that we have to tell the american people, and the world, that the united states is different from other countries who engage in these tactics, and that was the point that angus king, the independent from maine, made this morning on new day. listen to what he said. this is who we are as a country. we tell the truth, and if we make a mistake, we admit it, and we move on. i ve had military interrogators tell me that, getting the report out would actually help them, because at least it starts to erase the stain that this has put on our national character. now, the flipside of that, the opposing argument, poppy, is that this is going to hurt the united states. that is why, as barbara reported, military person sell are on alert, embassies around alert around the world because those who want to, for whom the united states is an enemy, will use this as a propaganda tactic, but the other thing i want to underscore here is that this has been years in the making.
looking as though he was a deer caught in headlines. very soft spoken, and the proceedings lasted 10 to 15 minutes. the charges against him so far not outlined in great detail, but we want to remind people that this, of course bg stems from 2012 when there was an attack that led to the deaths of former u.s. ambassador chris stephens as well as shawn smith and others. he has been kept for the last two weeks on the navy warship. that period of time he was being requested by cia interrogators, and fbi interrogators and by u.s. military interrogators. they were trying to prevent future attacks and learn more
suggesting as much within the first 24 hours of the attack. u.s. forces have been tracking khatallah since about five weeks after the benghazi attack. chairman of the joint chiefs general martin dempsey said sunday s operation took months to prepare for, required what he described as an intelligence soak. senior u.s. officials say they gained intelligence from watching khatallah for many months. we now know that the delta force operators, like the ones who carried out this capture of a wanted terrorist abu al-libbi back in october practiced on a mock-up of khatallah s home before launching the operation which was over in a quick 32 minutes. he was picked up at his house south of benghazi. u.s. military interrogators don t know how long they will have to question khatallah before he is he is mirandized and given a lawyer. that decision is up to the president, the libyans have expressed anger that he they were not told about the raid in advance and are demanding khatallah s return, greta
at one level they say it s a distraction. another level they want to guide how they spend quality time. what kind of interrogation. what will happen? the first thing that most likely happened to this individual was he was taken to libya and put on a u.s. military vessel. likely somewhere in the mediterranean. it s not hard to figure out what happened next. likely the first person to talk to him aside from maybe a doctor were military interrogators who don t have to worry about miranda rights. they are not prosecuting him. when the fbi agents take him, we have reached a phase where no more actionable intelligence has been taken. it is time to put him through the judicial process. any information they disclose, we want to enter it as evidence in court. that s after military interrogators already should have spoken to him. after we should have gotten intelligence to save american lives in the near future.
what happened to him during that process and what he may have picked up during that process. all of that will unfold on the military s time and on the time of our national security interests. evan, to that point, clearly one of the things that the parents talked a lot about and we know a lot of people were involved in this. my understanding is that the operation to recover him obviously relied on a lot of intelligence gathering. i would imagine sort of bringing him home, as goldie was just saying, they ll want to try to debrief and try to get a sense from the intelligence side of what he may or may not know. there is still a bit of a mystery about how exactly he fell into taliban hands to begin with. that s a complicated story. not that it matters that much now but nonetheless, it is going to be a complicated story. he needs to talk with military interrogators and explain all that. beyond that, there s so much that he may have witnessed while in the custody of the taliban, even sma