Cheney admits authorizing detainee's torture

[RanchHQ]

FROM: Sweetness & Light

Michigan, Kansas Eyed For Gitmo Trials

From an unfazed Associated Press:



AP sources: Military-civilian terror prison eyed

By Lara Jakes, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is looking at creating a courtroom-within-a-prison complex in the U.S. to house suspected terrorists, combining military and civilian detention facilities at a single maximum-security prison.

Several senior U.S. officials said the administration is eyeing a soon-to-be-shuttered state maximum security prison in Michigan and the 134-year-old military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as possible locations for a heavily guarded site to hold the 229 suspected al-Qaida, Taliban and foreign fighters now jailed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba…

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said Friday that no decisions have been made about the proposal. But the White House considers the courtroom-prison complex as the best among a series of bad options, an administration official said.

For months, government lawyers and senior officials at the Pentagon, Justice Department and the White House have struggled with how to close the internationally reviled U.S. Navy prison at Guantanamo.

Congress has blocked $80 million intended to bring the detainees to the United States. Lawmakers want the administration to say how it plans to make the moves without putting Americans at risk.

The facility would operate as a hybrid prison system jointly operated by the Justice Department, the military and the Department of Homeland Security…

Two senior U.S. officials said one option for the proposed hybrid prison would be to use the soon-to-be-shuttered Standish maximum-security state prison in northeast Michigan. The facility already has individual cells and ample security for detainees.

Getting the Standish prison ready for the detainees would be costly. One official estimated it would cost over $100 million for security and other building upgrades.

Several Michigan lawmakers, including Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin and Rep. Bart Stupak, both Democrats, have said they would be open to moving detainees to Michigan as long as there is broad local support.

But the political support is not unanimous. Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee who is seeking the GOP nomination for governor next year, is against the idea.

Administration officials said the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth is under consideration because it is already a hardened high-security facility that could be further protected by the surrounding military base.

It’s not clear what would happen to the military’s inmates already being held there. Nearly half are members of the U.S. armed forces, and by law, cannot be housed with foreign prisoners.

Kansas’ GOP-dominated congressional delegation is dead set against moving Guantanamo detainees to Leavenworth. Residents told Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., at a town hall meeting in May that 95 percent of the local community opposes it…

Gee, it seems like only yesterday Mr. Harry Reid was assuring us that this would never happen.

It’s happening.

And there are 229 of them.

[RanchHQ]

Dear Lisa:

Looks like those good Folks at The ACLU might have done more damage to US Intelligence and Security that anyone yet.

What say you?



Detainees Shown CIA Officers' Photos
Justice Dept. Looking Into Whether Attorneys Broke Law at Guantanamo


By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 21, 2009

The Justice Department recently questioned military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay about whether photographs of CIA personnel, including covert officers, were unlawfully provided to detainees charged with organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Investigators are looking into allegations that laws protecting classified information were breached when three lawyers showed their clients the photographs, the sources said. The lawyers were apparently attempting to identify CIA officers and contractors involved in the agency's interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects in facilities outside the United States, where the agency employed harsh techniques.

If detainees at the U.S. military prison in Cuba are tried, either in federal court or by a military commission, defense lawyers are expected to attempt to call CIA personnel to testify.

The photos were taken by researchers hired by the John Adams Project, a joint effort of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, to support military counsel at Guantanamo Bay, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the inquiry. It was unclear whether the Justice Department is also examining those organizations.

Both groups have long said that they will zealously investigate the CIA's interrogation program at "black sites" worldwide as part of the defense of their clients. But government investigators are now looking into whether the defense team went too far by allegedly showing the detainees the photos of CIA officers, in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes.

If proved, the allegations would highlight how aggressively both military lawyers and their allies in the human rights community are moving to shed light on the CIA's interrogation practices and defend their clients. Defense attorneys, however, described the investigation as an attempt by the government to intimidate them into not exposing what happened to their clients.

When contacted about the investigation, the ACLU declined to discuss specifics.

"We are confident that no laws or regulations have been broken as we investigated the circumstances of the torture of our clients and as we have vigorously defended our clients' interests," said Anthony D. Romero, the group's executive director. "Rather than investigate the CIA officials who undertook the torture, they are now investigating the military lawyers who have courageously stepped up to defend these clients in these sham proceedings."

It is unclear whether the military lawyers under investigation identified the CIA personnel in the photographs to the al-Qaeda suspects or simply asked the detainees whether they had ever seen them. It is also unclear whether the inquiry involves violations of federal statutes prohibiting the identification of covert CIA officers or violations of military commission rules governing the disclosure of classified information, including to the defendants.

The investigation is being overseen by John Dion, head of the Justice Department's counter-espionage section, who has worked on many high-profile national security cases, including the prosecution of Aldrich H. Ames, the CIA mole who spied for the Soviet Union. The CIA reports security breaches to Dion's office. The Justice Department and the CIA declined to comment.

Air Force Col. Peter R. Masciola, chief military defense counsel at Guantanamo Bay, and his deputy, Michael J. Berrigan, also declined to comment.

The Washington Post could not determine how many and which CIA personnel were photographed, which photographs were shown to detainees, or when.

Romero said he does not know what laws the government thinks the military lawyers may have broken.

"That is the most vexing part of it," he said. "Usually when you're read your Miranda rights or visited by the Justice Department or the FBI, you are given some indication as to what laws are at stake."

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers also declined to address the specifics of the inquiry but questioned its timing.

It is "customary in our experience that any kind of investigation like these are conducted after legal proceedings are finished in the case so as not to interfere with the defense function, not to interfere with the rights of defendants, not to give the appearance that the government is looking to chill the defense function," said Joshua L. Dratel, counsel for the John Adams Project and a former board member of the NACDL, who spoke on behalf of the group.

He added: "The lawyers have a duty to find out what happened to their clients, and to the extent that the government and certain agencies are resistant to that to protect themselves and to insulate themselves from accountability, there is a tension there, and to the extent that this investigation is part of that tension, it's most unfortunate. But the lawyers will not shirk their duty."

A wide variety of groups, including European investigators, human rights groups and news organizations, have compiled lists of people thought to have been involved in the CIA's program, including CIA station chiefs, agency interrogators and medical personnel who accompanied detainees on planes as they were moved from one secret location to another.
"It's a normal part of human rights research projects, and certainly in defense work, to compile lists of individuals who interacted with clients," Romero said.

Tracking international CIA-chartered flights, researchers have identified hotels in Europe where CIA personnel or contractors stayed. In some cases, through hotel phone records, they have been able to identify agency employees who jeopardized their cover by dialing numbers in the United States. Working from these lists, some of which include up to 45 names, researchers photographed agency workers and obtained other photos from public records, the sources said.

The government has largely cut off the airing of details about the CIA's interrogation program during proceedings at Guantanamo Bay, although many have been revealed in government documents.

At the courthouse at the prison, a court security officer, who is thought be in contact with CIA officials, can cut off the audio feed to the public gallery if there is any possibility of lawyers or defendants discussing CIA detention. At a hearing in July, the audio feed was cut when a lawyer for Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the alleged Sept. 11 conspirators, mentioned sleep deprivation, one of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used at the CIA's black sites.

LINK: Lawyers Showed Photos of Covert CIA Officers to Guantanamo Bay Detainees

[RanchHQ]

This is a good laugh, from those Neo-Cons at Town Hall Magazine:

(High Speed Connection reguired)

Gitmo Idol

[RanchHQ]

I support President Obama continuing these Policies developed by The Bush Administration:


Obama WH adopts Bush indefinite-detention position

posted at 8:48 am on September 24, 2009 by Ed Morrissey


Remember when the Left scoffed at the argument from George W. Bush that claimed the authorization to use military force allowed the executive branch to hold captured terrorists indefinitely, without criminal trial? Bush’s opponents screamed about human rights and due process, and claimed that Bush had abused his power. Those critics included Barack Obama, who regularly castigated the Bush administration for its failure to provide his idea of due process to detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, as well as blasting Bush for his argument that he didn’t require Congress to act to maintain that power.
Now? Change you can believe in, baby:

The Obama administration has decided not to seek new legislation from Congress authorizing the indefinite detention of about 50 terrorism suspects being held without charges at at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, officials said Wednesday.

Instead, the administration will continue to hold the detainees without bringing them to trial based on the power it says it has under the Congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the president to use force against forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
In concluding that it does not need specific permission from Congress to hold detainees without charges, the Obama administration is adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.
But President Obama’s advisers are not embracing the more disputed Bush contention that the president has inherent power under the Constitution to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely regardless of Congress.
The Justice Department said in a statement Wednesday night that “the administration would rely on authority already provided by Congress” under the use of force resolution. “The administration is not currently seeking additional authorization,” the statement said.

This is known as a distinction without a difference. If the White House doesn’t see the need to get Congressional authorization for continued indefinite detention, then it means that the White House believes it has that power under the Constitution, whence it derives all authority. They may not want to say it out loud, but their actions speak volumes. Obama has adopted the Bush position in its entirety.
And this is, of course, another example of the Geraghty Axiom. The New York Times has trouble reconciling this with Obama’s statement in May on the subject:

Still, the position surprised some critics who had expected after a speech by Mr. Obama in May that he would seek legislation to put the system of indefinite detention on firmer political and legal ground. In that speech at the National Archives, Mr. Obama said that he was considering continuing indefinite detention in some limited cases but that he would not act unilaterally.

“We must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded,” he said at the time. “They can’t be based simply on what I or the executive branch decide alone.”

The explanation? All of Obama’s statements come with an expiration date — all of them. Ask the Poles, who heard Obama offer rhetorical support at about the same time for a land-based missile shield, a controversial issue for which Polish politicians had risked much, only to have Obama flip-flop on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion.
Will Obama acknowledge that Bush had it right all along, and that war powers give the executive branch the right to hold unlawful combatants indefinitely until the end of hostilities? Or will he attempt, as the New York Times reports, to make distinctions without differences?

Update: Jazz Shaw is spitting nails over this reversal. He and I disagree on the policy point, but we both agree that Obama is a hypocrite.

LINK: Hot Air Blog Archive Obama WH adopts Bush indefinite-detention position

[RanchHQ]

Now, in the sense of "fairness", the view from The Left:

Spitting Nails Over Indefinite Detention
Posted by JAZZ SHAW, Assistant Editor in Politics, War

One of the negative effects of changes in national security policy during the Bush administration was the advent of “indefinite detention” as a way of handling potentially dangerous terrorists. (Or, in some cases, people who were picked up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time with a name having too many vowels in it.) Out on the campaign trail last year, one of the things I liked about candidate Obama was his seemingly unflinching loyalty to the rule of law and the basic belief that America was a place where the accused would get their day in court. He was hard on George W. Bush over this, and rightly so in my opinion. I have consistently maintained that these people should be brought up in some sort of court, (even if it’s a private, military one without press access if national security secrets must be aired) given a trial and either released if innocent, or executed / sentenced to life without parole if guilty.

Apparently, now that the campaign has ended, President Obama has either decided he no longer agrees with me or no longer has the stomach for the fight. Ed Morrissey reports on the subject.

Bush’s opponents screamed about human rights and due process, and claimed that Bush had abused his power. Those critics included Barack Obama, who regularly castigated the Bush administration for its failure to provide his idea of due process to detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, as well as blasting Bush for his argument that he didn’t require Congress to act to maintain that power.

Now? Change you can believe in, baby:
The Obama administration has decided not to seek new legislation from Congress authorizing the indefinite detention of about 50 terrorism suspects being held without charges at at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, officials said Wednesday.

Instead, the administration will continue to hold the detainees without bringing them to trial based on the power it says it has under the Congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the president to use force against forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

There are two views on this change making the rounds. One is that Obama has simply changed his mind and that the war powers act gives him the authority to hold suspects forever without benefit of a trial. The second is that he hasn’t actually changed his mind, but doesn’t want to get into a legislative battle over it while he’s in the middle of the fight of his life over health care and spending us into an economic black hole. Neither holds any water with me.

If he’s not going to follow through on this, then we were fed a bill of goods during the campaign and, as Ed is so fond of saying, all of his promises actually do have an expiration date. I have tried to point out the various areas in matters of foreign policy where I agree with and support the president, (since I find little or nothing to agree with him on domestically) but there’s no free pass to be given here. Stick to your word, sir, and put this system of indefinite detention out to pasture.

LINK: Spitting Nails Over Indefinite Detention | The Moderate Voice

[RanchHQ]

September 25th, 2009:

All Links active:

Man arrested in alleged attempt to bomb Dallas skyscraper

Two men accused in alleged bomb plots in Illinois, Texas

Pair accused of plotting to attack Marines in Quantico, Va.

Beauty supply stores caught up in NY terror case

Attorney to terrorists organizes Muslim rally at Capitol

Where is that Cheney fella when we need him?

[RanchHQ]

"Bush may as well have had a third term." - The Huffington Post



White House Regroups on Guantanamo

Counsel Craig Replaced as Point Man on Issue as Deadline for Closing Looms


By Anne E. Kornblut and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer and ProPublica
Friday, September 25, 2009


With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress.

Even before the inauguration, President Obama's top advisers settled on a course of action they were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal.

The White House has faltered in part because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities involved in determining what to do with more than 200 terrorism suspects at the prison. But senior advisers privately acknowledge not devising a concrete plan for where to move the detainees and mishandling Congress.

To address these setbacks, the administration has shifted its leadership team on the issue. White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig, who initially guided the effort to close the prison and who was an advocate of setting the deadline, is no longer in charge of the project, two senior administration officials said this week.

Craig said Thursday that some of his early assumptions were based on miscalculations, in part because Bush administration officials and senior Republicans in Congress had spoken publicly about closing the facility. "I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives," he said.

In May, one of the senior officials said, Obama tapped Pete Rouse -- a top adviser and former congressional aide who is not an expert on national security but is often called in to fix significant problems -- to oversee the process. Senior adviser David Axelrod and deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer were brought in to craft a more effective message around detainee policy, the official said.

"It was never going to be easy, but we have worked through some of the early challenges and are on a strong course," Pfeiffer said.

To empty the prison, the administration will need to find facilities to house 50 to 60 prisoners who cannot be released and who cannot be tried because of legal impediments, according to an administration official. The administration must also win congressional funding for the closure process, find host countries for detainees cleared for release, and transfer dozens of inmates to federal and military courts for prosecution.

Three administration officials said they expect Craig to leave his current post in the near future, and one said he is on the short list for a seat on the bench or a diplomatic position. Craig has long made clear his desire to be involved in foreign policy, but he declined to comment on his plans.
Several White House officials remain involved in Guantanamo Bay, including Thomas E. Donilon, the deputy national security adviser; John O. Brennan, the counterterrorism adviser; and David Rapallo, an official on the National Security Council.

"Guantanamo was everyone's part-time job," said a senior official, one of several interviewed for this article who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Now, the official added, Rouse is coordinating them.

Setting a Deadline


Before the election, Craig met privately with a group of top national security lawyers who had served in Democratic and Republican administrations to discuss Guantanamo Bay. During the transition, he met with members of the outgoing administration, some of whom warned him against issuing a deadline to close the facility without first finding alternative locations for the prisoners.

MORE AT: washingtonpost.com

[Maximus]

Lisa where are you now?

[RanchHQ]

"But it is odd that the same policy which, when pursued by the Bush administration, constituted "thumbing its nose at the Constitution" and putting a "stain on America's name at home and abroad" now elicits nothing but a few measured tsk-tsks."

Mr. Obama Punts . . .

. . . And the left cheers as the president embraces what it once decried as a lawless detention scheme.


Sunday, September 27, 2009

THE OBAMA administration announced last week that it did not need and would not seek new legislation to govern indefinite detention of some terrorism suspects at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In so doing, the administration has chosen the politically expedient and intellectually dishonest route.

Like President George W. Bush, President Obama now asserts that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force gives him the right to hold some terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial. At Guantanamo, this is expected to affect 50 or so prisoners who, the administration has determined, can be tried neither in federal court nor before a military commission but are too dangerous to release.

The White House and its allies knowingly engage in a distortion. The question isn't whether the president may indefinitely hold some detainees -- the courts have ruled that he can under certain circumstances -- but what process should be available to those subject to such detention. This is the debate that Mr. Obama now lacks the courage to engage.

Administration officials and their defenders note that, as a result of a 2008 Supreme Court decision, all Guantanamo detainees get the benefit of judicial review. As proof of the effectiveness of this process, officials point out that they have lost 30 of the 38 habeas corpus cases adjudicated thus far. Without question, judicial review is infinitely better than the deeply flawed tribunals that served as rubber stamps for the administration's detention decisions. But because there are no legislatively mandated legal standards in place, judges are essentially making up the rules as they go along. This has often led to conflicting rulings on a broad range of issues and forced judges to step into the role typically set aside -- and jealously guarded -- by elected policymakers.

Passing new legislation would have been difficult, and the president has other policy matters that command his attention. But rather than tackling hard questions as he pledged to do during his campaign, Mr. Obama in this instance has ducked them.

If the administration's abdication is irresponsible, the reaction of the civil liberties community has been breathtakingly hypocritical. The American Civil Liberties Union has consistently opposed any indefinite detention regime and pushed for detainees to be charged in federal or military courts or released. So we wouldn't expect them to join us in criticizing Mr. Obama for failing to seek a new legal regime. But it is odd that the same policy which, when pursued by the Bush administration, constituted "thumbing its nose at the Constitution" and putting a "stain on America's name at home and abroad" now elicits nothing but a few measured tsk-tsks.

LINK: washingtonpost.com

[RanchHQ]

FROM: Michael B. Mukasey: Civilian Courts Are No Place to Try Terrorists - WSJ.com

OPINION


OCTOBER 18, 2009, 11:23 P.M. ET

"Why? Because, before it began, in a foiled attempt to escape a maximum security prison, he sharpened a plastic comb into a weapon and drove it through the eye and into the brain of Louis Pepe, a 42-year-old Bureau of Prisons guard. Mr. Pepe was blinded in one eye and rendered nearly unable to speak."

Civilian Courts Are No Place to Try Terrorists

We tried the first World Trade Center bombers in civilian courts. In return we got 9/11 and the murder of nearly 3,000 innocents.

By MICHAEL B. MUKASEY

The Obama administration has said it intends to try several of the prisoners now detained at Guantanamo Bay in civilian courts in this country. This would include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and other detainees allegedly involved. The Justice Department claims that our courts are well suited to the task.

Based on my experience trying such cases, and what I saw as attorney general, they aren't. That is not to say that civilian courts cannot ever handle terrorist prosecutions, but rather that their role in a war on terror—to use an unfashionably harsh phrase—should be, as the term "war" would suggest, a supporting and not a principal role.



The challenges of a terrorism trial are overwhelming. To maintain the security of the courthouse and the jail facilities where defendants are housed, deputy U.S. marshals must be recruited from other jurisdictions; jurors must be selected anonymously and escorted to and from the courthouse under armed guard; and judges who preside over such cases often need protection as well. All such measures burden an already overloaded justice system and interfere with the handling of other cases, both criminal and civil.

Moreover, there is every reason to believe that the places of both trial and confinement for such defendants would become attractive targets for others intent on creating mayhem, whether it be terrorists intent on inflicting casualties on the local population, or lawyers intent on filing waves of lawsuits over issues as diverse as whether those captured in combat must be charged with crimes or released, or the conditions of confinement for all prisoners, whether convicted or not.

Even after conviction, the issue is not whether a maximum-security prison can hold these defendants; of course it can. But their presence even inside the walls, as proselytizers if nothing else, is itself a danger. The recent arrest of U.S. citizen Michael Finton, a convert to Islam proselytized in prison and charged with planning to blow up a building in Springfield, Ill., is only the latest example of that problem.

Moreover, the rules for conducting criminal trials in federal courts have been fashioned to prosecute conventional crimes by conventional criminals. Defendants are granted access to information relating to their case that might be useful in meeting the charges and shaping a defense, without regard to the wider impact such information might have. That can provide a cornucopia of valuable information to terrorists, both those in custody and those at large.

Thus, in the multidefendant terrorism prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and others that I presided over in 1995 in federal district court in Manhattan, the government was required to disclose, as it is routinely in conspiracy cases, the identity of all known co-conspirators, regardless of whether they are charged as defendants. One of those co-conspirators, relatively obscure in 1995, was Osama bin Laden. It was later learned that soon after the government's disclosure the list of unindicted co-conspirators had made its way to bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan, where he then resided. He was able to learn not only that the government was aware of him, but also who else the government was aware of.

It is not simply the disclosure of information under discovery rules that can be useful to terrorists. The testimony in a public trial, particularly under the probing of appropriately diligent defense counsel, can elicit evidence about means and methods of evidence collection that have nothing to do with the underlying issues in the case, but which can be used to press government witnesses to either disclose information they would prefer to keep confidential or make it appear that they are concealing facts. The alternative is to lengthen criminal trials beyond what is tolerable by vetting topics in closed sessions before they can be presented in open ones.

In June, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the transfer of Ahmed Ghailani to this country from Guantanamo. Mr. Ghailani was indicted in connection with the 1998 bombing of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He was captured in 2004, after others had already been tried here for that bombing.

Mr. Ghailani was to be tried before a military commission for that and other war crimes committed afterward, but when the Obama administration elected to close Guantanamo, the existing indictment against Mr. Ghailani in New York apparently seemed to offer an attractive alternative. It may be as well that prosecuting Mr. Ghailani in an already pending case in New York was seen as an opportunity to illustrate how readily those at Guantanamo might be prosecuted in civilian courts. After all, as Mr. Holder said in his June announcement, four defendants were "successfully prosecuted" in that case.

It is certainly true that four defendants already were tried and sentenced in that case. But the proceedings were far from exemplary. The jury declined to impose the death penalty, which requires unanimity, when one juror disclosed at the end of the trial that he could not impose the death penalty—even though he had sworn previously that he could. Despite his disclosure, the juror was permitted to serve and render a verdict.

Mr. Holder failed to mention it, but there was also a fifth defendant in the case, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim. He never participated in the trial. Why? Because, before it began, in a foiled attempt to escape a maximum security prison, he sharpened a plastic comb into a weapon and drove it through the eye and into the brain of Louis Pepe, a 42-year-old Bureau of Prisons guard. Mr. Pepe was blinded in one eye and rendered nearly unable to speak.

Salim was prosecuted separately for that crime and found guilty of attempted murder. There are many words one might use to describe how these events unfolded; "successfully" is not among them.

The very length of Mr. Ghailani's detention prior to being brought here for prosecution presents difficult issues. The Speedy Trial Act requires that those charged be tried within a relatively short time after they are charged or captured, whichever comes last. Even if the pending charge against Mr. Ghailani is not dismissed for violation of that statute, he may well seek access to what the government knows of his activities after the embassy bombings, even if those activities are not charged in the pending indictment. Such disclosures could seriously compromise sources and methods of intelligence gathering.

Finally, the government (for undisclosed reasons) has chosen not to seek the death penalty against Mr. Ghailani, even though that penalty was sought, albeit unsuccessfully, against those who stood trial earlier. The embassy bombings killed more than 200 people.

Although the jury in the earlier case declined to sentence the defendants to death, that determination does not bind a future jury. However, when the government determines not to seek the death penalty against a defendant charged with complicity in the murder of hundreds, that potentially distorts every future capital case the government prosecutes. Put simply, once the government decides not to seek the death penalty against a defendant charged with mass murder, how can it justify seeking the death penalty against anyone charged with murder—however atrocious—on a smaller scale?

Even a successful prosecution of Mr. Ghailani, with none of the possible obstacles described earlier, would offer no example of how the cases against other Guantanamo detainees can be handled. The embassy bombing case was investigated for prosecution in a court, with all of the safeguards in handling evidence and securing witnesses that attend such a prosecution. By contrast, the charges against other detainees have not been so investigated.

It was anticipated that if those detainees were to be tried at all, it would be before a military commission where the touchstone for admissibility of evidence was simply relevance and apparent reliability. Thus, the circumstances of their capture on the battlefield could be described by affidavit if necessary, without bringing to court the particular soldier or unit that effected the capture, so long as the affidavit and surrounding circumstances appeared reliable. No such procedure would be permitted in an ordinary civilian court.

Moreover, it appears likely that certain charges could not be presented in a civilian court because the proof that would have to be offered could, if publicly disclosed, compromise sources and methods of intelligence gathering. The military commissions regimen established for use at Guantanamo was designed with such considerations in mind. It provided a way of handling classified information so as to make it available to a defendant's counsel while preserving confidentiality. The courtroom facility at Guantanamo was constructed, at a cost of millions of dollars, specifically to accommodate the handling of classified information and the heightened security needs of a trial of such defendants.

Nevertheless, critics of Guantanamo seem to believe that if we put our vaunted civilian justice system on display in these cases, then we will reap benefits in the coin of world opinion, and perhaps even in that part of the world that wishes us ill. Of course, we did just that after the first World Trade Center bombing, after the plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific, and after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

In return, we got the 9/11 attacks and the murder of nearly 3,000 innocents. True, this won us a great deal of goodwill abroad—people around the globe lined up for blocks outside our embassies to sign the condolence books. That is the kind of goodwill we can do without.

Mr. Mukasey was attorney general of the United States from 2007 to 2009.