Intelligence director says accused Northwest bomber should have been interrogated by elite team

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Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told senators today that it was a mistake for authorities to give the accused bomber in the attempted Christmas Day attack on a U.S.-bound airliner a reading of his Miranda right to an attorney without consulting Blair’s office, the Homeland Security secretary and other officials.

Blair noted that the administration has created a special team for interrogating high-value terrorism suspects and that it wasn’t used -- but should have been -- after the arrest of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of attempting to take down the Northwest Airlines flight traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit.

‘That unit was created exactly for this purpose,’ Blair told the Senate Homeland Security Committee. “We did not invoke the HIG in this case. We should have. Frankly, we were thinking more of overseas people. And, duh ... the decision was made on the scene.’

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said it was a costly mistake.

‘We know that those interrogations can provide critical intelligence,’’ she said. “But the protections afforded by our civil justice system ... encourage terrorists to lawyer up. I’m told that with Abdulmutallab, once he was Mirandized and received civilian lawyers, that is exactly what he did. He stopped answering questions.’

HIG refers to high-value interrogation group, an elite team made up of experts from the CIA, FBI and other agencies. The team was created to replace the CIA interrogation program that President Obama disbanded.

-- Greg Miller in Washington