Last week, a little more than 24 hours after the FBI warned senators not to disclose the sensitive information that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was cooperating with the FBI, the White House shared the information with the news media.

Attorney General Eric Holder has been the Obama administration’s point man in revising the nation’s approach to terrorism. Holder said last summer that it was his decision to reinvestigate CIA operatives who had employed enhanced interrogation techniques during the Bush administration, although these individuals had been cleared by the Justice Department’s career prosecutors.