. >> khalid shaikh mohammed. >> he has been a target.o say fairly, not always outside the administration, but in some cases inside, he was one of the few people with the noticeably famously reserved president who had a personal relationship with his wife, michelle obama very close and they spend time together a lot socializing. they are within every administration when someone is close to a president, there is push and pull. i think eric holder has also like to think he has a legacy of fighting for civil rights. someone pushed a president to see things on racial justice. history will tell without a doubt. it is a mixed legacy in terms of that. >> we touched on some of the pro human rights stances. the liberal elites very much liked him for the fight over whether to try khalid shaikh mohammed on u.s. soil. on other issues he was sympathetic to big business and the holder memo outlining the rules for prosecuting and putting in another controversial position. where does eric holder's legacy lie? >> i will leave that for the historians to ma

now occupying that want to animal the ones that are left khalid shaikh mohammed observation and so forth these are the worst of the worst these are the folks who are given a chance would walk in here today and blow themselves up and take as many americans as they could with. this what they believe actually a two thousand and five report by seton hall university law school found that only five percent of the detainees were captured by the u.s. with a five percent of them handed over to american forces from pakistanis and afghans in exchange for five thousand dollars bally's moreover lawrence wilkerson a former chief of staff for colin powell made a sworn declaration in two thousand and ten that top members of the government knowingly lied about these men being dangerous he said that the deliberate choice to send detainees to guantanamo was an attempt to place them outside the jurisdiction of the u.s. legal system indeed having this prison outside of u.s. soil made it easier for the government to argue that the prisoners of war and title to protections under the geneva convention and us co

guantanamo still open, khalid shaikh mohammed sheik mohamed not on trial because it could not take place. >> guantanamo should be closed by now except for the legislation blocking it. it is ridiculous that we are spending millions a person down there. and accomplishing nothing for our safety. the finest justice system in the world and we should not act like we are afraid of these people. we bring them before our courts. just as we did with abu ghraib. the son in law of osama bin laden. i remember the screams that came from some of the congress when eric holder announced he was going to go before a court in and he are not afraid of these people and we could stand up to them and we have a justice system that works. i think if it had been somebody other than eric holder, you might have run from the criticism and that would have been a huge mistake. that's why he was such a good attorney general. >> let me ask you about possible successors and the process. so the filibuster rule. i believe that is correct other than for a supreme court justice. that said, do you think that a career person wo

not notifying people about the khalid shaikh mohammed trial in new york before he announced it was a mistake. and the timing of the indictments of the chinese was a mistake. on balance, i think his tone and his professionalism and focus on race were pluses. >> brit? >> i don't think an attorney general needs to be blinded, as ben carson suggested, but i think an attorney general should be neutral in application in muy you would want to trust a judge. i don't want a lot of people feel that way about eric holder and i think they have a right not to. from the comments that george mentioned about the united states being a nation of cowards on race, to an array of other instances in which he has seemed to be on one side, he totally for example on one side of the issue that has to do with voter identification, which is a legitimate concern, balanced security is a valid concern. you wouldn't know that listening to eric holder, to him, it's all voter repression. >> when you talk about how he was partisan, i think you have to take note of the fact that -- i don't know of any attorney general

i mean had there not been such an outcry and had he been able to try khalid shaikh mohammed in federal court in the united states, by now if we're honest, those guys would probably be tried, convicted and tucked neatly away in a federal prison somewhere. because he was turned back on that decision for political reasons instead their cases continue to languish and be an international spectacle of how we don't know what we want to do with them but attorney general eric holder's list of accompl h accomplishments is a long list. on civil rights it will be remembered for not what the department of justice did under his leadership but speak bluntly and personally on hard truths about civil rights and race. >> the news of travyon martin's death and the discussions that have taken place since then reminded me of my father's words so many years ago and brought me back to a number of experiences that i had as a young man when i was pulled over twice in my car searched on the new jersey turnpike when i'm sure i wasn't speeding or when i was stopped by a police officer while simply running to catc

we didn't know that khalid shaikh mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11 was an al qaeda operative. it worries me what we don't know. because we don't think they have the ability to attack right now doesn't mean we won't be able to. i will say this. everybody is concerned about isil across two nation states. i have a slightly differently view. and the european officials are very worried about planning against us. they had an official branch of al qaeda. they are coming from multiple directions. you have skilled operatives who were dispatched by the head of al qaeda to syria and they are carefully sorting through the pile to figure out who they can use. that's the near term concern. against the insurgency, they are very popular amongst the rebels. yesterday i think it was a vote with training the rebels. they are not isil. they are opposed to isil and assad. this is a complicated game we have to worry about. i don't hear a lot of discussion. that doesn't mean i oppose it, but we have to be careful about how we do it. finally back to your point, there was a suicide bomber this year fr

. >> keep in mind, khalid shaikh mohammed, another guy who understands america because he went to college here. he was the college clown. they nicknamed him brutto, but he understands what might intimidate and motivate america. >>> meanwhile, it's hard to believe it's been this many years since president bush authorized the surge in iraq, and he did it against the grain. he did it when the american people were saying, i'm tired of this war here, it's going on forever. how do we ever get on top of the insurgency? well, the president, as you know, accepted a plan that might have been written mostly by our own general jack keane, implemented by general petraeus. and it is amazing, as you listen to what he's about to say, how pressing he was in his prediction of what would have happened had he pulled out in 2007, and what he actually predicted when we pulled out in 2011. listen to president bush and then his chief speechwriter. >> i know some in washington would like us to start leaving iraq now, begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready would be dangerous for iraq, for the