Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is joining Republicans in ripping the FBI for reading Miranda rights to the would-be airline bomber, saying the administration made a mistake and should transfer Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab to military custody.
“We write to urge the administration to immediately transfer Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, a foreign terrorist, to the Department of Defense to be held as an unprivileged enemy belligerent (UEB) and questioned and charged accordingly,” said Lieberman, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, in a letter to President Barack Obama on Monday. Ranking member Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) also signed the letter.
Two dozen other Republicans signed a similar letter earlier this month.
“The decision to treat Abdul Mutallab as a criminal rather than a UEB almost certainly prevented the military and the intelligence community from obtaining information that would have been critical to learning more about how our enemy operates and to preventing future attacks against our homeland and Americans and our allies throughout the world,” Lieberman and Collins continued. “The administration can reverse this error, at least to some degree, by immediately transferring Abdul Mutallab to the Department of Defense.”
In a hearing last week, intelligence officials — including Director of Intelligence Dennis Blair and National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter — admitted that intelligence officials were not consulted before FBI agents decided to read Abdul Mutallab his Miranda rights. Blair said he thought a new Obama law enforcement team charged with interrogating high-value detainees should have made the call — but that unit is not yet operational.
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