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Holder: I Made Decision To Charge Botched Bomber WASHINGTON (CBS) ― Attorney General Eric Holder said that he made the decision to charge the Christmas Day terror suspect in the U.S. civilian system. The Obama administration has come under recent attack by Republicans that the Nigerian man who attempted to blow up a Northwest airliner on U.S. soil on Christmas Day should have been tried as a terrorist instead of having the same rights as a U.S. citizen in court. Republicans have said the move to try Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in civilian court gives him the right to withhold information,...

It only took a public thrashing to get Obama and pals to figure out that hey, maybe we want to get this Christmas Day Bomber to cooperate after all: The Nigerian man accused of trying to use a bomb hidden in his underwear to bring down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day has been cooperating with investigators since last week, discussing his contacts in Yemen and providing intelligence in multiple terrorism investigations, officials said Tuesday. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s cooperation could prove to be a national security victory and a political vindication for President Barack Obama, who has been under fire...

After being embarrassed by a report on the breakdown of counterterrorism efforts before Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded a Northwest flight in Amsterdam for Detroit and a series of Congressional appearances that demonstrated a lack of communication in the decision to treat the terrorist as a criminal rather than an enemy at war, the White House has begun to push back.  Citing unnamed “officials,” the AP reports that the FBI and the CIA have begun to get information from Abdulmutallab despite having clammed up after getting Mirandized.  The key, they claim, was to get his family involved in breaking his resistance:...

The Nigerian man accused of trying to use a bomb hidden in his underwear to bring down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day has been cooperating with investigators since last week and has provided fresh intelligence in multiple terrorism investigations, officials said Tuesday. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's cooperation could prove to be a national security victory and a political vindication for President Barack Obama, who has been under fire from lawmakers who contend the administration botched the case by giving Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, rather than interrogating him as a military prisoner. In the days following the failed bombing,...

Family members of Christmas Day airline bomb suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab traveled to the U.S. in recent weeks and persuaded him to start talking again to federal agents, Obama administration officials said Tuesday. The officials provided some of the first behind-the-scenes details of how they handled Mr. Abdulmutallab's case, following criticism from Republicans and others that the government should have done more to extract intelligence from him. The Nigerian man was charged in December with attempting to detonate a bomb aboard a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit from Amsterdam. Federal law-enforcement officials said Mr. Abdulmutallab has provided "valuable intelligence" in...

It might just be me, but in my humble opinion, you simply DON'T advertise what is, or isn't, being said by an enemy of the state since that info can and will be used by the enemy to adjust strategy. Since it's being advertised he's talking and there is "actionable intelligence" being gathered, it seems to me that any information he's providing is totally useless since adjustments have already been made. Let people complain that nothing is being done, but you needn't advertise the success, if any. I wonder how much success the WOT under Bush had that we never...

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man accused of trying to blow up a jet airplane on Christmas Day, has been providing FBI interrogators with useful intelligence about his training and contacts since last week, Obama administration sources said Tuesday. Separately, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told senators at an intelligence committee hearing that Abdulmutallab was giving information to investigators. Mueller did not elaborate. The disclosures that the Nigerian student is cooperating with criminal investigators come amid a fierce debate in Congress over the Obama administration's handling of the case and, more broadly, its approach to national security. Dennis C. Blair,...

Any cop, prosecutor, or defense lawyer will tell you that the quickest way to get a suspect to stop talking to you is to read him his Miranda Rights and get him a lawyer. The Obama Department of Justice, under Attorney General Eric Holder, has now begun dancing, two-stepping, ducking and dodging about, in earnest, as to who actually made the Christmas Day decision to Mirandize Muslim Underwear Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab – and why. It was a terrible mistake, whether he was to be sent to a Civilian Court or handed over for a Military Tribunal. I tell you...

Terrorism suspects from Jordan, Nigeria, Syria and Yemen have been detained in Malaysia, activists say as a report linked them to the Nigerian behind the botched Christmas plane bombing. Malaysia announced on Wednesday it had arrested 10 people for "acts of terrorism" and said they were members of an international terror outfit tracked down in cooperation with foreign intelligence groups. The government-linked New Straits Times said the 10 were believed to be associated with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian student accused of trying to detonate explosives on a Northwest Airlines plane approaching Detroit. "It was learnt that foreign anti-terrorism agencies...

Intending to die in the act of destroying a jetliner, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab instead landed alive in Detroit as a kind of message in a bottle from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He knew more about its recruiting, training, and operations than anyone who is ever likely to fall into our arms babbling like a scared 23-year-old. But the Obama administration shut him down. It didn’t go so far as to tell the Customs and Border Protection officers to cover their ears and try not to listen when Abdulmutallab made incriminating statements on the initial ride to the hospital, but...

Even the Washington Post has come out in opposition to the Obama administration’s decision to treat the crotch-bomber (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab) as nothing more than a common street criminal: Whether to charge terrorism suspects or hold and interrogate them is a judgment call. We originally supported the administration's decision in the Abdulmutallab case, assuming that it had been made after due consideration. But the decision to try Mr. Abdulmutallab turns out to have resulted not from a deliberative process but as a knee-jerk default to a crime-and-punishment model. ~~~ ...Some intelligence officials, including personnel from the Office of the Director...

The more we learn about his 'interrogation,' the worse White House policy looks. The attempted Christmas Day destruction over Detroit of Northwest Flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is fading from public memory as a fortunate near-miss. This incident should not fade from view. As more information emerges, the picture it paints about the antiterror mindset of the current U.S. government is—there is no other word—scary. Last week in these columns, we discussed Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair's Congressional testimony on the Abdulmutallab case. This was Mr. Blair's famous "duh" remark about the government's failure to invoke the new...

Lieberman rips FBI on Miranda rights By: Kasie Hunt January 25, 2010 04:05 PM EST Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is joining Republicans in ripping the FBI for reading Miranda rights to the would-be airline bomber, saying the administration made a mistake and should transfer Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab to military custody. “We write to urge the administration to immediately transfer Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, a foreign terrorist, to the Department of Defense to be held as an unprivileged enemy belligerent (UEB) and questioned and charged accordingly,” said Lieberman, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, in a letter to...

The White House is not disputing a report that FBI agents questioned accused Northwest Airlines bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab for just 50 minutes before deciding to grant him the right to remain silent and provide him with a court-appointed lawyer -- a decision that led Abdulmutallab to stop talking and provide no more information. The news came in an Associated Press reconstruction of Abdulmutallab's first hours in custody. The AP reported that Abdulmutallab "repeatedly made incriminating statements" to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents who originally took him into custody. Then Abdulmutallab made more statements to doctors who were treating...

WASHINGTON - For hours after allegedly trying to use a bomb hidden in his underwear to blow up a Christmas Day flight to Detroit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab talked and talked — to U.S. Customs officers, medical personnel, and FBI agents. He spoke openly about what he'd done and why, and provided valuable intelligence, U.S. officials told The Associated Press in a series of interviews that spell out for the first time the details of Abdulmutallab's arrest and questioning on Dec. 25. Badly burned and bleeding, the suspect tried one last gambit as he was taken from the plane: He claimed...

Don't tell me we learned all he knew about the plotters in Yemen in one sitting!In August of last year, the Washington Post ran a fascinating article titled "How a Detainee Became An Asset: Sept. 11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding." The article describes the lengthy process that CIA agents went through to extract the intelligence from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that was vital to stopping future plots and rounding up Al Queda terrorists. Former CIA Director George Tenet declared that this program saved countless lives and was "worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency...

The Washington Post supported the Obama administration's treatment of Christmas day bomber Umar Abdulmuttalab as a criminal rather than as an enemy combatant. In an editorial published yesterday, It has nevertheless retracted its support. The Post writes that it "originally supported the administration's decision in the Abdulmutallab case, assuming that it had been made after due consideration. But the decision to try Mr. Abdulmutallab turns out to have resulted not from a deliberative process but as a knee-jerk default to a crime-and-punishment model." The Obama administration's treatment of Abdulmutallab as a criminal accorded the constitutional rights of an American citizen...

WASHINGTON — Badly burned and bleeding, the suspect in the Christmas Day flight to Detroit tried one last gambit as he was led away: He claimed there was another bomb hidden on the plane he'd just tried to destroy, officials said. There was no second bomb, federal agents learned after a tense search. But the Nigerian suspect's threat began hours of conversations that are now the subject of a fierce political debate over the right way to handle terrorism suspects. In interviews with The Associated Press, U.S. officials described for the first time the details of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's arrest...

The principle of Universal Jurisdiction has been, and continues to be, an important tool in the legal practitioner’s tool box and an essential means of achieving justice for international crimes. Unfortunately, the principle has also become a political device employed for far more cynical means and far less noble purposes. In the early 1960’s, Israel was one of the first states to invoke the principle of universal jurisdiction in its groundbreaking trial against Adolf Eichmann, the “architect of the Holocaust”.

Gibbs: 'Right decision' to read underwear bomber his rights White House press secretary Robert Gibbs Sunday defended the decision to read so-called alleged underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights after just 50 minutes of interrogation, saying that ”FBI interrogators believe they got valuable intelligence and were able to get all that they could out of him.” “That decision was made by the Justice Department and the FBI by experienced FBI interrogators, Gibbs said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But make no mistake Abdulmutallab was interrogated and valuable information was gotten by those experienced interrogators.” After he was read his...