David Rivkin responds with call for serious evaluation of FBI interrogation policy

Published on February 09, 2010 by Brent Baldwin (OfficialWire) WASHINGTON, D.C.

On the hot seat of MSNBC’s The Ed Show, former Justice Department official David Rivkin called Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan “factually wrong” when insisting that senior members of Congress were aware that Miranda rights would be given so soon to terrorist suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

“It’s interesting that Mr. Brennan says that being in FBI custody is synonymous with being Mirandized,” said Rivkin, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for The Defense of Democracies and co-chair for the Center for Law & Counterterrorism.  Rivkin pointed to an organization within the FBI known as HIG (high-level interrogation group), formed early in the administration, that had previously announced it did not require Mirandizing a suspect.

“The notion [Republicans] could conceive the administration would be so foolish as to Mirandize him in 50 minutes is quite simply ludicrous. Of course they didn’t conceive of it. It would’ve been crazy!” Rivkin said.

The show segment from Feb. 8th began with a Meet The Press clip of Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan explaining that he had briefed several senior members of Congress on the night of the Christmas attack who never expressed reservations about standard FBI procedure. Among those was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, now one of the loudest critics of the Obama administration’s handling of the brief interrogation.

Liberal host Ed Schultz tried to paint the entire Republican argument as “political posturing” and challenged Rivkin, saying he was pitting his credibility against the word of Brennan. But Rivkin remained adamant that officials would not have simply assumed Miranda rights were being given automatically. Rivkin also pointed out that there should be less blame cast by both sides and more attention to the underlying failures in common sense procedure.

“We’re talking about somebody who is interrogated for 50 minutes, that interrogation was interrupted and he is Mirandized. I don’t know of any serious interrogator who does not believe that we should have a go at him for several weeks,” Rivkin said.


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 or contact:

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Former Justice Department official cites secret legal filing that contradicts Obama approach to charging terrorists

Published on February 08, 2010 by Brent Baldwin (OfficialWire) WASHINGTON, D.C.

Attorney and former Justice Department official David Rivkin recently broke a story in his Wall Street Journal Op-Ed (“Tale of Two Terrorists”) regarding a secret filing made by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. The filing, made Dec. 18, basically argued that interrogating terrorists must come before criminal prosecution.

On Feb. 6, Rivkin appeared live on Fox and Friends alongside Matthew Alexander, a former senior interrogator in Iraq and author, to discuss the use of Miranda rights for accused terrorists. They specifically discussed Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Abdumuttalab, who promptly stopped talking after being read his rights. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs previously stated that the FBI obtained sufficient intelligence from a 50-minute interrogation of Abdumuttalab on Christmas Day before reading him his rights. Rivkin strongly disagrees with this approach.

“This was a huge mistake,” Rivkin said. “The Justice Department senior official, U.S. attorney Preet Bharara on Dec. 18 argues in a filing that its essential to treat a person like Abdumuttalab as an intelligence asset, with protracted interrogations to illicit every bit of intelligence information back and forth—and not just for 15  [or 50] minutes.”

Alexander countered that he would rather “deligitimize” terrorists by showing that our government upholds the word of the law; and also by treating terrorists as common criminals which would make them less effective as recruitment figures.

Rivkin said the most important means of self-defense involved timing and the overall intelligence information gathered from suspects at hand. “We didn’t get this information in a timely fashion. So intelligence got stale. And just because we’re getting some intelligence stream out of this guy doesn’t mean we couldn’t have gotten more,” Rivkin said, noting that he was still for humane treatment of prisoners.

“We could’ve treated him as an enemy combatant, interrogated him humanely for several months, got everything out of him and then made a decision about whether we want to put him in a criminal justice system,” Rivkin said. “We got some information out of him, but we could’ve gotten more. There’s no doubt about that.”

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 or contact:

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