In a brief exchange on the Christmas Day attack, host Chris Wallace asked Gibbs when President Obama was informed of the decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal rather than an enemy combatant. Gibbs was dismissive. "Chris, the charges didn't happen until several days later," he responded.
The White House would probably like this to be true. It would make what was a hasty, ill-considered decision appear more deliberative. But it's not true. Abdulmutallab was charged in a conference room at University Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at 4:30pm on December 26 -- a little more than 24 hours after he was taken into custody.
Wallace then asked Gibbs whether a 50-minute interrogation was enough: "You really don't think that if you'd interrogated him longer that you might have gotten more information, since we now know that al Qaeda in Yemen..."
Gibbs interrupted: "FBI interrogators believe they got valuable intelligence and were able to get all that they could out of him."
Our leaders in charge of protecting us think that they can solve a terrorism problem within 24 hours in a 50-minute episode. Well that's just great.
Unless our High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) has Jack Bauer leading it, we're in for a world of homeland security hurt, if I don't miss my guess.
