Posted on 01/21/2010 8:58:49 PM PST by smoothsailing
January 22, 2010
It seems like a pretty simple question. Who made the decision to charge Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused terrorist arrested for trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day, as an everyday criminal, as opposed to an enemy combatant?
After all, Abdulmutallab was trained by al Qaeda, equipped with an al Qaeda-made bomb, and dispatched by al Qaeda to bring down the airliner and its 278 passengers. Even though the Obama administration has mostly abandoned the term "war on terror," the president himself has said clearly that the United States is at war with al Qaeda. So who decided to treat Abdulmutallab as a civilian, read him the Miranda warning, and provide him with a government-paid lawyer -- giving him the right to remain silent and denying the United States potentially valuable intelligence that might have been gained by a military-style interrogation?
This week that simple question -- Who? -- became more complicated after several of the administration's top anti-terrorism officials testified on Capitol Hill. The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, said he wasn't consulted before the decision was made. The director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, said he wasn't consulted, either. The secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, said she wasn't consulted. And the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, said he wasn't consulted.
"The decision was made by the agents on the ground," Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, referring to the officials who apprehended Abdulmutallab when the plane landed in Detroit. American agents questioned the accused terrorist briefly before he was taken to a hospital to be treated for burns suffered in the attempt to set off explosives hidden in his underwear. After that, Mueller testified, "in consultation with the Department of Justice and others in the administration," the agents read him his rights.
And that was that. "Isn't it a fact, that after Miranda was given ... the individual stopped talking?" Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asked Mueller.
"He did," Mueller answered. But Mueller declined to say who made the decision to grant Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent.
The issue is enormously important because Abdulmutallab, newly trained by al Qaeda in the terrorist group's latest hot spot, Yemen, likely knows things that would be very useful to American anti-terrorism investigators. He's not some grizzled old terrorist who's been sitting in Guantanamo Bay since 2003 and doesn't have any new intelligence. He's fresh material. Yet he is protected by U.S. criminal law from having to answer questions.
Why? Republicans on the Judiciary Committee increasingly believe there is only one person who can answer: Attorney General Eric Holder.
It was Holder who made the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a criminal trial in New York. It is Holder who has expressed his desire to grant full American constitutional rights to foreign terrorists. It is Holder who is leading the administration's sputtering effort to move some Guantanamo inmates to the United States. And it is Holder who is apparently cutting other parts of the government out of crucial terrorism decisions like the treatment of Abdulmutallab.
"These days, all roads lead to the attorney general," says one well-placed Republican source in the Senate. "They seem to have aggregated quite a bit of power inside Main Justice." The problem is, the Holder Justice Department appears to be handling terrorism issues from a defense-attorney perspective, and doing so without the input of the government's other terrorism-fighting agencies.
That was the message of Wednesday's testimony from Blair, Leiter, Napolitano, and Mueller, all of whom were out of the loop on the Adbulmutallab decision. Their accounts left a number of Republican senators shaken; as the GOP lawmakers see it, the decision to read Abdulmutallab Miranda rights was a dreadful mistake, one that could have serious consequences down the line. There should be some accountability.
So on Thursday all seven Republicans on the Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Holder asking for a full explanation: Who made the decision and why, and whether the administration now has "a protocol or policy in place for handling al Qaeda terrorists captured in the United States."
Republicans were troubled by the decision even before Wednesday's testimony showed that major administration figures knew nothing about it. Now, the lawmakers want to know what happened, and they believe the only person who can tell them is Holder.
Byron York, The Examiner's chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blog posts appears on www.ExaminerPolitics.com ExaminerPolitics.com.
Eric Holder wants to make sure that his old firm and other cronies will make a fortune representing these terrorists..it is business to them. With out money.
This perp has a rich father..tell him to pay.
Here’s more from Byron York - just posted.
I’ll bet the Senators won’t get an answer from Holder. He’ll come up with something similar about privileged information he cited in the Black Panther fiasco.
So that his former Law Firm can make Milions from US defending this scum.
or
Holder is anti-American like his boss Obummer.
“Eric Holder wants to make sure that his old firm and other cronies will make a fortune representing these terrorists..it is business to them. With out money.”
http://njteapartycoalition.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-not-try-khalid-sheikh-mohammed-in.html
Certainly, not everyone has done a 180 on this. Attorney General Holder was never a supporter of military tribunals. As he said, “after 8 years of delay”, we are finally moving forward”. It is true. Very few military tribunals were ever carried out due to leftist attorneys’ attempts to derail the proceedings with legal challenges. Many of these attorneys are in the Obama Justice Department today – including Eric Holder, a former partner in Covington & Burling LLP. Covington and Burling represented at least 18 Guantanamo detainees, donating over 3,000 FREE hours of legal service, making Holder’s claim of “8 years of delay” even more incredible.
Countless lawsuits delayed the military trials. These same delays, created by law firms like Covington and Burling, are the Obama administration’s justification for holding civilian trials.
//
How close are Togo West and Holder?
(no link)
Administration Gets a High-Level ‘Aggie’
Washington Post - Thursday, November 15, 2001
Author: Judy Sarasohn
EXCERPT
Jonathan D. Blake, chairman of Covington ‘s management committee, said the firm signed up (Frank) Hunger because of “his trial experience, his DOJ background, his legislative savvy and the fact we can have some fun together. We think he’s a good guy.”
For his part, Hunger said he was attracted to the firm because of the opportunity to help map strategy for clients and litigation and to manage cases. He noted that a number of his friends are at the firm, including former deputy attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. and former Army secretary Togo West Jr.
Good, maggief, thanks for bringing that here.
And now we have WH confirmation that Holder was the culprit.
Wonder if he has an off shore account that money is being put into.
Liz are there any signs of money laundering here?
Indeed. Several “interests” in Cayman Islands, Here;s one:
Covington & Burling LLP | Biographies | Meera ...Covington & Burling LLP 265 Strand London WC2R 1BH Tel ... onshore and offshore jurisdictions including the UK, Jersey, Guernsey, Cayman Islands ...
www.cov.com/mshah ·
Former Army Secretary Togo D. West Jr., who co-led a Pentagon review of the shooting, dismissed concerns that Maj. Hasan's religion was a factor in performance reviews during his career as an Army medical counselor.
When asked whether the immediate problem at Fort Hood, Texas, was Islamist radicalization, Mr. West declined to single out Islamists. "Our concern is not with the religion," he told reporters at the Pentagon. "It is with the potential effect on our soldiers' ability to do their job."
Mr. West said "radicalization of any sort" is the issue and that "our concern is with actions and effects, not necessarily with motivations."
Muslim question persists in Army shooting--Signs missed at Fort Hood
Thank you, jazusamo. Togo’s report was a complete sham.
Holder’s DOJ must be dismantled.
The need to recuse themselves from participating. This TOG0 guy is a fraud. We paid him and Obummer wrote his report.
Where is the MSM on this issue. this a Treason when you read TOGO’s report on Hassan.
Treason by Holder, Obummer and TOGO.
Yes it was a complete sham.
Holder’s DOJ is also a sham. He and his political heads do whatever he feels like or is told to and the law be damned. He is truly scary in the fact that the Dems in Congress and Zer0 back him up.
I don't see how Holder can avoid being severely damaged in this inquiry. Either he had no protocol in place in which case he was an exceedingly negligent executive or he did have one and it permitted the terrorist to be treated as a criminal, depriving us of potentially important national security information for some lamebrained notion of international justice, a notion not contained in any treaty nor warranted by common sense..
Thanks for posting, maggief.
Beyond the money to be made by his law firm, there’s Holder’s anti-American, pro-terrorist record going back at least as far as the FALN pardons in the Clinton years.
Thanks, Smooth...As usual Clarice is dead on the money and I have to believe he has a protocol to treat them as criminals.
Yes, Holder and his DOJ have politicized terrorism and put our nation’s security at an unimaginable high risk. Who’s going to prosecute the DOJ? Surely not the democrat controlled senate. Holder has to be removed from office along with all his minions.
Why refer to the enemy as an “enemy combatant” when he is in reality the enemy? During WWII did we refer to Nazis and the Japanese as “enemy combatants?” No. They WERE the enemy.
Today, both the Japanese and the Germans are our friends and allies. Why? Because we crushed them. We killed maimed and multilated everything in their midst until they unconditionally surrendered. But, somehow, today, muslims who will kill us are exempt from this status. Until we recognize them as an enemy, they will continue to kill us at will.
Many ask why are we refusing to accept that muslims are our enemy? Some argue Islam is a religion of peace. If you accept that premise, then you are as good as dead.
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