He was the lead prosecutor 15 years ago in one of the country's biggest terrorism trials: a group of men led by a blind Egyptian sheik had plotted to blow up the United Nations, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels and other city landmarks. “Are you ready to surrender the rule of law to the men in this courtroom?' the prosecutor, Andrew C. McCarthy, told the jury in Federal District Court in Manhattan in a closing argument. Ultimately, the 10 defendants were convicted. But last Dec. 5, Mr. McCarthy, who is no longer in government, joined a group of speakers outside the same courthouse rallying against the Obama administration's decision to bring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to Manhattan for a civilian trial. “A war is a war,' Mr. McCarthy declared. “A war is not a crime, and you don't bring your enemies to a courthouse.'
In the debate over how and where to prosecute Mr. Mohammed and other Sept. 11 cases, few critics of the Obama administration have been more fervent in their opposition than Mr. McCarthy, a 50-year-old lawyer from the Bronx who had built a reputation as one of the country's formidable terrorism prosecutors. Now he has a different reputation: harsh critic of the system in which he had his greatest legal triumph.
Mr. McCarthy has relentlessly attacked the administration for supporting civilian justice for terrorism suspects. He has criticized the military commissions system and called for creation of a national security court. After the arrest of the suspect in the Christmas bomb plot, he wrote, “Will Americans finally grasp how insane it is to regard counterterrorism as a law-enforcement project rather than a matter of national security?'
To his detractors, he is just another partisan commentator whose views can be easily dismissed. “When I read his stuff, I say, ‘Is he running for office, or does he want a show on Fox?' ' said Joshua L. Dratel, a defense lawyer who has represented many terrorism defendants. “I can't figure it out.' But his supporters argue that his background distinguishes him from pundits on the left and the right. “It certainly adds credibility to what he has to say,' said Michael B. Mukasey, attorney general under President George W. Bush and also the presiding judge in the 1995 trial of the sheik.
Debra Burlingame, an organizer of the December rally, whose brother, Charles F. Burlingame III, was the pilot of the hijacked plane that was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, said: “He's done a lot of heavy lifting on our behalf. This fight gets very tiring, and Andy is one of those people that truly inspires and keeps me going.'
Fellow alumni of the United States attorney's office for the Southern District of New York have mixed views about Mr. McCarthy, who also writes on topics like abortion and overhauling health care. “His critics view him as a right-wing blogger,' said Anthony S. Barkow, a former terrorism prosecutor in the office who now runs a center on criminal law at New York University. Mr. Barkow said he had stopped reading Mr. McCarthy on topics other than national security. “I have to give him credit for being willing to reject his past a bit,' he said, “and be out there so vehemently against something he was so integrally a part of.'
Through a spokesman, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. declined to comment about Mr. McCarthy. When asked about him during an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee in November, Mr. Holder replied that he was there “to talk about facts and evidence, real American values, and not the kinds of polemics that he seems prone to.'
“I'm not worried about Mr. McCarthy,' Mr. Holder said.