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Legal News

: Lawbeat

Gerstein gives DOJ its due -- and then some

By Mark Obbie

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On his blog today, Politico's Josh Gerstein shares the backstory to a report he wrote on Attorney General Eric Holder's speech at West Point last night. Justice Department officials, he writes, were "pretty unhappy" that he emphasized a portion of Holder's speech where the AG cautioned that government transparency has its limits. Gerstein thought the AG was saying something new, and significant, particularly given the timing -- the eve of a deadline to decide how much to disclose of war-on-terror legal memos. He left some of that in his second take, but after rereading the speech he decided to give more attention to the substantive focus of Holder's speech: a critique of the Bush administration's policies. But that's where the story gets even more interesting. Gerstein, a veteran legal affairs writer (formerly of the New York Sun), didn't just oblige Holder's handlers. He went them one better. He writes:

Even as I wrote that second version, though, I had a nagging sense that some of Holder's West Point broadside at the Bushies wasn't that new. Late Wednesday night, I found the speech that must have been triggering that sense of déjà vu.

It was a speech from the 2008 campaign, obviously before Holder was named AG and had to watch his words carefully. Gerstein carefully compares Holder's critiques, and finds significant omissions in the AG version, which he spells out on his blog. That's solid, independent, smart reporting.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on April 16, 2009 (boomark / email).