From the letter:

30 May 2011
2000 hours

The Conspiracy charge details 167 overt acts allegedly committed in furtherance of the 9/11 attacks…

Click on the link for a full list of charges.

The blabbermouth media formed a stampede over the weekend in a rush to publish a new round of Wikileaks documents on al Qaeda and Guantanamo Bay.

The Memeorandum round-up is here and the breathless tick-tock on how lib outlets stepped all over each other to get the “scoops” is here.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air says “Meh,” noting “these revelations don’t reveal much at all about AQ plots in the past, nor their operations today. The most recent data in either report is years old. They are both interesting for purposes of background information, but neither tells much of a story on its own or together that we didn’t already know.”

Let me give you a case in point: The New York Times’ story today on how Gitmo detainees coordinated suicide stunts to try to shut the facility down.

Against that backdrop, a collection of secret detainee assessment files obtained by The New York Times reveal that the threat of suicide has created a chronic tension at the prison — a tactic frequently discussed by the captives and a constant fear for their captors.

The files for about two dozen detainees refer to suicide attempts or threats. Others mention informants who pass on rumors about which prisoner had volunteered to kill himself next and efforts to organize suicide attempts. Two prisoners were overheard weighing whether it would create enough time for someone to end his life if fellow prisoners blocked their cell windows, distracting guards who would have to remove the obstructions.

While medical officials struggled to keep hunger strikers alive, other officials were on constant alert for signs of trouble. In May 2008, a detainee ordered fellow prisoners to “stop singing that song; we will sing it on Monday when our brothers leave.” His file noted: “It was assessed he meant planning suicide attempts.”

…Several later assessments of other detainees make references to the three suicides. One such file, for example, mentions in passing that a prisoner reported that another detainee had told him “he had been approached and recruited by the three detainees who had committed suicide.”

And Mr. Ahmed’s brother, Muhammaed Yasir Ahmed Taher, who was also a detainee until his repatriation in 2009, wrote to a family member depicting Mr. Ahmed “as a martyr,” according to an assessment. An analyst concluded that both brothers “viewed the suicide as a continuance of their jihad against the US.”

Gitmo sympathizers continue to characterize the suicides/suicide attempts as acts of desperation by poor, innocent potato farmers and bystanders. But these were clear acts of asymmetric warfare by cunning, cold-blooded jihadists versed in exploitation of Western sensibilities.

I said so all throughout 2005 and 2006, when the Close Gitmo cult was in full force during the Bush years.

Flashback June 2006: The Gitmo suicide was staged

Flashback June 2006: The Gitmo suicide stunt

Flashback July 2006: Gitmo suicide pact, boo-freaking-hoo part deux

Flashback June 2005:

The mainstream media and international human rights organizations have relentlessly portrayed the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as a depraved torture chamber operated by sadistic American military officials defiling Islam at every turn. It’s the “gulag of our time,” wails Amnesty International. It’s the “anti-Statue of Liberty,” bemoans New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.

Have there been abuses? Yes. But here is the rest of the story — the story that the Islamists and their sympathizers don’t want you to hear.

According to recently released FBI documents, which are inaccurately heralded by civil liberties activists and military-bashers as irrefutable evidence of widespread “atrocities” at Gitmo:

A significant number of detainees’ complaints were either exaggerated or fabricated (no surprise given al Qaeda’s explicit instructions to trainees to lie). One detainee who claimed to have been “beaten, spit upon and treated worse than a dog” could not provide a single detail pertaining to mistreatment by U.S. military personnel. Another detainee claimed that guards were physically abusive, but admitted he hadn’t seen it.

Another detainee disputed one of the now-globally infamous claims that American guards had mistreated the Koran. The detainee said that riots resulted from claims that a guard dropped the Koran. In actuality, the detainee said, a detainee dropped the Koran then blamed a guard. Other detainees who complained about abuse of the Koran admitted they had never personally witnessed any such abuse, but one said he had heard that non-Muslim soldiers touched the Koran when searching it for contraband.

In one case, Gitmo interrogators apologized to a detainee for interviewing him prior to the end of Ramadan.

Several detainees indicated they had not experienced any mistreatment. Others complained about lack of privacy, lack of bed sheets, being unwillingly photographed, the guards’ use of profanity, and bad food.

If this is unacceptable, “gulag”-style “torture,” then every inmate in America is a victim of human rights violations. (Oh, never mind, there are civil liberties chicken littles who actually believe that.)

Erik Saar, who served as an army sergeant at Gitmo for six months and co-authored a negative, tell-all book about his experience titled Inside the Wire, inadvertently provides us more firsthand details showing just how restrained, and sensitive to Islam — to a fault, I believe — the officials at the detention facility have been.

Each detainee’s cell has a sink installed low to the ground, “to make it easier for the detainees to wash their feet” before Muslim prayer, Saar reports. Detainees get “two hot halal, or religiously correct, meals” a day in addition to an MRE (meal ready to eat). Loudspeakers broadcast the Muslims’ call to prayer five times a day.

Every detainee gets a prayer mat, cap and Koran. Every cell has a stenciled arrow pointing toward Mecca. Moreover, Gitmo’s library — yes, library — is stocked with Jihadi books. “I was surprised that we’d be making that concession to the religious zealotry of the terrorists,” Saar admits. “[I]t seemed to me that the camp command was helping to facilitate the terrorists’ religious devotion.” Saar notes that one FBI special agent involved in interrogations even grew a beard like the detainees “as a sort of show of respect for their faith.”

Unreality-based liberals would have us believe that America is systematically torturing innocent Muslims out of spite at Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, our own MPs have endured little-publicized abuse at the hands of manipulative, hate-mongering enemy combatants. Detainees have spit on and hurled water, urine and feces on the MPs. Causing disturbances is a source of entertainment for detainees who, as Gen. Richard Myers points out, “would turn right around and try to slit our throats, slit our children’s throats” if released.

The same unreality-based liberals whine about the Bush administration’s failure to gather intelligence and prevent terrorism. Yet, these hysterical critics have no viable alternative to detention and interrogation — and there is no doubt they would be the first to lambaste the White House and Pentagon if a released detainee went on to commit an act of mass terrorism on American soil.

Guantanamo Bay will not be the death of this country. The unseriousness and hypocrisy of the terrorist-abetting Left is a far greater threat.

Same as it ever was.

Buzz out of Washington this morning is that the Obama administration has signaled it will end efforts to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian trial and instead will use the Gitmo military tribunal system pursued by, yes, George W. Bush.

AG Eric Holder is reportedly holding a 2pm Eastern press conference.

Here’s a blurb from CBS:

Attorney General Eric Holder today will announce that self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be tried in a military commission, CBS News has learned. A source says the commission will be held at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Trying Mohammed in a civilian court and closing the Guantanamo prison were once some of the Obama administration’s top priorities, but political realities have hamstrung both goals.

Holder previously recommended that Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 plotters be tried in New York City, but he scrapped that plan in the wake of public consternation.

Not just “political realities.”

Homeland security realities.

Public safety realities.

Intelligence realities.

Wartime realities.

Reality realities.

Reality bites. Sanity wins. For now.

Flashback to November 2009, when Obama/AG Holder embarked on their futile mission to treat Mohammed like your common domestic criminal.

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said today that it is highly likely that terrorists will attack New York City as a consequence of the Obama administration’s decision to send five alleged Sept. 11 plotters there for trial in federal court.

During a question and answer period following a speech to a conservative legal group, Mukasey was asked about the possibility that there might be an escape by one or more prisoners.

“The [Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan] is a very secure place….Is it secure? Of course, it’s secure. They’re not going to escape,” Mukasey told a conference of the Federalist Society. “The question is not whether they’re going to escape. The question is whether, not only that particular facility, but the city [at] large, will then become the focus for mischief in the form of murder by adherents of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed–whether this raises the odds that it will. I would suggest to you that it raises them very high.”

Mukasey said the men now to be tried in New York should have been left before military commission proceedings at Guantanamo that were already in progress.

“The plan seems to be to abandon the view that we’re in a war,” Mukasey said. “I can’t see anything good coming out of this. I certainly can’t see anything good coming out of it very quickly. And it think it would have been far preferable to try these case in the venue that Congress created for trying and where they were about to be tried.”

And this:

The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday. Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but “would explain what happened and why they did it.”

The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center. Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, is a nephew of professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Mohammed, Ali and the others will explain “their assessment of American foreign policy,” Fenstermaker said.

“Their assessment is negative,” he said.

Chalk up another “Emily ‘Never Mind’ Litella” Moment for feckless Team Obama:

***
Not coincidentally, Obama’s national security ratings have fallen to a new low.

Twitter users are having a field day with #Obama2012slogans. The latest in response to the Khalid retreat:

“Next Time I Really Am Closing Gitmo.”

Jan. 22, 2009 Obama’s executive order on closing Gitmo.

**

I’ve written extensively over the years on the perils of civilian trials for terrorists. See here and here and here for a refresher course in the Ally McBeal approach to terror.

Previous Obama Gitmo retreat/trial posts…

11/17/2010 The DoJ’s Civil Trial Balloon Pops; Update: Bush’s Fault, of Course

3/4/2010 National security flip-flop: Obama to retreat on KSM/Gitmo detainee civilian trials…for now

1/28/2010 Retreat: White House plays jihadi musical chairs

***

2:10pm Eastern AG Holder press conference. He says he embarked on shutting down Gitmo and forcing civilian trials with an “open mind.”

Pretends to speak for the 9/11 families — who raised their voices most loudly against KSM trial in New York City.

Says the Bush-era military tribunals will be fair and just, after all…

Whines about congressional restrictions based on national security/public safety concerns.

Still intends to close Gitmo.

Whines about critics trying to “score political points.”

Whines about “needless” debate.

Peppered with questions about his contradictory views on military tribunals and his condescension towards Americans who criticized civilian trial plans, a testy Holder cuts and runs.

Eric Holder: Honorary Fleebagger of the Day.

Still stuck on stupid, via the NYDailyNews:

The feds may still try the 9/11 terror thugs near Ground Zero, President Obama said yesterday, shocking critics.

“I have not ruled it out, but I think it’s important for us to take into account the practical, logistical issues involved,” Obama told CBS News anchor Katie Couric.

…Julie Menin, the chairwoman of lower Manhattan’s Community Board 1, said Obama needs to say where he stands on the issue once and for all.

The President “should unequivocally state that he will not hold these trials in New York City and then figure out where they’re going to move the trial,” she said.

Related: Team O’s civil-liberties woes

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs declared last week that 9/11 kingpin KSM “is going to meet justice, and he’s going to meet his maker and he’s likely to be executed for the heinous crimes that he committed.”

And President Obama himself said something similar last November, declaring of KSM: “I don’t think that it will be offensive at all when he’s convicted and the death sentence is applied to him.”

Now, obviously KSM is guilty, and richly deserves to die.

Indeed, he and his comrades offered to plead guilty before military tribunals — and to accept the death penalty.

But now that Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have decided, in order to prove that America really is committed to civil liberties, to try these killers in civilian court, they need to . . . well, respect civil liberties.

Loose talk like that from Gibbs and Obama is a hanging curveball for defense lawyers determined to exploit every single one of KSM & Co.’s new constitutional rights.

That defense lawyers’ cabal, I remind you again, includes a cadre of Attorney General Eric Holder’s old colleagues at Covington & Burling.

Nice assist, eh?

***

Via Keep America Safe, here’s the Obama video. Still not listening:

Thiessen has relentlessly exposed how the Left and Obama are sabotaging all the effective intelligence-gathering programs that the Bush administration created to prevent jihadi attacks after 9/11 — and how media propagandists are helping them.

Here’s one of his latest investigative op-eds, “A Tale of Two Terrorists,” on how the Obama administration defended the lengthy interrogation of one terror suspect days before the Christmas bomber was recklessly and hastily Mirandized.

Thiessen’s whistle-blowing work can be found here — and he has been spreading the word on cable TV.

No wonder President Obama wants you to turn it off.

***

Turn on PJTV for Glenn Reynolds’ interview with Thiessen right here!

On March 10, 2007, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad stood before a U.S. military Combatant Status Review Tribunal to determine if he met the criteria to be classified as an “enemy combatant.” The public record of the hearing consists of a 26-page transcript (redacted pdf) and a 54:12-minute recording (redacted mpg).

If you listen to the tape or watch the video, it’s clear that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed understood the difference between information he surrendered while under duress and information he volunteered while not under duress, stating four times that he felt no force or coercion to offer his confession.

We here at MyThomsonGitmo encourage you to watch the video and listen to the mpg in entirety. If nothing else, you may gain a new appreciation for the term “enemy combatant” as well as al Qaeda’s religious determination to kill you.

The story is breaking. Seattle P-I reports:

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered that Ahmed Ressam, a convicted terrorist arrested in December 1999 in Port Angeles with a car full of explosives, be sentenced again. And this time, the court has ordered that U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, who presided over Ressam’s trial and his sentencing and re-sentencing, not be involved.

Ressam also will likely face a much longer sentence, given that the appeals court noted several times how much lighter his 22-year sentence was than what sentencing guildelines call for. In a 2-1 decision, the court’s majority said Coughenour’s sentence — 43 years below the low range of the federal sentencing guidelines — was “both procedurally and substantively unreasonable.”

It concluded: “The district judge’s previously expressed views appear too entrenched to allow for the appearance of fairness on remand. For these reasons, we direct that the case be reassigned to a different judge for resentencing.” A new judge could be assigned in three weeks, prosecutors said. Ressam’s attorneys could appeal, and they have not responded to requests for comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle, which has sought a longer sentence, greeted the appeals court ruling with approval,

“Our primary mission is to protect the public. We are gratified that the Court of Appeals recognized the importance of public safety at sentencing and that Mr. Ressam remains a threat to the public.” said U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan in a statement. “We have the greatest respect for Judge John Coughenour and his hard work on a difficult case. However, we maintain that to protect the public, and deter others, a longer prison sentence is necessary.” In December 2008, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle appealed the 22-year sentence imposed Ressam. Ressam, an Algerian, had intended to set off the explosives at Los Angeles International Airport around New Year’s Eve 1999.

And from the LA Times:

Ressam was detained in Washington state in December 1999 when he attempted to smuggle explosives into the United States on a ferry from Canada with plans to detonate them at LAX. He initially cooperated with interrogators and provided what Coughenour termed vital insight into the workings of terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda.

But Ressam ceased helping federal agents and retracted his statements implicating other terror suspects after being subjected to solitary confinement and what he considered interrogation excesses.

Coughenour twice rejected the federal sentencing recommendation of 65 years in prison for the terrorism conspiracy offense, a position the 9th Circuit panel said constituted procedural error. The judge also failed to consider the potential national security consequences for the U.S. public if Ressam were to be released after only a 22-year term, as he would be only 53 years old, the appeals panel said. Ressam, now 42, has remained incarcerated the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo., throughout the legal appeals of his sentence.

I’ve reported on Coughenour’s antics over the years. He’s a notorious terrorist’s little helper who engaged in brazen grandstanding during Ressam’s sentencing in 2005 — using the occasion to pat himself on the back, express his opposition to military tribunals and detention of enemy combatants, and argue in support of applying the full panoply of constitutional rights to foreign al Qaeda conspirators.

More recently, as Morgen Richmond at Verum Serum reported, Coughenhour spoke at George Soros’s Open Society Institute and shrugged off the prospect of Gitmo detainee releases as the “price we pay” for granting them the full panoply of constitutional rights in civilian trials.

His retort: “So be it.”

There are more like him in the judiciary, and you can bet the Gitmo detainees’ lawyers at Eric Holder’s old law firm, Covington and Burling, are court-shopping for them.

My syndicated column today expands on Tuesday’s blog post about the Aafia Siddiqui terror trial debacle in New York City (see here for background/links) and what it portends for the future. Yes, I call it Cirque du Jihad. The White House and DOJ are now scrambling to cook up contingency plans for their jihadi show trials in the wake of mounting opposition to the Gitmo transfers. President Obama is still pushing to bring the Gitmo detainees into the U.S. federal court system.

But what’s happening in the Siddiqui circus can happen anywhere. Don’t let it happen in your backyard.

*Petition to ban KSM from appearing at NYC terror trias.

*Keep America Safe

***
Courtroom Cirque du Jihad
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

Imagine this nightmare courtroom scenario: Unhinged Jew-bashing, open mockery of American soldiers, juror intimidation, and coldly calculated exploitation of U.S. constitutional protections by a suspected al Qaeda defendant. Well, there’s no need to wait for the Gitmo terror trial circuses. New York City is already getting a glimpse of the future.

Jihadi scientist Aafia Siddiqui is on trial right now in a federal Manhattan court for the attempted murder and assault of U.S. military personnel in Pakistan two years ago. She’s an accomplished Karachi-born scientist who studied microbiology at MIT and did graduate work in neurology at Brandeis University before disappearing in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Counterterrorism investigators connected Siddiqui and her estranged husband, anesthesiologist Dr. Mohammed Amjad Khan, to Saudi terror funders. The couple’s bank account showed repeated purchases of high-tech military equipment and apparel, including body armor, night-vision goggles, and military manuals. Her second husband, fellow al Qaeda suspect and 9/11 plot helper Ammar al Baluchi, is one of five Gitmo detainees that the Obama administration is planning to transfer to New York for trial.

Siddiqui was identified as an al Qaeda operative, financier, and fixer by no less than 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed during U.S. interrogations. Al Baluchi is KSM’s nephew. Mohammed reportedly enlisted Siddiqui in a Baltimore-based plot to bomb gas stations, fuel tanks, and bridges, and poison water reservoirs in the greater Washington, D.C. area.. Siddiqui was taken into custody in Kabul in July 2008 after attempting to shoot U.S. military interrogators and FBI agents.

Now, the savvy “Terror Mom” of three is pulling out all the stops to win a mistrial. Among her Cirque du Jihad antics:

*Demanding that jurors be genetically tested for a “Zionist or Israeli background” to ensure a fair and impartial jury of her Jew-hating peers;

*Ranting about 9/11/Israel conspiracies during voir dire;

*Screaming out loud during the testimony of U.S. Army Capt. Robert Snyder, who was in the room in Kabul when Siddiqui allegedly grabbed an M-4 rifle and proclaimed, “Allah Akbar!” and “I hate Americans! Death to America!” Before being ejected from the courtroom, Siddiqui shouted to Snyder, “You’re lying!” She also babbled about torture at a secret prison;

*And blurting out “I feel sorry for you” to the witness in front of the jury before being led out of the courtroom again.

Siddiqui’s defense team, funded in part by the Pakistani government, asserts that Lady Al Qaeda is so mentally ga-ga that she should not be allowed to take the witness stand. Bleeding-heart human rights groups have dutifully rallied around Siddiqui. She’s Mumia abu Jamal in a burqa. Indeed, her supporters have launched their own “Free Affia” campaign. But two government-retained psychiatrists, working independently, determined last year that Siddiqui’s so-called symptoms of mental illness were attributed to “malingering” and “manipulation.” The judge in the case concluded that she is competent and understands full well the charges against her.

The Crazy Jihadi tactic is in perfect sync with the al Qaeda training manual advising its operatives to claim victimhood status if arrested and put on trial. This act is also in keeping with a long tradition of terror defendants invoking the insanity card – from “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui (whose lawyers chalked up his mass-murdering ambitions to a traumatic childhood) to Fort Hood massacre Nidal Hasan (whose defense will undoubtedly play up his lonely bachelorhood).

To make matters worse, the New York Post reported this week that an “unidentified man in a white headdress” mouthed an obscenity at the Siddiqu trial and cocked his finger like a gun at two jurors. The jurors were let go; it remains unclear whether the thug in white headdress will be charged and what relation, if any, he has to Siddiqui.

Would you answer a jury summons knowing you could end up sitting in front of a jihadi sympathizer on the loose mentally painting a target on your forehead? And would you trust the White House ringmasters and Justice Department terror-coddlers to protect you from harm?

These suspects belong in controlled military tribunals, not federal courtrooms that are being turned into al Qaeda p.r. platforms. The O.J. Simpson spectacle of a smirking murder suspect, preening defense attorneys, a showboating judge, and the judicial process run amok on cable TV 24/7 was bad enough. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial, which gave the bin Laden network a multi-million-dollar, tax-subsidized legal team, free translation services, personal dry-cleaning services, race-baiting defense witnesses, and access to information that was allegedly used by jihadists to evade surveillance, was even worse.

The specter of 10 or 15 or 20 Siddiqui-style courtroom carnivals – at a cost of at least $1 billion to taxpayers – threatens to throw our civilian courtroom system into complete chaos. America can’t afford to clown around with national security.

President Obama’s rhetoric meets reality, again.

After pushing hard to try Gitmo detainees in New York City, the White House has now ordered the Justice Department to try and find other venues. They are still insisting on shipping suspected jihadis to federal courts on U.S. soil.

It’s going to be a long, pointless game of jihadi musical chairs:

The White House ordered the Justice Department to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan.

The White House took the action hours after Mayor Bloomberg called Attorney General Eric Holder to say he would “prefer that they did it elsewhere.”

“It would be an inconvenience at the least, and probably that’s too mild a word for people that live in the neighborhood and businesses in the neighborhood,” Bloomberg told reporters.

“There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive for New York City.”

State leaders have railed against a plan to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Manhattan federal court since Holder proposed it last month.

The order to consider new venues does not change the White House’s position that Mohammed should be tried in civilian court.

“President Obama is still committed to trying Mohammed and four other terrorist detainees in federal court,” spokesman Bill Burton said Thursday.

As I said in November in a post on coming jihadi show trials:

If this White House thought Tea Party activists were an “angry mob,” wait until they see the backlash from 9/11 family members and their supporters nationwide. We’re not going to sit down and shut up about the reckless, security-undermining Obama 9/10 agenda and conflict-of-interest-ridden AG Eric Holder.

Note well:

“They’re in a tizzy at Justice over Bloomberg,” a federal law enforcement official said. “It’s like a half-baked souffle – the plan is collapsing.”

Meanwhile, a source told The News that Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly was the driving force behind the push by Manhattan business leaders to change the mayor’s mind on the trial.

Kelly made an “extremely powerful” speech to a roomful of 150 prominent business leaders about how disruptive and costly the trial would be for lower Manhattan at an annual police charity event on Jan. 13, the source said.

“What turned this around was when Ray made a presentation to the Police Foundation,” the source said. “Everyone went from thinking, ‘Justice will be served’ to thinking ‘We are screwed.’”

***

More on the rising political opposition to civilian show trials on both sides of the aisle from Allahpundit.

And more on the search for new jihadi musical chairs from the NYT:

Mr. Burton said the president agreed with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that civilian trials were the right choice. “Currently our federal jails hold hundreds of convicted terrorists, and the president’s opinion has not changed on that,” he said.

Finding a site for a trial rejected by New York City could prove a challenge. Other Southern District locations appeared to pose problems. Some officials mentioned the Eastern District of Virginia, where terror trials have been held, or the unused Illinois prison where the administration has proposed to move detainees from Guantánamo.

A Justice Department spokesman, Dean Boyd, said Thursday night that there had been no decision to shift the trial from Manhattan. He said department officials were confident that the Southern District, where the department’s most experienced terrorism prosecutors work, could handle the case “while minimizing disruptions to the community to the greatest extent possible consistent with security needs.”

City officials have estimated security and logistical costs could total more than $200 million per year for a trial that could last several years, and some politicians have complained that a trial could make the city an even more attractive target for Al Qaeda.

Mr. Bloomberg, who in November had strongly backed Mr. Holder’s decision to bring the Sept. 11 defendants to the city they were accused of attacking, surprised administration officials on Wednesday by saying he had changed his mind. On Thursday, he elaborated, not closing the door to a Manhattan trial but expressing strong preference for another location.

You want a glimpse of the future that crime-coddling Eric Holder and the White House will be bringing up en masse?

Right now, in New York City, jihad scientist Aafia Siddiqui is on trial.

See here, here, here, and here for background on the MIT-trained microbiologist/suspected KSM operative who went missing after 9/11 — and was caught, shot, and extradited two years in Pakistan after threatening to kill American soldiers.

The Pakistani government is paying for part of her defense. She has used the civilian court system to shout anti-American propaganda and spew hatred against Jews, cause legal chaos, and make a mockery of the rights she has been granted. al Qaeda has been trained to game the system. The Western-educated Siddiqui is milking it for all it’s worth.

On Monday, she was thrown out twice for outburts. Her defense team is now asking for, you guessed it, a mistrial.

A U.S.-trained Pakistani scientist linked to al-Qaida got into trouble again Monday in federal court after twice interrupting the sometimes tearful testimony of an American solider who claimed he shot her in self defense in Afghanistan in 2008.

“I feel sorry for you,” Aafit Saddiqui blurted out at one point at her attempted murder trial in Manhattan. After a judge had deputy U.S. marshals remove her, she pointed at the witness and muttered something else before disappearing behind a side door.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman allowed Saddiqui to return later, but kicked her out again amid another rambling tirade about injustice. At the end of the day, the defense argued that the removals made her look bad in front of the jury and asked for a mistrial, which the judge denied.

“It’s highly appropriate for her to be escorted out of the courtroom when she acts out,” he said.

Siddiqui – a specialist in neuroscience who trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University – has insisted in previous courtroom rants that she’s innocent. She also has refused to work with her defense attorneys, including some paid for by the Pakistani government.

The soldier described Siddiqui’s 2008 ambush:

He testified Afghan authorities had told him Siddiqui had been restrained, and was shocked when she sudden appeared from behind a curtain wielding his M4 rifle and yelling, “Allah akbar,” Arabic for “God is great.”

“It was pretty amazing she got that thing up and squared off,” he said. “She was looking at me and aiming dead at me.”

Hearing the rifle go off, the officer said he followed his military training and pulled his pistol. Siddiqui was wrestling with an interpreter when he shot her in the stomach.

“I operated within the rules of engagement to eliminate the threat,” he said.

Two jurors were also let go after a man sitting in the courtroom pointed at them, used his finger as a gun to pretend to shoot them, and mouthed an obscenity.

Reports the NYPost: ” The unidentified man in a white headdress was taken into custody but it was unclear if charges were filed following the incident in Manhattan federal court.”

An al Qaeda suspect given free reign with her tongue in a public courtroom. Jurors threatened. Prosecution in jeopardy.

Now, imagine the scene being repeated in 12 or 20 or 25 more courtrooms across America simultaneously with similar high-value suspects and the jihadi dregs of Gitmo.

Are you ready? It’s coming.

Obama brings the Gitmolympics home
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

President Obama’s hometown cronies lost their bid to bring the 2016 Olympic Games to the Windy City. But this week, they got a consolation prize: the Gitmolympics. On Tuesday, the White House went public with its official plans to purchase the Thomson Correctional Facility from financially-strapped Illinois to house Guantanamo Bay detainees. The War on Terror meets the Chicago Way.

Political boosters of the Illinois budget bailout masquerading as a national security program can’t wait to roll out the jihadi welcome mat. Unions representing federal prison workers also cheered the move. Leading the lobbying delegation for the new Gitmo-in-the-heartland located a few hours west of Chicago: Democrat Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, last seen on the international stage in 2005 likening American interrogators and military staff at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, Soviet gulag operators and genocidal maniac Pol Pot.

And co-chairing the bid to bring suspected jihadis to American soil: Beleaguered Illinois Democrat Gov. Pat Quinn, who is salivating at the prospect of an estimated $1 billion injection into the local economy over four years. (Never mind that the jobs predictions from the Council of Economic Advisers use the same fuzzy math methods that gave us bogus porkulus numbers.)

Sensibly, the people of Illinois who will have to live with this raw deal aren’t waving their pom-poms. A Rasmussen poll shows that 51 percent of voters in the state oppose the transfer of suspected terrorists from the Cuban detention facility to their backyard – including 70 percent of Republicans, 37 percent of Democrats, and 57 percent of independents.

Left-wing advocates of closing Gitmo accuse these Americans of “NIMBYism” and groundless fear. But can you blame anyone who watched the Crashergate debacle at the White House or the Scare Force One debacle in New York City for choking on disbelief when Team Obama promises airtight safety, security, and competence?

Moreover, Illinois is already suffering its own severe prison overcrowding crisis – which Gov. Quinn has alleviated by secretly releasing more than 850 inmates, including violent offenders, since September, according to the Associated Press.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Dan Proft points out that “[t]he state’s 28 current prisons are 32 percent over capacity. Why not alleviate the overcrowding and bring the Thomson prison online” for existing criminals instead of importing them from abroad? Another Republican candidate Kirk Dillard blasted Gov. Quinn’s fiscal desperation: “I think Al-Qaeda needs to stay in Cuba. It shows how pathetic the state of Illinois’ finances are where we have to stand with our hat in hand and have the federal government give us money to open a penitentiary that the Democrats have let sit vacant for years.”

Obama officials stress that the prison would house Gitmo detainees separately from federal inmates, and that the two would be “managed separately” with “no opportunity to interact” between them. Which entirely misses the point that Gitmo detainees’ lawyers and translators have been primary security concerns – not just other inmates:

*Last month, jihadist-enabling lawyer Lynne Stewart was finally ordered to jail after her conviction in 2005 for aiding and abetting imprisoned blind Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman by smuggling coded messages of violence to terrorist followers abroad — in violation of an explicit pledge to abide by her client’s court-ordered isolation.

*Earlier this summer, the Justice Department launched an inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guatanamo Bay detainees. The pictures of covert American CIA officers – “in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes,” according to the Washington Post – were shown to jihadi suspects tied to the 9/11 attacks in order to identify the interrogators.

*As investigative journalist Paul Sperry reported recently, a number of Arabic and Pashtu interpreters who served at Gitmo are “under active investigation for omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations, among other security breaches.”

The corruptocrat Attorney General Eric Holder is, of course, in no position to raise any principles objections to the Gitmo-in-the-Heartland plans. Remember: He served as senior partner with Covington & Burling — the prestigious Washington, D.C. law firm, which represents 17 Yemenis currently held at Gitmo – and top attorneys at his Justice Department have had to recuse themselves numerous times over their conflicts of interest in Gitmo-related cases. Holder has failed to provide a full recusal list of all the Gitmo detainee cases from which current Justice Department political appointees have had to recuse themselves.

Meanwhile, Team Obama is now championing the very same indefinite detention powers for detainees deemed untriable that it condemned the Bush administration for exercising – and for which it targeted Gitmo for closure in the first place. Give the White House a gold medal for costly incoherence and reckless redundance.

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy’s elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral’s mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named “Objective Amber,” told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

A legal team is going to New York to prevent the use of evidence provided by Germany in seeking a death penalty. Berlin wants to ensure that promises made by the US are kept if the suspects are found guilty.

A team of observers from the German government is going to New York to oversee the trial of five suspects accused of orchestrating the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday.

The federal trial of the suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants was announced on November 13 by the US Justice Department. The government also asserted that it intends to seek the death penalty if the accused are found guilty.

Germany, which does not have a death penalty, provided evidence for the trial on the condition that it could not be used to support a death sentence. Several members of the al Qaeda cell that planned and executed the attacks of September 11 were previously based in the northern German city of Hamburg.

“In this case we will observe very closely that the given assurances are kept,” Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said.

(Source)

Remember: It’s all about putting America on trial, not the jihadists.

***

Remember the Dancing Itos from the OJ Simpson trial farce? That’s going to look like Pulitzer Award-winning drama after the 9/11 show trials are through:

The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday. Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but “would explain what happened and why they did it.”

The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center. Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, is a nephew of professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Mohammed, Ali and the others will explain “their assessment of American foreign policy,” Fenstermaker said.

“Their assessment is negative,” he said.

Bleeding-heart Barack Obama and interest-conflicted Eric Holder are all too happy to serve as executive directors for the 9/11 show trials.

Hey, why not turn them into a Broadway play while you’re at it, White House?

***

Just a reminder of what Obama wrote about the 9/11 jihadists eight days after the attack left 3,000 innocent men, women, and children dead on American soil:

“We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.”

My response last year:

As for Obama’s continued delusion about the “climate of poverty and ignorance” that supposedly breeds Muslim terrorists, can American politicians ever rid themselves of this unreality-based trope? This belief is part and parcel of the same idiocy that lead the State Department to embrace “spa days” for Muslims to “build bridges” with the Arab world and President Bush to open up our aviation schools to more Saudi students to “improve understanding.” John McCain also alluded to education-as-cure for Islamic terrorism at the L.A. World Affairs Council in March, when he declared that “In this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs.” Just what we need: more student visas for the jihadi-infested nation that sent us the bulk of the 9/11 hijackers.

Author and National Review Online blogger Mark Steyn’s sharp rejoinder to McCain then applies to Obama now: “There’s plenty of evidence out there that the most extreme ‘extremists’ are those who’ve been most exposed to the west – and western education: from Osama bin Laden (summer school at Oxford, punting on the Thames) and Mohammed Atta (Hamburg University urban planning student) to the London School of Economics graduate responsible for the beheading of Daniel Pearl. The idea that handing out college scholarships to young Saudi males and getting them hooked on Starbucks and car-chase movies will make this stuff go away is ridiculous – and unworthy of a serious presidential candidate.”

Ayman al-Zawahiri didn’t need more education or wealth to steer him away from Islamic imperialism and working toward a worldwide caliphate. He has a medical degree. So does former Hamas biggie Abdel Rantissi. Seven upper-middle-class jihadi doctors were implicated in the 2007 London/Glasgow bombings. Suspected al Qaeda scientist Affia Siddiqui, still wanted by the FBI for questioning, is a Pakistani who studied microbiology at MIT and did graduate work in neurology at Brandeis.

And as I’ve reported before and must reiterate again for the hard of hearing in Washington, lowering academic standards at American colleges helped al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed further the jihadi cause. In the early 1980s, he enrolled at tiny Chowan College in Murfreesburo, N.C., which had dropped its English requirements to attract–ahem–wealthy Middle Easterners. At Chowan, Mohammed bonded with other Arab Muslim foreign students known as “The Mullahs” for their religious zeal. Mohammed then transferred to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where he earned his degree in mechanical engineering along with 30 other Muslims. Mohammed applied his Western learning to oversee the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot (six Americans dead), the U.S.S. Cole attack (17 American soldiers dead), and the September 11 attacks (3,000 dead). He has also been linked to the 1998 African-embassy bombings (212 dead, including 12 Americans), the plot to kill the pope, the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, and the Bali nightclub bomb blast that killed nearly 200 tourists, including two more Americans.

Perhaps bleeding-heart Obama thinks a master’s degree in social work would have convinced poverty-stricken, helpless, ignorant, despairing Mohammed to change his mind?

It’s Friday. The president is flying off to Asia. Congress is not in session. Perfect time to drop a bombshell on the American people:

The Obama administration is bringing 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed to New York City for a civilian trial.

No, it’s not a joke. Via the NYT:

Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official said Friday.

The official said Attorney General Eric Holder plans to announce the decision later in the morning.

The official is not authorized to discuss the decision before the announcement, so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bringing such notorious suspects to U.S. soil to face trial is a key step in President Barack Obama’s plan to close the terror suspect detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama initially planned to close the detention center by Jan. 22, but the administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline.

It is also a major legal and political test of Obama’s overall approach to terrorism. If the case suffers legal setbacks, the administration will face second-guessing from those who never wanted it in a civilian courtroom. And if lawmakers get upset about notorious terrorists being brought to their home regions, they may fight back against other parts of Obama’s agenda.

Here is the e-mail the DOD’s Director Victim Witness Program sent out to victims, survivors, and family members of jihadi attacks this morning (via Sgt. Tim Sumner, brother-in-law of FDNY Joseph G. Leavey, 45, Ladder 15, WTC):

You are receiving this email because you have been identified as a victim, survivor, or victim family member of an Al-Qaeda attributed attack and have requested to be kept informed of events involving detainees charged in military commissions or being held in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility in connection with those attacks.

We would like to inform you that the U.S. Departments of Defense and Justice will be making an important public announcement later this morning. At 10:30 am Eastern Standard Time, the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism will post information for victims about the announcement on its password protected victims’ website. At 11:00 am the Defense and Justice Departments will issue a joint press release notifying the public of the information, and there will also be a press conference. In addition, the Defense Department will notify victims about the information by email.

Both the Defense Department (Karen Loftus) and the Justice Department (Heather Cartwright) are sending out this e-mail to ensure that as many victims as possible receive it. We apologize if you receive duplicates. If you know of other victims who may be interested in the information, please pass this on to them.

Here’s what Tim sent in response:

We have an announcement as well: we will fight with every remaining breath in our bodies both their bringing KSM and the rest of the 9/11 conspirators to federal courtrooms within walking distance of where they slaughtered our loved ones. And whomever finds Manhattan’s federal courthouse near Ground Zero a “sentimental favorite” for the 9/11 trials is a damn fool and they ALL ought to be fired. Pass that message on, far, wide, and up and down the chain-of-command.

See here for a petition to the president.

If this White House thought Tea Party activists were an “angry mob,” wait until they see the backlash from 9/11 family members and their supporters nationwide. We’re not going to sit down and shut up about the reckless, security-undermining Obama 9/10 agenda and conflict-of-interest-ridden AG Eric Holder.

Call them out.

***

I’ve written extensively over the years on the perils of civilian trials for terrorists. See here and here and here for a refresher course in the Ally McBeal
approach to terror.

Here’s a taste of what we have to look forward to:

The idea of prosecuting suspected terrorists like burglars or drug dealers seems to make sense in principle, but jury trials for War on Terror suspects are fraught with peril.

“In ordinary civilian trials, there is no significant cost to sharing everything the government knows,” notes Johns Hopkins international law professor Ruth Wedgwood. “But this does not hold against the background of Al Qaeda’s stated ambition of mounting new attacks.” Affording accused Al Qaeda operatives the Sixth Amendment right to a public trial threatens to compromise classified information necessary to prosecute future terrorist trials. Other rights guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment’s the right to subpoena witnesses and compel them to testify, the right to an attorney, can interfere with interrogations of captured suspected Al Qaeda agents. Moreover, in civilian courtrooms, prosecutors are severely restrained from closing off classified information under the existing federal Classified Information Procedure Act. Anonymous testimony and intelligence based on hearsay are often inadmissible in civilian courts. And while the lives of those immediately involved in say, a mob trial, might be endangered, the entire nation may be at risk when we allow suspected members of a terrorist network to partake in the discovery process.

The prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers in our civilian court system, though successful, demonstrated the pitfalls of prosecuting the War on Terror like an episode of the TV show “Ally McBeal” — a courtroom comedy. The trials gave the bin Laden network a multi-million-dollar, tax-subsidized defense team, free translation services, personal dry-cleaning services, and access to information that was allegedly used by Islamists to evade surveillance.

All of the convicted World Trade Center bombers received life sentences. Two had faced the death penalty, but were spared by a minority-dominated jury that swallowed the race-baiting of traitorous defense witness Ramsey Clark (the former U.S. attorney general under Lyndon Johnson). Clark testified that no member of a racial minority group — African-American, Arab or otherwise — could expect a fair trial in the U.S. He also blamed the Gulf War and U.S. sanctions on Iraq for creating the psychological “suffering” that led to the embassy attacks. On another front, convicted mastermind Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman may have exploited his right to counsel in order to establish a terrorist message center from behind bars. His lawyer, Lynne Stewart, was indicted in the fall of 2003 on charges of providing material support to terrorists and went to trial in May 2004; she is accused of aiding a plot to kidnap and kill people to help win the release of Rahman and making false statements regarding her efforts to pass messages between Rahman and third parties…

Stewart was convicted of aiding terrorists and lying to the government in 2005 — for which she received a slap on the wrist. She is still free pending appeal.

***

Andy McCarthy exposes the underlying Obama/Holder agenda. The 9/11 show trials are a payoff to the Bush-haters and transnational Left:

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.

And read this timely excerpt from McCarthy’s invaluable Willful Blindness: “Bring my lawyer! — That’s what’s so beautiful about America.”

***

Update: Just heard that former Bush AG Michael Mukasey will be addressing the Federalist Society National Lawyer’s Convention today at the Mayflower in Washington, D.C. at 2:15pm today and will take on the White House decision to prosecute Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in his speech.

Update: Details on Mukasey’s speech…

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said today that it is highly likely that terrorists will attack New York City as a consequence of the Obama administration’s decision to send five alleged Sept. 11 plotters there for trial in federal court.

During a question and answer period following a speech to a conservative legal group, Mukasey was asked about the possibility that there might be an escape by one or more prisoners.

“The [Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan] is a very secure place….Is it secure? Of course, it’s secure. They’re not going to escape,” Mukasey told a conference of the Federalist Society. “The question is not whether they’re going to escape. The question is whether, not only that particular facility, but the city [at] large, will then become the focus for mischief in the form of murder by adherents of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed–whether this raises the odds that it will. I would suggest to you that it raises them very high.”

Mukasey said the men now to be tried in New York should have been left before military commission proceedings at Guantanamo that were already in progress.

“The plan seems to be to abandon the view that we’re in a war,” Mukasey said. “I can’t see anything good coming out of this. I certainly can’t see anything good coming out of it very quickly. And it think it would have been far preferable to try these case in the venue that Congress created for trying and where they were about to be tried.”

And more thorough coverage of Mukasey’s speech from Philip Klein here.