February 3, 2010 8:15 PM
- Text
The Abdulmutallab Guessing Game
Should the U.S. have treated Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab like a regular street criminal and read him his Miranda rights? Or put the screws to him until he began singing like a canary?
It's an important debate. No doubt the Justice Department was in a tizzy when it decided - without first consulting with senior intelligence officials - how to proceed after the Christmas Day bomber's apprehension. The director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair even wondered publicly in Senate testimony whether this was the smart move.
Also Read: White House Damage Control: Politics or Policy?
There's an argument to be made that the delay denied the U.S. intelligence about al Qaeda that we otherwise would have retrieved through interrogations. (Former CIA Director, Gen. Michael Hayden argued as much recently in a critique he published in the Washington Post.) But the White House has since put out word that with the help of a couple of Abdulmutallab's Nigerian relatives who flew back to the U.S with interrogators, leaked Abdulmutallab "has been cooperating for days." Of course, in Washington's uber-politicized atmosphere, good news means bad news and the White House leak has only intensified the ire of the Obama (and Eric Holder) critics.
In the Washington Independent, Byron York complained about the "political context" in which the news was being reported and hinted darkly at a White House conspiracy to cover up - well, something. At National Review, the prolific duo of former Bush officials Dana Perino and Bill Burcke used the occasion to bash the administration for ending the "CIA interrogation program disbanded by President Obama." (They're too delicate to get into the details but they're talking about practices like waterboarding, head slapping and sleep deprivation. For the record, this is the same Dana Perino who said last November that "we did not have a terrorist attack during President Bush's first term.")
Hot Air's Ed Morrissey spoke for many on the right in expressing his skepticism of the White House's commitment to protecting the common weal.(This one deserves quotation in length.)
"There are two possibilities in this scenario. The first is that the administration got Abdulmutallab's family to the US immediately after the terrorist clammed up, and that he had been giving valuable intel all along. That would mean that the White House sent Gibbs on a misinformation mission — which under the circumstances would be acceptable as a way to keep Abdulmutallab's contacts relaxed and in position for American attempts to target them.
"But if that was the case, why leak its effectiveness now? The US hasn't conducted any known raids in Yemen for the last few weeks. This leak will certainly tip off any of Abdulmutallab's cohorts to start looking for new ground and to disconnect any network nodes of which the EunuchBomber had knowledge.
"The second scenario would be that the White House finally acted after getting ripped by both Democrats and Republicans for their mishandling of the terrorist and the unilateral decision to keep him in the criminal system. That would explain the testimony of Mueller, Blair, Napolitano, and Leiter in front of Congress — where deliberately giving false testimony is a crime, not a misdirection strategy. Under this scenario, the administration finally got Abdulmutallab to talk by getting his family involved, but weeks too late to have anything helpful in stopping any other potential terrorist attacks.
"Given this administration's track record and the previous testimony to Congress, the second scenario seems significantly more likely."
His assumption is that U.S. intelligence would have extracted a trove of actionable information that it might have later used to disrupt terror plots. Is Abdulmutallab as knowledgeable as all that? But it's only a guess, one that's more informed by predictable partisanship than by a sober analysis of the facts on the ground.
It's an important debate. No doubt the Justice Department was in a tizzy when it decided - without first consulting with senior intelligence officials - how to proceed after the Christmas Day bomber's apprehension. The director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair even wondered publicly in Senate testimony whether this was the smart move.
Also Read: White House Damage Control: Politics or Policy?
There's an argument to be made that the delay denied the U.S. intelligence about al Qaeda that we otherwise would have retrieved through interrogations. (Former CIA Director, Gen. Michael Hayden argued as much recently in a critique he published in the Washington Post.) But the White House has since put out word that with the help of a couple of Abdulmutallab's Nigerian relatives who flew back to the U.S with interrogators, leaked Abdulmutallab "has been cooperating for days." Of course, in Washington's uber-politicized atmosphere, good news means bad news and the White House leak has only intensified the ire of the Obama (and Eric Holder) critics.
In the Washington Independent, Byron York complained about the "political context" in which the news was being reported and hinted darkly at a White House conspiracy to cover up - well, something. At National Review, the prolific duo of former Bush officials Dana Perino and Bill Burcke used the occasion to bash the administration for ending the "CIA interrogation program disbanded by President Obama." (They're too delicate to get into the details but they're talking about practices like waterboarding, head slapping and sleep deprivation. For the record, this is the same Dana Perino who said last November that "we did not have a terrorist attack during President Bush's first term.")
Hot Air's Ed Morrissey spoke for many on the right in expressing his skepticism of the White House's commitment to protecting the common weal.(This one deserves quotation in length.)
"There are two possibilities in this scenario. The first is that the administration got Abdulmutallab's family to the US immediately after the terrorist clammed up, and that he had been giving valuable intel all along. That would mean that the White House sent Gibbs on a misinformation mission — which under the circumstances would be acceptable as a way to keep Abdulmutallab's contacts relaxed and in position for American attempts to target them.
"But if that was the case, why leak its effectiveness now? The US hasn't conducted any known raids in Yemen for the last few weeks. This leak will certainly tip off any of Abdulmutallab's cohorts to start looking for new ground and to disconnect any network nodes of which the EunuchBomber had knowledge.
"The second scenario would be that the White House finally acted after getting ripped by both Democrats and Republicans for their mishandling of the terrorist and the unilateral decision to keep him in the criminal system. That would explain the testimony of Mueller, Blair, Napolitano, and Leiter in front of Congress — where deliberately giving false testimony is a crime, not a misdirection strategy. Under this scenario, the administration finally got Abdulmutallab to talk by getting his family involved, but weeks too late to have anything helpful in stopping any other potential terrorist attacks.
"Given this administration's track record and the previous testimony to Congress, the second scenario seems significantly more likely."
His assumption is that U.S. intelligence would have extracted a trove of actionable information that it might have later used to disrupt terror plots. Is Abdulmutallab as knowledgeable as all that? But it's only a guess, one that's more informed by predictable partisanship than by a sober analysis of the facts on the ground.
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Charles Cooper is an executive editor at CNET News. He has covered technology and business for more than 25 years, working at CBSNews.com, the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. E-mail Charlie.
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