This doesn’t exactly bode well for protecting us from the excesses of the surveillance state:
In September, President Obama nominated John Carlin, a career federal prosecutor, to run the Justice Department’s National Security Division, a senior post whose occupant plays a key role in authorizing secret surveillance operations and managing national security investigations. It was a controversial pick. Not only did some of Carlin’s peers think he wasn’t the most qualified candidate. Attorney General Eric Holder — the man who was supposed to be Carlin’s boss — hadn’t supported him. Several former officials told Foreign Policy that the attorney general “strenuously” objected to nominating Carlin.
But Carlin had the backing of two senior officials in the White House, who had made it known that he was their preferred choice. In the end, their candidate won out, prompting several former law enforcement and national security officials to decry the nomination as an act of undue political influence over law enforcement decisions.
“I think it is extraordinary and unusual to have someone forced upon an attorney general over his objections,” said one former law enforcement official. “The independence of the Justice Department from the White House is institutionally important.” Decisions on which cases to prosecute and how to manage criminal investigations are supposed to be made free of political considerations.
Holder had his own list of candidates, which included another career prosecutor who had been his adviser on national security issues and had years more experience than Carlin working on terrorism and espionage cases, officials said. Holder didn’t know Carlin well and hadn’t worked closely with him.
Ultimately, the decision on whom to nominate for the position is the president’s alone. And Holder has since embraced Carlin — at least in public. But the rocky path to Carlin’s nomination, described in interviews with a dozen current and former Justice Department and administration officials, reveals a tense personal and political struggle over one of the most important national security positions in the government.
Carlin’s biggest advocates in the White House were Kathryn Ruemmler, the White House counsel, and Lisa Monaco, the president’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, according to current and former officials. Ruemmler and Monaco had worked with Carlin at the Justice Department and in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, where all three served at the same time as prosecutors.
Former officials said they are concerned that Carlin, who has been acting in the position since March, doesn’t speak as an independent voice for the department, but rather is aligning his positions first with the White House, and particularly with Monaco, thus undermining Holder’s authority. Two individuals drew comparisons to John Yoo, the controversial Justice Department attorney in the George W. Bush administration, who was known to have his own relationships with White House officials and was seen as operating outside channels meant to guard against political influence.
“It shouldn’t be that way,” said a former government official who doesn’t support Carlin’s nomination. “There should be some walls between the Justice Department and the White House. The White House should not have a direct feed.”
“Thus undermining Holder’s authority”……is a bad thing how? Holder has been a great attorney general? Who knows what the WH knows about what Holder’s Justice Department is up to? Wasn’t Holder a George Bush senior appointee? That makes him suspect to begin with.
Gosh, I hope this Carlin thing doesn’t distract Holder from his vigorous prosecution of big time/big money Wall St. frauds, rackets and cheaters.
Political pandering is telling your constituents exactly what they want to hear. Even though what they want to hear is nonsense rooted in myth and fantastical thinking. That is how every dictatorial demagogue in history has won legitimate political power. At present we have 435 people in the House, give or take a select few, and 100 people in the Senate, give or take 3, seeking the title of demagogue -in-chief. The guy in the WH has finally seen the light but is now a prisoner of his own stupidity. Not that he must remain so.