The underpants bomber was talking, quit talking, and now he’s talking again. Senator Bond accuses the White House of politicizing the investigation.
Abdulmutallab — the Nigerian man accused of attempting to blow up a plane in Detroit on Christmas — is apparently talking with authorities again. Senator Bond says the decision to give him Miranda rights was a bad idea in the first place.
Bond says while Washington is frozen under, the White House has picked a heated fight — the administration is lobbying charges of politics, when the only one making this political is the White House.
Bond is vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He says airing all the details of this investigation — and Mirandizing the terror suspect — is hampering this and future terror investigations. Bond says the White House should have said any kind of information is classified and only to be discussed in secret session.
Abdulmutallab was arrested on Christmas Day after smuggling explosives onto a plane in Detroit. He admitted to ties with Al Qaeda in Yemen but after he was read his rights, he stopped talking and asked for a lawyer.
Bond says the White House is leaking the information about the investigation for political gain.
“I’m not the one leaking sensitive info for political gain for the dangerous decision to Mirandize Abdulmatalluh,
charging the Republicans with politicizing the issues simply because we’re asking tough questions is a dodge from important policy disagreements,” he says. “We have policies disagreements on how to interrogate terrorists, how to … make sure we prevent attacks on Americans at home and our troops abroad.”
Bond also spoke on whether Iran’s threat on the U.S. was to be taken seriously. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said his country will deliver a punch felt by the West Thursday.
Bond says “We’ve seen what kind of punches they can throw — they have delivered deadly explosive projectiles attacking out troops in Iraq. They’re developming new weapons and I hope we’ll be able to get more countries to go with us to get a effective to get a refined patrol sanction on Iran, which will show support for the dissidents there that are getting a little tired of Ahmadinejad. We know a fair amount of what’s going on, and there are a number of things he can do, but don’t overlook the fact that he likes to play the terrorism game. He likes to terrorize people by making threats. We’ll do our best to counter it, but we’ll see what happens, and there are certain ways we can respond. If he takes very drastic action, we’ll be ready to do those.”
Jessica Machetta reports [Download / listen Mp3]