It seems Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer wants to do a more effective job of hunting down human rights abusers.
Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer has proposed combining the Criminal Division’s Domestic Security Section and the Office of Special Investigation. If approved by the Office of Management and Budget, the merger would represent the first major structural change in the division since Breuer took office.
The mandates of the sections have grown closer in recent years. OSI, created in 1979, has reshaped its mission from ferreting out Nazis living on American soil to hunting human rights violators who fled all corners of the world, from Rwanda to the former Yugoslavia.
DSS, established early in the Bush administration, targets human smuggling rings, immigration fraud, certain violent crimes and gun offenses, and international human rights violations. The section also has jurisdiction over crimes committed oversees by “individuals employed by or accompanying” the U.S. military.
The new entity would be called the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section. Meshing the resources of DSS and OSI could give the Criminal Division a competitive edge over U.S. Attorneys’ offices and other agencies vying to prosecute major human rights cases.
Rather than rearranging the deck chairs, maybe Breuer should just head to Alexandria and Mclean, VA to pick up Addington and Cheney.