He [ANDY MCCARTHY] was the lead prosecutor 15 years ago in one of the country’s biggest terrorism trials: a group of men led by a blind Egyptian sheik had plotted to blow up the United Nations, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels and other city landmarks. “Are you ready to surrender the rule of law to the men in this courtroom?” the prosecutor, Andrew C. McCarthy, told the jury in Federal District Court in Manhattan; ultimately, the 10 defendants were convicted.
But last Dec. 5, Mr. McCarthy, who is no longer in government, joined a group of speakers outside the same courthouse rallying against the Obama administration’s decision to bring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to Manhattan for a civilian trial.
“A war is a war,” Mr. McCarthy declared. “A war is not a crime, and you don’t bring your enemies to a courthouse.”... Mr. McCarthy said he understood why the office pursued the prosecutions. “I mean that’s the ethos of the place — that you want to do the cutting-edge case.” But, looking back, he said, he questioned the focus, particularly given that Al Qaeda continued to escalate its attacks. He cited the 2000 bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 American servicemen, and Sept. 11.
“We became headquarters for counterterrorism in the United States,” he said. “Not the C.I.A. Not anyplace in Washington. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.”
“From the country’s perspective,” he said, “it’s not a good thing.” A prosecutor’s job, he added, “is not the national security of the United States.”
In June 1998, the office secretly indicted Osama bin Laden. Three months later, Al Qaeda blew up the two embassies.
“I mean, we could go into the grand jury and indict him three times a week,” Mr. McCarthy said. “But to do anything about it, you needed the Marines. You didn’t need us.”
In a November 1998 essay for The Weekly Standard, he offered one of his earliest public pronouncements of where his thinking was going. “In the main, terrorism is a military problem, not a criminal-justice issue,” he wrote.
Ms. White, who was the United States attorney from 1993 to 2002, declined to discuss Mr. McCarthy’s comments. But in a 2008 panel, Ms. White, who has said she favors military commissions, made clear she agreed with Mr. McCarthy’s view that the prosecutions had not deterred attacks. She said “9/11 happened despite all those cases.”
She cited the indictment her office obtained after the 1998 embassy bombings; it listed Mr. bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahri and other Qaeda leaders. “They were on the Ten Most Wanted List two and a half years or three years before 9/11 happened,” she said.
“I mean, the criminal justice system didn’t succeed even though it proceeded according to the rules. Tough prosecutions. It’s not enough.”
MCCARTHY WAS A VISIONARY IN 1998.
OBAMA AND HOLDER DON'T JUST HAVE A 9/10/01 MENTALITY; THEY HAVE A PRE-1998 MENTALITY.
HOLDER SHOULD BE FIRED. OBAMA COULD/SHOULD HIRE MARY JO WHITE.
MCCARTHY IS A NATIONAL TREASURE. RTWT.
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