Federal Judiciary

Two Cheers for the Maine Ladies -- By: Robert Costa

When Obamacare sailed into rough waters near Christmas, most Republicans jumped ship. But two GOP senators, Maine?s Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, clung to the battered vessel right until Ben Nelson cut the rope.

This week, the Maine ladies redeemed themselves with their handling of the Republican riposte to President Obama?s foundering anti-terror policy. It was a welcome surprise. As northeast moderates, Snowe and Collins could have easily continued to glide through Senate life, secure in their belief that the GOP is lucky to have them on its side. Yet, refreshingly, in both tone and substance, they snapped this week -- irking everyone from Robert Gibbs and Eric Holder to Rachel Maddow and the Huffington Post -- coming down hard on the Obama administration?s handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed Christmas bomber.

Maybe, after months of patiently listening to a logorrheic swirl of health-care arguments from liberals, Collins and Snowe have had enough of Team Obama?s talk-talk ways. Maybe the success of their new Senate neighbor, Scott Brown, shook them awake. Whatever the reason, the duo showed real verve in taking a scalpel to the administration?s excuses and the incoherent bureaucracy otherwise known as our national-security apparatus.

Collins, the ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, shined in the GOP?s radio and video response to the president?s weekly address, denouncing the Obama administration for enabling Abdulmutallab to lawyer up right after he tried to take down Northwest Airlines Flight 253. ?Less than one hour,? Collins said. ?That?s right, less than one hour. In fact, just 50 minutes. That?s the amount of time that the FBI spent questioning Abdulmutallab, the foreign terrorist who tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day. Then, he was given a Miranda warning and a lawyer, and, not surprisingly, he stopped talking.?

Collins?s tough words didn?t come out of thin air. A week before, she was flabbergasted when Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, testified to her committee about how the FBI made a mistake in reading Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights. That decision, Blair said, was ?made by the FBI team agent in charge on the scene, consulting with his headquarters and Department of Justice.? Collins?s scowl said it all: Unbelievable. ?I believe we, by doing so, have lost an opportunity to secure additional intelligence from [Abdulmutallab], not only [about] his own training but intelligence that possibly would allow us to uncover other plots that are emanating from Yemen,? she said. ?We know those interrogations can provide critical intelligence. But the protections supported by our civil system, as opposed to the military-tribunal system, can encourage terrorists to lawyer up to stop answering questions.?

Snowe, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also raised pointed questions during a hearing on Tuesday with the heads of the CIA, the FBI, and other agencies. Snowe challenged the chiefs on the Miranda issue, calling its use in the Abdulmutallab case ?disturbing.?

?There is obviously a profound concern,? Snowe said. ?The American people need reassurances.#...#It seems to me, in this instance, that [Abdulmutallab] should have commanded attention at the highest levels of the intelligence community about whether further questions should be posed to this individual, to be certain that the questions being posed were based on all of the information regarding al-Qaeda in Yemen, and putting it all together before issuing his Miranda rights. That?s what?s so disturbing here, because that did not occur.? The administration?s intelligence policy, she added, is not ?cohesive.?

The White House was shocked. The administration?s anti-terror policy was being riddled to pieces not by the usual suspects like Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R., Mich.) or Rudy Giuliani, but by the Maine ladies -- who were, at one point, the president?s best hope for passing his health-care bill. Gibbs, Obama?s press secretary, scurried to offer a rebuttal, a memo the Washington Post called a ?rare point-by-point critique.? Gibbs also enlisted Attorney General Eric Holder to fire off a letter to Senate Republicans defending his decisions, and held what the Post described as a ?hastily arranged briefing for reporters? where ?a senior administration official? argued ?against GOP assertions.?

?All the senior leadership in government involved in intelligence knew that Abdulmutallab was being indicted more than a day before and they supported that decision,? Gibbs said. ?Abdulmutallab has not been offered anything. The Department of Justice take his cooperation into consideration.#...#The men and women of the FBI have disrupted plots, saved American lives, and acquired intelligence that has allowed us to take the fight to terrorists overseas. That includes the counterterrorism professionals who were on the scene in Detroit and those who continue to gather critical intelligence from Abdulmutallab while politicians in Washington second-guess their work.?

It wasn?t enough. The administration continued to fret, so this week it started to leak to its favorite reporters information about how the government actually has been able to get some information out of Abdulmutallab. Collins didn?t take back a word. In a statement, she said that ?if Abdulmutallab is now talking in the context of plea negotiations, that is, of course, welcome, but it implies that the government is willing to grant him a measure of leniency for the information he is willing to provide. We will never know whether the quality and quantity of information might have been superior had he not been given a lawyer who is now guiding him on what to reveal and what not to disclose.? The lack of coordination, she added, ?on the front end and the inexplicable, reflexive choice to use a law enforcement approach were dangerous decisions.?

As the Obama administration continues to spin and fizzle, Snowe and Collins should become more prominent in the national-security debate -- giving the GOP a smart, even-tempered Yankee opposition to complement Senate veterans like John McCain and Kit Bond. As Collins said in her radio address, ?The Obama administration appears to have a blind spot when it comes to the war on terrorism.? Look for her and Snowe to help them see the light.

-- Robert Costa is the William F. Buckley Jr. Fellow at the National Review Institute.

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on February 05, 2010 (boomark / email).