Today's Hearing: Intel Chief: Christmas Bomb Case Bungled
By Ed Carson
Wed., Jan. 20, '10 2:31 PM ET
blogs.investors.com
The Christmas airline bombing suspect should have been treated as a terror detainee and been questioned by special interrogators, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told a Senate panel Wednesday. Blair and other top officials said they were not consulted:
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that he was not consulted on whether (Umar Farouk) Abdulmutallab should be questioned by the recently created High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG.
"That unit was created exactly for this purpose," Blair said. "We did not invoke the HIG in this case. We should have."
Under questioning by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Blair and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said they were not consulted before the decision was made to not use the high-value detainee interrogation group. Also, Michael Leiter, chief of the National Counter Terrorism Center, said he was not consulted.
"That is very troubling," Collins said.
Blair also said criteria for adding people to the government's "no fly" list was too legalistic. And he said that in recent years there has been pressure to shrink rather than expand the list because of a cascade of complaints from people getting "hassled" by authorities. "Why are you searching grandmothers?" was a too-common refrain, he said.
Meanwhile, FBI Director Robert Mueller told lawmakers that al-Qaida and its offshoots are spreading and rebuilding in Pakistan, Yemen, and the Horn of Africa.
We’re in the very best of hands. |
