McConnell Attacks Holder on Underwear Bomber, Justice and Security Conflict Grows

While Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told the House Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday that a terrorist attack against the United States was imminent, on the other side of Capitol Hill, Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell slammed President Barack Obama's national security policies.

Speaking to a packed auditorium inside the Heritage Foundation, McConnell criticized what he called the Obama administration's "ready, fire, aim approach" to developing national security strategy. He reserved his sharpest attacks for Attorney General Eric Holder and the administration's dismantling of the CIA's enhanced interrogation program, saying that putting the nation's top lawyer in charge of interrogating, detaining, and trying alleged enemy combatants has weakened America's ability to gather and act on intelligence.

"The Attorney General should not be running the war on terror," said McConnell. He then made a passionate call to reinstate the CIA's enhanced interrogation program, citing the treatment of failed Christmas Day underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

McConnell ripped the FBI agents who interrogated Abdulmutallab as ill-equipped and lacking the necessary language skills to question the detainee even though he spoke English. He also argued that Holder misclassified Abdulmutallab as a civilian criminal and said that reading him his rights and notifying him of his right to legal counsel obstructed the intelligence community's ability to get information about the locations, training techniques, and communications of Al Qaeda in Yemen.

A recognized public safety exception allowed the FBI to initially question Abdulmutallab without reading him his Miranda rights. When they detained him in Detroit, agents mirandized Abdulmutallab after consulting with Holder's office and Department of Justice attorneys.

"Americans wanted us to get every bit of information we could about Al Qaeda from this man," said McConnell. "Instead, the administration put a higher priority on reading him his Miranda rights and getting him an attorney."

The attorney general dismissed the assertion made by McConnell and Sens. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), and John McCain (R-Ariz.) in a January 27th letter that he ignored national security because of an unnecessary preoccupation with administering Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights.

In an open letter dated Wednesday, Holder answered Senator McConnell's demands for him to testify in front of Congress and defended his and the FBI's decision to charge Abdulmutallab criminally. "The practice of the U.S. government, followed by prior and current Administrations without a single exception," wrote Holder, "has been to arrest and detain under federal criminal law all terrorist suspects who are apprehended inside the United States."

Holder reaffirmed the administration's commitment to the law, pointing out that McConnell seemed to forget there is no lawful facility where the government can hold terrorists captured inside the United States without access to an attorney. "Victory means defeating the enemy without damaging the fundamental principles on which our nation was founded," he wrote.

Still, when given the choice between preserving the civil rights of terrorists and acquiring intelligence, McConnell left no doubt where he thinks America's priorities should lie. "No one denies that a balance must be struck between civil liberties and protecting the homeland," he said. "But . . . our priorities should be clear: keeping Americans safe should always win out."

Ben Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute specializing in government studies, said that while there's a serious policy question over how to treat terrorists arrested in the United States, the historical record is clear. "There's no debate to be had about what the practice was regarding how you can deal with those people," said Wittes. "You treat them under the criminal justice system if you capture them domestically." McConnell's demands and the administration's stance highlight a growing conflict between the intelligence world and the criminal justice system on these issues.

Holder argued that it's possible to obtain credible information without declaring a detainee an enemy combatant and using enhanced interrogation techniques. According to Wittes, the CIA's program produced huge amounts of intelligence that would have been impossible to get if interrogators were limited by the criminal justice system.

This summer the Obama administration limited how common terror suspects should be treated, revoking the CIA's standing authority to detain and interrogate enemy combatants and issuing an executive order requiring everyone – CIA included – to use only interrogation tactics described in the Army field manual. Wittes claims that there is no policy currently in place that offers specific guidelines for treating high value detainees under these limits.

"I know what happens in the last administration," said Wittes. "If you capture a high value detainee, you now know what you can't do, but it's not obvious what replaces it."

HIDEOUSLY TREASONOUS DESTROYER IN CHIEF.

But we already knew that.

Sigh.

The rights proscribed by our Constitution are universal if inalienable. Should they not apply to citizens of the world who seek our harm?

We have a document that enshrines universal principals, but want to apply it to a specific piece of turf. Is it any wonder this is a mess?

It would not disappoint me in the least if the underwear bomber were dispatched to the depths of the sea without notice, but the rule of law is not about me.

The so-called rights of an individual terrorist should never be greater than those of the individuals he seeks to harm.

Let the CIA do their job with enhanced interrogation until the sponge is dry, hand them over to a military tribunal, and then execute them speedily upon a guilty verdict.

Let them die in vain for their cause.

The rights might be “universal” is some ivory tower, detached from reality, sense. But if you look around this planet, you will see that the rights are NOT universal in country after country.

You fail to acknowledge that it is our constitution, which applies to citizens of our country. Are you suggesting that we should impose it on all other countries? The Muslim countries think that these rights are all wrong and against their religious beliefs.

Of course these rights should NOT apply to non-citizens who seek our harm. What an insane concept.

When Holder talks about how his behavior is consistent with that of the prior administration regarding the treatment of terrorists, he is speaking of people like the Shoe Bomber, Richard Reid, and Zacarias Moussaoui.

What Holder refuses to mention is that the legal structure for terrorists captured in the U.S was not in place at that time (the above mention were arrested in 2001).

Since that time, the legal structure has been developed for military tribunals and definition of such terrorists as enemy combatants (Military Commissions Act of 2006).

BTW, Obama was a vocal opponent of the Act and not only voted against it but offered an amendment to limit it to 5 years.

The Muslim countries think that these rights are all wrong...

...as does the present occupant of the White House.

The rights proscribed by our Constitution are universal if inalienable. Should they not apply to citizens of the world who seek our harm? We have a do

The rights laid out in the Constitution do not apply to other countries or residents thereof. Only a total fool would think otherwise. When it was written it was meant to apply to legal residents and citizens. Since then PC has morphed the constitution into something that covers everyone. You are just as idiotic as the liberals if you truly believe our constitution covers everyone, even illegal aliens and enenmy combatants who happen to live here pretending to be Americans.

It is self-evident from the text of the Constitution that it was written to apply specifically to the people of the United States. The principles it embodies, however, are expressed in another founding document which also serves as a base for our legal system, namely the Declaration of Independence.

Do the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” apply only when one is positioned at certain points of the globe?

The Declaration is not law.

If one man’s “pursuit of happiness” consists of blowing you and me into tiny bits, is that something we should support?

Not at all, since it infringes upon the rights of others when it comes to life itself.

The issue is at what point, and to what degree, we apply the universal principles by which our country was founded. Are they limited strictly to citizens of the United States? We’ve taken universal principles and expressed them in writing, but that does not diminish the universal nature of those rights and principles. So it is not at all ludicrous to suggest or understand they apply to all men at all times and in all places.

And yes, the Declaration of Independence is law.

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