Posted on 04/12/2008 8:47:35 PM PDT by nuconvert
FBI chief blames Britain’s laws for the ‘dark hole’ in terror intelligence
13th April 2008
The war on terror is being hindered by restrictive British law which has created a "dark hole of intelligence", the director of the FBI has claimed.
Robert Mueller, America's top counter-terrorist official, said in an exclusive interview that he sometimes felt "frustration" at MI5 and Scotland Yard's inability to obtain critical information from suspects.
He blamed Britain's banning of plea-bargaining – which, in America, means suspects can receive much lighter sentences in return for revealing everything they know about other members of their cell and their international links.
"If you talk to our British counterparts, it's clear that people questioned about the training camps and the individuals who run the training camps have not been co-operating," said Mr Mueller, 63.
"The information they must have would bear directly on the threat situation in the UK and the situation in Pakistan, which right now is the key to thwarting successful attacks.
"All of us would like a clearer view of what's happening in Pakistan and so that's a frustration."
Mr Mueller, made FBI chief a week before the 9/11 attacks, spoke after talking about counter-terrorism in London last week to an audience including MI5 chief Jonathan Evans and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair.
His comments are a clear attempt to influence debate in Britain, where the Government is trying to extend the period that terrorist suspects can be held without charge from 28 to 42 days.
But plea-bargaining would mean that would be unnecessary, said Mr Mueller, adding that he had "no problem" with the US limit of two days before a terror suspect had to be charged.
Under the American plea-bargaining system, suspects are bound by a rigid contract, so that if it later emerges that they have not given up all their relevant knowledge, their deal is void.
Mr Mueller said that although leads opened up by plea-bargains in America had proven vital in preventing attacks and obtaining convictions in Britain, terrorists arrested and convicted in the UK were keeping invaluable secrets to themselves in their prison cells.
He cited Mohammed Babar, a Pakistani-American who, having admitted plotting attacks in New York, went on to give the FBI the tip that led to Scotland Yard's Operation Crevice, the 2004 arrest of seven men in Surrey who were keeping explosives in a garage and planning to blow up the Bluewater shopping centre and the Ministry of Sound nightclub.
Babar gave evidence at their 2006 trial, where all seven were convicted, and later against the five convicted over the 21/7 attacks in London in 2005.
"He is a product of the plea-bargain system," said Mr Mueller. "He saw it to his advantage to reduce the sentence he'd serve. I'm not certain my British counterparts have had anyone who has given the same amount of information, despite the number of arrests they have made over the past five years, because of the system here."
He contrasted Babar with Dhiren Barot, the UK citizen jailed in Britain for 30 years in 2006 for plotting attacks in America, where he had carried out detailed surveillance.
Mr Mueller said Barot had spent long periods in Pakistan and was "an example of someone with a wealth of knowledge who would have had information that would have been very relevant to cases in America".
But Barot, he added, had not co-operated at all and the FBI had been unable to interview him.
Mr Mueller said he expected "a majority" of terrorist suspects in America to co-operate, making plea-bargaining one of his most useful weapons.
He added that the mere knowledge that such deals could be done tended to disrupt cells' ability to function because members were more reluctant to trust each other.
Can’t be. We have been told that only the harshest of methods are used in America to obtain critical information.
So, we’re complaining that the UK is needlessly “tough” on these terrorists, by throwing the book at them without a chance for a reduced sentence?
I can argue the UK is at least standing on principle.
Apparently, in the US, you could rape twenty women and get off with 30 days probation if you know someone else was going to commit a crime.
Waterboard them
BTTT
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