WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. expressed serious concern Wednesday about Americans’ safety from possible revenge attacks for Osama bin Laden’s death and expects the terrorist watch list to be expanded, based on evidence collected in the al Qaeda leader’s compound.
Mr. Holder also said the raid was “entirely lawful and consistent with our values.”
The attorney general told the Senate Judiciary Committee in testimony that he thinks bin Laden’s death ultimately will make the United States safer. Meanwhile, he’s trying to address the risk that terrorists will try to avenge bin Laden’s killing.
Mr. Holder said he had held a conference call earlier this week with U.S. attorneys nationwide to go through steps he wants them to take to be on their toes. He did not specify what those steps are.
Mr. Holder also said officials from his department are working with intelligence officers to examine evidence collected from bin Laden’s residence in Pakistan. He said he expects names will be added to the terrorist watch list and no-fly list because of it.
The attorney general agreed with Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, that there was a sound legal basis for the raid.
“Let me make something very clear: The operation in which Osama bin Laden was killed was lawful,” Mr. Holder told the senators. The raid “was justified as an action of national self-defense” against “a lawful military target,” he said.
White House officials earlier said the team that carried out the raid was prepared to take bin Laden alive if he was willing to surrender, but instead he resisted capture. Mr. Holder reiterated that.
“It was a kill-or-capture mission,” Holder said. “He made no attempt to surrender. And I tend to agree with you that even if he had, there would be a good basis on the part of those very brave Navy SEAL team members to do what they did in order to protect themselves and the other people who were in that building.”
Mr. Holder said the SEALs minimized the loss of life as much as possible. “I’m proud of what they did,” Mr. Holder added. “And I really want to emphasize that what they did was entirely lawful and consistent with our values.”
Mr. Holder was under a second day of oversight questioning on Capitol Hill; Tuesday he was questioned by the House Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican and the committee’s ranking GOP member, questioned Mr. Holder about a chart he said was prepared by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in response to a controversy over the efforts of U.S. agents who hunt gun traffickers along the U.S. border with Mexico.
The chart showed 15 people indicted in January were responsible for buying 1,318 guns from Arizona dealers after being identified as targets of “Fast and Furious,” the agency’s name for its anti-gun-trafficking program. The chart dated March 29 said only 250 of these weapons had been recovered in the United States.
Mr. Holder replied that he was seeing the document for the first time at the hearing, so he could not answer questions about it.
Mr. Grassley and Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, also criticized Mr. Holder for the decision not to prosecute one of Justice’s former attorneys who tipped off the media about the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program. They said they were disappointed to read news reports last week that Thomas Tamm will not be prosecuted for the leak that he acknowledged making to the New York Times and that then-President George W. Bush called a breach of national security.
“It just seems to me that it sends a very, very bad signal that leaking is OK and you aren’t going to get prosecuted for it,” Mr. Grassley said.
Mr. Holder said that the decision was made by career lawyers in the department, that he did not sign off on it, and that he couldn’t comment on why Mr. Tamm wasn’t prosecuted.
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