On two consecutive warm summer days last July, the House Armed Services Committee debated procedures for interrogating war-on-terror detainees. There were sharp exchanges between the lawmakers and during testimony from expert witnesses and disagreement on virtually every aspect of U.S. detention policy.
There was, however, one point on which there was consensus, even unanimity: that there was no need to read Miranda rights to detainees.
“There is not now nor has there ever been any interest by any member of Congress in applying the Miranda warnings to the battlefield,” said Representative Vic Snyder, a Democrat from Arkansas, on July 30, 2008. Snyder, a former lawyer and ex-Marine, went on.
The next day Representative Patrick Murphy, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, echoed those sentiments. Murphy, an Iraq war veteran and a former prosecutor, said:
But–according to Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican from Michigan and a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee–the FBI has been reading Miranda rights to high-value detainees at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan. Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, interviewed interrogators at those detention facilities on a factfinding trip he took to Afghanistan in late May.
Officials from intelligence and law enforcement agencies explained to Rogers that they had been told to read high-value detainees their Miranda rights.
“Think about this. Some guy travels from Tunisia, shows up in Afghanistan–masterminding this plot with local insurgent leaders. Taliban, likely, because, you know, any enemy of your enemy is your friend,” Rogers explains. “He goes out, he’s leading a team to kill U.S. soldiers, 5,000 miles away from home, on the battlefield. They get snatched up–either before it happens or, most likely, after it happens–take him to the detention facility and an FBI agent reads him his rights.” Rogers shakes his head. “Reads him his rights. That is not a law enforcement event. That’s a military, enemy combatant event.”
Rogers says he sought confirmation from senior intelligence and law enforcement officials. An official at the CIA did not know about the practices, but the FBI confirmed that some detainees are Mirandized and explained the procedures. “I sat down with a very high-ranking FBI official,” says Rogers, “and he told me how it’s happening.”
Rogers also says that interrogators expressed frustration that the Red Cross has been advising detainees to take advantage of their new rights and to talk to interrogators only once they had been given a lawyer.
When THE WEEKLY STANDARD broke this story online on June 9, military officials denied that Operation Enduring Freedom detainees had been Mirandized. That same day, however, the Justice Department released a statement acknowledging that detainees had, in fact, been read Miranda rights, but disputing suggestions that this was a change in “overall policy.”
Yet several of the individuals responsible for conducting the interrogations of detainees told Rogers that a “change of policy” is exactly what has occurred.
Officials at the Pentagon, with the U.S. military in Afghanistan, at U.S. Central Command, and at the National Security Council referred all questions to the Justice Department. But taking questions after a speech in Washington on Thursday, CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus acknowledged that some detainees had been Mirandized, a practice he said he was “comfortable” with. “This is the FBI doing what the FBI does. There is a very limited number of cases where this has been done.”
The Justice Department has refused to be specific about the number. Matt Miller, the top public affairs official at the Justice Department, said:
The Red Cross, too, declined to discuss numbers, citing its “direct and confidential dialogue with U.S. authorities.” But Simon Shorno, a spokesman for the Red Cross, said that while his organization will continue to press for more rights for detainees, “some progress has been made.”
Obama administration officials told reporters on background that the policy was not a change because detainees had been Mirandized during the Bush administration. That’s technically true, but Bush administration officials familiar with detainee decisions told me that they can remember only one detainee who was Mirandized. They caution that there may have been more than one, but the story of Aafia Siddiqui stands out.
Siddiqui is a Pakistani woman married to the nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. She was detained in Ghazni, Afghanistan, and taken to a U.S. facility for interrogation. Shortly before her questioning began, she stole the M-4 rifle of a U.S. Army warrant officer and began shooting. (As she did this, she shouted, “Allahu Akhbar!” and told an interpreter to “Get the f– out of here!”) Siddiqui was shot in the abdomen and, after a continued struggle, subdued. No one else was hurt. It was after this incident that she was read her rights having just committed an obvious crime. She was brought to New York and charged with attempted murder. Bush administration officials say Siddiqui’s case is notable because it is an exception.
Late last week, Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department, provided a more specific statement on the Miranda controversy.
Shortly after Boyd’s statement, Rogers–joined by House minority leader John Boehner–demanded more information from the Obama administration. Rogers introduced a “Resolution of Inquiry” that would, if it passed the Democratic-led House, formally ask the Obama administration to provide any information related to Mirandizing detainees.
“The idea of reading Miranda rights to terrorists captured on the battlefield is sheer lunacy,” Boehner said. “It’s so far outside the mainstream, in fact, that President Obama himself mocked it on 60 Minutes a few months ago.”
Rogers says that the “Resolution of Inquiry” will force discussion of the issue–and the Justice Department’s broader Global Justice Initiative–at least on the committee level. And that discussion could prove interesting.
The big concern for Representative Snyder is U.S. military personnel reading Miranda rights to enemy combatants on the battlefield. He says he has no objection as a matter of policy to detainees being Mirandized by the FBI.
“I don’t get what the big whoop-dee-doo is if an FBI agent, in the course of an investigation, reads Miranda rights to a detainee.”
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
