Setting the Record Straight on the Christmas Day Attack
John Brennan, who serves as Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, took to the pages of USA Today this morning to clear up some falsehoods being spread by those seeking to get political advantage out of this national security matter:
Politics should never get in the way of national [...]
How Barack botched the Christmas Day Jihadist Incident
In looking at this Stephen Hayes report at The Weekly Standard:
[...] One of the greatest concerns about the handling of Abdulmutallab is that FBI interrogators — in their initial 50 minute interview — questioned him without the benefit of the information the U.S. intelligence community had collected on him in the six months prior [...]
Holder in ‘02: It’s "Hard to Interrogate" Enemy Combatant in the U.S. Because "He Has a Lawyer"
In a letter today to Senator Mitch McConnell, Attorney General Eric Holder defended his decision to have FBI agents read Miranda rights to Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and to charge him in civilian court. Holder challenged the claims of some critics that the presence of a lawyer would in any way hurt U.S. intelligence [...]
Former CIA Director: We Didn’t Adequately Interrogate the Christmas Day Bomber
In a hard-hitting, must-read op-ed that will run in tomorrow's Washington Post, former CIA Director Michael Hayden writes that the decision to Mirandize Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a mistake. "We got it wrong in Detroit on Christmas Day."
Hayden, who comes to these issues with the valuable perspective of a man who has known the [...]
Abdulmutallab’s Encounter With the "Clean Team"
The Associated Press has a fascinating blow-by-blow account of the interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that adds several new details to previous reports on his handling. Overall, however, this news does not change the disturbing picture of the reflexive, law-enforcement-first approach the Obama administration took with the al Qaeda operative. And with the new details come new [...]
Too bad to be true?
Scott has written about the fact that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas-day bomber, was interrogated by the FBI instead of the “High Value Detainee Interrogation Group.” The creation of this Group — the HIG — was announced with some fanfare a year ago by President Obama who, having shut down the CIA’s [...]
