Holder wins two, loses one

[Geee]

Daily Caller:

President Barack Obama has appointed a career Justice Department lawyer to lead the nation’s counterterrorism center and approved a new anti terror strategy. Both are seen as good for Attorney General Eric Holder.

The president has appointed Matthew Olsen to head the antiterrorism center. Olsen is a former deputy to Holder and an 18-year Justice Department official. He replaces Michael Leiter. The White House made the announcement July 1.

Olsen spent 16 years at the Justice Department and was then given the task by Holder of studying the records of jihadis at Guantanamo Bay. He was also appointed to oversee legal matters at the nation’s chief electronic-intelligence group, the National Security Agency. During the Bush administration, the agency was widely criticized by Democrats for monitoring international communications between U.S. residents and overseas people linked to jihadi groups. Olsen is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

The president’s new anti terror strategy is a political victory for Attorney General Eric Holder, who has waged a bureaucratic struggle to ensure lawyers and civil courts — not soldiers or intelligence agents — play the leading role in defending the nation from overseas jihadis.

“They’re trying to make their views have priority over the war-fighters,” said Hans Von Spakovsky, a senior Justice Department official during George W. Bush’s administration. “There shouldn’t be any role” for the department in fighting overseas jihadis, said Von Spakovsky. “It is something the Department of Defense should be fighting.”