LFTC - Terror Trials & Interrogations: Team Obama Helps Team bin Laden

Incredibly, President Obama told Katie Couric on Super Sunday that he STILL has not ruled out holding the 9/11 trial in New York City!!!!

Ex-Brit special forces Tim Wilson nails Team Obama for national security sins, including disclosing that the XMAS bomber kid started talking again after five weeks of Miranda silence.  By revealing this--to counter GOP charges that Mirandizing the kid permanently sealed his lips, Team Obama gave al-Qaeda a heads-up and put the kids parents in peril.  Here's how....

Wilson explains:

As a result of that pressure, FBI Director Mueller told a Congressional panel last week, in public, that the FBI is now getting more information from Abdulmutallab. But this garnered little attention (Congressional hearings are usually tedious and not often regarded as newsworthy by the MSM) so, in order to raise support for Attorney General Holder, the White House jumped to give out more details of how the FBI has cleverly brought over the Panty Bomber’s family to persuade him to cooperate. Once again, politics interferes with National Security.

So now President Obama’s team has managed to announce publicly to al Qaeda that the guy they thought had refused to talk is now cooperating thanks to family pressure. All the initiative is with the enemy at this point. They can check to make sure their immediate precautions were adequate. They can check that any trails they might have left over the last five weeks have been covered. They can even make moves to threaten Abdulmutallab’s family to ensure his further silence. This administration has managed to reinforce failure. President Obama’s team may believe in giving a guy a second chance but when dealing with terrorists, especially those in any way connected to al Qaeda, there must be no second chances, just swift and effective retribution.

On ABC News This Week ex-Clinton WH chief of staff John Podesta stated that a terror cell was rolled up in Malaysia, based upon XMAS bomber interrogation intel; but the TAS Prowler cites confidential sources stating that no actionable intel was gained from the XMAS bomber.  There is first-hand account detail on Team Obama's sudden disclosure & the politics, from Senator Christopher "Kit" Bond (R-MO, in a Feb. 4 letter to the White House that should be read in full:

During my tenure on the Senate Intelligence Committee, I have worked with the Executive Branch to stem the disclosure of sensitive information.  In 2006, for example, I introduced legislation that would aid the Executive Branch in prosecuting individuals engaged in leaks of classified information.  In the realm of national security, sometimes it is necessary to withhold critical information from the public that may be used by our enemies to harm the American people. 

 

Accordingly, I am deeply disturbed with the official handling of vital national security information regarding the recent cooperation by the Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab.   On Monday afternoon, the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee received notification from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) concerning Abdulmutallab’s recent willingness to provide critical information.  FBI officials stressed the importance of not disclosing the fact of his cooperation in order to protect on-going and follow-on operations to neutralize additional threats to the American public; FBI Director Bob Mueller personally stressed to me that keeping the fact of his cooperation quiet was vital to preventing future attacks against the United States.  Handling this information in such a sensitive manner struck me as entirely appropriate.

 

Twenty-four hours later, however, White House staff assembled members of the media to announce Abdulmutallab’s cooperation and to laud the events that led to his decision to cooperate with law enforcement personnel.  This information immediately hit the air waves globally and, no doubt, reached the ears of our enemies abroad. 

Sunday, WH deputy national security adviser John Brennan slammed the GOP for saying that Republicans were not fully informed re the interrogations; GOP leaders responded that the charge by Brennan is not true.  Here is added detail from the Washington Examiner:

Hoekstra says if Brennan had brought up the subject of Miranda rights, then he, Hoekstra, would have discussed the issue with legal counsel from the Intelligence Committee. "If Brennan had called and said, 'Congressman, we're contemplating a legal strategy here,'" Hoekstra says, "the first thing I would have done is call up…my legal counsel and some other people and said, 'Hey, is this a sound strategy or not?' It never came up."

All the lawmakers describe Brennan's call as being very short; one recalls it as less than a minute. And all describe it as a heads-up, and not a briefing or an exchange of views. Brennan, however, told another story. This is his full statement, beginning with a question from NBC's David Gregory:

GREGORY: When you briefed some Republicans about how he was going to be treated, were they on board with the administration's decision?

BRENNAN: On Christmas night, I called a number of senior members of Congress. I spoke to Senators McConnell and Bond, I spoke to Representatives Boehner and Hoekstra. I explained to them that he was in FBI custody, that Mr. Abdulmutallab was in fact talking, that he was cooperating at that point. They knew that in FBI custody means that there's a process that you follow, as far as Mirandizing and presenting him in front of a magistrate. None of those individuals raised any concerns with me at that point. They didn't say, Is he going into military custody? Is he going to be Mirandized? They were very appreciative of the information. We told them we would keep them informed, and that's what we did. So there's been quite a bit of an outcry after the fact, where again, I'm just very concerned on behalf of the counterterrorism professionals throughout our government, that politicians continue to make this a political football and are using it for whatever political or partisan purposes.

Parsing Brennan's statement, Republicans believe he chose his words very carefully. Brennan says he told the GOP lawmakers that Abdulmutallab "was cooperating at that point," which suggests that Brennan called the lawmakers before Abdulmutallab stopped talking. In addition, Brennan did not call the lawmakers back later in the evening to say that, after a 50-minute interrogation, Abdulmutallab was no longer cooperating. It also appears that Brennan relied on the lawmakers to surmise that Abdulmutallab had been given the Miranda warning, since they were told that he was in FBI custody. "Brennan didn't say, 'I told them that," says Hoekstra. "He's saying, 'They should have known.'"

Author Marc Thiessen proves Brennan a liar on this: A few months ago the administration told the Washington Post that the new High-value Interrogation Group (HIG) would not necessarily Mirandize detainees--in other words, the HIG might or might not do so; neither the GOP--nor Director of National Intelligence Dennis, Blair, for that matter, knew that the HIG had not yet even been set up.

Here is the August 24, 2009 Washington Post story on the HIG, which PROVES BRENNAN LIED SUNDAY (emphases mine):

Members of the new interrogation unit will have the authority to travel around the world to talk to suspects and will be trained to handle certain high-interest people, such as al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Linguists and cultural and interrogation specialists will be assigned to the group and will have "some division of responsibility" regarding types of detainees, a senior administration official said. Most of the group's members will work there full time, although they will have part-time support from the FBI.

Interrogators will not necessarily read detainees their rights before questioning, instead making that decision on a case-by-case basis, officials said. That could affect whether some material can be used in a U.S. court of law. The main purpose of the new unit, however, is to glean intelligence, especially about potential terrorist attacks, the officials said.

"It is not going to, certainly, be automatic in any regard that they are going to be Mirandized," one official said, referring to the practice of reading defendants their rights. "Nor will it be automatic that they are not Mirandized."

Meanwhile, ex-Bush 43 speechwriter William McGurn wryly notes that to defend its current terror polices Team Obama is wrapping itself in the mantle of...(you guessed it) the Bush administration:

This weekend, Americans were treated to something new: Barack Obama defending his war policies by suggesting they merely continue his predecessor's practices. The defense is illuminating, not least for its implicit recognition that George W. Bush has more credibility on fighting terrorists than does the sitting president.

Mr. Obama's explanation came in an interview with Katie Couric just before the Super Bowl. Ms. Couric asked about trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York. After listing some of the difficulties, the president offered a startling defense for civilian trials:

"I think that the most important thing for the public to understand," he told Ms. Couric, "is we're not handling any of these cases any different than the Bush administration handled them all through 9/11."

McGurn goes on to demolish "195 terrorist trials" flapdoodle, and then allows Judge Michael Mukasey, the last Bush-43 A-G, to demolish Brennan's claims on intel and law enforcement.  The WSJ editors summarize how close to another target of Obama darts--former VP Cheney--Team Obama's evolving policies increasingly resemble. 

Ralph Peters joins the chorus in denouncing Team Obama & Brennan, but adds this about interrogations--apparently unknown to the likes of Brennan:

Retired Army Col. Stu Herrington -- the most noteworthy military interrogator of his generation -- highlights a particularly destructive one: making it next to impossible to keep terrorist captives isolated while they're imprisoned.

When dealing with top-end prisoners (the KSMs, not the Abdulmutallabs), interrogations can last for months or even years. The last thing you want is to allow prisoners to communicate with and discipline one another.
You don't want terrorists coordinating their stories, bolstering each other's morale or bringing pressure on those who might be cooperating. Just the ability to monitor a prisoner's absences from his cell can tip fellow captives that he's talking.

A consistent advocate of humane interrogations, Herrington would treat terrorists more mildly than I would -- but we agree that interrogations require sensible flexibility. You can't protect Americans by bolstering the terrorists' camaraderie and cohesion.

All this stuff about Team Obama's ineptitude & duplicity & playing domestic politics at the expense of security falls into the "unfunny funny" bin, as the underlying threat to our national & homeland security remains serious.

Gloria Borger, moderate liberal pundit, writes at CNN online that the lesson of the XMAS bomber botch is that intelligence agencies must be actively consulted from the outset, so that any decision is made with full input from all security agencies.  When pundits like GB turn against Team Obama on an issue, it means that the administration is now isolated with its core leftist partisans, and out of step with most likely voters.  (In the politics equation what counts are likely voters, who by vast disproportion decide elections.)

Bottom Line.  The White House disclosed sensitive intelligence information to cover its own political hide.  In effect, Team Obama gave "actionable intelligence" to al-Qaeda's Yemen affiliate.

Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, 9/11, National Security, Terrorism, Homeland Security