As details leak out surrounding the administration’s scandalously inept handling of the Abdulmuttalab case, I’m still waiting for a definitive answer to the following question: What role did President Obama play in the decision to hand over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to a federal court in Manhattan?

It’s a major issue, of course, one with far-reaching implications for the way this country wages the war on terror and protects our national security. Shouldn’t the public know what, if any, input the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer and commander in chief had in it? How exactly did the decision-making process work? Was the president the driving force behind this move, or did he act more as a hands-off administrator, delegating to lower levels such seemingly fateful questions bearing on the country’s safety?

Either way, the answer would tell us a lot about the president and the administration he leads. Has this question already been put to Obama and satisfactorily answered? Where are all the enterprising investigative reporters with their sources in the administration, the intelligence community, and the Justice Department?

– John P. Hannah, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, served as national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2005 to 2009.