Someone is Lying About the Detroit Underwear Bomber

Someone is lying.

Item One: After concerted pressure from Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder confessed that he was behind charging the alleged Detroit crotch-bomber in civilian court, thereby terminating the interrogation process after a scant 50 minutes. But, he says, he had consulted the heads of the various intelligence agencies and -- after no one objected -- he went forward with Miranda-izing the accused terrorist.

Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. said Wednesday that he personally made the decision. "I made the decision to charge Mr. Abdulmutallab with federal crimes, and to seek his detention in connection with those charges, with the knowledge of, and with no objection from, all other relevant departments of the government," Holder said in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Among the Washington heavy-hitters in the Situation Room when that decision was made, according to Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary: Dennis Blair, the national director of intelligence; FBI Director Bob Mueller; CIA Director Leon Panetta; Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

So Holder says that all relevant intelligence agencies were consulted. But:

Item 2: On February 2nd, however, CNN reported that no one in the intelligence communities knew of Holder's decision.

The official was not authorized to speak for attribution because the case remains under investigation. Mueller said none of the intelligence chiefs at Tuesday's hearing were consulted about the decision to read AbdulMutallab his Miranda rights. That decision was made by the chief security interrogator at the scene in consultation with the Department of Justice, Mueller said.

And:

Item 3: According to Politico, "Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano admitted they had not been consulted about the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab."

And:

Item 4: The former chairs of the 9/11 Commission criticized the handling of the Crotch-bomber case, saying that the terrorism and intelligence communities should have been consulted.

The two former chairmen of the 9/11 Commission expressed concerns today about how security agencies responded to the arrest of alleged Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and the decision to quickly charge him instead of attempting to gain valuable intelligence information...

"Here is a man who may have trained with other people who are trying to get into this country one way or another, who may have worked with some of the top al Qaeda leadership in Yemen or al Qaeda generally and we don't know the details of that," Thomas Kean, former chairman of the 9/11 Commission, told the committee. "He may know about other plots that are pending and we haven't found out about them."

... "The decisions of this kind should never have been made without consulting without the full input of the greater intelligence community, particularly the DNI, but also the CIA the FBI and other members of the intelligence community," said Kean.

In short, the heads of the intelligence agencies say that Eric Holder never consulted them about the decision to Miranda-ize the crotch-bomber.

Eric Holder, in writing, says he did.

Someone is lying -- and an immediate investigation is needed. Eric Holder needs to be put under oath and questioned extensively about his side of this bizarre story. The safety of innocent Americans -- men, women and children -- hangs in the balance.


Hat tip: Commenter Brian.