Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad

The Obama Administration

has ordered the FBI and CIA to inform terrorists overseas that they "have the right to remain silent" before probing them for information to save American lives.

According to Weekly Standard report by Stephen F. Hayes, a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee has revealed that "the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan."

The Miranda warning, named after the 1966 Supreme Court case Miranda vs. Arizona, is a statement read by law enforcement officials to inform suspects of their rights. It states:

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.

Hayes noted that former CIA Director George Tenet said Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad refused to cooperate with officials when he was captured March 1, 2003.

"I'll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer," Mohammad demanded.

Mohammad did not enlist the services of a lawyer until months after his capture and interrogation. But, according to the report, Tenet wrote in his memoirs that intelligence extracted from the terrorist saved countless American lives.

"I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal – read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up," Tenet wrote.

Hayes said, "If Tenet is right, it's a good thing (Mohammad) was captured before Barack Obama became president."

Rep. Mike Rogers, former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement during his fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

"The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement," Rogers told the Weekly Standard. "Here's the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them … and they're reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters."

Rogers told Hayes the Obama administration has never informed Congress of the Miranda policy.

"I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn't been briefed on it, I didn't know about it," he said. "We're still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative."

The policy is part of a larger plan to replace the CIA-dominated method of covert arrest and interrogation with a significantly expanded role for the FBI and Justice Department in counter-terrorism operations. According to a Los Angeles Times report, agents will collect evidence to criminally prosecute all suspected terrorists.

In previous years, the Bush administration considered counter-terrorism operations an intelligence or military issue, not a law enforcement one, the Times states. But, under Obama's new "global justice" plan, the goal is to ensure that all suspected terrorists can be tried in a U.S. or foreign court of law.

"With many thousands of lives potentially in the balance, we did not think it made good sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time," former Vice President Dick Cheney said in a May speech.

Many Republican lawmakers agree with Cheney.

"When they mirandize a suspect, the first thing they do is warn them that they have the 'right to remain silent,'" Rep. Pete Hoekstra, ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Weekly Standard. "It would seem the last thing we want is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other al-Qaeda terrorist to remain silent. Our focus should be on preventing the next attack, not giving radical jihadists a new tactic to resist interrogation – lawyering up."

Rogers said even the International Red Cross has begun advising terrorist suspects to remain silent until they have representation.

"The International Red Cross, when they go into these detention facilities, has now started telling people – 'Take the option. You want a lawyer,'" he said.

Rogers told Hayes that the predicament may become confusing in a combat scenario:

The problem is you take that guy at three in the morning off of a compound right outside of Kabul where he's building bomb materials to kill US soldiers, and read him his rights by four, and the Red Cross is saying take the lawyer – you have now created quite a confusion amongst the FBI, the CIA and the United States military. And confusion is the last thing you want in a combat zone.

However, Richard Clarke, senior counter-terrorism official in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, told the Los Angeles Times the changes are long overdue.

"We have to return to the practice that we had before of arresting terrorists and putting them on trial," he said, claiming U.S. ability to do so "has atrophied."

But Hayes notes that a suspected terrorist who remains silent will not provide the U.S. with vital information about impending attacks.

In his memoirs, Tenet wrote, "I am confident that we would have obtained none of the information he had in his head about imminent threats against the American people."