President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., served as the deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration and has considerable justice department experience. If confirmed, he would be the first African American to serve in the post.
Holder began his career with the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, where he served twelve years, investigating federal corruption. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan nominated Holder to be an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, a post he filled for five years until President Bill Clinton chose him to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, the largest such office in the country.
Holder became deputy attorney general under Janet Reno in 1997 and later served as acting attorney general during the first few weeks of the Bush administration until President Bush appointed John Ashcroft to the position. He faced criticism from some congressional Republicans for his role in Clinton's last-minute pardon of fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich. Holder told the White House he was "neutral, leaning towards favorable" on the pardon, which turned out to be Clinton's most controversial, in part because of funds donated to Clinton by Rich's former wife.
Holder argued in 2002 that detainees in the "war on terror" are not technically entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions. In an interview with CNN, Holder said the detainees should still be treated "in a very humane way and almost consistent with all of the dictates of the Geneva Convention." In a CNN interview in 2004, Holder was critical of the Bush Justice Department's use of the Patriot Act, saying it had been enforced in less-than-transparent way.
More recently, Holder has objected publicly to the Bush administration's handling of the "war on terror."...
