NYC Terrorist Trials?

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Is The Obama Administration nutz?

We are going to run the People who were responsible for America's largest "Human Caused Disaster" thru Criminal Courts in New York?

These vermin have admitted their guilt; they have asked to be executed.

Why these "Show Trials"?

Will anyone here want to be anywhere around NYC during these Trials?

Questions for the Legal Beagles:

Will the Defense call CIA Agents?

Will they have a Jury or their peers?

Could they walk?

November 13, 2009
Disbelief in response to news of KSM's upcoming trial in New York

Clarice Feldman

The news that the administration plans to try the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York has placed the Holder/Obama team's legal idiocy in the spotlight. Some have noted how impossible it will be to impanel a fair jury in NY where the most awful destruction occurred.

Others note this makes NY the terror target of the world.

Still others have questioned whether the Administration really plans to release Mohammad in case he would be acquitted, the administration having earlier suggested that in such cases it would retain the right to hold the accused - but acquitted - in detention.

It all appears suicidal as Tom Maguire notes :

Team Obama has to postpone these trials until after the 2010 elections or this will go down as the biggest "own-goal" of the century millenium.

NRO's Andy McCarthy has the most diabolical interpretation of this seemingly idiotic move:

"So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda's case against America. Since that will be their "defense," the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and - depending on what judge catches the case - they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see - in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America's defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us."

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FROM: Obama?s Public Option for Gitmo The Foundry


Obama’s Public Option for Gitmo

• Posted November 13th, 2009 at 12.42pm in Protect America.

The Obama Administration announced this morning that it intends to ship five Guantanamo Bay detainees to New York to be tried in civilian federal court. One of those men is the September 11th mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad.

This decision will be seen by many liberals as paving the way for closing the Guantanamo Bay facility. It is also an olive branch by an Administration facing growing criticism from its own party for its failure to move forward on closing the facility by its January 22nd deadline. In fact, the President has been battered lately by the left for staying too close to Bush Administration terrorism policies. So close in fact, that the Obama Administration had announced its intent to continue to use military tribunals despite Obama’s feverish opposition to such an idea during the Presidential campaigns.

Obama tried to make his case today for this decision by stating that Khalid Sheik Mohammad, one of the four set to be tried, would be subject to “the most exacting demands of justice.” But this move would be anything but justice.

Civilian courts are horribly situated to handle the prosecution of these types of detainees. Not only there potential security concerns associated with transporting such high-value detainees thousands of miles away, but these five men, charged with crimes related to the attacks of 9/11 would be tried in New York City, the very same location of the attacks. Defense lawyers are sure to argue that the venue is prejudicial paving the way for multiple due process challenges.

While this decision will certainly appease those seeking to erode America’s ability to prosecute war criminals under a military tribunal, there is no reason to believe a military tribunal isn’t capable of exacting justice on these four suspects. Placing these detainees in a domestic criminal proceeding creates evidentiary, security, and procedural issues. These detainees are not common criminals—but individuals that committed an act of war against the United States. Not only does the law sufficiently provide for use of military tribunals, common sense demands it.

The Obama Administration’s scattered counterterrorism policies, littered with efforts to placate the left while recognizing the legitimacy of some Bush era policies, are an invitation for terrorists to take advantage of America’s divisions. Obama needs to be clear, forceful, and direct, sending the message that America won’t stand for terrorism

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Hey, Legal Beagles:

Can Mr. Terrorist really insist on Defending Himself? If so, does that mean The U.S. has to give Mr. Terrorist all the info on how we grabbed Mr. Terrorist and how we got Mr. Terrorist to admit to attacking The U.S?

Could you see the possibility of Mr. Terrorist calling any/all Troops, FBI, CIA, DEA, etc. that took part in Mr. Terrorist's capture and questioning to the Stand to Cross Examine?

Mr. McCarthy makes it clear why Attorney General Holder/President Obama want this show to go on but does it really make any sense?







November 16, 2009 10:00 AM

Trial and Terror
The Left gets its reckoning.

By Andrew C. McCarthy

The decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other top al-Qaeda terrorists to New York City for a civilian trial is one of the most irresponsible ever made by a presidential administration. That it is motivated by politics could not be more obvious. That it spells unprecedented danger for our security will soon become obvious.

The five 9/11 plotters were originally charged in a military commission. Military commissions have been approved by Congress and the courts. Eleven months ago, the jihadists were prepared to end the military case by pleading guilty and proceeding to execution. Plus, the Obama administration is continuing the commission system for other enemy combatants accused of war crimes. If we are going to have military commissions for any war criminals, it is senseless not to have them for the worst war criminals. In sum, there is no good legal or policy rationale for transferring these barbarians to the civilian justice system. Doing so will prompt a hugely costly three-ring circus of a trial, provide a soapbox for al-Qaeda’s anti-American bile, and create a public-safety nightmare for New York City.

There is, however, a patent political rationale behind Obama’s decision.

The terrorists are clearly committed members of the al-Qaeda conspiracy to wage a terrorist war against the United States — so much so that KSM cannot help himself, bragging about his atrocities against our country, including the 9/11 massacre of nearly 3,000 Americans. Further, controversy surrounds the intelligence-collection measures used by the Bush administration after 9/11 — measures such as enhanced interrogation that, though they saved countless lives, have been stridently condemned by the antiwar Left. This antiwar Left, President Obama’s base, has demanded investigations and prosecutions against Bush officials.

The Obama Justice Department teems with experienced defense lawyers, many of whom (themselves personally or through their firms) spent the last eight years volunteering their services to America’s enemies in their lawsuits against the American people. As experienced defense lawyers well know, when there is no mystery about whether the defendants have committed the charged offenses, and when there is controversy attendant to the government’s investigative tactics, the standard defense strategy is to put the government on trial.

That is, Pres. Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, experienced litigators, fully realize that in civilian court, the Qaeda quintet can and will demand discovery of mountains of government intelligence. They will demand disclosures about investigative tactics; the methods and sources by which intelligence has been obtained; the witnesses from the intelligence community, the military, and law enforcement who interrogated witnesses, conducted searches, secretly intercepted enemy communications, and employed other investigative techniques. They will attempt to compel testimony from officials who formulated U.S. counterterrorism strategy, in addition to U.S. and foreign intelligence officers. As civilian “defendants,” these war criminals will put Bush-era counterterrorism tactics under the brightest public spotlight in American legal history.

This is exactly what President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder know will happen. And because it is unnecessary to have this civilian trial at all, one must conclude that this is exactly what Obama and Holder want to see happen.

During the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama and his adviser, Holder, rebuked the Bush counterterrorism policies and promised their base a “reckoning.” Since President Obama took office, Attorney General Holder has anxiously shoveled into the public domain classified information relating to those policies — with the administration always at pains to claim that its hand is being forced by court orders, even though the president has had legal grounds, which he has refrained from invoking, to decline to make those disclosures. Moreover, during a trip to Germany in April, Holder signaled his openness to turning over evidence that would assist European investigations — including one underway in Spain — that seek to charge Bush-administration officials with war crimes (which is the transnational Left’s label for actions taken in defense of the United States).

Now, we see the reckoning: Obama’s gratuitous transfer of alien war criminals from a military court, where they were on the verge of ending the proceedings, to the civilian justice system, where they will be given the same rights and privileges as the American citizens they are pledged to kill. This will give the hard Left its promised feast. Its shock troops, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, will gather up each new disclosure and add it to the purported war-crimes case they are urging foreign courts to bring against President Bush, his subordinates, and U.S. intelligence agents.

From indictment to trial, the civilian case against the 9/11 terrorists will be a years-long seminar, enabling al-Qaeda and its jihadist allies to learn much of what we know and, more important, the methods and sources by which we come to know it. But that is not the half of it. By moving the case to civilian court, the president and his attorney general have laid the groundwork for an unprecedented surrender of our national-defense secrets directly to our most committed enemies.

The five jihadists in question are alien enemy combatants currently detained outside the United States. They are not Americans and are not entitled to the protection of our Bill of Rights. That means that in a military-commission trial, they would be given only those rights Congress chose to give them.

At Gitmo, they’ve insisted on representing themselves. In a military commission, we can allow them to do that, but we don’t have to. The commission rules provide for the appointment of military counsel and permit the combatants to retain their own lawyers. This is significant because discovery rules require that the defense be given mounds of information for trial preparation. Much of that information is top-secret intelligence. Importantly, however, we do not have to show the terrorists themselves any classified information. Only counsel who have the required security clearances, and are duty-bound not to reveal the nation’s secrets to the nation’s enemies, get access.

The rules are saliently different in the civilian justice system, where, the attorney general has promised, this case will be treated like any other criminal case. In federal court, defendants — even illegal aliens — are vested with constitutional rights that Congress may not alter or reduce. One of those is the right to represent oneself, meaning: to conduct one’s own defense without the participation or interference of an attorney.

In 1975, the Supreme Court ruled in Faretta v. California that this right to self-representation is absolute. As Justice Potter Stewart put it, “forcing a lawyer upon an unwilling defendant is contrary to his basic right to defend himself if he truly wants to do so.” To borrow Holder’s pet phrase, we are supposedly bringing terrorists into civilian court to honor “the rule of law.” Well, our rule of law holds that a defendant may tell the judge that he does not want a lawyer, that he wants to conduct his own defense, and that he wants to see all of the legally required discovery himself — not have a lawyer or some other government operative restrict his access.

The judge may try to talk the defendant out of his decision to be his own lawyer. The judge may appoint “stand-by counsel” to advise the defendant and to be available to represent the defendant if he changes his mind. Under Faretta, however, the judge may not deny the defendant the right to conduct his own defense.

By transferring this case to civilian court rather than leaving it to be handled by the military-commission system created by Congress, Obama and Holder have needlessly created a perilous dilemma. Do we deny KSM & Co. the right to represent themselves and thus risk reversal of any convictions on Sixth Amendment grounds? Do we grant them self-representation but withhold critical discovery and thus risk reversal on due process grounds? Or do we grant them self-representation and disclose directly to our wartime enemies the nation’s security secrets, which they can then pass on to confederates who are actively targeting us for mass-murder attacks?

In the military court, there would be no such dilemma. Indeed, in the military court, this case would be over now. If President Obama had simply let it proceed, there would have been no trial, and these war criminals would be well on their way to the execution of death sentences.

But then the Left would not have gotten its reckoning. Can’t have that.

— National Review’sAndrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the author ofWillful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 200.

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"They gave us bombs, we gave them rights."

The AG's Distortion of the Opposition to His Decision

Andy McCarthy

Attorney General Holder has several times offered a spirited defense of federal prosecutors — including expressions of confidence that KSM and the other jihadists will be convicted. This is a strawman: There's no reason to defend people who are not being attacked, and conviction is not the issue.

As it happens, Preet Bharara, the new U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, worked for me for a while when he was a new prosecutor. He is superb. There isn't the slightest doubt in my mind that he and the assistant U.S. attorneys he assigns to the KSM case will do an excellent job and uphold the high standards and traditions of the Southern District and the Justice Department. I'm also very confident that KSM and the others will be convicted.

For what it's worth, I think the team I led in the Blind Sheikh case did an excellent job, and we also convicted everybody. But that is not the measure of success. It's not whether the government wins the litigation; it's whether the national security of the United States has been harmed more by having the trial than it would have been harmed by handling the detainees in a different manner.

What made the United States most vulnerable in the Nineties was our enemies' perception that they were at war and we were not. They gave us bombs, we gave them rights. That encouraged them to attack us more often and more audaciously — which is exactly what they did.

If we are at war, and the Attorney General said this morning that we are, we have to treat it like a war. Pressed by Sen. Graham this morning, the AG could not name a single time when, during war, we captured an enemy combatant outside the U.S. and brought him into the United States for a civilian trial — vesting him with all the rights of an American citizen. That's because hasn't happened. That's not how you treat wartime enemies.

Further, if we are going to have military commissions at all (and Holder says we will continue to have them), it makes no sense to transfer the worst war criminals to the civilian system. Doing so tells the enemy that they will get more rights if they mass-murder civilians.

The question is not whether the prosecutors are able, whether they'll do a spectacular job, and whether they'll get these guys. They are extraordinarily competent, they will perform at a very high level, and I'll be shocked if they don't win the case. The issue is: What damage will we sustain by doing things this way, and is there a way we could do them without sustaining that much damage?

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[Matthew]

This whole thing is ridiculous.

YouTube- Lindsey Graham Destroys Eric Holder

YouTube- Lindsey Graham Destroys Eric Holder

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Does the AG have the authority to take a DOD Prisoner out of DOD custody?
Posted via Mobile Device

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"America should notice another layer of evidence that as terrorists continue to wage war on us, we are slowly dismantling our war against them."

We Are Slowly Dismantling Our War on Terror
By Mark Davis

I was in the worst possible place to hear of the worst possible idea for bringing the 9/11 plotters to justice.

A dreary rain pelted New York City as tabloid headlines shouted from beneath tarpaulin-covered newsstands. "Evil Returns," proclaimed the giant New York Daily News headline plastered across the face of avowed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The New York Post featured a sunny postcard depicting a Manhattan skyline featuring the twin towers adorned by the words, "Welcome to New York."

"NOW DIE!" is plastered below. "9/11 fiends coming here for trial. Next stop is hell."

But even as the most sensational of the city's newspapers played the story for maximum drama, every New Yorker gulped through the real emotions of imagining these monsters paraded into their city - and into America's justice system - not as warriors against our nation but as criminal defendants.

Even when pretending to be tough on terrorists they scarcely admit exist, the Obama administration cannot help but reveal where its genuine anger is directed.

Attorney General Eric Holder stood before cameras and microphones Friday, trying to look half as enthused about prosecuting 9/11 conspirators as he is about punishing their CIA interrogators. But as he announced civilian trials for those who launched a war against America, his words betrayed him.

"After eight years of delay," he began, "Those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September 11 will finally face justice."

Eight years of "delay"? Surely he knows the years since 9/11 have contained chapter after chapter of attempts to progress down a path toward some kind of disposition for the monsters who planned that attack on America.

But we mustn't forget that in the Holder mindset, the years between 9/11 and the Obama inauguration are a blur, filled with developments he prefers to forget, if not condemn.

These men who made 9/11 happen were plucked from various parts of Pakistan and detained as enemy combatants, ultimately assigned to the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

This handling of terrorists as terrorists has always been a hairball in the throat of an administration eager to be admired in foreign capitals and on the metaphoric "Arab street," all part of the campaign to be everything the Bush administration was not.

To our national detriment, their progress toward that goal continues at a quickening pace. They are not in the mood to handle the 9/11 kingpins in military tribunals as befits combatants in wartime. They are not concerned about energizing terrorists by affording their brothers the constitutional protections usually reserved for U.S. citizens. They are not worried about the security concerns this poses for New York or for the nation as sensitive security information finds its way into open court.

Those factors are brushed away with ease in the face of two tantalizing opportunities this president and his attorney general cannot resist: Scoring brownie points among the roll call of America-haters at the U.N.; and, of course, putting the real defendants on trial - George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

And while past policies will surely be mauled in court, the supposed defendants may well escape by asserting the very rights this administration is so eager to bestow.

Does anyone remember that we waterboarded old KSM about every hour on the hour there for a while? Sure, it worked - and saved American lives. But criminal juries are properly concerned with Miranda rights and other loopholes completely outside the proper framework of wartime justice.

So let this president and his attorney general sidekick bow up as if they are meeting terror head on. The confused cauldron of "world opinion" may smile, but America should notice another layer of evidence that as terrorists continue to wage war on us, we are slowly dismantling our war against them.

Mark Davis is a columnist for the Dallas Morning News. The Mark Davis Show is heard weekdays nationwide on the ABC Radio Network. His e-mail address is mdavis@wbap.com.

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Allrighty now.

We have Attorneys working in The Obama Administration Justice Department that, until recently, were defending Terrorists in proceedings in Gitmo.

Including AG Holders former Law Firm:



Did Holder stiff Senate on Justice Dept. lawyers who defended jihadis?

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
11/19/09 2:00 AM EST

Some Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were taken aback Wednesday by Attorney General Eric Holder's refusal to reveal conflicts of interest involving Justice Department lawyers who, before joining the Obama administration, worked on behalf of Guatanamo detainees.

[IMG]http://media.washingtonexaminer.com/images/250*157/web.EricHolden.jpg[/IMG]

One reason it has taken so long to deal with the Guantanamo cases is the number of legal challenges lodged by lawyers for the detainees, some of whom are now working on detainee matters in the Obama Justice Department. At Wednesday's Judiciary Committee hearing, amid discussion of Holder's decision to grant 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed full American constitutional rights, the issue was brought up by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, who told the attorney general:

I want to know more about who is advising you on these decisions. There are attorneys at the Justice Department working on this issue who either represented Guantanamo detainees, or worked for groups who advocated for them. This prior representation I think creates a conflict of interest problems for these individuals.

Grassley brought up the case of Neal Katyal, who is now the Principal Deputy Solicitor General. Katyal, formerly a law professor at Georgetown University, worked on legal challenges to the Military Commission Act -- he represented Osama bin Laden's driver -- and is reportedly still working on detainee questions at the Justice Department. Other department lawyers represented other detainees. "I want to know more about these potential conflicts," Grassley told Holder:

Would you provide me and members of the committee with the following information? The names of political appointees in your department who represent detainees or who work for organizations advocating on their behalf? The cases or projects that these appointees work with respect to detainee prior to joining the Justice Department? And the cases or projects relating to detainees that have worked on since joining the Justice Department? Would you please provide that information to me and the committee?

It seemed a reasonable request, but Holder appeared decidedly cool to the idea. "Yes, I will certainly consider that request," he said. "But I want to make sure that you understand that the people in the department understand their ethical obligations. And to the extent that recusals are appropriate on the basis of prior representations or prior connections, people in the department have recused themselves from specific cases."

"But I asked you for information," Grassley responded. "Will you provide it?"

"I will consider that request," Holder repeated, adding that the lawyers involved are "fine public servants" and "patriots" who have "national security uppermost in their minds."

Grassley still wanted an answer. "The very least you can give me is a list of the recusals," he said.

"I will consider that," Holder said again.

To Republicans, it appeared that Holder was stiffing Grassley on a legitimate matter of oversight. "It certainly came across that way," says one GOP aide. Before the hearing was over, Holder apparently thought better of his position.

"I didn't mean to be flip when I said that I would consider the request about turning over the names of people who had previous representations that might conflict with their duties as Department of Justice attorneys," Holder told the committee:

When I said I would "consider," I only meant to say that I don't know if there are ethical concerns with regard to attorney-client privilege and things of that nature, and I need to consider those before I would actually be able to respond to the question. So I didn't mean to say that I was not being -- trying not to be responsive or not taking seriously a question that was posed I guess initially by Senator Grassley…I just wanted to talk to the experts back at the department about whether there was an ethical concern in responding to the question.

Grassley accepted the explanation -- sort of. But he wants the information. "Sen. Grassley expects Attorney General Holder to respond fully to all requests from committee members, including the important requests for ethics recusals discussed at today's hearings," a Grassley spokesman said after the hearing. "Those requests should be complete and timely."

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"He will put the CIA and the Bush administration on trial."


Holder's True Motive
by Mona Charen

Attorney General Eric Holder adopted a tough guy pose when he announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others will be tried in federal court for the most heinous terror attack on Americans in history. "After eight years of delay," he intoned, "those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September 11 will finally face justice. It is past time to finally act."



Where to begin? The claim that the Bush administration was somehow dilatory sets a new standard for gall, particularly coming from Eric Holder. As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out, "The principal reason there were so few military trials is the tireless campaign conducted by leftist lawyers (including Holder) to derail military tribunals by challenging them in the courts."

Those lawyers threw up hundreds of roadblocks. Military detentions and tribunals violated, they claimed, the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Litigating all this has taken years.

At last clearing those obstacles, the government initiated Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's military trial in Guantanamo in September 2008. In December, KSM pleaded guilty and asked to be executed.

But now, the attorney general puffs out his chest and declares that by trying KSM in an Article III federal court, he has chosen the forum "most likely to lead to a positive result."

The mind reels.

This is an excruciatingly awful decision that no hanging judge talk of "the ultimate penalty" can perfume. What about the increased risk of terror attacks on New York during the trial? The city is "hardened" against attacks Holder assures us. Really? Like Fort Hood?

By granting a civil trial to KSM, while Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who bombed the USS Cole in Yemen, will receive a military tribunal, the U.S. telegraphs this message to terrorists: Wherever possible, attack our civilians. You'll get more lawyering and a better deal than if you attack our military. (And by the way, you'll get more rights than a member of our military who commits a crime.)

Attorney General Holder is keen to prove to a supposedly skeptical world that America lives up to its values (never mind that granting the full rights of citizens to enemy combatants is not part of our creed -- nor anyone else's). Yet he has also repeatedly asserted that a not-guilty verdict is unacceptable. "Failure is not an option. These are cases that have to be won." Whoa. In the first place, it isn't at all beyond imagination that the government could lose this case. KSM was waterboarded. No evidence thus obtained is admissible. A liberal judge who disliked the Bush administration might exclude other key evidence as well.

But Holder says he'll be found guilty. Isn't that a perversion of our jurisprudence? If a not-guilty verdict is impossible, then the trial is a sham. "Sentence first -- verdict afterward" said the Red Queen.
Moreover, the Justice Department has assured Sen. Jon Kyl that "we will not release anyone into the United States if doing so would endanger our national security or the American people." So in the event that KSM is acquitted, it's the position of the Obama Justice Department that we would continue to hold him? How does that outcome burnish the reputation of our justice system?

And while we're on the subject of not thinking things through, at a Senate hearing, Holder could not answer Sen. Lindsey Graham's question about how we would deal with Osama bin Laden if we caught him tomorrow. Would he be Mirandized? Would we give him a lawyer? Isn't that the precedent this decision sets?

There are dozens more reasons (including the intelligence bonanza this will confer on al-Qaida) that this decision is among the worst to emerge from a terrible presidency. What did they hope to achieve? Perhaps they have thought it through -- at least as far as how the trial would unfold. With no defense (he has boasted about his mass murder), what will KSM do? He will put the CIA and the Bush administration on trial. Prepare for lurid accounts of his and others' mistreatment.

Is that the nub? To satisfy the revenge fantasies of American leftists who have lusted to put the Bush administration on trial, the Obama administration is willing to sacrifice logic, justice, national security, and honor?

When KSM's star turn in the courtroom goes viral on the Internet and inspires thousands of new jihadis, the Obamaites can console themselves that at least they stuck it to George W. Bush.