Justice Department official slams 'lawless' Bush terror policies
The ex-Bush official says practices undermined the U.S. and foreign alliances and helped Al Qaeda. His remarks coincide with Atty. Gen. Holder's efforts to shift course.
By Josh Meyer
LA Times
April 28, 2009
Reporting from Washington — The Bush administration's "lawless response to terrorism" has not only undermined the United States' moral credibility and standing abroad and provided Al Qaeda with its best recruiting material, it also has weakened the U.S. coalitions with foreign governments that it needs most to fight the threat posed by Islamist extremism, a senior Obama Justice Department official said Tuesday.
The remarks by Todd Hinnen, deputy assistant attorney general for law and policy in the department's National Security Division, went well beyond some of the earlier criticisms of the Bush administration by President Obama and his political appointees. And they came on a day when Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. was pressing the case for a sharp course correction away from Bush administration policies toward one that officials said was more in keeping with the rule of law.
Hinnen, who oversees the team of Justice Department lawyers in charge of strategic thinking, policy development and legal analysis on national security matters, said that the new administration was struggling to deal with the fallout left by its predecessors, both in the U.S. and overseas on issues such as coercive interrogations, "extraordinary renditions," and the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at secret CIA "black sites" around the world without due process.
"For years, talks with foreign partners regarding how best to combat terrorism have foundered at a fundamental impasse because of the use of counter-terrorism authorities outside of, and many felt, contrary to, the rule of law," Hinnen told an audience of government and private-sector counter-terrorism experts at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
(More here.)
By Josh Meyer
LA Times
April 28, 2009
Reporting from Washington — The Bush administration's "lawless response to terrorism" has not only undermined the United States' moral credibility and standing abroad and provided Al Qaeda with its best recruiting material, it also has weakened the U.S. coalitions with foreign governments that it needs most to fight the threat posed by Islamist extremism, a senior Obama Justice Department official said Tuesday.
The remarks by Todd Hinnen, deputy assistant attorney general for law and policy in the department's National Security Division, went well beyond some of the earlier criticisms of the Bush administration by President Obama and his political appointees. And they came on a day when Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. was pressing the case for a sharp course correction away from Bush administration policies toward one that officials said was more in keeping with the rule of law.
Hinnen, who oversees the team of Justice Department lawyers in charge of strategic thinking, policy development and legal analysis on national security matters, said that the new administration was struggling to deal with the fallout left by its predecessors, both in the U.S. and overseas on issues such as coercive interrogations, "extraordinary renditions," and the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at secret CIA "black sites" around the world without due process.
"For years, talks with foreign partners regarding how best to combat terrorism have foundered at a fundamental impasse because of the use of counter-terrorism authorities outside of, and many felt, contrary to, the rule of law," Hinnen told an audience of government and private-sector counter-terrorism experts at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
(More here.)
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