Under President George W. Bush, the Justice Department considered and rejected criminal charges against the Council on American-Islamic Relations for alleged support of Hamas, a knowledgeable source told POLITICO Monday.

The decision not to indict CAIR came in 2004 as prosecutors in Dallas were preparing to seek an indictment of the Holy Land Foundation and five of its officials, the source said. Some prosecutors wanted to include CAIR and others in the case at that time. However, senior Justice Department officials elected not to, the source said. (The Attorney General at the time was John Ashcroft.)

The disclosure of a Bush-era decision not to indict CAIR is noteworthy because some conservatives have alleged in recent days that a Justice Department decision last year to decline prosecution of CAIR, co-founder Omar Ahmad, and others was motivated by politics and a desire to preserve outreach efforts to U.S. Muslim groups.

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After the bombing/fbi photo

Sixteen years ago today, America was served up one horrific surprise: The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City: 168 people died.

It was shocker.

At the time — April 19, 1995 –  as a reporter at the Detroit News, I called around to federal law enforcement people, checking to see what they knew. Some speculated that it was foreign terrorists, just like in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Others suggested it had something to do with Waco. The foreign terrorist theory sounded more palatable. The idea of our own citizens committing such an atrocity seemed unlikely.

I was wrong.

Two days later, I was headed up to Decker, Mi., about two hours outside of Detroit, to check out a farm  the FBI and ATF  agents were raiding.  The farm belonged to James Nichols. His brother Terry and Tim McVeigh had spent time there. Terry Nichols and Tim McVeigh were later convicted. McVeigh was put to death.

Now, 16 years later, we’ve evolved. The  thought of one our own committing a terrorist act simply doesn’t phase us.  A lone wolf. A naturalized citizen. A convert.  An anti-government fanatic. Nothing surprises us any more.

Sixteen years isn’t a particularly noteworthy milestone. But around this time of year, I always feel like its worth noting and offering condolences to the many families who lost loved ones in Oklahoma City.

Allan Lengel

Sixteen years ago today, America was served up one horrific surprise: The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City: 168 people died.

It was shocker.

At the time — April 19, 1995 —  as a reporter at the Detroit News, I called around to federal law enforcement people, checking to see what they knew. Some speculated that it was foreign terrorists, just like in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Others suggested it had something to do with Waco. The foreign terrorist theory sounded more palatable. The idea of our own citizens committing such an atrocity seemed unlikely.

I was wrong.

Two days later, I was headed up to Decker, Mi., about two hours outside of Detroit, to check out a farm  the FBI and ATF  agents were raiding.  The farm belonged to James Nichols. His brother Terry and Tim McVeigh had spent time there. Terry Nichols and Tim McVeigh were later convicted. McVeigh was put to death.

Now, 16 years later, we’ve evolved. The  thought of one our own committing a terrorist act simply doesn’t phase us.  A lone wolf. A naturalized citizen. A convert.  An anti-government fanatic. Nothing surprises us any more.

Sixteen years isn’t a particularly noteworthy milestone. But around this time of year, I always feel like its worth noting and offering condolences to the many families who lost loved ones in Oklahoma City.

The Justice Department has jumped into the fray to try and help two Secret Service agents from being sued in a case linked to former vice president Dick Cheney.

The Associated Press reports that the  Department of Justice filed documents in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver siding with the agents –Virgil D. “Gus” Reichle Jr. and Dan Doyle — who asked that the court overturn the court’s  three-judge panel’s ruling that said Colorado resident Steven Howards could sue them.

AP reported that the Justice Department is arguing that the law protects agents when making split-second decisions when protecting a vice president and president.

AP reported that the Secret Service agents arrested Howards in 2006 after he allegedly approached Cheney at a mall outside of Denver and protested his Iraq policy and touched his shoulder.

Howards alleged in the suit that the arrest was done in retaliation. The feds never charged him and the state dropped charges.

The court panel ruled  last month  that Howards can sue agents on First Amendment grounds, the Associated Press reported. The court ruled that two other agents initially named in the suit are immune in the case.

Last month, Howard’s attorney David Lane said: “I fully intend on deposing the former vice president.”

headline after first trial

The pretrial hearing was like a “weigh in” before the big boxing match, where both sides snipe at one another.

A federal prosecutor on Monday called the very chatty ex-Ill. Gov Rod Blagojevich a ‘liar’  at a pretrial hearing in U.S. District Court in Chicago, according to the Chicago Tribune.

And U.S. District Judge James Zagel warned Blago to watch what he yaps to the media because some of those things could be used against him in the trial that begins on Wednesday.

“You can consider my remarks a red flag,” Zagel said.

Lead prosecutor Reid Schar complained about Blagojevich,  who was saying in the media that federal attorneys tried to hide evidence that might  clear him of the accusations, which include allegations that he tried to sell President Obama’s vacant Senate seat, the Tribune reported.

Schar said in court, according to the Trib:  “This is just an attempt by him to poison what’s going on. . . . At a certain point, enough is enough.”  Schar said he would like to grill Blago on  the witness stand and “confront him with his lies.”  However, it’s not clear if Blago will take the stand in his retrial. He did not in the first trial in which he was only convicted on 1 of 24 counts — for lying to the FBI.

Schar was particularly annoyed by Blago’s comments on TV in which he said the government had the power to publicly release more FBI wiretap recordings, the Tribune reported. Schar said that power resides with the judge. Blago has claimed repeatedly that the prosecutors don’t want to release all the FBI recordings, which would prove his innocence.

“We’d like some remedy for those fabrications that he’s not being called on,” he said, according to the Tribune.

Defense attorney Sheldon Sorosky countered by saying Blago  was offering up his understanding of the rules and intentionally fabricating them, according to the Trib.

Blagojevich spokesman Glenn Selig said in a statement, according to the Trib: “The governor will continue to be truthful, honest and responsible as he does everything he can to clear his name.”

FBI Spy Robert Hanssen

To the FBI, the White House, the CIA and the American people, FBI agent Robert Hanssen was nothing more than a traitor, a Russian spy who did some serious damage to national security in exchange for diamonds and cash worth $600,000.

But in the real estate world, his name means little. His five-bedroom home in Vienna, Va., a nice little suburb of Washington, is just another listing.

USA Today reports that Hanssen’s dark wood and brick split-level is up for sale for $725,000. It makes no mention online of Hanssen.

“We’re not obviously marketing to that aspect,” real estate agent Patrick Kilner told USA Today. “It’s not a salient issue.”

USA Today reports that info Hanssen provided to the Russians over 15 years resulted in the executions of at least two Russian agents working for the United States.

USA Today reported when Hanssen, now 67, pleaded guilty to espionage charges in 2001, the family home was one of the few possessions  the government did not seize. The property was assigned to Hanssen’s wife, Bernadette, whose name remains on property records.

hanssen home/llewellyn realtors

Hanssen is serving a life sentence and is currently being housed in the Supermax prison in Colorado, a far cry from his cozy home in Virginia.

Rep. Peter King/gov photo

Rep. Peter King is busting the chops of the Justice Department, claiming the department overruled fed prosecutors and FBI agents who wanted to file  charges against unindicted co-conspirators  in  a prosecution of a  Texas-based Muslim charity —  the Holy Land Foundation — which had ties to Hamas in Gaza, the Washington Times reported.

King, a New York Republican who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, sent a letter on Monday to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asking that he answer questions regarding the 2008 terrorism-financing prosecution, the Washington Times reported.

“I have been reliably informed that the decision not to seek indictments of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its co-founder Omar Ahmad; the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) was usurped by high-ranking officials at Department of Justice headquarters over the vehement and stated objections of special agents and supervisors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, who had investigated and successfully prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation case,” King stated.

King also wants to know if the White House intervened in the matter, the Times reported.

“I believe that in order to maintain the credibility of the department, there should be full transparency into the department’s decision,” King stated.

Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, issued a statement to ticklethewire.com disputing the allegations:

“The Justice Department brings prosecutions based on the facts and the evidence, nothing more or less. The investigation, prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and five of its leaders for providing material support to Hamas, and determination of whether to charge unindicted co-conspirators, were guided only by the law and the facts; any suggestion to the contrary is false and unfounded.”

“The notion that an individual suspect or organization is immune from Justice Department prosecution solely because of their affiliations, memberships or political leanings is not only false but an affront to Department prosecutors nationwide who bring charges against defendants daily without regard to such considerations.”

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