Petraeus debunks Rogers, Hoekstra on Miranda rights

On Wednesday the Weekly Standard had a story wherein Rep. Mike Rogers and Rep. Pete Hoekstra, both Michigan Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, claimed that the Obama administration had secretly ordered our troops to read detainees their Miranda rights when capturing them in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Thursday Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of all American forces in both countries, shot down that claim.

Miranda warnings are the ones you’ve seen on every TV police show for the last 40 years – “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.”

Rogers told the Weekly Standard:

For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”

The Weekly Standard then quoted an article in the LA Times from a few months ago that talked about how the FBI was getting more involved in counter-terrorism efforts abroad, but that article didn’t say anything at all about Miranda warnings. And then they cited Hoekstra:

“When they mirandize a suspect, the first thing they do is warn them that they have the ‘right to remain silent,’” says Representative Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “It would seem the last thing we want is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other al-Qaeda terrorist to remain silent. Our focus should be on preventing the next attack, not giving radical jihadists a new tactic to resist interrogation–lawyering up.”

But Petraeus, speaking to the Center for a New American Security, debunked that claim and any concerns about the FBI being involved in such interrogations, as Spencer Ackerman of our sister site the Washington Independent reports:

A Fox News reporter asks about a Weekly Standard report that detainees were getting read Miranda rights. Petraeus says he has “No concerns at all. This is the FBI doing what the FBI does. … The real rumor yesterday is whether our forces were reading Miranda rights to detainees and the answer to that is no.”