You Have The Right To Burst Out Laughing

Team Obama has ordered the FBI to read the Miranda rights to high-value detainees captured in Afghanistan?  I still think someone is kidding.  [Jake Tapper learns from Admin officials that this is happening but it is OK because Bush did it too.]

The TigerHawk has more, including puzzlement over the legal strategy and a flashback to the Eerily Prescient Sarah Palin.

Fox News has what looks like the same clarification as Jake Tapper:

Asked if the Obama administration had ordered that Miranda rights be read to certain detainees, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "I have no reason to disbelieve a member of Congress. But I don't know any of the circumstances that are involved around it."

But Gibbs acknowledged that it wouldn't be a surprise to find out that it was happening.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd denied there has been a policy change covering detainees.

"There has been no policy change nor blanket instruction for FBI agents to Mirandize detainees overseas," he said in a statement, adding, "While there have been specific cases in which FBI agents have Mirandized suspects overseas, at both Bagram and in other situations, in order to preserve the quality of evidence obtained, there has been no overall policy change with respect to detainees."

I am not a lawyer, but my extensive reading of crime fiction and careful study of "Law and Order" tells me that it doesn't make much sense to provide a Miranda warning late in the process, after a suspect has already been interrogated for a while. 

Hypothetically, let's assume that military interrogators do a preliminary interview of detainees captured in Afghanistan.  For people who look like high value captures the FBI is then brought in, presumably in anticipation of the day that a trial in the US may occur.  Is the FBI going to make some claim that the preliminary military interrogations conducted prior to the Miranda warning do not represent a violation of a detainee's rights?  Would that be correct?

And back to Tapper:

In March, President Obama told 60 Minutes that "the whole premise of Guantanamo promoted by Vice President Cheney was that somehow the American system of justice was not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists. I fundamentally disagree with that. Now do these folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter down the block? Of course not."

LET'S HEAR FROM GEN. PETRAEUS:

Tim Fernholz of TAP was at a conference where Gen. Petraeus took a few questions:

A Fox News correspondent at the CNAS conference lucked out after Petreaus' speech and managed to be called on for one of three allowed questions; he asked the general, who supervises Afghanistan as the head of U.S. Central Command, about the Miranda reports. "This is the FBI doing what the FBI does," Petraeus replied. "These are cases where they are looking at potential criminal charges. We're comfortable with this." He denied that his soldiers and other relevant American agents are reading Miranda rights to detainees, some of whom are detained as enemy combatants, while others are high-value anti-terror targets.

Well, were Bush and Cheney secretly solicitous of terrorist's rights?  Does this represent some sort of policy shift of which Obama is unaware?  Or is something else going on?  Baffling.

Comments

[fdcol63]

The "law enforcement" approach to terrorism, including Jamie Gorelick's "wall" and all the rest, lead directly to 9/11.

Obama and his ilk want to change the policies and strategies that have kept us from being attacked since.

They are not on our side.

[Thomas Collins]

It's time for the Joint Chiefs of Staff to resign as a group. It could be too late by January, 2013 to undo the damage to our national security that this Administration will cause. A dramatic gesture is needed by the military to get the attention of Americans, and a group resignation by the Joint Chiefs, I think, is the best bet.

Unfortunately, I don't think it will happen.

[clarice]

Let's spread the rumor in Afghanistan that this is an American trick, that if you ask to speak to a lawyer you will be executed. It's the only way out of this nonsense.

[Jack is Back!]

TC,

Bad idea. The current senior officer corp is what is keeping us from a total authoritarian government - Chavez style. The O wants to emasculate the military and have the officer corp start resigning so he doesn't have that to worry about anymore. We need to bolster the officer corp and the NCO's. There is no problem with recruitment but we need to watch for subversives which I believe could spoil the pool so to speak.

[Thomas Collins]

I agree with everything you say in your reply to my comment, Jack, but I still think it is a good idea. The reason is that it will force what Obama is doing to our military to the forefront of discussion. Folks such as Feinstein, who claim to be strong on national security, will have to answer why the Prez they are supporting has acted so against our interests as to cause a mass resignation of the Joint Chiefs. I think that Obama is more likely to emasculate the military in the absence of a dramatic gesture. But I do acknowledge that my suggestion has risks. Unfortunately, we have elected a true believing one worlder who truly believes he will usher in one worldism.

[matt]

welcome to Carter/Clinton redux.....

Deja vu, a feeling of having been somewhere or done something before...Deja vu, a feeling of having been somewhere or done something before....Deja vu...a feeling of having been somewhere or done something before.....

[Thomas Collins]

OK, Jack, if you still insist that I back down from the ledge, my fallback is that a group of Senators attach an amendment to every piece of legislation that is before the Senate to ban giving Miranda rights to combatants captured in Afghanistan. Shut down Senate business.

[Pofarmer]

Sarah Palin was funny, direct, and right on the money with most everything she said. Too bad the McCain campaign wouldn't support her. Humor that's true cuts. I hope she's making notes of all the things going on she predicted, correctly. And, I hope the smug asshole in the Whitehouse gets his due.

[Pofarmer]

Shut down Senate business.

That's good on so many levels.

[PaulL]

For an amazing site and discussion links on the Air France crash, check out LUN. Note: A lot of it is very technical.

[Mark O]

I hear they are reading the Miranda warning in pig latin.

[Jack is Back!]

OT: But I have to share this.

Sometimes we need a parliamentary form of government especially the PMQ's on Wednesday. William Hague, shadow foreign minister for the Tories - do not drink hot liquids while watching this - especially around the 2:34 mark. I am assuming most of you know about Peter Mandelson, Gordon Brown and all the ministers that have resigned. Wouldn't it be neat to have some young whippersnapper in our Congress take the O on this way? But I don't think we have anyone in Congress this smart, this witty, with a rhetoric of this proportion and intellect. Or do we?

[Jack is Back!]

TC,

Better yet, just have Jim Jones resign with a presser. And Jake Tapper can ask all the questions.

[Thomas Collins]

With respect to TM's supplement to his post, which supplement discusses the timing of Miranda warnings in the Afghanistan context, the timing issue opens up an issue ripe for treatment in the law journals, namely, at which point does an enemy combatant become a "Miranda eligible" suspect. Obama and his folks are beyond cluelessness.

[Danube of Thought]

My recollection from law school is that the officer must read the suspect his rights as soon as he is no longer free to go. This is so regardless of whether the magic words "you're under arrest" have been uttered. If you're ever in doubt while being questioned, ask the officer "ami I free to go home?" If the answer is no, he's required to read you your rights.

If that's correct, it's pretty clear that to the extent Miranda is required for any of these guys, it's required the instant they're taken into custody.

I have a suspicion that there is less to this than meets the eye. My guess would be that the guys who have been Mirandized are a few who cannot reasonably be categorized as enemy combatants. But at this point nothing at all would surprise me.

[Thomas Collins]

Jim Jones as a start is probably more rational than my initial thought, Jack.

[narciso]

If Jones had that kind of integrity, he wouldn't have joined the administration
in the first place.

[Thomas Collins]

My thought, DOT, is that in this context, a distinction might be made between "in custody as an enemy combatant" and "in custody as a criminal suspect." But I hope you are correct that this is a limited universe.

[Cecil Turner]

[Jake Tapper learns from Admin officials that this is happening but it is OK because Bush did it too.]

Now that's precious. Wonder how the warning was delivered? Maybe:

You have the right to remain silent . . . but we'll waterboard you if you decide to exercise it.

[clarice]

PUk's in charge of the leaflets, daddy has to fly the plane from which we'll drop them. Cecil --we need you to take to the radio in Kandahar and explain that "lawyer" means "executioner" in translation.

[DebinNC]

A few weeks ago the nutroots were orgasmic over the Senate testimony of former FBI interrogator. Said Newsweek:

Ali Soufan, testifying to a Senate panel behind a screen to hide his identity, said that his interrogation team obtained a "treasure trove" of information from Abu Zubaydah using a non-threatening approach that outwitted the detainee - even getting him to talk by using his childhood nickname

He claimed torture was slow and ineffective, unlike his method of "informed" interrogations. But how can interrogations be informed without information, which Miranda warnings will certainly impede? More and more, it seems like the political divide is between those with common sense and those without.

[centralcal]

Completely off topic (well except for the "burst out laughing" part):

Beginning in the fall season, HLN (CNN's stepchild) will replace Lou Dobb's with Joy Behar in the 9 pm hour.

Guess CNN's really poor ratings just aren't quite bad enough. snort.

[Fresh Air]

DebinNC--

Informed interrogations always go better when the person being question is about to have a snake dropped into his shorts.

[jean]

I like to check with Cheney before I believe we've been out mirandizing all sorts of terrorist

[narciso]

Are they trying to race to the test pattern,
Joy Behar, it's like a power drill on a chalk board

[Thomas Collins]

See LUN for an article on terrorism by hacking a plane's computer system. The article makes clear that it is not claiming that this is the most likely cause of the Airbus disaster, but is worth considering. Note that the article makes an interesting point about the lack of assertions by terrorist groups that they caused this crash, namely, that the bringing down of the Airbus might be a test of a technique to be used in the future.

[A.L.]

Tom, this is non-story. The FBI always mirandizes anyone it talks to because they are always trying to build an evidentiary case. That's what they do. They did the exact same thing under the Bush administration. There's been no change in policy. Check out the WaPo article I link to in my post

[narciso]

Really, who did they mirandize who they were caught overseas Muhammed Khan, the programmer, who was nabbed in July of
2004, part of that tip leaked by the ISI to the New Republic, Spencer Ackerman's that was part of a thread. Essam al Hindi, Dhiren Birot, the organizer of that plot.
Abu Ubeida la Masri, organizer of two aerial plots, might have been, had he not died of kidney failure.

[cathyf]

I'd be a little cautious about this, since nobody seems to know exactly what it is that they are doing. Given the amount of opium poppy growing in Afghanistan, it may be that the FBI is mirandizing people arrested in the drug trade. Or thieves caught stealing supplies on military bases.

Just because a country has a shooting war going on doesn't mean that all criminal behavior stops. And for crimes, the law enforcement approach is obviously appropriate...

[matt]

I just asked a friend at an FOB on the Paki border. Will let you know when I get a response.

[narciso]

Detainees, suggest something other than ordinary criminals, maybe Rogers mispoke. One forgets that the fellow whointerrogated KSM, served in the Narcotic section of the Embassy in Afghanistan, which the likes of Scott Shane, was good enough to give his current employment, with the firm revealed by ABC last month

[Danube of Thought]

I suspect A.L. is right, and it's no harm, no foul provided the FBI is last in line to get to talk to these folks. A.L. at his site utters the classic fallacy that so infects this entire administration:

"One of the worst mistakes the Bush administration made was paying absolutely no attention in the early days to building cases against the people it detained."

It's a "mistake" only if your purpose in detaining them was to hold them for a criminal trial and obtain a conviction. It wasn't. The purpose was to take and keep them out of circulation (as Obama is doing, without trial), and above all to get information from them so as to prevent further attacks and to find additional terrorists (whether and how Obama is doing this is not clear to me).

You can't interrogate them at all--and thus you can't learn anything from them--if you treat them either as POW's under the Geneva Convention or as ordinary criminal suspects. Thank God the Bush administration did neither.

[clarice]

Breaking:

Just heard that the Weekly Standard may have been a von Brunn target--so much for the vast right wing assassination corps.

[jimmyk]

Just heard that the Weekly Standard may have been a von Brunn target

It won't change the narrative. To the MSM (and now bloggers like LGF), racist implies right wing. If he hates neocons and the Weekly Standard that just proves how much of a "right wing extremist" he really is.

[PeterUK]

"PUk's in charge of the leaflets, daddy has to fly the plane from which we'll drop them. Cecil --we need you to take to the radio in Kandahar and explain that "lawyer" means "executioner" in translation."

No need,I just posted the hourly rate for a lawyer.Seems to have done the trick.

[A.L.]

It's a "mistake" only if your purpose in detaining them was to hold them for a criminal trial and obtain a conviction. It wasn't.

It's not as if these are mutually exclusive goals. You can hold someone as an enemy combatant while still doing your best to preserve and collect admissible evidence. The Bush administration belatedly realized this. Like much of what they did, they didn't think through the endgame. At some point, whether in civilian court or in some kind of commission, you're going to want to try these guys, and if you haven't paid any attention to the collection and preservation of evidence, you're going to have a hard time.

The FBI always conducts its investigations with an eye toward eventual prosecution, so they do their best to generate usable evidence. Hence the miranda warnings.

[PeterUK]

"using a non-threatening approach that outwitted the detainee - even getting him to talk by using his childhood nickname."

Which means they have captured his mother.
"Oh Ali was so cute he used to have this little stuffed goat called Moomoo,used to take it to bed with him". "I remember the time when he was........"
"Mother! For the Love of Allah......All right I'll talk".

[PeterUK]

"At some point, whether in civilian court or in some kind of commission, you're going to want to try these guys,"

No you are not,any more than were those detained in WWII.

Anyway,isn't this extension of US law to foreign nationals captured on foreign soil,having committed no crime on US soil,that imperialism that liberals used to detest?

[glasater]

Like much of what they did, they didn't think through the endgame

I am so sick and tired of this stupid meme. Just explain to me where Zero is performing any better.

Yeah--he really is thinking through the endgame on defense, the economy and last but not least--his stumbling around on Gitmo.

[Extraneus]

All right I'll talk

LOL

[Mark O]

Can our military shoot these "evil doers"? (which phrase, I still contend, equated them with The Joker.)

[Extraneus]

I think he's thinking through to the endgame glasater. I don't think he gives much thought to defense, Gitmo or foreign policy, because the endgame is "redistributive justice," as he has clearly stated. All the rest of this foreign policy stuff is just a distraction, perhaps a smoke-screen, but the statist takeover is happening right on schedule. The endgame is getting it done before people realize it's too late to stop it.

[daddy]

OT Breaking News

Alaska Pipeline Deal http://community.adn.com/adn/node/141725 ">confirmed.

I'm going to post this on a few threads. Hope nobody minds.

My initial thought is that this bodes very positive for Sarah Palin. This is a very big accomplishment attributable totally to her, not to her predecessors in office, not the GOP, not the Feds', nobody. This is her baby. Others can wreck it; Obama, environmentalists, Lawyer's, etc, but the credit is hers, and anybody who does try to prevent this can easily be painted as obstructionists because stuff like this is what America is screaming for. Good job Sarah.

Let's see how this gets reported.

[Fresh Air]

Daddy--

Excellent. For her encore I would like her to publicly tell David Letterman to go eff himself.

[PeterUK]

"For her encore I would like her to publicly tell David Letterman to go eff himself."

On the contrary,Sarah Palin should forgive Letterman,the Leftiberals would have green slime coming out of thir ears.

[JM Hanes]

A.L.:

Yeah, I can hear Commanders in the field right now, telling their men to remember, "Our objective here is to bring the enemy to trial!" Bush was thinking through a different end game, thank heaven.

[JM Hanes]

PUK:

LOL. She should forgive him, at length, for all his sins.

[PeterUK]

As the man said,
"The object of war is not to die for your country but to bring the other poor bastard to trial".

[PeterUK]

Were the Japanese on Iwo Jima have Miranda read out to them?

[PeterUK]

DID?

[Daddy]

Well just imagine how many Cindy Shhehan's this Miranda Rights stupidity will produce. At least her son died fighting to protect and defend his buddies, not while pausing a moment and letting his guard down while reading some bullshit legalistic argument to somebody intent on chopping his head off. If this sort of lunacy starts filling US body Bags I think a whole lot of mamma's and papa's who care about this country and understand the Second Amendment are going to go way beyond Cindy Sheehan stuff in expressing their anger at such mandated idiocy.

[Soylent Red]

PUK:

Trial is hell.

[clarice]

Sarah's going to win this one--I noticed the Yahoo account is almost pure fiction, but I believe the truth will seep out and she will have the people's sympathy and respect--not that clown.

[Danube of Thought]

"It's not as if these are mutually exclusive goals. You can hold someone as an enemy combatant while still doing your best to preserve and collect admissible evidence. The Bush administration belatedly realized this. Like much of what they did, they didn't think through the endgame."

Nonsense. The people responsible for defending the nation from further attack felt they didn't have the luxury of taking their time, and as we now know they had the concurrence of, among others, Nancy Pelosi and Jay Rockefeller in that regard. (One cannot identify a single official who, having been informed of what was being done, argued for forbearance.)

The appropriate endgame, as seen by the Bush administration in 2003 and the Obama administration in 2009, was and is to hold until the cessation of hostilities anybody you don't intend to try, for whatever reason.

[PeterUK]

Clarice,
Sarah Palin should start thinking Joan of Arc.

[Danube of Thought]

"The FBI always conducts its investigations with an eye toward eventual prosecution..."

Good for them. But we didn't send the FBI or the cops to Afghanistan or Iraq; we sent the CIA and the 82nd Airborne. Their objectives and their methods are quite different from one another, and that is as it should be.

[PeterUK]

" But we didn't send the FBI or the cops to Afghanistan or Iraq; "

Only because they have no jurisdiction in those countries.Ooops!

[A.L.]

Yeah, I can hear Commanders in the field right now, telling their men to remember, "Our objective here is to bring the enemy to trial!" Bush was thinking through a different end game, thank heaven.

If you'd read the story (or any of my comments), you'd see that no one was talking about commanders in the field. We were talking about the FBI. The FBI only gets involved, at the earliest, after someone is in custody and safely away from the battlefield. The FBI isn't the army. Their object is, and has always been, to gather evidence to use in prosecution. That's what they do. They did the exact same thing during the Bush years.

[Soylent Red]

Also...

This whole line of reasoning is discombobulated from the start.

If we are talking about baddies we catch from this point forward in AFG, we should be following the stated COIN doctrine of letting the Host Nation (Afghan Government) take care of them, under their rules, which do not include Mirandization.

I have first hand knowledge that this is the thrust of our strategery in Iraq right now: catch baddies, transfer to the INA or IP, let the Central Criminal Court of Iraq carry the ball from there. Also no Mirandization.

But...

If these are people who we are detaining in a foreign country, we have no jurisdiction to simply snatch them up as criminals under our law, and try them in a U.S. court.

Think about it. If we can bring people to trial for our laws here (which is what Mirandization implies), why couldn't Iran snatch up an American in Belgium, apply their rules of interrogation, and try them under Sharia law?

My point is that these people just can't be considered offenders of U.S. law, or we open the door to similar interpretation from other countries. If that is true, why bother with Miranda?

[Danube of Thought]

"...no one was talking about commanders in the field. We were talking about the FBI. The FBI only gets involved, at the earliest, after someone is in custody and safely away from the battlefield."

Precisely, and that's as it should be. They also get involved only after all useful intelligence has been extracted from them.

At the close of World War II there were 400,000 German nationals imprisoned on US soil. Not one had a right to any kind of hearing, let alone a trial. Many were conscripts taken into the service against their will; others were involuntarily in or attached to the army performing ministerial functions, and posed no threat to any American. No one contended that any of them had a right to be released, and no one had the slightest concern about whether they could successfully be prosecuted at the end of the war.

Because these enemy combatants have elected not to wear uniforms and not to conduct themselves in accordance with the laws and customs of wars, there are those who think they should derive some benefit from their behavior, rather than forfeit rights they would have as POW's. This is simply madness.

[PeterUK]

Soldiers "Mirandizing" enemy combatants after capture,prior to questioning.

[JM Hanes]

A.L.:

"If you'd read the story (or any of my comments), you'd see that no one was talking about commanders in the field. We were talking about the FBI. The FBI only gets involved, at the earliest, after someone is in custody and safely away from the battlefield. The FBI isn't the army. Their object is, and has always been, to gather evidence to use in prosecution. That's what they do. They did the exact same thing during the Bush years."

How much can one person get wrong in a single paragraph? Where do you think these people are being taken into custody? Where do you think the "evidence" that the F.B.I. is supposed to be collecting is located? It reminds me of the joke about the guy looking for his lost quarter under the street light.

If you think they're just doing the same old thing they've always done, you must have missed the turf wars between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. over all the changes Team Obama has been trying to make.