By PETE YOST
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday he made the decision to charge the Christmas Day terrorism suspect in civilian court rather than the military sys-tem, with no objection from all other relevant departments of the government.

In a letter to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, the attorney general wrote that the FBI told its partners in the intelligence community on Christmas Day and again the next day that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would be charged criminally.

Holder's letter was the latest volley in a vigorous counterattack by the Obama admini-stration to Republican charges that the arrest and FBI interrogation of the Detroit sus-pect was a mistake that cost a chance to learn key information.

The letter followed less than 24 hours after senior administration officials disclosed that the suspect had resumed talking to U.S. interrogators last week after breaking off his discussions the day of his arrest.

Abdulmutallab has discussed his contacts in Yemen and provided intelligence in multiple terrorism investigations, officials say.

Holder said that the possibility of detaining Abdulmutallab in the U.S. military system under the law of war was explicitly discussed in the days following the arrest, including at a Jan. 5 meeting that included President Barack Obama and senior members of the national-security team.

"No agency supported the use of law of war detention for Abdulmutallab, and no agency has since advised the Department of Justice that an alternative course of action should have been, or should now be, pursued," the attorney general wrote.

Holder said his decision was consistent with earlier practices followed uniformly in both the Obama and Bush administrations.

"The practice of the U.S. government followed by prior and current administrations with-out a single exception, has been to arrest and detain under federal criminal law all ter-rorist suspects who are apprehended inside the United States," Holder wrote.

He defended the decision to read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights, a focus of the Re-publican criticism.

FBI Director Robert Mueller testified Tuesday that FBI agents questioned Abdulmutallab until he entered surgery, and that the suspect was not advised of his Miranda right to remain silent until after he emerged from surgery. A federal law-enforcement official, requesting anonymity in discussing an ongoing case, said the suspect made clear upon emerging from surgery that he was going to stop talking and then was given his Miranda warning.

Republican critics have argued that Abdulmutallab could have been declared an enemy combatant and held indefinitely without providing him access to an attorney.

"The government's legal authority to do so is far from clear," Holder wrote. He cited a ruling by his Republican predecessor as attorney general, Michael Mukasey, while he was a federal judge, that the Bush administration could not prevent an enemy combatant, Jose Padilla, from speaking to an attorney while he was in military custody.

Holder also said the course proposed by the Republicans wasn't feasible.

"There is no court-approved system currently in place in which suspected terrorists cap-tured inside the United States can be detained and held without access to an attorney; nor is there any known mechanism to persuade an uncooperative individual to talk to the government that has been proven more effective than the criminal justice system," Holder wrote.

Holder's letter went to McConnell and 10 other Republican senators who had questioned the decision on charging Abdulmutallab.

Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee opened a new line of attack Wednesday. They criticized as a political maneuver the Tuesday evening briefing by a senior administration official that revealed some details about the success in persuading Abdulmutallab to resume talking.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee asked Wednesday for a hearing to ques-tion Holder. The chairman, Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., said he had been negotiating to bring Holder to testify since January and expected he would appear in March.

Pam Hess contributed to this report.