Abdulmutallab Resumes Talking to Federal Agents -(A Month Later And After A Plea Deal?)

From the Wall St. Journal:

WASHINGTON—Family members of Christmas Day airline bomb suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab traveled to the U.S. in recent weeks and persuaded him to start talking again to federal agents, Obama administration officials said Tuesday.

The officials provided some of the first behind-the-scenes details of how they handled Mr. Abdulmutallab's case, following criticism from Republicans and others that the government should have done more to extract intelligence from him.

The Nigerian man was charged in December with attempting to detonate a bomb aboard a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit from Amsterdam.

Federal law-enforcement officials said Mr. Abdulmutallab has provided "valuable intelligence" in the past week, when he began cooperating again with Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewers. Mr. Abdulmutallab was interviewed for an hour shortly after the botched bombing and then stopped cooperating, officials have said. Justice Department prosecutors filed their initial criminal complaint the following day.

Officials declined to give specifics on what intelligence Mr. Abdulmutallab is providing.

Republicans have accused the administration of squandering a chance to gain intelligence by using the civilian court system to charge the suspect instead of declaring him an enemy combatant and subjecting him to more interrogation. Some have homed in on the decision to administer a Miranda warning to Mr. Abdulmutallab, advising him of his right to refuse to answer questions and to meet with an attorney.

Word that Mr. Abdulmutallab has resumed cooperating with authorities isn't likely to end the controversy. "There's no changing the fact that Mirandizing Abdulmutallab gave terrorists a six-week head start to cover their tracks," said Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee. "We will never know what life-saving information on co-conspirators and future plots we missed out on."

Obama administration officials note that others in similar cases have also faced charges in a civilian court, including Richard Reid, the 2001 "shoe bomber."

An administration official said that after the bombing attempt, FBI agents traveled to Nigeria to meet with Mr. Abdulmutallab's family.

The agents returned to the U.S. on Jan. 17 accompanied by some family members, including his parents. Family members were allowed to meet with Mr. Abdulmutallab, and after several days they persuaded him to speak with FBI agents.

The official said Central Intelligence Agency officers have provided assistance but aren't present in the room during interviews. The team of FBI interviewers includes behavioral analysts, the official said.

He said that at a Jan. 5 meeting of top national-security advisers in the White House Situation Room, President Barack Obama and other officials discussed Attorney General Eric Holder's plan to file formal criminal charges against Mr. Abdulmutallab the following day. Mr. Obama and his advisers discussed whether Mr. Abdulmutallab should be transferred to military custody and declared an enemy combatant, but none of the top advisers supported that idea, the official said.

The first hint that Mr. Abdulmutallab was talking again emerged at a Tuesday hearing before the Senate intelligence committee. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said of the interrogation of Mr. Abdulmutallab: "We got good intelligence. We're getting more."

Mr. Blair fueled some of the Republican criticism two weeks ago in comments about the FBI's initial interrogation of Mr. Abdulmutallab. Mr. Blair said then that the suspect should have been questioned by a special interrogation group that is still under development. But Tuesday he appeared more supportive of the FBI's decision to read Mr. Abdulmutallab his rights, saying the FBI struck a "very understandable balance."

In his early interview with FBI agents, Mr. Abdulmutallab said he was trained and given explosives by al Qaeda-affiliated militants in Yemen. A group called al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility the bombing attempt.

U.S. officials have said that when Mr. Abdulmutallab's father, a prominent Nigerian banker, told the U.S. before the bombing attempt of his concern that his son had been radicalized and was linked to militants in Yemen. However, Mr. Abdulmutallab wasn't added to terrorism watch lists that would have prevented him from boarding a U.S. airliner.