Eric Holder

Abdulmutallab, Barack Obama, Dennis Blair, Eric Holder, Flight 253

Did DNI Blair misinform Senators or tell them too much of the truth?

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Obama administration officials are fearful that Blair may have ended up hand-delivering their Republican critics an issue by his misinformed remarks. “I didn’t think there was going to be a fall guy for the Detroit incident,” said the senior official. “But Blair may have just talked himself into being one.” — Michael Isakoff, Newsweek magazine, January 21, 2010

Apparently, those same White House officials did not dispute DNI Dennis Blair telling the Senate Intelligence Homeland Security Committee that, “The FBI interrogated Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab when they took him into custody. They received important intelligence at that time.” They could not dispute him as FBI Director Mueller told the Senate Judiciary exactly the same thing, that very same day.

I don’t believe that Director Robert Mueller told the whole truth.

Eli Lake of the Washington Times reported (‘Blair: FBI mishandled bomb case’):

“It appears to me that we lost an opportunity to secure some valuable intelligence information, and that the process that Director Blair described should have been implemented in this case,” Ms. Collins said. Sen. Christopher S. Bond, Missouri Republican and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the administration’s intelligence officials “fumbled the Christmas Day terrorist case.”

“That this administration chose to shut out our top intelligence officials and forgo collecting potentially lifesaving intelligence is a dangerous sign,” Mr. Bond said in a statement.

Mr. Abdulmutallab is accused of trying to ignite a military-grade explosive known as PETN that was sewn into his underwear on the Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Dec. 25. The plot failed, and FBI agents apprehended Mr. Abdulmutallab in Detroit. He was questioned for at least two hours before agents read him his Miranda rights, which allowed him to have an attorney before answering further questions.

Mueller cited “Quarles” which indicates FBI agents initially believed “the use of the Miranda warnings could be avoided” because “public safety was at issue” (New York v Quarles). Perhaps limiting questions to asking Abdulmuttalab if he had accomplices aboard Flight 253 (who might also have bombs) and if bombers were aboard additional aircraft currently in flight or soon to depart would be upheld by the courts.

Yet at least two hours went by before they read Abdulmuttalab the warnings because FBI agents know similar and simultaneous attacks are al Qaeda’s M.O. and Abdulmuttalab told them “twenty-five” others had trained with him in Yemen. Surely the agents would have alerted the FBI’s Special Agent in Charge in Detroit or its Assistant U.S. Attorney.

If FBI agents made the decision, it was left to them to decide, after word reached some level above them and came back down. Director Mueller, DNI Blair, DHS Secretary Napolitano, and NCTC Director Lieter all claimed to not have been asked.

Attorney General Eric Holder knows who advised the FBI agents. The Senate should ask him if he or the President made the call and if not, who left a national security policy decision up to “agents on the ground.”

Update:

Andy McCarthy, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Guantanamo, Thompson prison

‘Gitmo by the Lake’ by Andrew McCarthy (Will Americans dither while al Qaeda comes here on their dime?)

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Is bringing jailhouse jihadists to America and perhaps releasing them on our streets one of your core values?

The Supreme Court will soon decide if federal judges can order trained terrorists released on to America’s streets over the objections of the President. Yet without knowing how the Justices will rule, Barack Obama’s administration will announce today those detainees who will not be prosecuted will be transferred from Guantanamo Bay to a prison in Thompson, Illinois.

The administration lied when it said the leaked memo from Secretary Gates to Attorney General Holder was a “pre-decision memo.” While the Department of Justice considers whether to farm out an additional 50 detainees to federal courts around the country, it is already looking to make NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly’s job harder by prosecuting several of them in Brooklyn. The Illinois General Assembly’s 12/22 debate over whether to sell the prison to the federal government is a sham and Illinois Governor Pat Quinn is fooling no one with his “we never waver from this all-important goal” public safety rhetoric.

Andrew McCarthy writes in the National Review Online today of the potential impact of 47 Senators and 63 Congressmen changing their votes:

In the 2005 Real ID Act, Congress barred aliens who either have been members of terrorist organizations or have received paramilitary training in terrorist camps from entering our nation. Though one judge has tried to order detainees released here regardless, his order was reversed on appeal. Other judges have been hesitant to hold that their power to review detention rulings implies a power to order detainees released, much less released in the United States, in defiance of statutory proscription.

Once the terrorists are already in the country, though, that hesitancy will vanish. Anyone who doubts that has not been watching the courts’ pro-terrorist decisions over the last eight years, to say nothing of such rulings as the 9th Circuit’s recent directive that California release over 40,000 convicted inmates in order to relieve the supposed overcrowding in the state’s prisons. Indeed, the Obama administration has already floated the idea of releasing Gitmo detainees in the U.S. — and providing public welfare payments to support them — as an example for other countries to follow. And Jennifer Daskal, now advising Holder on detainee issues, spent years as a Human Rights Watch activist campaigning for Gitmo to be shuttered, and detainees released in the United States, if other countries are unwilling to take them. Human Rights Watch also maintains that U.S. “supermax” prisons, where terrorists convicted in civilian courts are incarcerated, are inhumane.

Even if they are not released, the presence of terrorists in American prisons creates enormous security problems. In 2000, while purportedly preparing for his trial on charges of bombing U.S. embassies in Africa, an al-Qaeda inmate maimed a prison guard in an attempt to break himself and his confederates out of jail. Sayyid Nosair helped plot the 1993 World Trade Center bombing from Attica prison in New York, even as he recruited new terrorists and conspired to escape. Despite maximum-security confinement conditions, other WTC bombers were permitted to communicate by mail with overseas terror cells. And from the federal prison where he is serving a life sentence for terrorism, the notorious “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, issued the fatwa approving the 9/11 attacks. With the help of his now-convicted lawyer, he continued guiding his Egyptian terrorist organization.

Despite this record, the Obama administration says it can surely detain additional hundreds of terrorists. This claim would be hard to swallow even if Holder’s Justice Department were not now caving in to jihadists’ complaints that confinement conditions in civilian prisons are too onerous. DOJ has just moved the “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, into the general prison population after he contended that heightened security measures designed to hinder terrorists violated the First Amendment by denying his alleged right to communal prayer with other jihadists.

This doesn’t have to happen. You can either sit around just talking about the next election or stand up now for your families and with ours.

Update:

When he testified on November 18, 2009 before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Holder said that, “There is nothing common about the treatment the alleged 9/11 conspirators will receive. In fact, I expect to direct prosecutors to seek the ultimate and most uncommon penalty for these heinous crimes. And I expect they will be held in custody under Special Administrative Measures reserved for the most dangerous criminals. Finally, there are some who have said the decision means that we have reverted to a pre-9/11 mentality or that we don’t realize that this nation is at war.” (audio)

On November 13, 2009, the same day AG Holder announced the 9/11 conspirators would be moved to federal court in Manhattan for trial, he sent Assistant U.S. Attorneys into federal court in Denver to tell a judge that Richard Reid had been move to general population and his Special Administrative Measures had been lifted (see this and this).

Providing the enemy with the means to propagandize against the United States from their jail cells is one hell of a way for someone to prove they realize that we are at war.