Krauthammer: Christmas Day bombing: The scandal grows

By Charles Krauthammer

The real scandal surrounding the failed Christmas Day airline bombing was not that a terrorist got on a plane - that can happen to any administration, as it did to the Bush administration - but what happened afterward when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was captured by the U.S. government. After questioning him, the Obama administration chose, reflexively and mindlessly, to give the chatty terrorist the right to remain silent. Which he immediately did, undoubtedly denying us crucial information about al-Qaida in Yemen, which had trained, armed and dispatched him.

We have since learned that the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab was made without the knowledge of or consultation with the secretary of defense, the secretary of homeland security, the director of the FBI, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center or the director of national intelligence (DNI).

Obama's own DNI said that Abdulmutallab should have been interrogated by the HIG, the administration's new High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.

Perhaps you hadn't heard the term. Well, in the very first week of his presidency, Obama abolished by executive order the Bush-Cheney interrogation procedures and pledged to study a substitute mechanism. In August, the administration announced the establishment of the HIG, housed in the FBI but overseen by the National Security Council.

Where was it during the Abdulmutallab case? Not available, admitted National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, because it had been conceived for use only abroad. Travesties of this magnitude are not lost on the American people.

One of the reasons Scott Brown won in Massachusetts was his focus on the Mirandizing of Abdulmutallab.

Of course, this case is just a reflection of a larger problem: an administration that insists on treating Islamist terrorism as a law-enforcement issue. Which is why the Justice Department's other egregious terror decision, granting Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) a civilian trial in New York, is now the subject of a letter from six senators - three Republicans, two Democrats and Joe Lieberman - asking Attorney General Eric Holder to reverse the decision.

The problem is, it's hard to see how that decision gets reversed. Once you've read a man Miranda rights, what do you say? On second thought ... .

Hence the agitation over the KSM trial. This one can be reversed, and it's a good surrogate for this administration's insistence upon criminalizing - and therefore trivializing - a war on terror that has now struck three times in one year within the United States, twice with effect (the Arkansas killer and the Fort Hood shooter) and once with a shockingly near miss (Abdulmutallab).

On the KSM civilian trial, it is quite insane to spend millions to give the killer of 3,000 innocents the largest propaganda platform on Earth, while at the same time granting civilian rights of cross-examination and discovery that risk betraying U.S. intelligence sources and methods.

Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. Frank Wolf are planning a bill to block funding for the trial. It makes flesh an otherwise abstract issue: Should terrorists be treated as enemy combatants or criminal defendants? The vote will force members of Congress to declare themselves.

Congress may not be able to roll back the Abdulmutallab travesty. But there will be future Abdulmutallabs. By cutting off funding for the KSM trial, Congress can send Obama a clear message: The Constitution is neither a safety net for illegal enemy combatants nor a suicide pact for us.

n Contact the writer at letters@charleskrauthammer.com