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Holder: No surrender on rule of law

In a speech Wednesday extolling the rule of law, Attorney General Eric Holder rebuked members of the Bush administration for casually dispensing with longstanding American legal principles while pursuing the fight against terrorism.

Holder declared that officials prosecuting the war on terror, whom he did not name, “surrendered faithful obedience to the law to the circumstances of our time.”

“We will not sacrifice our values or trample on our Constitution under the false premise that it is the only way to protect our national security,” Holder said, speaking to a conference at West Point. “Discarding the very values that have made us the greatest nation on earth will not make us stronger—it will make us weaker and tear at the very fibers of who we are.”

“There simply is no tension between an effective fight against those sworn to do us harm and a respect for the most honored civil liberties that have made us who we are,” he said.

At the same time, the attorney general did offer a rare caution that President Barack Obama’s oft-stated pledge to bring transparency to the federal government has its limits.

“Even as we usher in a new period of openness and transparency, many national security decisions must by necessity be made in a manner that protects our ability to gather intelligence, investigate threats and execute wars,”