The president can fire the attorney general

NOTE: The last paragraph in the article by Michael Barone says it all: "If Barack Obama really meant it when he said that he didn’t want to see prosecutions of CIA interrogators for acts committed long ago, for which they were cleared long ago, he has a ready alternative: he can give Eric Holder the same treatment Harry Truman gave J. Howard McGrath."

The president can fire the attorney general

By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
08/28/09 2:47 PM EDT

Obama administration spokesmen are portraying the president as unable to overrule Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to have a special prosecutor determine whether to prosecute CIA interrogators who were cleared by Department of Justice career attorneys back in 2004. “This was not something the White House allowed, this was something the AG decided,” a White House spokesman said.
Utter nonsense.
The attorney general serves at the pleasure of the president, and the president can determine that a prosecution would undermine the national security—a subject on which he has a wider perspective and a greater responsibility than the attorney general—and order that it not go forward.

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