IN MY SHOES: “My Father Was Killed By Terrorists Eric Holder Helped Release”
The Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee delayed a vote on whether to approve attorney general nominee Eric Holder to delve deeper into such issues as whether he planned to prosecute intelligence agents who used aggressive interrogation techniques on suspected terrorist detainees. This gives the committee until Wednesday of the coming week consider this op-ed published by the Los Angeles Times written by Joseph Connor, whose father was killed by domestic terrorists in 1975 when he was 9 years old:
[W]hile my father was at a business lunch at the historic Fraunces Tavern in New York's financial district, a bomb exploded … One of my father's colleagues was decapitated, and silverware from the table was lodged in the torsos of the other victims. The Armed Forces of National Liberation, or FALN, a Puerto Rican terrorist group, claimed responsibility.
My father was just 33. Up to that point, his life had been an American success story. The only child of immigrants he … worked his way through college and went on to a job at J.P. Morgan, a firm at which his mother had worked nights as a cleaning lady. He was a terrific father. His death has left a gaping hole in our lives.
Now my family is facing a blow of a different kind.
President-elect Barack Obama has nominated a man to be his attorney general who was closely involved in former President Clinton's decision as he was leaving office to pardon 16 FALN members convicted on conspiracy and weapons charges. …
At the time of the pardons, Eric H. Holder Jr. was deputy attorney general. In considering his department's recommendation on clemency, he met with supporters of the terrorists but ignored their victims. He pushed staff members to drop their strong opposition to a presidential pardon for the FALN members and alter a report they had prepared for the president recommending against clemency.
Incredibly, this family was touched by terrorism again on September 11, 2001, when a cousin, Steven Schlag, 41, died in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
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