President Obama’s top counter terrorism advisor defends the administration’s response to the failed terror bombing in New York City’s Times Square. On “Fox News Sunday,” John Brennan said the attempt “underscores the determination of this ruthless enemy, but also it underscores the importance for us to maintain our vigilance.”
He credited American forces, police and intelligence agencies with stopping numerous terrorist plots from taking place in the U.S. and overseas since September 11, 2001. He said reading the suspect, who is a naturalized U.S. Citizen, Miranda rights after several hours of questioning did not impede the ability to get information from him.
But a former CIA director says that wasn’t his experience with terrorists. That former director is George Tenet. He says when 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. Tenet wrote in his memoirs” Mohammad said, “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer”. Mohammad didn’t get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed.
Tenet claims that the information the CIA obtained from Mohammad before he got a lawyer disrupted plots and saved lives. “I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat Mohammad 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?”
You’ve heard both sides on this issue. Now you have what you need to make an informed decision about the best way to handle domestic terrorism and it’s perpetrators.
This is Carl Ramsey and that’s Another View of the News.
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