PAM MEISTER ON THE DECISION TO TRY TERRORISTS IN NEW YORK
November 14, 2009
Exclusive: Decision to Try 9/11 Masterminds in New York a Slap in the Face to All AmericansPam Meister
In an act that further makes a mockery of the Islamist threat that faces us, the administration has decided that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Gitmo detainees will be sent to New York City to stand trial in a civilian federal court for their role in the 9/11 atrocity. According to Attorney General Eric Holder, prosecutors will seek the death penalty.
No word yet if Lynne Stewart has offered to be on the defense team.
“For over 200 years our nation has relied upon a faithful adherence to the rule of law,†Holder told a news conference at the Justice Department. “Once again, we will ask our legal system in two venues to answer that call.†Yes, but “rule of law†usually applies only to citizens and others who are here legally – not terrorists and other enemy combatants. These men did not break into someone’s house and burgle it. They were part of a plot that killed thousands of Americans in what was an overt act of war against our people and our nation.
Yet we treat them like common criminals who deserve due process. Not even Hollywood could come up with a plot this ridiculous.
Is there a hidden agenda here? According to Andrew McCarthy, there is:
This summer, I theorized that Attorney General Eric Holder — and his boss — had a hidden agenda in ordering a re-investigation of the CIA for six-year-old alleged interrogation excesses that had already been scrutinized by non-partisan DOJ prosecutors who had found no basis for prosecution. The continuing investigations of Bush-era counterterrorism policies (i.e., the policies that kept us safe from more domestic terror attacks), coupled with the Holder Justice Department’s obsession to disclose classified national-defense information from that period, enable Holder to give the hard Left the “reckoning” that he and Obama promised during the 2008 campaign. It would be too politically explosive for Obama/Holder to do the dirty work of charging Bush administration officials; but as new revelations from investigations and declassifications are churned out, Leftist lawyers use them to urge European and international tribunals to bring “torture” and “war crimes” indictments. Thus, administration cooperation gives Obama’s base the reckoning it demands but Obama gets to deny responsibility for any actual prosecutions.
Today’s announcement that KSM and other top al-Qaeda terrorists will be transferred to Manhattan federal court for civilian trials neatly fits this hidden agenda. Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witnesses — intelligence sources — must expose themselves and their secrets. (emphasis added)
Last December, these men wanted to plead guilty to further their role as martyrs – and today they’re being put on trial with all the bells and whistles usually reserved for American citizens, along with cameras in the courtroom so that the entire world can see and hear everything. They confessed – and now they are referred to as “alleged masterminds,†“accused,†and “suspects.†That’s quite a reversal.
And, as Rush Limbaugh points out, the ones on trial here are not Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his merry band of jihadists, but the CIA, FBI, the former Bush administration and anyone else connected to keeping our nation safe. In other words, the United States itself will be on trial.
Let’s put aside the fact that, as Andrew McCarthy notes, intelligence sources must expose themselves and their secrets, putting themselves and their intel networks at risk. That in and of itself is bad enough. But what if the prosecution bungles the case? What if these guys get off on a technicality or, heaven forbid, they are found innocent by a jury of their, er, peers because there is enough “reasonable doubt� These things are possible in a trial in a civilian courtroom. Where will they be released? Here in the United States? Or deported back to their home countries, where they will probably get the same hero’s welcome as Libya’s Lockerbie bomber? Either way, we lose.
If they’re released, look for a tell-all book that will be hyped on the television talk show circuit. I can see the title now: Growing Up Jihadist: How We Snuffed Out the Lives of Millions of Americans and Lived to Tell the Tale. If we’re going to give them the “American way†treatment, we might as well go whole hog in our efforts.
And if they are found guilty, where will they be sent to prison? Certainly not back to Guantanamo Bay, which the Obama administration has been promising to close. That leaves federal prison, where the chance that they’ll radicalize other American prisoners is a very real threat.
Debra Burlingame told Fox News that this decision “is a travesty…and a dark day for all who died on 9/11. These men…are getting the full force protection of the United States Constitution. … They are getting the same rights of United States citizens. … [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] will rally his jihadi brothers to kill more Americans.â€
Perhaps those who support this decision believe that the system will “work†and these men will be thrown in prison for the rest of their days. Even if that happens, the jihadists will still have won because they will have used our own system against us – part of their stealth jihad – and the American taxpayer will fund the effort that ultimately is against their own interests.
It certainly says something when the decision to try terrorist enemy combatants in a civilian courtroom took less time than it took to decide on how to memorialize those who perished in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 – a decision, by the way, that has yet to be made.
That stinging sensation you feel? It’s a slap in the face to all Americans from the government officials who swore to protect us. Thanks for nothing.
Pam Meister is the editor of FamilySecurityMatters.org.
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