If Guantanamo is able to handle military commissions and Habeas Corpus federal hearings there’s no reason it can’t handle federal criminal trials. Secure teleconference abilities for classified information, video feeds, media viewing rooms, detention facilities for the detainees during hearings. They money has already been spent building and maintaining these facilities and the facilities are secure (if spartan for the journalists covering the trial) but, as usual, the government wants to spend more money on redundant facilities.

Editor –

Your point is a good one; a federal 9/11 trial could be securely conducted at Gitmo. Yet they would still take 2 to 4 years to prepare and conduct.

Why wait? Obama and Holder have both stated that the changes made in 2009 to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 fixed them to become on par in fairness to federal trials. Not only did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four cohorts attempt to plead guilty in November 2008, their full trial was ready to begin in January 2009. In fact, it was reported last July that military commissions were ready to proceed at Gitmo against 66 detainees.

Instead, President Obama is doing a takeoff of Henny Youngman, “Take my 9/11 trial, please, for $200 million,” along with all the dangers and disruptions to peoples’ lives in your community for the 2 to 4 years it we’ll take to conduct them. What a deal!

It costs $100 million annually to run the detention facility at Guantanamo, it is highly secure, ready to conduct military commissions for KSM et al, their defense lawyers are ready to defend them, and we’d protect national security by conducting them in that manner.

Here’s a wild idea: Let’s try them at Gitmo by military commission this year.