Patrick Leahy » The Republican Temple

While President Barack Obama watches his so-called national security team become politicized and partisan, some Democrats are attempting to put out the flames of Americans’ discontent with gasoline by sending a letter yesterday to the President endorsing civilian court trials for suspected terrorists.

The key signatory of the letter urging Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder to stick to their proverbial guns is none other than Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the U.S. Senate’s powerful Judiciary Committee.

“Our system of justice is strong enough to prosecute the people who have attacked us,” said the Senator known to many in the law enforcement and intelligence communties as “Leaky” Leahy.

News coming out of the White House, and reported by Fox News Channel’s national security correspondent Catherine Herridge, indicates that President Obama will take a more active role in choosing a location to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terrorists. Many security experts contacted by this writer say that Senator Leahy and other left-wing Senators are pressuring Obama to avoid adhering to Bush Administration strategies, including the use of military tribunals.

At first, Obama asked Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. to choose the site for the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed. But swift and intense criticism greeted Holder’s decision to try the self-proclaimed mastermind of the attack and his four alleged co-conspirators in a civilian courtroom in New York, according to the Washington Post.

“While indicating it wasn’t his preference, Holder left open the possibility that Mohammed’s trial could be conducted before a military commission,” the Washington Post reported Friday.

The Legend of Leaky Leahy

While polls show a majority of Americans oppose civilian trials for terrorism suspects or enemy combatants captured on the battlefield, Senator Leahy and other far-left lawmakers are stubborn in their obsession to revamp the war on terrorism right down to the terminology used to describe attacks, terror groups, and terrorists’ theology-philosophy.

It is believed that Senator Leahy is responsible for leaks to the news media that are anti-military, anti-intelligence in nature.

Throughout his long political career, Leahy revealed a propensity to leak government secrets for his own political agenda. At one point his “nasty little habit” caused his removal from his vice-chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said a former NYPD detective and military intelligence officer.

“This ‘leaker’ was kicked kicked off the Senate Intelligence Committee and he ends up chairing the Judicial Committee? Leahy should have been kicked out of the Senate by the voters in Vermont, not given an important chairmanship,” said Det. Sidney Farnces

Here’s a brief history of Sen. “Leaky” Leahy’s experience in handling top security information:

Senator Patrick Leahy was annoyed with the Reagan administration’s military strategy in the 1980s. At the time he was vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Therefore, “Leaky Leahy,” threatened to sabotage classified strategies he didn’t like.

Leahy “inadvertently” disclosed a top-secret communications intercept during a 1985 television interview. The intercept had made possible the capture of the Arab terrorists who had hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered a American citizen. But Leahy’s leak cost the life of at least one Egyptian “asset” involved in the operation.

In July 1987, it was reported that Leahy leaked secret information about a 1986 covert operation planned by the Reagan administration to topple Libya’s Moammar Gaddhafi. US intelligence officials stated that Leahy sent a written threat to expose the operation directly to then-CIA Director William Casey. Weeks later, news of the secret plan turned up in the Washington Post, causing it to be aborted.

A year later, as the Senate was preparing to hold hearings on the Iran-Contra scandal, Leahy had to resign his Intelligence Committee post after he was caught leaking secret information to a reporter. The Vermont Democrat’s Iran-Contra leak was considered to be one of the most serious breaches of secrecy in the committee’s 28-year history.

After Leahy’s resignation, the Senate Intelligence Committee decided to restrict access to committee documents to a security-enhanced meeting room.

Former Green Beret officer, now columnist and radio talk host, Geoff Metcalf is on record saying Leahy should have been indicted, arrested and tried long ago.

He’s known as a man who’s more than willing to speakout on issues he knows absolutely nothing about. In fact, while attempting to sound as if he were a legal scholar, he’s made several flubs. During a debate on the Geneva Conventions, for example, he finally admitted he wasn’t familiar with the provisions he was debating.

In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, Leahy headed the Senate’s negotiations on the 2001 anti-terrorism bill, the USA Patriot Act. He was more concerned with protecting the civil liberties of the enemy than providing protection for Americans.

Patrick Leahy is not known as a very honest man either. When Senator Dick Durbin compared US military personnel to Nazis, Leahy said that Durbin made no such comment. Then when told Durbin indeed made the statement on the floor of the US Senate, Leahy amended his own statement claiming Durbin’s comments were taken out of context. When the Durbin tirade was shown to Leahy, he began to denigrate Bush by saying he hurt the Iraqis as much as did Saddam Hussein.

Within the Beltway, Leahy is known as an extremely abrasive and “sneaky” man. He’s the only senator in recent history to have an otherwise mellow Vice President tell him to “go f— yourself.”

Image: Life

Filed under: The Sermon

Tags: Barack Obama, civilian court, Democrats, Eric Holder, Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, terrorist trials

Jim sent this in:

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) — known within law enforcement and intelligence circles as “Leaky Leahy” — is sharply critical of President Barack Obama’s decision, announced last week by the US State Department, to decline joining the international treaty to ban anti-personnel landmines.

“This is a default of U.S. leadership and a detour from the clear path of history,” Leahy said in a press statement.

“The United States is the most powerful nation on earth. We don’t need these weapons and most of our allies have long ago abandoned them. It is a lost opportunity for the United States to show leadership instead of joining with China and Russia and impeding progress. The United States took some of the earliest and most effective steps to restrict the use of landmines. We should be leading this effort, not sitting on the sidelines,” said Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Leahy’s supporters say that for two decades Leahy has been the leading U.S. officeholder advocating an international ban on the use of anti-personnel landmines. Leahy claims his legislation, including the world’s first export ban on landmines, was a catalyst in launching the international treaty effort.

The Vermont senator went on to say that the Obama Administration’s review of the earlier decision to stand apart from the treaty “can only be described as cursory and half-hearted.”

The Obama Administration’s decision was announced on the eve of an international meeting this weekend in Cartagena, Colombia, to assess compliance with the ten-year-old treaty.

Senator Leahy gained the nickname “Leaky Leahy” because of his propensity for leaking classified intelligence to the news media if he did not agree with a policy decision.

During the Reagan Administration, at the height of the Cold War, Leahy was forced to step down as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee because he leaked classified information to a news reporter in an attempt to thwart a decision by then-President Ronald Reagan.

Filed under: Temple Tidbits, The Red Skinny

Tags: anti-personnel landmines, Barack Obama, international treaty, Patrick Leahy