Vanderboegh: Put A Hold on Holder
Mike's take, with some essential background information:
Monday, December 22, 2008
Personnel IS Policy: Put a Hold on Eric Holder
Folks,
They say that personnel is policy. If so, and I believe it to be true, then we Three Percenters are really not going to like the Obama administration. Of course this comes as no surprise to anyone, but of all the people BHO seeks to surround himself with in DC, Eric Holder as the nominee for Attorney General has to be the most offensive stench in the nostrils of free men and women.
Now everyone knows about Holder's assistance to Clinton in the pardon of Marc Rich. Likewise they are well aware of his "service" to the Clintonista regime in the Elian Gonzalez federal kidnapping, where he famously denied taking the little boy at the point of a gun. See here.
We are also well aware of how consistently anti-firearm freedom he's been. Less well known is his work on the post-OKC Counter Terrorism Bill, which strengthened the federal suite of proto-tyranny tools.
But I would like to draw your attention to two other items from Holder's record that cause me more concern than all of the above.
The first dates from September 1999. Read this:
Prosecutor Who Raised Questions About Waco Cover-Up Removed
By Michelle Mittelstadt
September 14, 1999
Associated Press
WASHINGTON--The federal prosecutor who raised questions about a possible Justice Department cover-up in the Waco standoff was abruptly removed from the case along with his boss, according to a court filing made public Tuesday.
Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder recused U.S. Attorney James W. Blagg in San Antonio and assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Johnston in Waco, Texas, from any further dealings in criminal or civil proceedings related to the siege.
Holder appointed the U.S. attorney in a neighboring district as a "special attorney to the U.S. attorney general."
The court filing in Waco provides no explanation for the decision to recuse the U.S. attorneys' office for the Western District of Texas, to which Blagg and Johnston are assigned, but said the action took effect last Friday.
Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott told reporters Tuesday that the Senate investigation should go beyond Waco to the Justice Department's forthrightness on other matters, such as allegations of campaign finance violations by the 1996 Clinton campaign.
"I think it's going to have to be broader than just Waco itself," said Lott, R-Miss. "I think we have a bigger focus here. ... There are a number of investigations that they are basically either not doing or they have stiffed us on. So we need to find out what's going on."
The recusal of the U.S. attorney's office isn't the first in the Waco case. Attorney General Janet Reno last week recused herself, saying she will be a witness in the independent inquiry she ordered into the fiery end of the 1993 siege.
Johnston, in a letter made public Monday, wrote Reno recently warning that aides within her own department were misleading her about federal agents' roles.
"I have formed the belief that facts may have been kept from you and quite possibly are being kept from you even now by components of the department," Johnston wrote in an Aug. 30 letter.
Johnston also has been at odds with Blagg, his superior, and other Justice officials over the investigation of the government's actions during the standoff with the Davidians at their compound outside Waco. It was Johnston who pressed Justice Department officials to allow independent filmmakers to review evidence sifted from the charred ruins of the Davidians' compound--evidence that led to the FBI's recent admission that potentially incendiary tear gas canisters were fired on April 19, 1993.
That disclosure, after six years of denials, sparked a furor on Capitol Hill and has led to congressional inquiries and Reno's appointment of an independent investigator.
Blagg, Johnston and the Justice Department provided no immediate comment. . .
Burton, who chairs the committee, said the Justice Department buried the panel in an avalanche of documents shortly before the 1995 hearings began, and congressional investigators depended on a Justice summary to guide them.
"The Justice Department dumped 100,000 documents on the committee three days before the hearings, knowing that they couldn't possibly go through them," the Indiana Republican said in an interview. Although Burton was on the Government Reform Committee in 1995, he was not on the subcommittee that led the investigation.
Burton also noted that the Justice Department was forced to acknowledge last week that it failed in 1995 to give Congress the key page from a 1993 FBI lab report mentioning the use of military tear gas. The final page of that 49-page report, with the key tear gas mention, was missing, he noted.
"I don't think that's a coincidence," he said.
Almost six out of 10 Americans believe the FBI has been intentionally trying to cover up its actions at Waco, an ABC News poll released Monday indicated. . .
The records Waxman cited, discovered among more than 40 boxes of material compiled during the earlier House hearings, include an FBI pilot's 1993 statement recalling a radio transmission in which agents had a conversation "relative to the utilization of some sort of military round ... on a concrete bunker." And post-raid interview summaries include an unnamed FBI agent's explanation that smoke captured on film "came from (an) attempt to penetrate bunker with one military and two (non-incendiary) rounds."
So Holder helped cover up the details of federal misconduct in the Waco massacre. But a fellow who is good at covering up one federal conspiracy is useful in covering up others.
Jesse Trentadue, a Salt Lake City attorney, has been independently investigating the circumstances of his brother Kenny's strange death while in federal custody at the time of the OKC bombing. Go here to see some graphic pictures of what Kenny Trentadue looked like after he was received from the tender mercies of the Bureau of Prisons after what the Clintonistas claimed was a suicide hanging.
The particulars of Kenneth Trentadue's murder at the hands of federal authorities are hazy. This is partly because Eric Holder managed to short circuit a Senate investigation.
DOJ memos leaked to Jesse Trentadue by an FBI agent indicate just how important Holder was in the cover-up.
Jesse Trentadue said recently,
“They’re Department of Justice memos, they’re actually e mails, and they’re talking about Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and what he has to do to keep the lid on this story,” said Trentadue, adding that the memos make it clear than an attempt to deflect press attention is the goal, along with claiming that the investigation is ongoing in order to keep everything secret.
“This was a coordinated cover-up run at the highest levels of justice and out of the White House,” said Trentadue, noting that the memos refer to the cover-up as “The Trentadue Mission” and use terms like “The Invasion of Normandy” to illustrate the scale of the operation.
“You have to ask yourself, why would the death of one little person, which they claim was a suicide by hanging, generate this kind of activity at the highest levels of the Clinton/Reno Justice Department, the answer is….they knew this murder, if investigated, would lead to the Oklahoma City Bombing and lead to the fact that the Department of Justice, through the FBI and ATF informants, was involved and this occurred just before the re-election of Bill Clinton in 1996,” said Trentadue.
“Mr. Holder’s job was to cover-up my brother’s murder, basically to stop all inquiry,” said Trentadue, saying the e mails were “inflammatory,” referring as they do to “Trentadue’s and Trentadon’ts”.
“Holder’s job was to stop the Democrats and Republicans from looking into this….you have to ask yourself why the Deputy Attorney General of the United States in involved in covering up the death of an inmate and the answer’s simple, they knew that death if investigated would lead back to the bombing, it would lead back to the government’s knowledge and involvement,” said Trentadue, adding that the release of the information would have been a disaster for the re-election hopes of Bill Clinton in 1996.
The leaked memos themselves are posted here.
So why do I think these actions are more compelling than the issues currently being discussed? Simple. In all the others you could argue that Holder was merely doing his job, or holding opinions, about firearms for example, that are controversial. Even in the Marc Rich pardon, he was in the grey zone somewhere between impropriety and illegality.
But in the Waco and Trentadue coverups, Holder was slap in the middle of criminal conspiracies to evade prosecution for federal misdeeds.
As Foghorn T. Leghorn would say, the fox has done been appointed to rule the chicken coop.
Now Jeff Knox, writing here, has called for all gunnies to answer the call to bring pressure on their Senators to stop the Holder nomination. David Codrea, using both his War on Guns and Cleveland Gun Rights Examiner blogs (example here), has seconded this call. Peter at Western Rifle Shooters Association has also.
In fact, Pete says this:
Remember -- this guy is the planned boss of the FBI and BATFE thugs who will be coming to kill you. Get it?
EXACTLY.
I realize that this may endanger the "pragmatists'" characterization of me as "insane," but I call on all Three Percenters to contact their Senators on this one. We won't be able to win the vote, but using the arcane rules of the Senate, we only need one Senator to put a hold on him to slow this outrage down down, and maybe, stop it.
I have no illusions. Even if we do manage to get him to withdraw his nomination, they'll probably appoint someone equally objectionable. However, this falls under the heading of "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me." The one thing we must not allow to happen is to give the impression that we agree by acquiescence.
I'm with Knox on this one. Fight the Holder nomination with everything you've got.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Personnel IS Policy: Put a Hold on Eric Holder
Folks,
They say that personnel is policy. If so, and I believe it to be true, then we Three Percenters are really not going to like the Obama administration. Of course this comes as no surprise to anyone, but of all the people BHO seeks to surround himself with in DC, Eric Holder as the nominee for Attorney General has to be the most offensive stench in the nostrils of free men and women.
Now everyone knows about Holder's assistance to Clinton in the pardon of Marc Rich. Likewise they are well aware of his "service" to the Clintonista regime in the Elian Gonzalez federal kidnapping, where he famously denied taking the little boy at the point of a gun. See here.
We are also well aware of how consistently anti-firearm freedom he's been. Less well known is his work on the post-OKC Counter Terrorism Bill, which strengthened the federal suite of proto-tyranny tools.
But I would like to draw your attention to two other items from Holder's record that cause me more concern than all of the above.
The first dates from September 1999. Read this:
Prosecutor Who Raised Questions About Waco Cover-Up Removed
By Michelle Mittelstadt
September 14, 1999
Associated Press
WASHINGTON--The federal prosecutor who raised questions about a possible Justice Department cover-up in the Waco standoff was abruptly removed from the case along with his boss, according to a court filing made public Tuesday.
Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder recused U.S. Attorney James W. Blagg in San Antonio and assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Johnston in Waco, Texas, from any further dealings in criminal or civil proceedings related to the siege.
Holder appointed the U.S. attorney in a neighboring district as a "special attorney to the U.S. attorney general."
The court filing in Waco provides no explanation for the decision to recuse the U.S. attorneys' office for the Western District of Texas, to which Blagg and Johnston are assigned, but said the action took effect last Friday.
Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott told reporters Tuesday that the Senate investigation should go beyond Waco to the Justice Department's forthrightness on other matters, such as allegations of campaign finance violations by the 1996 Clinton campaign.
"I think it's going to have to be broader than just Waco itself," said Lott, R-Miss. "I think we have a bigger focus here. ... There are a number of investigations that they are basically either not doing or they have stiffed us on. So we need to find out what's going on."
The recusal of the U.S. attorney's office isn't the first in the Waco case. Attorney General Janet Reno last week recused herself, saying she will be a witness in the independent inquiry she ordered into the fiery end of the 1993 siege.
Johnston, in a letter made public Monday, wrote Reno recently warning that aides within her own department were misleading her about federal agents' roles.
"I have formed the belief that facts may have been kept from you and quite possibly are being kept from you even now by components of the department," Johnston wrote in an Aug. 30 letter.
Johnston also has been at odds with Blagg, his superior, and other Justice officials over the investigation of the government's actions during the standoff with the Davidians at their compound outside Waco. It was Johnston who pressed Justice Department officials to allow independent filmmakers to review evidence sifted from the charred ruins of the Davidians' compound--evidence that led to the FBI's recent admission that potentially incendiary tear gas canisters were fired on April 19, 1993.
That disclosure, after six years of denials, sparked a furor on Capitol Hill and has led to congressional inquiries and Reno's appointment of an independent investigator.
Blagg, Johnston and the Justice Department provided no immediate comment. . .
Burton, who chairs the committee, said the Justice Department buried the panel in an avalanche of documents shortly before the 1995 hearings began, and congressional investigators depended on a Justice summary to guide them.
"The Justice Department dumped 100,000 documents on the committee three days before the hearings, knowing that they couldn't possibly go through them," the Indiana Republican said in an interview. Although Burton was on the Government Reform Committee in 1995, he was not on the subcommittee that led the investigation.
Burton also noted that the Justice Department was forced to acknowledge last week that it failed in 1995 to give Congress the key page from a 1993 FBI lab report mentioning the use of military tear gas. The final page of that 49-page report, with the key tear gas mention, was missing, he noted.
"I don't think that's a coincidence," he said.
Almost six out of 10 Americans believe the FBI has been intentionally trying to cover up its actions at Waco, an ABC News poll released Monday indicated. . .
The records Waxman cited, discovered among more than 40 boxes of material compiled during the earlier House hearings, include an FBI pilot's 1993 statement recalling a radio transmission in which agents had a conversation "relative to the utilization of some sort of military round ... on a concrete bunker." And post-raid interview summaries include an unnamed FBI agent's explanation that smoke captured on film "came from (an) attempt to penetrate bunker with one military and two (non-incendiary) rounds."
So Holder helped cover up the details of federal misconduct in the Waco massacre. But a fellow who is good at covering up one federal conspiracy is useful in covering up others.
Jesse Trentadue, a Salt Lake City attorney, has been independently investigating the circumstances of his brother Kenny's strange death while in federal custody at the time of the OKC bombing. Go here to see some graphic pictures of what Kenny Trentadue looked like after he was received from the tender mercies of the Bureau of Prisons after what the Clintonistas claimed was a suicide hanging.
The particulars of Kenneth Trentadue's murder at the hands of federal authorities are hazy. This is partly because Eric Holder managed to short circuit a Senate investigation.
DOJ memos leaked to Jesse Trentadue by an FBI agent indicate just how important Holder was in the cover-up.
Jesse Trentadue said recently,
“They’re Department of Justice memos, they’re actually e mails, and they’re talking about Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and what he has to do to keep the lid on this story,” said Trentadue, adding that the memos make it clear than an attempt to deflect press attention is the goal, along with claiming that the investigation is ongoing in order to keep everything secret.
“This was a coordinated cover-up run at the highest levels of justice and out of the White House,” said Trentadue, noting that the memos refer to the cover-up as “The Trentadue Mission” and use terms like “The Invasion of Normandy” to illustrate the scale of the operation.
“You have to ask yourself, why would the death of one little person, which they claim was a suicide by hanging, generate this kind of activity at the highest levels of the Clinton/Reno Justice Department, the answer is….they knew this murder, if investigated, would lead to the Oklahoma City Bombing and lead to the fact that the Department of Justice, through the FBI and ATF informants, was involved and this occurred just before the re-election of Bill Clinton in 1996,” said Trentadue.
“Mr. Holder’s job was to cover-up my brother’s murder, basically to stop all inquiry,” said Trentadue, saying the e mails were “inflammatory,” referring as they do to “Trentadue’s and Trentadon’ts”.
“Holder’s job was to stop the Democrats and Republicans from looking into this….you have to ask yourself why the Deputy Attorney General of the United States in involved in covering up the death of an inmate and the answer’s simple, they knew that death if investigated would lead back to the bombing, it would lead back to the government’s knowledge and involvement,” said Trentadue, adding that the release of the information would have been a disaster for the re-election hopes of Bill Clinton in 1996.
The leaked memos themselves are posted here.
So why do I think these actions are more compelling than the issues currently being discussed? Simple. In all the others you could argue that Holder was merely doing his job, or holding opinions, about firearms for example, that are controversial. Even in the Marc Rich pardon, he was in the grey zone somewhere between impropriety and illegality.
But in the Waco and Trentadue coverups, Holder was slap in the middle of criminal conspiracies to evade prosecution for federal misdeeds.
As Foghorn T. Leghorn would say, the fox has done been appointed to rule the chicken coop.
Now Jeff Knox, writing here, has called for all gunnies to answer the call to bring pressure on their Senators to stop the Holder nomination. David Codrea, using both his War on Guns and Cleveland Gun Rights Examiner blogs (example here), has seconded this call. Peter at Western Rifle Shooters Association has also.
In fact, Pete says this:
Remember -- this guy is the planned boss of the FBI and BATFE thugs who will be coming to kill you. Get it?
EXACTLY.
I realize that this may endanger the "pragmatists'" characterization of me as "insane," but I call on all Three Percenters to contact their Senators on this one. We won't be able to win the vote, but using the arcane rules of the Senate, we only need one Senator to put a hold on him to slow this outrage down down, and maybe, stop it.
I have no illusions. Even if we do manage to get him to withdraw his nomination, they'll probably appoint someone equally objectionable. However, this falls under the heading of "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me." The one thing we must not allow to happen is to give the impression that we agree by acquiescence.
I'm with Knox on this one. Fight the Holder nomination with everything you've got.
posted by Concerned American | 2:33 PM
2 Comments:
"The leaked memos themselves are posted here."
link doesn't work
Fixed. Thanks for the catch.
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