| From Thursday but running it today because Rantburg needs to absorb the key message: that High-Value Interrogation Group? It doesn't exist. Read to the end. They don't exist yet. This isn't just incompetence, this is the Bambi world-view. The HIG doesn't exist because there are no high value terrorists to interrogate anymore. They're all just criminals so they all get the protection of the US Constitution. This is precisely what Scott Brown talked about on the campaign trail: the Bambi administration is going to 'Mirandize' terrorists, give them a lawyer and allow them to remain silent. Even if the Bambi administration doesn't agree with the approach of the Bush administration regarding a "War on Terror", they have to be serious enough to acknowledge that certain groups of people mean America serious harm. The Undie-Boomer was carrying out a low-rent operation designed to test us, and we almost failed. He's clearly a 'high-value' target because he can tell us many things -- he can help us connect the dots. But he certainly won't tell us if we don't ask him, and he likely won't tell us if we ask nicely. So we may have to be stern with him -- not torture him, but be stern. He may need a session or two in a cold room with "Muskrat Love" playing over and again in the background. George Bush was repeatedly slammed about 9/11 for 'failing to connect the dots'. We now have an administration that doesn't even want to look at the dots and would prefer that the whole concept of dots disappears. That is simply dangerous for our country. |
The nation's intelligence chief said the man accused of trying to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day should have been questioned by a special interrogation team instead of being handled as an ordinary criminal suspect. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday that officials botched the handling of terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is accused of working with a Yemen-based offshoot of al Qaeda to try to bring down the Detroit-bound jet carrying 290 passengers and crew.A new panel charged with designating so-called high-value terrorism suspects for special interrogations should have been used in the case and the suspect should have been questioned by an elite group of interrogators, said Mr. Blair, who used the expression "duh" to emphasize his point.
Later in the day, Mr. Blair issued a statement saying his comments were "misconstrued." "The FBI interrogated Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab when they took him into custody," his statement said. "They received important intelligence at that time, drawing on the FBI's expertise in interrogation that will be available in the HIG once it is fully operational," he said, referring to the High-Value Interrogation Group.
| The HIG doesn't exist. It hasn't been constituted. There was no one to turn the Undie-Boomer over to because the unit doesn't exist. |
Wednesday's series of four hearings related to the Christmas attack prompted a new round of finger-pointing among government officials. Mr. Blair has been under fire since it became clear the government failed to piece together myriad clues that might have foiled the attempted attack.
Mr. Blair's testimony was quickly disputed by other administration officials, but seemed to bolster the contention by some Republicans and other critics that officials squandered an opportunity to gain more intelligence from Mr. Abdulmutallab.
In his testimony Wednesday, Mr. Blair said the HIG "was created exactly for this purpose--to make a decision on whether a certain person who's detained should be treated as a case for federal prosecution or for some of the other means."
He added: "We did not invoke the HIG in this case; we should have."
Mr. Blair, who was vice chairman of the task force that created the elite interrogation teams, offered implicit criticism of the Justice Department and the FBI, which decided how to handle Mr. Abdulmutallab. "I was not consulted," he said. "The decision was made on the scene, [and] seemed logical to the people there, but it should have been taken using this HIG format, at a higher level."
Mr. Blair's comments came as FBI Director Robert Mueller was defending his agency's handling of the case before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said FBI agents acted "appropriately, I believe, very appropriately" in treating Mr. Abdulmutallab as a criminal suspect.
| But that's the problem; he's not a criminal suspect, he's a foreign national who is a terrorist and an agent for a terrorist organization. |
| You had all the time in the world. All you needed to say was, "he's not a criminal suspect, he's a terrorist, and we'll treat him as such." |
| Queerly enough, according to this AP article the FBI did bring in a second interrogation team the next day, after the pantybomber's injuries had been treated and he'd slept for five hours. It was the second FBI team that Mirandized the pantibomber. |
| There you go: the HIG doesn't exist. |