Obama Considered—and Rejected—Military Custody for Accused Underpants Bomber

President Obama and senior advisers last month considered—and rejected—the notion that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused Christmas Day underpants bomber, should be handed over to the U.S. military for interrogation and detention, NEWSWEEK has learned. The subject of whether Abdulmutallab should be transferred to military custody came up at a meeting the president held in the White House Situation Room in early January, shortly before the Justice Department announced it would proceed against him in the civilian court system, according to little-noticed statements made by one or more "senior administration officials" who gave a background briefing to White House reporters on Feb. 2.

According to a transcript of the briefing, the subject of whether Abdulmutallab ought to be turned over to the military came up at a Situation Room meeting that appears to have been held on Jan. 5, the day before the accused underpants attacker was formally charged with terrorist offenses under federal law. During the meeting, according to a White House briefer, Attorney General Eric Holder announced: "I'm going to charge him tomorrow." At that point, according to the briefer, "there was a discussion about whether or not in fact there was going to be any type of change in his custodial disposition."

Later in the media briefing, the "senior administration official" elaborated, saying that what came up in this discussion were "questions ... about whether or not he should in fact go to Law of War detention status." But according to the official, "Nobody advocated for that position. People were comfortable throughout this process that it was going in the right direction and that given what we can do in a military commission, what we can do in the criminal-justice system, there was full unanimity on the part of the seniors that this was the right way to go."

The White House briefers then went on to discuss both the political and legal consequences of continuing to move Abdulmutallab through the civilian-justice system. "The ones who were advocating that [the administration's handling of the case in civilian courts] was a disaster claim that if you put them into Law of War detention, that, all of the sudden, is going to open up this Pandora's box of intelligence. There are people who have been in Law of War detention, including Guantánamo, that have not given anything whatsoever.

"And so the main difference between conducting the debriefing under Law of War detention as opposed to within the criminal-justice system is that the debriefer wears a military uniform. And it was the professional, considered judgment of the individuals who had access to Abdulmutallab that putting him in front of somebody with a military uniform would have made him even more opposed to any type of cooperation; that the way to get to him is to use family members who are going to be supportive of what we're trying to do, which is to get him to cooperate," the White House briefer stated. The official also claimed that in light of revelations—explained in detail at the same briefing—that Abdulmutallab had recently been spilling his guts to investigators, the administration's decision to keep him in the civilian-justice system had been "vindicated."

Most, if not all, news reports generated by this White House background briefing focused on details that the briefers offered about how Abdulmutallab had begun cooperating again after he was urged to do so by family members, who had been brought to the U.S. from their native Nigeria by the FBI.

Prominent conservatives argue that Abdulmutallab should have been processed as a military detainee and treated as an enemy combatant (with some particularly avid defenders of Bush administration policies even suggesting that he should have been subjected to "enhanced interrogation" methods which the current administration has eschewed). The White House and its political supporters have argued that their handling of the case has been entirely appropriate, and that a cooperative Abdulmutallab is now providing valuable intelligence, including possible information on other plots by Al Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate that might be in the pipeline.