Many on the right have argued that reading terror suspects their Miranda rights jeopardizes American security by making it less likely that the suspects will provide crucial terror-related information to federal authorities. Cutting past all the empty rhetoric, the syllogism appears to go something like this: (1) Reading the suspect his Miranda rights will cause the suspect to invoke his rights to an attorney; (2) the attorney provided to the suspect will advise the suspect not to cooperate with the authorities but, instead, to remain silent; and (3) the suspect will take the advice of his attorney and deprive authorities of valuable information. This syllogism is wrong because it fundamentally misunderstands what good defense lawyers do.
I am a lawyer, and a large part of my practice is criminal defense. Though my criminal defense colleagues all have their own unique styles, essentially every good -- indeed, every half-way decent -- criminal defense lawyer I have met agrees on one thing: If your client is accused of participating in a criminal conspiracy, and the evidence against him is remotely substantial, COOPERATE WITH THE AUTHORITIES.
Criminal defense lawyers aren't idiots. They know that "remaining silent" doesn't do a suspect a damn bit of good if the evidence against him is already substantial. Criminal defense lawyers know that there are guaranteed, institutionalized benefits to cooperation. In particular, cooperating with authorities -- especially helping authorities capture and convict other members of the conspiracy -- will result in a reduced sentence and potentially other benefits. Sometimes cooperating is the only way to avoid the death penalty.
While I am not aware of any empirical study assessing whether conspiracy suspects tend to cooperate with authorities more often once they are represented by an attorney, my bet is that the answer is yes. It is not a coincidence that the Christmas Day bomber started "re-cooperating" roughly a day after he was provided a criminal defense lawyer. I can guarantee you that the lawyer explained to the young man that he had been caught red-handed and that cooperating with authorities would result in reduced punishment.
What I find amusing is that right wingers like Sarah Palin and Scott Brown -- who apparently believe that we should interrogate terror suspects in remote, undisclosed locations and with "enhanced" techniques -- believe that actual or threatened physical pain is more likely to lead to cooperation than providing the suspect with a lawyer who will explain to the suspect that certain guaranteed benefits will flow from cooperation. The terror suspect who has been renditioned and is being waterboarded has no real reason to believe that the torture will cease if only he cooperates. Would an American soldier being tortured by a member of the Taliban have reason to trust his torturer's "promise" that the torture will stop if only he disclosed the location of his platoon? I would say no, and I believe Sarah Palin would say no as well. What is the basis for assuming that the opposite is true in the case of a terror suspect being tortured at the hands of an American? More likely is that the terror suspect will trust the advice of his criminal defense lawyer --and that advice will invariably be to cooperate.
This is not to say that all terror suspects will listen to their defense lawyers' advice to cooperate with authorities. Some suspects truly are martyrs in the sense that they lack any interest in self-preservation. Such suspects probably won't provide assistance to authorities, even if it means exposing themselves to the death penalty or giving up guaranteed benefits such as a reduced prison term. But my belief is that these are the suspects that straight torture won't work on either.
Ultimately, the goal of the authorities is to get as many terror suspects as possible to cooperate -- to give up critical information to help America stop future attacks and to find and arrest or kill other terrorists. The reason that using the criminal justice system -- with all its "protections" for defendants -- will maximize the achievement of this goal is because the system provides guaranteed, institutionalized benefits to suspects who cooperate with authorities and provides suspects with an advocate that will trustworthily advise the suspects of these benefits. I am not sure why Eric Holder or President Obama haven't explicitly made this argument, but they should.