Posted on 01/21/2010 12:55:56 PM PST by Sergeant Tim
Stephen Hayes writes today in The Weekly Standard that there is no protocol in place to evaluate a terrorist captured here for their potential intelligence value and the FBI agents who arrested Flight 253 bomber Abdulmuttalab decided on their own if and when to read him Miranda warnings. Yet those agents were operating in the dark:
"Mueller testified that those FBI agents interviewed Abdulmutallab about "ongoing and other threats." What the FBI director did not mention was that his agents interviewed the terrorist without any input from the National Counterterrorism Center -- the institution we now know was sitting on top of a small mountain of not-yet-correlated information about the bomber. So whatever information Abdulmutallab provided, he gave up in response to general questions about his activities, not in response to specific questions based on the intelligence the U.S. government had already collected on him. And within 24 hours -- according to Senator Jeff Sessions, whose tough questioning [see video here] left Mueller stuttering -- Abdulmutallab was Mirandized and he stopped talking. (It would be nice to learn, from Mueller or someone else in a position to know, precisely when Abdulmutallab was read his rights.)"
Director Mueller correctly defended the FBI agents who arrested Abdulmuttalab. From everything President Obama has said to date, it is apparent that he had given no guidance to the Department of Justice to do otherwise when terrorists are captured here.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair literally slapped himself in the forehead yesterday while testifying "Duh! We never thought of that." Meaning, the current National Security Council never thought they needed to establish a protocol and disseminate guidance to federal law enforcement agents. Blair further testified that the "High Value Interrogation Group" (HIG) ... was created exactly for this purpose -- to make a decision on whether a certain person who's detained should be treated as a case for federal prosecution or for some of the other means." Only, he later wrote on the DNI's web site that, "the FBI's expertise in interrogation that will be available in the HIG once it is fully operational." (See image below.)
President Obama did not establish either a protocol or the HIG to determine when to interrogate terrorists captured here, as enemy belligerents, or when to treat them as common criminals and read them their rights. The FBI agents went with what they knew, their training and the "Bush successfully prosecuted shoe-bomber Richard Reid" talking point. The lesson of Reid was lost, that his accomplice remained free with an armed shoe-bomb for two years because Reid was allowed to lawyer up and remain silent.
What Abdulmuttalab knows and is being allowed to not say may well get people killed. If so, that buck also stops with President Obama; he is responsible for the Flight 253 post-arrest intelligence failure.
ZERO proves he knows nothing ...
I am surprised there are not protesters outside the house of Jamie Gorelick. She is the original architech of this form of surrender.
Voters need to understand just how vulnerable we are with the RATS in control.
The Bush/Obama meme is so tiresome and stupid and only serves to distract from the truth.
“Zero” Barack “Hussein” Obama is a “Lame Duck POTUS”. The American people know it, the world knows it!!! The only folks that are in complete denial is the Democrat Party. But, fear not, soon you will hear cries from the Democrat rank and file to broom this empty suit, anti-American POTUS right out of office. As soon as the slow thing liberal, socialist Democrats grasp the fact & truth that he is killing the Democrat Party, he will be forced out of office in disgrace for being the worst and most incompetent POTUS in the history of the United States of America!!!
Doesn't engender a great deal of confidence in them or their assessments.
Ask yourself: "Do you feel as safe under 0bama / Biden as you did under Bush /Cheney?"
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