Detroit bomber was singing like a canary before being lawyered up

The Telegraph:

Detroit bomber 'singing like a canary' before arrest

The chance to secure crucial information about al-Qaeda operations in Yemen was lost because the Obama administration decided to charge and prosecute Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as an ordinary criminal, critics say. He is said to have reduced his co-operation with FBI interrogators on the advice of his government-appointed defence counsel.

The potential significance became chillingly clear this weekend when it was reported that shortly after his detention, he boasted that 20 more young Muslim men were being prepared for similar murderous missions in the Yemen.

The lawyer for the 23-year-old Nigerian entered a formal not guilty plea on Friday to charges that he tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on December 25 – even though he reportedly admitted earlier that he was trained and supplied with the explosives sewn into his underwear by al-Qaeda in the Arab state.

"He was singing like a canary, then we charged him in civilian proceedings, he got a lawyer and shut up," Slade Gorton, a member of the 9/11 Commission that investigated the Sept 2001 terror attacks on the US, told The Sunday Telegraph.

"I find it incomprehensible that this administration is treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue. The president has finally said that we are at war with al-Qaeda. Well, if this is a war, then Abdulmutallab should be treated as a combatant not a criminal."

Not only did our government throw away its chance to gather valuable intelligence from Abdulmutallab but worse, Abdulmutallab presented us with the opportunity to gather a particular type of intelligence that is now lost to us. 

Contrary to the stereotype being put forth by the White House that terrorism is born of poverty, Abdulmutallab represents the growing threat from upper income, educated young men who were raised or at least educated in the West.  We need to know why these young men are turning to terrorism, how they are being recruited and vetted, and how they are being trained. 

In any case, it is mind boggling that if Abdulmutallab was willing, in fact eager, to give us badly needed information about the threat that faces us that the government would do the one thing that blocks us from gathering that intelligence.  We need to be smarter about how we obtain intelligence.  We could start by not throwing opportunities out the window.