Attorney General Eric Holder made an “unannounced” visit with Assistant U.S. Attorneys in Manhattan yesterday about the planned prosecution there of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four additional 9/11 conspirators. Also yesterday, NBC New York spot polling indicated that 82% became furious when word leaked “a federal grand jury in New York is [secretly] now hearing evidence and testimony” as prosecutors seek a federal indictment of the five. Perhaps coincidentally, one 9/11 family member’s commentary appeared and offered, “In four years, America can hold Obama accountable.”
In total, federal prosecutions during the 1990s convicted two dozen for the first bombing of the World Trade Center, Landmark plot, and the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa. Yet no U.S. official was held accountable for not preventing those attacks or the bombing of the Kobar Towers and the U.S.S. Cole. Instead, valuable intelligence reached Osama bin Laden about al Qaeda’s membership and organization and those trials inspired thousands off to the jihad in Afghanistan. Former U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White has said it will take at least three years just to prepare a federal trial for the five 9/11 conspirators because prosecutors must review 538,000 pieces of evidence and more than a million documents.
This is far more than just about the fate of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. With hundreds of defense motions and appeals expected, the trial will drag on at least through 2013 as 300,000 downtown residents are subjected to even more disruption of their lives. Our troops are at war and fighting for their lives and ours. Eric Holder decided to provide Constitutional protections to the enemy even after President Obama doubled the number of troops in Afghanistan since January 20, and 30,000 more of America’s sons and daughters will join that fight.
We’ve come to a national decision point: are battlefields crime scenes or combat zones? It matters, as former U.S. Special Forces NCO James Hanson illustrates:
Picture the scene when we go to get Osama bin Laden.
(knock, knock, knock)
“Navy SEALs, we have a warrant.”
“Mr. bin Laden, open the door, please. We have a warrant, sir.”
“Thank you, sir. Can you please step away from that suicide vest. Thank you.”
“You, crime scene tape. You, cut the lights and get me a flashlight. I’m going to check for latent prints.”
It’s absurd, and yet our legal system would seem to require it. Now that we have him in custody, we can consider interrogating him about future al Qaeda operations. Except that we first must inform him that he has the right to remain silent and to an attorney and apparently to a show trial in New York City.
Even if we were to attempt to interrogate him, he has the word of our president and attorney general that we will not do so with any rigor. Heaven forbid he receive so much as a fat lip, as the three SEALs found out recently when they captured Abed, a butcher who murdered and desecrated four Americans in Fallujah.
After 9/11, we went to war and two-thirds of al Qaeda died from unnatural causes. Thousands more were caught, interrogated for intelligence, a number of follow-on attacks upon our homeland were thwarted, and less than 800 of the enemy ever saw the inside of our detention facility at Gitmo. About 20% of the 550 detainees released from Guantanamo since 2004 went back to the jihad.
The good news is, since September 11, 2001, the Supreme Court has ruled the Military Commissions Act of 2006 Constitutional, Congress has refined the Act, and the current President has signed those revisions into law. President Obama can overrule AG Holder’s decision and Congress can stop bringing war criminals into the United States and prosecuting them in federal court through the power of the purse. And Military Commissions at Gitmo against 55 detainees were prepared to begin in January 2009.
The bad news is Attorney General Eric Holder thinks turning lower Manhattan into a fortress for years is a good idea. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly say $75 million per year might [not] be enough to cover New York City’s addition security requirements. What about the economic impact upon New York’s Chinatown, the widespread disruption of small businesses in surrounding neighborhoods, and the added security needed at the nearby World Trade Center construction site and financial district? The federal prosecution itself of the five 9/11 conspirators is expected to average $150 million per year, for years to come. That amount does not cover the five others AG Holder is referring to a stateside Military Commission, the detention facilities for all those not released yet moved from Guantanamo, and the costs of prosecuting an additional 50 detainees, most of which are expected to be farmed to federal courts around the country.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has an absolute right to defend himself [if prosecuted] in federal court. He will incite the faithful to take up arms against our troops abroad, laugh aloud that nothing of 1,100 people was ever found at nearby Ground Zero, and mock the memories of the 2,976 he slaughtered and their family members. Then, al Qaeda’s legal brigade will join the fray. Pro bono lawyers — paid or funded by dozens of major law firms and self-proclaimed human rights groups — will propagandize in the media and file motions on Gitmo South, Gitmo North, black prisons, torture, detainees denied a lawyer and a right to remain silent, mishandled Korans, forced feedings, forced confessions, and evidence that is the “fruit from a poisoned tree.” It will look and sound like a years-long masquerade party at the zoo with all the animals wearing suits.
We all were attacked on 9/11. Those were war crimes, our troops fight the same enemy, and America still lives in al Qaeda’s kill zone. When we capture unlawful combatants, they should be interrogated for intelligence and detained as long as each remains a threat. When we have sufficient evidence of war crimes, swift justice and our national security are best served by Military Commissions.
War criminals have no more Constitution right to a federal trial than the ACLU has text within the President’s oath of office or a place within the Commander-in-Chief’s decision cycle. We owe both our families and our troops far more than an Election Day accounting in 2012. President Obama owes those he sends into combat far better than thousands of lawyers watching their every move.
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