If Bush Had Done That

The Obama administration appears to have abandoned plans to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and four co-conspirators on trial in Lower Manhattan, according to administration sources.

“It seems less and less likely” that the trial will take place in New York, according to a senior administration official.

The administration was facing a surge of political opposition to hosting the trial in New York. That opposition crystallized in recent days when New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, an early supporter of holding the trial in the city, said the security and financial costs were too great.

In a letter to the president Friday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said a New York trial heightens the risk of a terrorist attack.

“Without getting into classified details, I believe we should view the attempted Christmas Day plot as a continuation, not an end, of plots to strike the United States by al-Qaeda and its affiliates,” Feinstein said. “Moreover, New York City has been a high-priority target since at least the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. The trial of the most significant terrorist in custody would add to the threat.”
She told the president in the letter that he has “the flexibility to move this trial to a less prominent, less costly, and equally secure location.”

Administration officials said they remain committed to putting Mohammed and the other defendants (who are currently held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) on trial in federal court, not in a military commission as some in Congress have been demanding.

That commitment was welcomed by proponents of using the federal courts to try terrorist suspects.
“As long as these trials occur in federal criminal courts with proper due-process protections, the actual venue doesn’t matter very much,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “All of our federal courts are equipped and able to handle such cases. That’s where they belong and that’s where they should stay.”

Oh well,
Shon Jimenez

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