we all remember the case of umar farouk ab u matalliif, the christmas day bomber, who tried to detonate a suicide bomb on an airplane over the skies of detroit. shortly after being taken into custody, he was read his miranda warnings and it took five long weeks of plea negotiations before we would again have the opportunity to interrogate him. why does this matter? why do so many of my colleagues and i continually come to this senate floor to raise this issue? the answer is simple -- we have been down this road before of treating terrorists like criminals, sacrificing intelligence for the sake of criminal charges and miranda rights. the results on september 11, 2001, were predictable and disastrous. we lost numerous chances to gather intelligence that could have been used to neutralize future threats. we were in a reactive mode, reacting to but not preventing the 1993 world trade center bombing, the 2000 attack on the u.s.s. cole, and the 1998 embassy bombings, the same attack involving al al. al-libi. it took the reality of the 9/11 attacks to get this trend reversed. prevention became