Great GQ Piece Re: Holder "Hope. Change. Reality."

<...> In the months since Holder lost custody of the <KSM> trial, his place in the administration has only become more conflicted. In some respects, he has enjoyed an extraordinary year. With an infusion of more than one hundred new employees at the Civil Rights Division, for example, and a budget increase of $22 million per year, the CRD has grown faster and accomplished more than at any other time since the 1960s. In the fiscal year that ended in September, the criminal section brought a record number of cases, the housing section brought its largest case in history, and the CRD won the largest settlement ever awarded in a lending-discrimination suit, more than $6 million on behalf of 2,500 African-American homebuyers. But the most telling measure of the CRD's recovery may be its staff. "Virtually every section is bringing back people who were here before," says division head Tom Perez. "The diaspora have returned."

Yet on national security, Holder continues to struggle for footing. In case after case, he seems to have reconciled himself to policies that he would have once condemned. In January, after a review by the Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that the authors of the torture memos had committed professional misconduct, Holder allowed the supervisor of that office, David Margolis, to overturn the committee's conclusion and absolve the lawyers of wrongdoing. Sources close to Holder say that he was disappointed by Margolis's decision and believed the finding of misconduct was correct—but was unwilling to overrule a nonpolitical employee on such a sensitive issue. That seems reasonable, except that other DOJ sources say it's ridiculous to portray Margolis as nonpolitical. "His whole approach," one longtime DOJ insider told me, "is skewed by his desire to protect the department from embarrassment."

In April, Holder watched his nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel, where the torture memos originated, withdraw from consideration after more than a year of painful stalemate in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Although Dawn Johnsen refuses to blame Holder or Obama for allowing her nomination to fail, she says a primary objection among Senate Republicans was her opposition to torture. As a law professor during the Bush years, Johnsen was vehement in her criticism of the OLC opinions. "That played a big role in the failure of my nomination," she told me from her cell phone as she made the long drive home to Indiana this summer. "But I have no regrets about taking those positions." Two Republican staffers on the committee confirmed Johnsen's explanation. Six years after the OLC memos, the only lawyer to be punished for the torture policy is one who strenuously opposed it. <...> GQ}
[br />The whole (long) article is worth reading.