Abdulmutallab in 50 Minutes
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 High-Value Detainee Interrogration Group (HIG) to question Abdulmutallab. A remarkable Associated Press story this past weekend makes clear that "duh" was mainly another word for disgust inside the intelligence bureaucracy over what happened that day in Detroit.
Here, compressed, is AP's account of how Abdulmutallab was handled after the plane landed. Read it and weep.
He was taken to the hospital by U.S. Customs agents and local cops, to whom he babbled that he was trying to blow up the plane.
Agents from the FBI's Detroit bureau were called in about 2:15. He "spoke openly" and admitted he was from al Qaeda in Yemen. Under a Miranda exception meant to let officials find out fast if another bomb is imminent, the agents didn't issue the standard self-incrimination warning. He talked for 50 minutes. Then, to let the suspect's medications wear off, the interrogators stopped.
Five hours later, the FBI in Washington said it wanted a new interrogation team to do a second interview. This new group of FBI interrogators is called a "clean team."
The AP explains: "By bringing in a so-called 'clean team' of investigators to talk to the suspect, federal officials aimed to ensure that Abdulmutallab's statements would still be admissible if the failure to give him his Miranda warning led a judge to rule out the use of his first admissions . . . . In the end, though, the 'clean team' of interrogators did not prod more revelations from the suspect."
After he was rested and revived, Abdulmutallab was given his Miranda warning. He never said another thing.
On "Fox News Sunday," Chris Wallace asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs whether the President was told that Abdulmutallab was Mirandized after only 50 minutes of interrogation. Mr. Gibbs said the decision was made "by the Justice Department and the FBI" and insisted they got "valuable intelligence."
This is awful. This talky terrorist should have been questioned for 50 hours, not 50 minutes. More pointedly, Abdulmutallab should not have been questioned by local G-men concerned principally with getting a conviction in court. He should have been interrogated by agents who know enough about the current state of al Qaeda to know what to ask, what names or locations to listen for, and what answers to follow up. The urgent matter is deterring future plots, not getting Abdulmutallab behind bars.
It gets worse. Appearing before Congress last week, FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted that the HIG group essentially doesn't even exist yet. They haven't pulled it together.
Recall that in August Mr. Obama announced the intention to create a multi-agency HIG, transferring lead responsibility for interrogations away from the CIA and into the FBI, with techniques limited to the Army Field Manual.
And worse. As a Wall Street Journal account of last week's Senate Judiciary hearings noted, the HIG team is intended only for interrogations overseas; the Administration hasn't decided whether to use it domestically. In any event, that's moot until there is an HIG team.
We hope the appropriate committees of Congress do not let this drop, for many obvious reasons. We'll make one point:
Ultimately, the national security bureaucracies take their signals from the top. In August Mr. Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder made it clear that their war on terror would be fought inside the framework of Miranda and the civilian justice system. Before Justice ordered him Mirandized, would-be suicide bomber Abdulmutallab thus gave us 50 minutes in the mortal war against al Qaeda.
It has to get better than this. But it won't unless the President throws his weight publicly behind the officials who want to make it better than this.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703808904575025231056290438.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
