The story we've been given lately is that Attorney General Eric Holder made the decision to bring terrorist suspects into the U.S. for trial on his own. He informed the president, he didn't consult him.

From Jim Lehrer's program last Friday:

JIM LEHRER: Did you run it by President Obama?

ERIC HOLDER: Just informed him of the decision...

JIM LEHRER: So, you just told him what your decision was; you didn't say, "What do you think about it, Mr. President?"

ERIC HOLDER: Nope. Told him last night -- or had relayed to him what I was going to do last night while he was on Air Force One on his way to Asia.

JIM LEHRER: Did you talk to anybody outside the government?

ERIC HOLDER: I talked to my wife...

JIM LEHRER: Yes? OK.

ERIC HOLDER: ... about what she thought. And I actually talked to my brother, who's a retired Port Authority police officer who served...

So the story is that Eric Holder made this decision without discussing it with the president, but after discussing it with his wife and brother.

Yet over a year ago, less than a week after Obama's election, the following article was published:

President-elect Barack Obama's advisers are making plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and prosecute terror suspects in the United States, a plan that the Bush administration said Monday was easier said than done.

The suggestion that Eric Holder made this decision with his wife and brother is absolutely absurd. This was clearly decided over a year ago by the president-elect's team.

If this is a decision that was made by Obama's team long ago, which appears to be the case, why exactly is Eric Holder now trying to claim ownership of this? Why is the Obama Administration letting him take ownership of something they decided a year ago? It's not like they could have possibly forgotten whose idea it was. This idea was floated before Eric Holder was even nominated as Attorney General.

So what's the purpose of this apparent attempt at revisionist history? Is it so that Holder can be blamed if it doesn't go smoothly? Is it possible they actually believe that no-one would remember that Obama's team made the suggestion within a week of his election?