Jan. 26--U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman called on the Obama administration Monday to transfer accused Christmas Day airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from civilian to military control, a move that would reclassify him as an enemy combatant and deny him legal protections enjoyed by defendants in U.S. civilian courts.

Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said in a letter to administration security officers that Abdulmutallab is "an enemy combatant and should be detained, interrogated and ultimately charged as such." The letter, co-signed by U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the committee's ranking Republican, criticized the Justice Department for treating Abdulmutallab as a civilian criminal. Lieberman is an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.

Abdulmutallab is charged with igniting explosives hidden in his underwear in an attempt to blow up a jetliner carrying more than 250 people from Europe to Detroit. Immediately after being detained in Detroit with severe burns, he admitted having been trained and directed by the Yemen-based group al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

But Abdulmutallab stopped talking less than an hour later after local FBI agents told him that he had a legal right against self-incrimination. Lieberman, other lawmakers and top intelligence officers have been critical of the way Abdulmutallab was taken into custody, arguing that he should have been placed immediately in military custody and questioned by specially trained terror investigators from Washington.

"The decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal rather than an [enemy combatant] almost certainly prevented the military and the intelligence community from obtaining information that would have been critical to learning more about how our enemy operates and to preventing future attacks against our homeland and Americans and our allies throughout the world," Lieberman and Collins said in the letter.

The letter follows up a Homeland Security Committee meeting last week at which Lieberman said witnesses testified that federal prosecutors did not consult federal intelligence experts before making the decision to advise Abdulmutallab that he had the right to remain silent.

Lieberman and Collins addressed their letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and John O. Brennan, presidential assistant for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.

"The Administration can reverse this error, at least to some degree, by immediately transferring Abdulmutallab to the Department of Defense," the senators wrote. "The Department of Defense has the authority and capability to hold and interrogate Abdulmutallab and try him before a military commission. We urge you to take that course of action immediately and to ensure that the necessary steps are taken to avoid repeating such mistakes in the future."

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