This morning Steve Hayes noted reports that the Obama administration is planning on giving the FBI a greater role in its "global justice initiative" whose "premise [is] that virtually all suspects will end up in a U.S. or foreign court of law." Gary Schmitt makes a few additional points about the proposed initiative:
The reality is Guantanamo, renditions, harsh interrogation techniques, and so on are the product of the fact that the vast majority of terrorists rounded up around the world are not going find themselves in a court of law. The evidence trail will either never be clean enough for courts here or abroad to use or much of it will be tied to intelligence that neither we nor other foreign intelligence services will be willing to expose in a normal court case. Of course, it is impossible at this point to know whether "the global justice initiative" is the Obama team's actual plan or just a Washington-style leak by folks (perhaps within the Justice Department) to see what the public reaction to such a plan would be. However, the idea that we should return to the "good ol' days" when the core of our counterterrorism strategy was to arrest terrorists and put them on trial is an idea that should be thoroughly debated before we head back down that road. Lest anyone forget, the first World Trade Center bombing-which only by luck did not result in hundreds or possibly thousands dying-happened on the FBI's watch and while DOJ and FBI officials were worried about building a court case against the plotters. And of course the '90s saw al Qaeda and terrorists kill hundreds in attacks against Americans with the bombings of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole. The question someone should ask is: how many died on 9/11 and before when the FBI was taking the lead in counterterrorism, and how many have died since?