David Rivkin skewers officials for not interrogating Abdulmutallab long enough

Former Justice Department official calls out recent intelligence failure on Fox & Friends show

Published on January 25, 2010

by Brent Baldwin

(OfficialWire)

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Lawyer and former Reagan Justice Dept. official David Rivkin was upset after hearing White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs defend the decision to interrogate accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab for only 50 minutes before granting him an attorney. Rivkin explained his frustration live during the Fox and Friends morning show that aired Jan. 25.

“Every intelligence expert knows that it takes days and weeks and months to get all the intelligence you can get out of a person. Even then you don’t know if you get everything,” Rivkin said. “To say, smugly, that 50 minutes is all you need is appalling.”

The accused terrorist was granted an attorney after a nearly hour-long interrogation session and immediately stopped speaking on the advice of counsel. Rivkin went on to argue that 50 minutes was not nearly enough time to consult experts in Washington, get feedback from the attorney general, or utilize interagency cooperation from the CIA and military intelligence.

“The thing is they did it. What even worse from my perspective, they’re defending it,” Rivkin continued. “They’ve learned nothing from this experience. They had a knee-jerk reaction to do law enforcement stuff, and they’re defending it weeks into the process.”

Rivkin said the Obama Administration could’ve still charged the accused terrorist as a criminal but that it did not have “a system in place” and should’ve consulted more senior intelligence officials. For instance, interrogators could have capitalized more on the mental state of the recently arrested prisoner, Rivkin said. “You are most vulnerable at that time. Psychological shock, being captured, this is the time to press on,” he told hosts for Fox & Friends.

Rivkin, who is a vocal proponent for classifying accused terrorists as enemy combatants instead of criminals, closed by lamenting the fact that much or any intelligence gathered from the suspect “weeks and months down the road would not be as actionable.”

About David Rivkin
David Rivkin is an attorney in private practice and partner at Baker & Hostetler in Washington, D.C., who has had a lengthy career distinguished by service in the White House during two presidents’ terms, in the U.S. Department of Justice and in the U.S. Department of Energy. He is a well-known writer and media commentator on matters of constitutional and international law, as well as foreign and defense policy. He is a visiting fellow at the Nixon Center, contributing editor at the National Review, and a member of the Advisory Council at National Interest magazine. He currently serves as co-chairman of the Center for Law and Counterterrorism at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He also represents foreign governments and corporate entities on legal, political, defense, economy and public relations matters.  For more information, visit www.davidrivkin.com.

Contact

David B. Rivkin, Jr.
drivkin@bakerlaw.com
Tel: (202) 861-1731