In NY Times op-ed, Finder finds contradiction in consistent statements to assert Holder flip-flopped

SUMMARY: Editor's Note: After this item was posted on August 30, we received an email from Joseph Finder, the author of the op-ed, taking issue with the item. Mr. Finder contends that we were wrong in asserting that Mr. Holder's statements in 2002 and 2008 were consistent. After review, we agree with Mr. Finder that we went too far in asserting that the two statements were consistent; the facts do not establish that. However, our criticism of the omission of a key part of Mr. Holder's 2002 comments remains valid. Mr. Finder omitted the part of Mr. Holder's 2002 comments in which Holder made clear that he shared then-Secretary of State Powell's position that, in Mr. Holder's words: "[T]hese are not people who are prisoners of war as that has been defined, but who are entitled to, in our own interests, entitled to be treated in a very humane way and almost consistent with all of the dictates of the Geneva Convention." By leaving out that statement, Mr. Finder denied his readers information that was relevant to an assessment of Mr. Holder's views on detainee treatment, then and now.


The New York Times published an op-ed by Joseph Finder, who contrasted statements Attorney General Eric Holder made in 2002 and in 2008 to suggest that after originally stating that the United States government should not extend rights consistent with the Geneva Convention to detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Holder subsequently flip-flopped. But Holder's comments are completely consistent; Finder suggests otherwise by reporting Holder's 2002 statement that detainees were "not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention," but ignoring his statement later in the same interview that they are nonetheless "entitled to be treated in a very humane way and almost consistent with all of the dictates of the Geneva Convention."

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