In the five weeks since the Christmas Day attack on Flight 253, the Obama administration has come under tremendous scrutiny for its mishandling of al Qaeda operative, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. At first the criticism focused on the many intelligence lapses that allowed Abdulmutallab on the plane. In recent weeks, most of the attention has been on the gross incompetence of the Obama administration in the aftermath of those attacks — from the general ignorance of top administration national security officials such as Janet Napolitano to the failure of the administration to have set up any mechanism to interrogate high-value detainees.
But nothing has drawn more criticism than the decision to read Miranda rights to Abdulmutallab after just 50 minutes of questioning by local FBI officials. That attention is much deserved. By mirandizing the al Qaeda operative, law enforcement officials closed a window into the increasingly dangerous al Qaeda franchise in Yemen — al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The U.S. government knows relatively little about the group, which consists of several hundred terrorists and is led by a team that includes two former Guantanamo Bay detainees. Top White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan acknowledged that he was surprised the group was targeting the U.S. homeland and could send its operatives here. We should want to know more about AQAP and by mirandizing Abdulmutallab the Obama administration has chosen to know less.
