Morale has tanked at the Justice Department’s counterterrorism division, a well-informed source tells me. These are the officials who oversee the federal government’s terror prosecutions around the country — the part of the war on terror that involves actually locking up real terrorists. Why? The administration doesn’t seem focused on that part, he says.
These Justice guys are at the business end of the domestic war on terror, but they haven’t seen much real action, and that’s got to burn. While the NSA sifts through millions of phone records, and the FBI runs down tens of thousands of mostly useless tips, federal prosecutors have only fielded a few hundred cases since 9/11. And even those are mostly chump change: Of 510 cases brought by the Feds in the past five years, they’ve won only four convictions on terror charges, according to one study.
But the complaints aren’t about the stats, my source says. It’s the leadership vacuum that keeps them from fighting the good fight. “There’s widespread dismay at the adminisration’s complete lack of focus and ability to get anything done,” he said. “There’s no coordination. Nothing actually happens. It’s all the same [expletive].”
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