Yesterday, at an event at the conservative Hudson Institute, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested that trying terrorists in the U.S. could give them special rights under immigration laws that would prevent the government from deporting them:

Sometimes they [alleged terrorists] raise legal objections to going back and you can’t send them back. Our position was and I believe it to be true, you don’t want to bring them to the United States. Once you bring them into the United States soil, they will have a set of rights under the immigration laws that could well put you in a difficult position of being ordered to release somebody and not being able to deport them. I think the last thing we want to do is import terrorists into the U.S.

Watch it:

The concerns Chertoff has expressed aren’t new amongst Republicans . Back in November, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) drilled Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. on whether alleged 9/11 plotters will have an immigration status or be able to apply for asylum if and when they are tried in the U.S. At the time, Holder seemed baffled by Cornyn’s line of interrogation and said that he would get back to him with more information.

It’s unclear whether Holder ever responded to Cornyn’s fear-mongering, however, immigration experts from the National Immigration Law Center informed the Wonk Room that detainees would most likely be brought to the U.S. but kept in custody on criminal charges — without an immigration status. In the extremely unlikely event that they are acquitted, they could still be kept in custody and put in removal proceedings.

It’s even more implausible that suspected 9/11 plotters would be granted asylum — let along a green card — if they are found innocent. Syracuse University further points out that there’s a common misconception that the U.S. asylum system is abused by people who endanger national security. However, “asylum applications are subject to stringent review procedures by adjudicators in the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice and to rigorous background and security checks.” Terrorism concerns essentially lead to an automatic disqualification from asylum and immediate deportation.

In fact, a study by Human Rights First showed that immigration law has instead created a situation in which refugee and asylum seekers who pose no risk to the U.S. are unfairly denied U.S. residency due to the “pervasive, unintended consequences of the ‘terrorism’ provisions in the Immigration and Nationality Act.”

The Administration’s new Ballistic Missile Defense Review, which came out last week with the QDR, is strategically refreshing. Unfortunately, however, the corresponding budget for long-range missile defense is anything but. And when it comes to defense programs, money talks.

The Ballistic Missile Review talks importantly about not investing in exotic unproven programs designed to protect against threats that may never materialize, which is a direct swipe at missile defense programs focused on stopping long-range inter-continental ballistic missiles. This in many ways builds off the Obama administration’s previous actions on missile defense such as: focusing on more proven theater based systems that protect against short and medium range missiles (such as those held by Iran); abandoning a strategically useless ground-based missile system in Europe, cutting futuristic programs such as the Airborne Laser and the Multiple Kill Vehicles, as well as reducing funds for the fanciful ground based program in the US. All of these are definitely steps in the right direction, and have consequentially irked missile-defense-hugging neoconservatives.

However, despite the nice talk in the recently released review and all the talk of fiscal discipline, the Administration has failed to follow through in its current budget. Fred Kaplan of Slate notes:

There’s a mismatch, however, between Gates’ words and his actions. His proposed missile defense budget for fiscal year 2011 amounts to a staggering $10.4 billion. This is $2 billion less than George W. Bush requested (and received) for missile defense—his most cherished military program—in his last year as president. But it’s $700 million more than Gates himself received in FY 2010. The program is getting more expensive and, in some respects, more exotic—not less.

Kaplan also points out the strategic dissonance of the Administration’s middling approach. By killing off programs that focus on shooting down a missile in its initial boost-phase, such as the Airborne Laser, Gates is essentially cutting off one of the major conceptual legs of Bush’s multi-phased missile defense system. Not only is this a kin to the Administration acknowledging that the whole concept behind the program is deeply unsound, but by removing one of the system’s legs, Kaplan explains, the system simply can’t stand.

But if boost-phase intercept is a vital part of a missile-defense system, if all the ideas for boost-phase intercept have washed out, and if the only thing going for it is a laser-research project that’s not likely to bear fruit for decades, if ever—then the whole vision of a multi-phased missile-defense system is in deep trouble. If that’s the case, and if there’s no way around it, the idea of spending $10.4 billion on a dream system begins to sound like a fool’s errand.

In other words, Gates has effectively determined that the concept behind Bush’s multi-phase system is bunk, yet the Administration is still funding the rest of the system as if it were strategically sound and nothing had changed. Instead of putting the long-range missile program out of its misery and diverting that money to more essential programs – such as paying for the wars we are fighting – the Administration is just middling around the edges on long-range missile defense.

Our guest blogger is Ken Gude, Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Mark Thiessen, a former Bush administration speechwriter, has been waging a non-stop partisan political campaign to destroy Americans’ faith that their government can keep them safe. His latest gambit is to question the integrity of a career public servant, John Brennan, a 25-year veteran of the CIA and President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser. The tragic consequences of his efforts will be to undermine the effectiveness of America’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies that are protecting all of us, Republicans and Democrats, from future terrorist attacks.

On Meet the Press Sunday, Brennan responded to criticisms from key Congressional Republicans over the administration’s handling of Umar Faroul Abdulmuttalab, the failed Christmas bomber, by pointing out that he had kept them informed:

On Christmas night, I called a number of senior members of Congress. I spoke to Senators McConnell and Bond, I spoke to Representative Boehner and Hoekstra. I explained to them that he was in FBI custody, that Mr. Abdulmutallab was, in fact, talking, that he was cooperating at that point. They knew that “in FBI custody” means that there’s a process then you follow as far as Mirandizing and presenting him in front of a magistrate. None of those individuals raised any concerns with me at that point.

For that statement, Mark Thiessen, who has either been a speechwriter or a press spokesperson his entire career, called Brennan a liar.

Thiessen’s not claiming that Brennan didn’t call them, or that these four Republicans actually did raise concerns. Thiessen calls Brennan a liar because, according to Thiessen, these four Republicans didn’t know that the FBI Mirandizes people in it detains in the United States. Thiessen bases his theory of Republican confusion about Miranda on a Washington Post story on the Obama administration’s plan to form a High-Value Interrogation Group (HIG) which wouldn’t automatically Mirandize those detainees it interrogated.

Sounds great, except the problem is that the FBI does not have a choice whether to Mirandize people detained in the United States. There is a public emergency exception that allows for questioning without Miranda warnings, which the FBI used to question Abdulmuttalab prior to his entering surgery. The HIG, in contrast, was designed specifically to make sure the CIA stays out of the torture business and is directed at detainees captured outside the United States who may never face the prospect of trial in a U.S. court. It would be bizarre to automatically Mirandize detainees in those circumstances.

None of this matters to Thiessen, though, because this is about politics not policy, and in politics ignorance is strength.

Never mind that because the Obama administration publicly rejected the Bush administration’s use of torture, which Thiessen still defends as necessary, Abdulmutallab’s family agreed to work with the FBI to secure his cooperation. And it’s producing results. Never mind that when the Bush administration tried to do detention the way Thiessen still thinks it should be done, holding Jose Padilla in military custody without access to his family or lawyers, Padilla was still not cooperating after seven months, and never supplied much useful information.

In the Author’s Note of his book, Courting Disaster, Thiessen complains that he shouldn’t really have to write the book at all but irresponsible people have twisted information “to paint our intelligence community as a band of rogue operators who abandoned our ideals in the fight against terror.” Maybe he should check the mirror before he twists information in order to call a career public servant and senior national security official like John Brennan a liar.

We’ve tried detention and interrogation the way Thiessen wants to do it, and it was a spectacular failure. It undercut our international reputation as a defender of human rights. It helped recruit terrorists to Al Qaeda’s cause. It made us less safe. The Obama administration has chosen a path that is working but is facing unrelenting criticism from people like Mark Thiessen. One really gets the sense that Thiessen wants the Obama administration to fail.

Maybe he does. After all, this is the guy who took to the pages on the Washington Post just two days after Obama took office to warn, “if Obama weakens any of the defenses Bush put in place and terrorists strike our country again, Americans will hold Obama responsible — and the Democratic Party could find itself unelectable for a generation.” It doesn’t sound like that’s something that would disappoint him.