WASHINGTON -- The real scandal surrounding the failed Christmas Day
airline bombing was not the fact that a terrorist got on a plane -- that
can happen to any administration, as it surely did to the Bush
administration -- but what happened afterward when Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab was captured and came under the full control of the
U.S. government.
After 50 minutes of questioning him, the Obama administration chose,
reflexively and mindlessly, to give the chatty terrorist the right to
remain silent. Which he immediately did, undoubtedly denying us crucial
information about al-Qaeda in Yemen, which had trained, armed and
dispatched him.
We have since learned that the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab had
been made without the knowledge of or consultation with (1) the secretary
of defense, (2) the secretary of homeland security, (3) the director of the
FBI, (4) the director of the National Counterterrorism Center or (5) the
director of national intelligence (DNI).
The Justice Department acted not just unilaterally but unaccountably.
Obama's own DNI said that Abdulmutallab should have been interrogated by
the HIG, the administration's new High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.
Perhaps you hadn't heard the term. Well, in the very first week of his
presidency, Obama abolished by executive order the Bush-Cheney
interrogation procedures and pledged to study a substitute mechanism. In
August, the administration announced the establishment of the HIG, housed
in the FBI but overseen by the National Security Council.
Where was it during the Abdulmutallab case? Not available, admitted
National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, because it had only been
conceived for use abroad. Had not one person in this vast administration of
highly nuanced sophisticates considered the possibility of a terror attack
on American soil?
It gets worse. Blair later had to explain that the HIG was not
deployed because it does not yet exist. After a year! I
suppose this administration was so busy deploying scores of the country's
best lawyerly minds on finding the most rapid way to release Gitmo
miscreants that it could not be bothered to establish a single operational
HIG team to interrogate at-large miscreants with actionable intelligence
that might save American lives.
Of course, this case is just a reflection of a larger problem: an
administration that insists on treating Islamist terrorism as a
law-enforcement issue. Which is why the Justice Department's other
egregious terror decision, granting Khalid Sheik Mohammed a civilian trial
in New York, is now the subject of a letter from six senators -- three
Republicans, two Democrats and Joe Lieberman -- asking Attorney General
Eric Holder to reverse the decision.
Lieberman and Sen. Susan Collins had written an earlier letter asking
for Abdulmutallab to be turned over to the military for renewed
interrogation. The problem is, it's hard to see how that decision gets
reversed. Once you've read a man Miranda rights, what do you say? We are
idiots? On second thought ...
Hence the agitation over the KSM trial. This one can be reversed and it's a good surrogate for this administration's
insistence upon criminalizing -- and therefore trivializing -- a war on
terror that has now struck three times in one year within the United
States, twice with effect (the Arkansas killer and the Fort Hood shooter)
and once with a shockingly near miss (Abdulmutallab).
On the KSM civilian trial, sentiment is widespread that it is quite
insane to spend $200 million a year to give the killer of 3,000 innocents
the largest propaganda platform on earth, while at the same time granting
civilian rights of cross-examination and discovery that risk betraying U.S.
intelligence sources and methods.
Accordingly, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. Frank Wolf have gone beyond
appeals to the administration and are planning to introduce a bill to block
funding for the trial. It makes flesh an otherwise abstract issue -- should
terrorists be treated as enemy combatants or criminal defendants? The vote
will force members of Congress to declare themselves.
The White House, feeling the heat on this issue, signaled on Friday
that it is looking for another venue. But the issue isn't New York. The
issue is giving KSM a civilian trial anywhere. Rather than leaving him in
the military commission system where he was until Obama decided otherwise.
Congress may not be able to roll back the Abdulmutallab travesty. But
there will be future Abdulmutallabs. By cutting off funding for any KSM
civilian trial, Congress can send Obama a clear message: The Constitution
is neither a safety net for illegal enemy combatants nor a suicide pact for
us.