Holder: I made decision on prosecuting airline bomb-attack suspect

WASHINGTON — In his first public defense of the arrest of the suspected Christmas airplane bomber, Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday he made the decision to prosecute Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and no one in the federal intelligence community objected that the al-Qaida operative should instead be turned over to military interrogators as a prisoner of war.

Holder also praised the work of FBI agents in Detroit, specifically those who spoke with the Nigerian and who have been criticized for reading him his Miranda rights against self-incrimination. Abdulmutallab, 23, initially stopped talking but since then, after meeting with his family while in custody, has begun to cooperate again.

Holder and the Justice Department declined to discuss whether the discussions may lead to a plea bargain for Abdulmutallab, who reportedly trained under an al-Qaida branch in Yemen.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that while "Abdulmutallab has not been offered anything, the Department of Justice (would) take his cooperation into consideration."

Holder, in a response to Republican calls for his testimony on Capitol Hill, took personal responsibility for deciding to prosecute Abdulmutallab.

"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," he said.

Holder did not say who approved the decision to read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights against self-incrimination. FBI Director Robert Mueller said Tuesday it was a joint decision by the FBI counterterrorism division and federal prosecutors.

Republicans, who have been highly critical of the decision to arrest and to Mirandize Abdulmutallab rather than declare him an enemy combatant, said they were dissatisfied with Holder's response and continued to press for his testimony.

On Christmas night and the next morning, "the FBI informed its partners in the intelligence community that Abdulmutallab would be charged criminally, and no agency objected to this course of action," the attorney general said.

In the following days, including during a meeting with President Obama and senior members of his national-security team Jan. 5, "high-level discussions ensued within the administration in which the possibility of detaining Mr. Abdulmutallab under the law of war was explicitly discussed."

But, Holder said, "no agency supported the use of law of war detention for Abdulmutallab."

That position appears to contradict remarks from some in the intelligence field, including Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence, who told the Senate Homeland Security Committee it was a "mistake" for agents to give Abdulmutallab a Miranda warning.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., insisted that military custody was the proper place for Abdulmutallab to truly find out everything he knows about al-Qaida plots. "Treating terrorists like civilians damages our ability to gather crucial intelligence," Sessions said.