AG Holder Works to Jay-Z During the Day, Sound of Silence at Night
Attorney General Eric Holder makes his most difficult decisions in the middle of the night, including his determination to try Sept. 11 detainees in New York.
Holder picked the New York venue at 1 a.m. at his home while eating Chips Ahoy, the Washington Post reports. The newspaper notes his routine one evening, when Holder sat down at his kitchen table at 11 p.m. after his wife and daughter were already asleep.
The attorney general listens to Tupac and Jay-Z at his office at the Justice Department, but at night the scene is so quiet that Holder notices when the refrigerator motor stops humming, the story says. He turns off all the lights in the house, save for the bulb above the granite kitchen table. Then he spreads his legal papers across the table and begins to work.
“I need a place and time to step away from the opinions and other voices, and almost hear my own voice,” he tells the newspaper.
The Post covered Holder’s routine as part of its story on President Obama’s “nighthawks,” the top officials who guard the nation’s security. “Of all the nighthawks, Holder occupies the loneliest perch,” the story says. “He is the president’s friend, yet as the government’s chief law enforcer, he has to stand aloof. White House aides roll their eyes behind his back; Hill critics roll their eyes to his face.”
