June 10, 2009
Stephen F. Hayes / The Weekly Standard
When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer,” he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.
Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. “I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal – read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up,” Tenet wrote in his memoirs.
If Tenet is right, it’s a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.
Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”
That effort, which elevates the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and diminishes the role of intelligence and military officials, was described in a May 28 Los Angeles Times article:
The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions.
Under the "global justice" initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.
Thanks in part to the popularity of law and order television shows and movies, many Americans are familiar with the Miranda warning – so named because of the landmark 1966 Supreme Court case Miranda vs. Arizona that required police officers and other law enforcement officials to advise suspected criminals of their rights.
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.
A lawyer who has worked on detainee issues for the U.S. government offers this rationale for the Obama administration’s approach. “If the US is mirandizing certain suspects in Afghanistan, they’re likely doing it to ensure that the treatment of the suspect and the collection of information is done in a manner that will ensure the suspect can be prosecuted in a US court at some point in the future.”
But Republicans on Capitol Hill are not happy. “When they mirandize a suspect, the first thing they do is warn them that they have the 'right to remain silent,’” says Representative Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “It would seem the last thing we want is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other al-Qaeda terrorist to remain silent. Our focus should be on preventing the next attack, not giving radical jihadists a new tactic to resist interrogation--lawyering up.”
According to Mike Rogers, that is precisely what some human rights organizations are advising detainees to do. “The International Red Cross, when they go into these detention facilities, has now started telling people – ‘Take the option. You want a lawyer.’”
Rogers adds: “The problem is you take that guy at three in the morning off of a compound right outside of Kabul where he’s building bomb materials to kill US soldiers, and read him his rights by four, and the Red Cross is saying take the lawyer – you have now created quite a confusion amongst the FBI, the CIA and the United States military. And confusion is the last thing you want in a combat zone.”
One thing is clear, though. A detainee who is not talking cannot provide information about future attacks. Had Khalid Sheikh Mohammad had a lawyer, Tenet wrote, “I am confident that we would have obtained none of the information he had in his head about imminent threats against the American people.”
One more step closer to 9/11 part 2. Thanks Barak!
__________________
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.-Samuel Adams
Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.-Heinrich Heine
An understatement that would be funny if ot for the fact that it's things like this, and like the release of so-called 'torture pics", that will cost us the war - and our nation.
An understatement that would be funny if ot for the fact that it's things like this, and like the release of so-called 'torture pics", that will cost us the war - and our nation.
^^^
It is statements like this that (not because they are made, but because they are true) make me wanna shoot myself in the head.
All these people sacrificing their lives, health, and sanity just so a bunch of a-holes in suits can screw it up. :mad:
Now maybe my understanding of things is wayyyyyyyy off, but isn't the constitution written for and enforced for the American citizen(s)? And Miranda is also in response to violations of an American citizens rights? So how do people, who are not citizens, are in a war against us and try to kill any and all Americans they can, be given ANY type of protection under the constitution when they are not citizens of our country.
Good lord, when does this stop, or are we just in a downward spiral out of control waiting to hit rock friggin bottom?????
__________________
The man of tomorrow is shaped by his actions today!
Now maybe my understanding of things is wayyyyyyyy off, but isn't the constitution written for and enforced for the American citizen(s)? And Miranda is also in response to violations of an American citizens rights? So how do people, who are not citizens, are in a war against us and try to kill any and all Americans they can, be given ANY type of protection under the constitution when they are not citizens of our country.
Take a peek inside the Obama Admin's Justice Dept mind: A war takes place against an army of another nation. Terrorists are not an army from another nation; they are a criminal organization made up of criminals from all over the world. That's why Obama changed the name from the GWOT to "Overseas Contingency Operations". The word "War" has been removed, because you don't 'war' with criminals. And as criminals, where we find them we arrest them.
Of course, if this were true, Obama now has a problem with the use of American military forces as a police force, but that problem has yet to be discussed.
Now maybe my understanding of things is wayyyyyyyy off, but isn't the constitution written for and enforced for the American citizen(s)? And Miranda is also in response to violations of an American citizens rights? So how do people, who are not citizens, are in a war against us and try to kill any and all Americans they can, be given ANY type of protection under the constitution when they are not citizens of our country.
Like Chicago said, since the Emporer looks at the War on Terror (oops..Overseas Contingency Operations) as a criminal action...with the intent of trying the terrorists...darn it...criminals in a civilian court, the logic is by reading Miranda then the opportunity for a slick defense attorney to throw out any confessions we may politely ask the terr...er...criminals to give won't be as easy.
Again, this is just another footnote in the long list showing how naive and inexperienced BO is. What's next? Making our troops get search warrants before entering some Afgani house to look for weapons or sumbags?
Also, referencing Chicago again, it is also one more step closer to turning our military into a police type force. Kind of makes you wonder what they'll be used for next after BO blows the war and brings the troops home.
__________________
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.-Samuel Adams
Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.-Heinrich Heine
He's going to turn the Military into the police of the world with the National Guard becoming the police of the US, throwing out the civilian Police agencies for fear of revolt when he starts turning the US into a communistic country. Since the military will follow whatever he says he'll have less of a chance of them saying no to his orders and the ones that do he can justify shooting by stating that they were commiting treason.
Then once he's done that his army of felons and miscreants will become the KGB of the US.
God help us all...
EDIT: Ok I just thought about this and I'm scared now.
__________________ Texas DPS Academy September 2009
"Nearly all men can stand the test of adversity, but if you really want to test a man's character, give him power." -- Abraham Lincoln
"The basis of all morality is duty."--Robert Heinlein
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