In the wake of the resignation of Eric Holder – the nation's “top cop” and first ever African American to serve as Attorney General – public officials, commentators, celebrities and editorials alike have had strong reactions to the controversial figure.
After a tearful ceremony in which Holder announced his departure, President Obama graded Holder's service as nothing less than “superb.” A former spokesperson for Holder compared his legacy to that of the popular, former Attorney General and Presidential candidate, Robert Kennedy, a comparison to which his surviving widow echoed: “Eric Holder has vigilantly defended an ideal Bobby strongly believed — that the Justice Department must deliver justice for all Americans. Especially our most vulnerable,” said Ethel Kennedy in a statement. The New York Times editorialized that Holder “worked to increase justice for many of America’s most dispossessed or forgotten citizens.”
In contrast, harsh condemnations were issued by leading Republicans on Holder's legacy for allegedly playing “partisan politics (Representative Bob Goodlatte, R-Va, Chairman of House Judiciary Committee), placing “ideological commitments above the law,” (Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell), and having shown “a lack of respect for Congress” (Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of Judiciary Committee).
Amidst the contrasting views, however, one thing is certain: support or criticism for Holder has been decidedly along party lines. What has gotten lost in the partisan smoke of Holder's departure, however, is how civil society has graded Holder's legacy.
Human, immigrant and civil rights organizations were consulted by teleSUR in an attempt to evaluate Holder's performance on leading policy and legal considerations, as opposed to reactions based more on party and political loyalties or emotion filled departure ceremonies.
Civil society groups and organizations issued strong condemnations on Holder's record to teleSUR in reaction to repressive actions taken against whistle-blowers and journalists. Criticism was also lobbied against alleged violations of the Constitutional and privacy rights of citizens by spying programs, while Holder's immigration and “targeted” killing policies were also pointed to as deeply flawed. While support was expressed for Holder's legal pursuits in respect to defending gay marriage, speaking out against police brutality and seeking out legal protections in the wake of a Supreme Court decision unraveling the landmark Voting Rights Act, substantive criticism against national programs run during Holder's tenure outweighed approval of specific policies and rhetorical stances.
The NSA Spying Programs
On June 9, 2013 in a hotel room in Hong Kong, documentary filmmaker Laura Poirats and investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald sat down to an interview with a young, good looking and technologically adroit man. The following day Edward Snowden's identity was revealed to the world, making him a household name around the globe.
Snowden revealed through thousands of leaked documents, and on an ongoing basis, a domestic and worldwide spying program long undertaken by the secretive and multi-billion dollar Federally-funded National Security Agency (NSA). Of particular controversy, were revelations of a number of massive domestic spying programs, which pried into both the phone, e-mail and internet activity of citizens abroad and those at home, and even heads of state hailing from countries allied with the U.S. (The German and Brazilian Presidents' personal e-mail accounts, much to their chagrin, were disclosed to have been subject to NSA spying.)
To many observers, Snowden's revelations changed history, thus adding to the chances of the spying programs becoming one of the most memorable marks of Holder's legacy, especially given his supportive stance of the programs throughout his tenure. The leak themselves were dubbed as the most important in U.S. history by the country's previous most well-known source of leaks, Daniel Ellsberg.
As for Snowden himself, Holder and the Department of Justice charged him on two counts under the Espionage Act just days after he revealed his identity as the source of the NSA document leaks. During the same time, a close vote in Congress nearly defunded the NSA spying programs. Finally, lawsuits quickly arose and challenged the NSA programs.
According to civil and human rights groups, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Holder's stance on the issue was patently unconstitutional. The EFF filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the program, arguing that the programs amounted to “ongoing dragnet surveillance” which illegally monitored the private “communication and communications records” of an untold amount of innocent civilians.
Most Americans polled in the wake of the Snowden leaks agreed that U.S. spying programs were undermining global Internet freedom, having registered harsh opinions against the spying programs and in favor of Snowden, whom they viewed as more of a “whistle-blower,” as opposed to the Obama and Holder's stance of Snowden being a “traitor.”
The U.S. intelligence and defense community, in contrast, continues to seethe with anger and resentment over the continuing and gradual fallout of the leaks. Just earlier this year, one NSA official told BuzzFeed that they wanted to, “kill [Snowden] myself” and that a “lot of people share this sentiment.” Another Pentagon official was quoted as saying, “I want to put a bullet into his head,” while an overseas intelligence officer also said, “Most everyone I talk to says 'he needs to be tried and hung,' forget the trial and just hang him.”
In spite of this, eventually governmental entities came to disagree with Holder's continued legal defense of the program. In December 2013, a federal judge ruled that the metadata program was “likely unconstitutional” and virtually “Orwellian,” though an opposite ruling was reached by another federal judge in the same month. Nonetheless, a governmental task force concluded this past January in a report that the program lacked “a viable legal foundation.”
Through the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Holder's leadership, the Obama administration attempted to have each legal challenge to NSA spying thrown out on the grounds of the “state secrets privilege.” Some of their attempts did not succeed, however, as a number of lawsuits first undertaken by civil rights groups are still ongoing, such as the EFF's Jewel vs. NSA.
As recently in January of this year, Holder continued to officially defend the NSA programs as being lawful and constitutional in testimony given to the Senate Judiciary Committee. One of the first programs to be revealed, the so-called “215 program” collecting metadata from millions of U.S. citizens, was singled out by Holder as only being questionable on grounds of efficiency, not on legality.
The “Targeted-Killings” Program
The “targeted-killings” program, first started under the Bush administration but continued during the Obama administration, was one of the most oft-criticized Holder-era programs by human rights and civil liberties groups. When The New York Times first reported on the existence of the “capture or kill list,” teenagers and children were revealed to be part of those on the still confidential list which the program is based on.
The program has been shrouded in secrecy and to date, virtually all of the instances of the use of the program, as well as those targeted and victimized, have been kept under wraps and classified.
The American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) Hinnah Shamsi directed teleSUR to a statement revealing “profound disagreements on national security issues,” with Holder on a number of programs, including targeted killings, citing specifically the case of a U.S. citizen “killed far away from any battlefield.”
Surveillance on Journalists, Legal Attacks on Whistleblowers Stand in Contrast to “De Facto Immunity” for Business Community
Civil society and journalist rights groups have criticized Holder as having undertaken an unprecedented legal offensive on whistleblowers and surveillance against journalists. Holder charged seven whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, which was more than any other previous Attorney General. The act was passed in 1917 and was only previously invoked against three people until Holder started his tenure.
Journalists were systematically targeted in several Federal Bureau of Investigation seizures of the phone records of hundreds of otherwise unsuspecting reporters, in so-called “leak investigations.”
With “leak investigations,” aggressive surveillance tactics are used to uncover the source of leaks to journalists, resulting in President Obama even expressing concern about a potential chilling effect on the ability of journalists to hold governmental officials accountable.
In light of these DOJ actions and policies, Courtney Radsch, the Advocacy Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, expressed concerns to teleSUR about how Holder's successor will be able “to make progress on actually taking action to prevent surveillance and aggressive prosecution of journalists and whistle-blowers,” with their “work going to be cut out for them,” especially since “each successive administration is taking more and more steps to restrict the free flow of information.”
Technological advances, Radsch explained has only hastened the problem, which the DOJ only “wants to use to their advantage to restrict journalist freedoms.”
Radsch remained unconvinced by Holder's justifications of national security, stating that, “one of the most common excuses used by governments to limit the free flow of information and I don't think there's been sufficient proof that has been the case and that there is no evidence to back it up.”
“You know what,” Radsch asked rhetorically, “I think that having a free press should be part of our national security strategy.”
Holder's aggressive pursuits of whistleblowers stood in sharp contrast to criticism of the lack of legal prosecution or investigations of finance sector institutions which engaged in illegalities leading to a national and global recession.
“There hasn't been any serious investigation of any of the large financial entities by the Justice Department,” an economics professor noted to Newsweek, referencing Holder directly.
This stance has been called one of “de facto immunity,” as prosecution rates against white collar crimes reached a twenty year low during Holder's tenure, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research group based at Syracuse University.
The “Fast and Furious” Program
The “Fast and Furious” gun walking program was among the most prominent scandals during Holder's service. After a Border Patrol agent was killed by guns stemming from the then still secret program carried out under the DOJ's Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency (ATF), whistle-blower agents from the Phoenix ATF branch went public and spoke to the Center for Public Integrity, CBS and eventually gave Congressional testimony revealing the existence of the program. The “Fast and Furious” program, the public learned from the whistle-blowers, deliberately shipped high-powered weapons straight into the hands of Mexico-based drug cartels in a purported effort to “track” and step up prosecution.
The Mexican Archdiocese’s office lambasted U.S. officials, Holder among them, for crafting a situation where, “one of the most fervently anti-immigrant states [Arizona] is also the prime site for permitting the illegal passage of arms to go right into the hands of Mexican criminals.”
Congressional representatives undertook investigations and held hearings about the Fast and Furious program, eventually making Holder the only U.S. Attorney General ever held under both civil and criminal contempt by Congress for having refused to provide documents related to program. The Obama administration, citing executive privilege, declined to prosecute.
The “Secure Communities” Program
Under Holder's tenure, more than two million immigrants were deported, more than any other presidential administration. Most of those deportations came under the controversial and Federally-run “Secure Communities” deportation, started under the Obama Administration and Holder's initial assumption of office in 2008.
The Justice Department oversees the billion dollar plus program, which controversially does not reimburse states for the acquired implementation costs of the program. This has led some states to get rid of the program altogether, resulting in lawsuits. New York is among the states that have suspended the program.
Immigrant advocacy and civil rights groups, such as the ACLU, have criticized the program as being a case of “racial profiling.”
A scholarly study on the program, slated for publication in the Journal of Law and Economics, claims that it does not achieves its own objectives. The study's findings revealed that the program has failed to lower either the overall or violent crime rates in most of the communities in which it has been applied.
Customs and Border Protection Impunity and Corruption
The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is another agency which Holder oversaw through the Justice Department. Holder served during a period in which a flurry of border patrol agents were recruited, which was then followed by a sizable increase in civilian killings, including unarmed children and Mexican nationals across the border.
According to the CBP's new Internal Affairs director, not one agent has ever been reprimanded or prosecuted while Holder was in office. In most cases, the name of the accused agent has not even been released, as a result of Justice Department sealing requests successfully obtained from judges.
“If you never know what, if anything, is done to investigate a shooting, or to address any deficiencies in procedures involved in that shooting, then you have a kind of renegade agency,” Hyde Post, president of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, told The Arizona Republic regarding the CBP's lack of transparency and problems with impunity killings.
In recent months, James Tomsheck, the former director of CBP's Internal Affairs department, has spoken out against impunity and corruption within the embattled agency, estimating to the Center for Investigative Reporting that as many as 10 percent of CBP agents are on the take. Other officials serving under Tomsheck, put the number as high as 20 percent.
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For now, who Holder's successor will be remains unknown, though he has pledged to serve his term until a transition can take place. In the meantime, civil society organizations will surely keep close watch and critical scrutiny on the array of controversial programs and policies that the next Attorney General will inherit, which were either first begun, maintained or defended during Holder's tenure.
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