GOP hits Holder on leaks probe

Atty. Gen. Eric Holder on Tuesday fended off Republican demands that he appoint a special counsel outside of the Justice Department to look into national security leaks.

Holder said both he and FBI Director Robert Mueller have already been interviewed by the FBI as part of a Justice Department leak investigation.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said they want the attorney general to appoint a special counsel to look into the leaks, rather than Holder’s choices, U.S. Attys. Ron Machen and Rod Rosenstein.

Holder praised the two U.S. Attorneys as experienced and highly respected.

“We have people who have shown independence, an ability to be thorough and who have the guts to ask tough questions,” Holder told the committee.

Machen and Rosenstein were appointed to oversee investigations into who leaked information about U.S. involvement in cyberattacks on Iran and an al-Qaida plot to place an explosive device aboard a U.S.-bound flight. Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, passing up an opportunity to clarify its last Guantanamo decision, in 2008. That ruling, in Boumediene v. Bush, gave prisoners at Guantanamo a “meaningful opportunity” to challenge their detentions.

Human rights groups said the new cases presented significant questions about whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had been faithful to that instruction, and they expressed disappointment that the Supreme Court declined to intercede.