"We are being asked to choose," he said, "between prosecuting terrorist acts that have been completed and preventing terrorist attacks that are planned for the future".
Holder wouldn't say where the 9/11 defendants will ultimately be prosecuted, he did defend the track record of civilian federal courts, which he said have prosecuted close to 400 terrorists since 9/11, relying on recently-released Justice Department numbers.
As for the government, he said, "They prosecute people for being gay, but there is no law against stealing 14 million".
There's the difficult-to-prosecute "he said, she said" nature of many sex crimes.
Those who ignored the warning, he said, would be prosecuted.
He said he would prosecute cronyism among private contractors and use the settlement money to pay for more police officers.
Its task, he said, was "to prosecute Serbs" and "to falsify modern Serb history".
It came to him in the late '90s, he said, after he prosecuted Ronnie Earl Seymour in the killing of Nadga Schexnayder and her mother during a domestic dispute in 1995.
"We've always got discretion about whether to prosecute or not to prosecute," he said.
In an interview, he said he had recommended prosecuting eight ministers, but had been blocked by either the courts or the attorney general.
