covered Eric Holder so long that his access to the Attorney General can only be described as extraordinary.

It’s not unheard of for the Attorney General to call Klaidman directly to talk about what’s on his mind. (Shortly after he took the job, in fact, Holder called Klaidman — only to be put on hold for two minutes when the reporter’s assistant didn’t realize who was on the line.)

Now, the former Legal Times senior reporter is writing his first book, in which Holder is set to be a key figure.

The book, temporarily named “The Arc of Justice: Obama, Terrorism, and the Struggle over American Ideals,” is slated for publication by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the spring of 2012. It will probe the Obama administration’s shaping of national security policy and counter-terrorism efforts in the wake of the controversies of the George W. Bush administration.

Dan Klaidman, managing editor of Newsweek, is working on a book about the terrorism policies of the Obama administration (Newsweek).

“The Justice Department is obviously a significant part of this story, and Holder therefore is an important character,” Klaidman said in an interview. “But I’m as focused on other advisers to the president as I am on the Attorney General.”

Klaidman said the book “will chronicle in narrative fashion the goals and desire of rolling back some of the controversial policies from the previous administration and how big a challenge that is, how really difficult that turns out to be for a variety of reasons.”

Holder is aware he is working on the book but has not yet sat down for a formal interview, Klaidman said.

Klaidman began covering Holder for Legal Times in the late 1980s, when Holder was a District of Columbia Superior Court judge. He continued to follow Holder during his tenure from 1993 to 1997 as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and when he served as Deputy Attorney General from 1997 until the end of the Clinton administration.

Klaidman joined Newsweek in 1996. He was a key member of the investigative team whose coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal earned a National Magazine Award. He also served as Jerusalem bureau chief, was named Washington Bureau Chief in 2000 and managing editor in 2006.

In July 2009, after a long interview at Holder’s kitchen table in his Northwest Washington home,  Klaidman broke the news that Holder was leaning towards appointing a special prosecutor to conduct a preliminary review of whether CIA officers had gone beyond the guidance from the Office of Legal Counsel when interrogating terrorism suspects. (Last month, Holder told law students that Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham of the District of Connecticut is close to a decision). Holder gave Klaidman and Newsweek another interview in December.

Obama, like Holder, is “trying to navigate between the left and the right here to try to come up with sensible, prudent, tough and just policies in an extremely difficult, extremely polarized environment, so I want to try to tell that story,” Klaidman said.

Holder and the Obama administration’s handling national security issues hasn’t gone as planned. The administration has yet to make a final decision on where to hold the trial of alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed . Holder announced last year that KSM would face a civilian trial in New York City, but the plan faced significant political opposition.

The administration also took flack for reading Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called “underpants bomber,” his Miranda rights and placing him in the civilian justice system. Efforts to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay also have stalled because of congressional opposition. Those issues have caused strain between the White House, most notably Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and the Justice Department.

Klaidman said there’s no question that Justice Department officials are frustrated with the extent to which politics have hampered their efforts.

“These are people who’ve obviously served in the government before and are not Pollyanna-ish about the impact that politics has in carrying out your agenda,” Klaidman said. “But on the other hand, I think that there’s a sense that things have gotten to a point where it’s just very frustrating, very difficult to do the things that people in this administration think are the right things to do.”

Holder Wants To ‘Stick It Out’ For At Least First Term

While some D.C. observers previously thought Holder’s job was in peril, Klaidman said he gets the impression that the Attorney General “certainly wants to stick it out” for the first term of the Obama administration.

“These jobs are huge grinds. Whether or not he wants to serve out two terms, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised that, assuming Barack Obama is re-elected, he goes back into private practice or does something else. On the other hand, I’ve been surprised before. It may be that he would serve a second term if he had the opportunity,” Klaidman said.

Ultimately, said Klaidman, the Attorney General and his top national security officials in the Justice Department are pragmatic.

“I think that he’ll bide his time and look for him moments. I think he understands that the perfect is the enemy of the good and hope to get as much as he can,” Klaidman said.

Although Holder expected to be dealing with terrorism and national security issues for much of his tenure as Attorney General, he was still surprised by how much of his time was dominated by those issues, Klaidman said. Holder told his aides that something like 70 percent of his time is spent on national security, according to Klaidman.

While Holder has faced criticism from some at the White House for being too independent — one administration official told Klaidman for a previous piece that Holder had “overlearned the lessons of Marc Rich” — he has also taken criticism from some for being too close to the President.

“I think he’s got a good relationship with the President; he’s got some good chemistry. Eric Holder is not as close to this President, or as close as might be troubling, in terms of how close relationships between AGs and Presidents have been,” Klaidman said.

Historically, former Attorneys General have been some of the president’s closest political advisers, even running their political campaigns, Klaidman said.

“That’s when you have to start worrying… when an Attorney General has a dual role [of] watching out for the president’s politics on a daily basis while trying to carry out the responsibilities of being the country’s top lawyer, where you have to exercise a certain amount of independence,” Klaidman said.

Attorney General Eric Holder may be a fan of the Justice Department’s prisoner reentry programs, but an audit released Wednesday by the DOJ’s Inspector General found the department is doing a poor job monitoring the effectiveness of programs aimed at reducing recidivism.

According to the report, the Inspector General’s office could not determine if Office of Justice Program grants were successful in reducing recidivism rates because the office does not effectively track how the programs that receive grants spend their funds.

The report included an audit of 10 grant programs worth $17.9 million from January 2005 through November 2009 which questioned how $5.2 million of that money was spent. The Inspector General found in the overall report, which covered three separate grant programs spanning from fiscal year 2002 through January 2010, that in many cases there was little documentation showing the office followed up with grantees after awarding them with funding.

More than 50 percent of those released from prison will be in legal trouble again within three years, according to OJP. The grant programs provide services to high-risk offenders — such as substance abuse prevention and employment and training assistance — in the hopes of reducing the rate of recidivism.

The Inspector General found that the office had not established an effective system to assess whether offender reentry programs were meeting their goals and called on OJP to improve the management and oversight of the programs.

The audit recommend 11 changes to OJP’s grant process, including establishing baseline recidivism data, developing a program to analyze the performance of programs, and identifying best practices.

Justice Department officials said in a statement that they already had taken steps to address many of the issues raised in the audit.

OJP officials said the office will implement a new system, called the performance measurement tool, to collect data on reentry grant programs. The new system would be in place by Oct. 1.

They said the findings would inform the implementation of the Second Chance Act Offender Reentry Initiative, which is a top priority for the administration.

The full report from the Office of the Inspector General is embedded below.

Offender Reentry

National Incident Commander Thad Allen briefs reporters at the Justice Department on Tuesday (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

Thad Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who has become the federal government’s point man on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, briefly met with Attorney General Eric Holder and his staff at Justice Department headquarters on Tuesday to update the nation’s top federal prosecutor on the latest developments in response to the spill.

After the meeting, Allen held his daily news briefing in the conference room on the seventh floor of the Robert F. Kennedy building. Employees removed the Justice Department emblem on the front of the podium, raised the insignia that hangs in the backdrop and the moved the department’s flag offstage.

Thad Allen (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

“If you’re wondering why I’m in the DOJ building, I like to…circulate among the cabinet officers and make sure that there aren’t any issues that I need to be dealing with,” Allen said. “I had a brief meeting with the Attorney General and his staff, it was a very, very good meeting.”

There was no particular focus to the meeting with the Attorney General, Allen said, but they discussed issues the government faces in the Gulf Coast region.

They did not talk about the criminal investigation during the meeting, Allen said.

“We did not discuss the investigation per se,” Allen said, noting there were “a number of areas where our interests cross” on the issue of the oil spill.

“I’m not indicating there’s anything being walled off,” Allen said. “We just had a very general discussion about the issues that are going on down there. It just was a private discussion between myself and the Attorney General.”

Holder has been criticized in recent weeks for his announcement last month that the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into those responsible for the oil spill. The Washington Post editorial board called his handling of the probe “odd.” But Holder has defended his announcement, arguing the extraordinary circumstances made it “appropriate to let the American people know that the federal government was understanding what was going on.”

The Attorney General visited the Gulf Coast region for the second time since the spill last week.

Allen, who as National Incident Commander reports to President Barack Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, said at the briefing that the government would allow BP to extend for 24 hours a pressure test on the capped well after they determined that a nearby seepage of oil is not related to the test.

Two Democratic members of Congress introduced a bill Thursday that would prohibit the use of racial profiling and authorize the Justice Department to provide grants to state and local law enforcement to discourage the practice.

The measure, introduced by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), seeks to eliminate law enforcement practices that single out individuals for heightened scrutiny based on race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. Similar legislation was introduced in 2007.

Nadler said that focusing on such characteristics distracts and diverts the attention of law enforcement in ways that can prove disastrous to public safety.

“Racial profiling not only unfairly targets people for different treatment by law enforcement based on traits such as race, nationality, or religion, but it is bad policing,” Nadler said. “It simply is not an effective way to identify and apprehend criminals.”

Conyers said the recent passage of Arizona’s new immigration law, which the Justice Department is challenging, “crystallized the terms of the profiling debate.”

“The debate over racial profiling has become a central element in a much larger history of adversarial relationships between the police and communities of color,” Conyers said. “Over the past two decades, the tensions between police and minority communities have grown as allegations of racial profiling by law enforcement agents, sometimes supported by data collection efforts, have increased in number and frequency.”

Under the legislation, the Justice Department would provide grants to state and local governments to develop and implement practices, such as early warning systems, technology integration or other management protocols that discourage profiling. The bill also would require the Attorney General to issue periodic reports on any ongoing discriminatory profiling practices.

Last fall, Attorney General Eric Holder initiated an internal review of the Justice Department’s Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies, which was issued in 2003 and has been the subject of criticism.

“I’m committed to ensuring that department policy allows us to perform our core law enforcement and national security responsibilities with legitimacy, accountability and transparency,” Holder told the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee last month.

A Justice Department spokeswoman could not immediately comment on the progress of that review.

Attorney General Eric Holder called for a new approach to dealing with prisoner reentry Tuesday, saying that incarceration is not an economically sustainable way to combat violent crime.

Attorney General Eric Holder (file photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

In a speech at the Project Safe Neighborhoods annual conference, Holder also said a network of U.S. Attorneys are updating the Justice Department’s violent crime strategy focusing on three key areas: enforcement, prevention and reentry.

“Effective reentry programs provide our best chance for safeguarding our neighborhoods and supporting people who have served their time and are also resolved to improve their lives,” Holder said. “People who have been incarcerated are often barred from housing, shunned by potential employers and surrounded by others in similar circumstances. This is a recipe for high recidivism. And it’s the reason that two-thirds of those released are rearrested within three years. It’s time for a new approach.”

The Justice Department is convening an interagency working group which will focus exclusively on reentry issues, including housing, job training needs and policy recommendations, and will work to enhance coordination at the federal level, Holder said.

The Attorney General noted that the Justice Department distributed $28 million in reentry awards under the Second Chance Act and said another $100 million is available for reentry programs this year.

Project Safe Neighborhoods is an initiative funded by the Justice Department that advocates against gun violence. It began as a pilot program in Delaware in 2007. On Wednesday, acting Attorney General Gary Grindler also spoke at the conference, which is being held in New Orleans.

Grindler also handed out the 2010 Project Safe Neighborhoods Achievement Awards, which are listed below.

• The PSN Maine Task Force received the Outstanding Media Outreach Campaign Award for its Gun Sellers Awareness Campaign.

• The Western District of Tennessee Law Enforcement Coordination Committee received the Outstanding Local Training Program Award for developing and administering a series of training programs designed to improve the quality of officers’ criminal investigations, case documentation and courtroom presentations.

• Recipients of this year’s Outstanding Individual Contribution to a Violent Crime Task Force Award include Law Enforcement Coordinator for the District of New Mexico Ronald P. Lopez, Assistant Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal for the Northern District of Texas Trent Touchstone and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico Guillermo Gil.

• The Tampa/Hillsborough Comprehensive Anti-Gang Task Force from the Middle District of Florida and the Eastern District of North Carolina PSN Partnership Task Force received the Outstanding Overall Partnership/Task Force Award.

• This year’s Outstanding Local Prosecutor’s Office Award was awarded to the Los Angeles City Attorney‘ s Office in the Central District of California, the Oklahoma County District Attorney‘ s Office in the Western District of Oklahoma and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington C. Andrew Colasurdo.

• Recipients of this year’s Outstanding Juvenile Program Award include the Springfield Salvation Army Bridging the Gap Program in the District of Massachusetts and the Mercer County PSN Juvenile Component in the District of New Jersey.

• The San Francisco Police Department received the Outstanding Local Police Department Involvement Award for its innovative violence reduction strategy designed to direct a concerted enforcement effort in “hot spots” in each of the 10 police districts in the city.  The department reduced homicides by 54 percent and shootings by 34 percent in a single year.

• The Outstanding Gun Crime Investigation Award was awarded to Operation Gideon in the District of Arizona, Operation Glass Hotel in the District of Columbia, Operation Statesboro Blues in the Southern District of Georgia, and Operation City Nights in the Eastern District of Missouri.

• Operation Augusta Ink in the Southern District of Georgia, the Western District of North Carolina MS-13 Investigation and the FBI Safe Streets Task Force in Newport News, Va., received the award for Outstanding Gang Investigation.

• This year’s Outstanding Community Involvement Award was awarded to the Youth Intervention Network in the Northern District of California for its comprehensive initiative designed to build and support a high performing and robust community working together to serve youth identified as likely to commit or become victims of violent crimes without prevention assistance.

• Hartford Neighborhood Centers Inc. in the District of Connecticut and the Miami-Dade Reentry Task Force received the Outstanding Reentry Initiative Award.

• Dr. Anthony A. Braga, a Senior Research Associate at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, received the Outstanding Service by a Research Partner Award for providing research and program development assistance to the Massachusetts PSN Program for more than eight years.

Six New Orleans Police Department officers were indicted Tuesday in connection with a now-infamous shooting that occurred on the Danziger Bridge in the days after Hurricane Katrina.

The indictment alleges that four officers – Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, Robert Faulcon and Anthony Villavaso — open fired on the Danziger Bridge, killing two individuals and wounding four others. The shootings allegedly occurred on Sept. 4, 2005, days after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Faulcon also is charged with shooting a 40-year-old mentally disabled man in the back, and Bowen faces charges for allegedly kicking the man while he was dying.

The four officers face up to life in prison or the death penalty, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana Jim Letten said.

Two supervisors – Arthur “Archie” Kaufman and Gerard Dugue – are charged with obstructing justice during the subsequent investigations. Kaufman faces 120 years in prison, while Dugue faces 70 years, Letten said.

The indictments were unveiled during a news conference in New Orleans with Letten, Attorney General Eric Holder, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez and Assistant Director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division Kevin Perkins.

All of the officers were in custody by Tuesday, Letten said.

Five other police officers and a civilian have already pleaded guilty to federal charges they obstructed justice and engaged in a cover-up of the shootings.

At the news conference, Holder said that the announcement “marks an important step forward in administering justice, in healing community wounds, in improving public safety, and in restoring public trust in this city’s police department.”

“It will take more than this investigation to renew the New Orleans Police Department and allow it to thrive,” Holder said. The DOJ “is committed to using our civil statutes, technical expertise, and other tools to implement sustainable reforms and address the systemic problems that have challenged this department.”

Holder also recognized what he called the “outstanding leadership and partnership” of New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D). In May, Landrieu wrote at letter to Holder asking for the Justice Department to conduct an assessment of the city’s police department and the criminal justice system.

“This process is far from over. And I want leaders and residents of New Orleans to know that the Justice Department is committed to providing whatever assistance this city, its police department, and its people need,” Holder said. “You have, and deserve, nothing less that my full and ongoing support.”

The indictment is embedded below.

NOPD Indictment

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez on Monday defended a Justice Department’s lawsuit that seeks to preempt the enforcement of an Arizona law that critics say could lead to discrimination against Hispanics.

“Under our system of government, there is one quarterback and only one quarterback when it comes to issues of immigration, and that is the federal government,” Perez told an audience gathered for a American Constitution Society event in Washington D.C.

Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division Thomas Perez (file photo by Channing Turner / Main Justice)

States getting involved in immigration could complicate the federal government’s operations in a number of areas, Perez said.

“You cannot have a system of 50 quarterbacks in the immigration system because immigration includes issues of law enforcement, it involves decisions with implications in foreign policy, it involves incidents with humanitarian implications, and you can’t have 50 states making immigration law and have a coherent system,” Perez said.

The law at issue allows authorities to question an individual if law enforcement officials have a “reasonable suspicion” the person is in the country illegally. It also criminalizes the “willful failure” to carry immigration documents. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit last week against Arizona and its governor, Republican Jan Brewer, seeking to invalidate the state’s immigration law on the grounds that it is preempted by federal immigration laws.

Justice Department lawyers traveled to Arizona to listen to what various group thought about the law before deciding to file the suit, Perez said.

“We didn’t simply sit here inside the beltway and figure out what was best for Arizona or what was constitutional under that circumstance, we went out and listened,” Perez said. “And it’s very noteworthy to me to see that officers who are on the front lines, police chiefs who are on the front lines, talk about how if you want to get smart on crime, you should focus on the most serious and violent criminals and you shouldn’t be focusing your first attention on the day laborers, and that’s precisely what this bill among other things does.”

In an interview with CBS that aired Sunday, Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department “wanted to go out with what we thought of our strongest initial argument and to focus on what we thought is the most serious problem with the law as it now exists.” He suggested that a second lawsuit which focused on racial profiling grounds could be possible if the first suit were to fail.

On Monday, Perez encouraged people to read the pleadings in the case.

“What you will find is not only are there declarations from federal officials in that case, but you’ll also find there are declarations from the police chief or Phoenix, the police chief of Tuscan, the police chief of Flagstaff, and the sheriff of… one of the counties that borders Mexico,” he said.

Attorney General Eric Holder will throw the ceremonial first pitch when the Washington Nationals take on the New York Mets in Washington, D.C. on Friday night. But figuring out which team he’ll be routing for can prove a bit difficult.

Holder is a longtime New York Mets fan, having played hooky to see one of the team’s first games at Shea Stadium near his childhood home in New York City. But later in life, he was a member in an investment group that placed an unsuccessful bid for the Washington Nationals baseball team.

A Justice Department spokeswoman didn’t know which, if any, team uniform Holder will wear on the mound. But it’s fair to say a Mets uniform wouldn’t help his relatively low poll numbers, at least in the D.C. area. It might, however, score him some points in his native New York, where his original decision to try those behind the Sept. 11 attacks proved unpopular.

Earlier this year, Paul Clement, a former Solicitor General from June 2005 through June 2008 and now a partner at King & Spalding, joked at an awards ceremony that Holder’s ill-fated attempt to buy the Nationals was a demonstration of his commitment to the D.C. area.

“I’ve never heard an introduction that included my ill-fated attempt to buy the Nationals,” Holder responded. “This is why this man was Solicitor General of the United States. That’s impressive research.”

The Washington Post editorial board on Friday criticized Attorney General Eric Holder for his response to the oil spill, calling his announcement that the Justice Department had opened a criminal probe into the matter “odd” and “discomfiting.”

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

Last month, Holder traveled to the Gulf coast and, during a press conference, said the DOJ had opened a criminal investigation of the spill. Holder declined to say which companies were being investigated.

The announcement was unusual: Justice Department officials almost always decline to confirm or deny the existence of a criminal investigation. According to the U.S. Attorneys manual — the document that governs the behavior of DOJ attorneys in the field — prosecutors can only confirm probes when officials determine that an extraordinary event justifies public acknowledgment.

“In matters that have already received substantial publicity, or about which the community needs to be reassured that the appropriate law enforcement agency is investigating the incident, or where release of information is necessary to protect the public interest, safety, or welfare, comments about or confirmation of an ongoing investigation may need to be made,” the manual states. “In these unusual circumstances, the involved investigative agency will consult and obtain approval from the United States Attorney or Department Division handling the matter prior to disseminating any information to the media.”

One week before Holder announced the probe, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that “consistent with long-standing policy, we neither confirm nor deny the existence of such an investigation,” The Post noted.

In addition, the editorial also was critical of Holder’s appearance at a meeting between White House officials and representatives from BP.

Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, who lead the White House negotiations that resulted in a multibillion-dollar victims’ compensation fund, was “perfectly capable of ensuring that the fund agreement passed legal muster,” the editorial said, and Holder’s presence “inevitably raised the specter of the criminal probe — and the possibility that it could be used to pressure BP on the size and terms of the fund.”

Administration officials pointed out that Holder attended with other Cabinet secretaries and left the meeting before substantive negotiations had begun.

Because he handles both criminal and civil aspects of an issue, the Attorney General “must take great care to avoid even the appearance of conflict,” wrote the editorial board.

“Mr. Holder may not have crossed that line in the gulf oil matter, but he has come close.”

Read the full editorial here.