WASHINGTON — FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III on Wednesday found himself defending the handling of the Christmas day bombing attempt in Detroit — this time before a Congressional committee.
Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., told Mueller he would have preferred that a team of interrogation experts had been brought to Detroit to question Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab instead of the local FBI, according to the Associated Press.
“They were not the best people that we had in the nation at that time to interrogate the Christmas Day bomber,” Wolf said, according to AP.
But Mueller, who appeared before a House Appropriations subcommittee, defended the the way things were handled, saying the FBI could have lost valuable information while waiting for the out of town interrogators to arrive, AP reported. He added that Abdulmutallab is continuing to cooperate with authorities.
“One has to make decisions relatively quickly in order to maximize the opportunity to get that intelligence,” Mueller said.
Read Mueller’s Statement before the House Appropriations Subcommittee
