9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America

Not only did President Barack Obama release Iran’s terrorists operating in Iraq in the hope of their future participate in the political process and the hope of a release of British hostages, the evidence indicates those terrorists had abducted and murdered five U.S. soldiers. The National Review Online’s Andy McCarthy writes, “That President Obama has exchanged a terrorist for hostages is now obvious, as should be the disastrous consequences.”

The story is one of utter folly, of a President with no understanding of the Iranian regime and their terrorists that he is making deals with:

On Jan. 20, 2007, five American soldiers were killed and three seriously wounded in Iraq. As Bill Roggio relates at the Long War Journal, it was a daring operation: a twelve-man terrorist team disguised as U.S. servicemen attacked our troops as they held a previously arranged meeting with local officials in Karbala. Four of the soldiers were alive when they were abducted from the scene. They were handcuffed and murdered in a remote location when the coalition forces attempting to rescue them closed in.

Given the sophistication of the raid and the intelligence required to pull it off, it was a virtual certainty that the mullahs’ special forces, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, were behind it. More than a decade earlier, in concert with Hezbollah (Iran’s forward terrorist militia), the IRGC had bombed the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 members of the United States Air Force. In Karbala, the IRGC had relied on what Michael Ledeen of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies aptly calls its “most lethal element,” the Quds (Jerusalem) Force, in combination with a burgeoning, Hezbollah-like network of local Shiite terrorists.

This was confirmed two months later when U.S. forces captured Ali Mussa Daqduq, a high-ranking veteran of Hezbollah, in Basrah. As Roggio explains, Daqduq had been tasked by Iran to organize a network of terror cells to strike coalition forces in Iraq. The network would operate under the direction of Qais Qazali. Qazali and his brother, Laith Qazali, were captured along with Daqduq.

Unquestionably, Iran, acting through the Qazali network — which is better known as Asaib al-Haq, or the League of the Righteous — was responsible for the murder of our troops in Karbala. As Ledeen documents in his book The Iranian Time Bomb (reviewed here), Gen. David Petraeus made that clear at an April 2007 press conference. Petraeus detailed that the Qazali brothers were among “the key members” of a network of “extremist secret cells.”
…
About two weeks ago, the Obama administration released Laith Qazali after extensive negotiations with the Asaib al-Haq terror network. That network has long been in negotiations with the fledgling Iraqi government, dangling the possibility of laying down its arms, renouncing violence, and integrating into Iraqi society, provided that its top members — particularly Qais and Laith Qazali, as well as Ali Mussa Daqduq — be released. Realizing, however, that these terrorists were responsible for kidnapping and killing American soldiers in gross violation of the laws of war, the Bush administration had declined to release them.

What Obama got in return were two dead bodies. When will he ever learn?

READ THE REST.

The potential loss of tens of billions of dollars in damages is not what the Saudis fear most, should the Supreme Court allow this lawsuit to move forward. Way down in the Washington Times’ article today about the Obama administration irking 9/11 families by asking the Supreme Court to deny their appeal of a ruling barring a lawsuit against Saudi princes was this gem:

“A Justice Department spokesman said the administration held the meetings to hear from family members and declined to discuss details. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg said that while he sympathized with the families, the State Department is pursuing a broader strategy, using multiple tools to reach beyond U.S. borders and freeze terrorist assets.”

That was a hard pill for one who had bet on hope:

“I find this reprehensible,” said Kristen Breitweiser, a leader of the Sept. 11 families, whose husband was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center. “One would have hoped that the Obama administration would have taken a different stance than the Bush administration, and you wonder what message this sends to victims of terrorism around the world.”

The lawsuit would crack open a window into Islamic “charities” worldwide. Instead, we will continue to turn a blind eye to terror financing. Saturday, the AP reported al Qaeda’s finances are recovering:

“As the Taliban gains power in Afghanistan and Pakistan, its money is coming mostly from extortion, crime and drugs, the AP found in an investigation into the financial network of militants in the region. However, funding for the broader-based al-Qaida appears to be more diverse, including money from new recruits, increasingly large donations from sympathizers and Islamic charities [emphasis added mine], and a cut of profits from honey dealers in Yemen and Pakistan who belong to the same Wahabi sect of Islam.
…
“In three of the last five years, the No. 1 source of money into Pakistan through this hawala system has been the United States, according to the Pakistani security official. He couldn’t say how much of the money went to terrorists and how much was sent from Pakistanis abroad to their families.”

President Barack Obama said this during his June 4 speech in Cairo:

“Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together. We must always examine the ways in which we protect it. For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That’s why I’m committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.”

Al Qaeda is banking on that change.

The Washington Times reports this morning:

Family members of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks say they have been blindsided by the Obama administration’s opposition to their lawsuit seeking damages from top members of the Saudi Arabian government over suspected financial links to the 9/11 attackers.

A series of closed-door meetings between the relatives’ groups and Justice Department officials, arranged as an update on Mr. Obama’s plan to close the detention facility at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, turned instead into a sharp clash over the Saudi legal action, The Washington Times has learned.

“Physically, President Obama has done what previous presidents have done for a long time, which is bow down,” said Debra Burlingame, co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America.

The relatives of the victims have signed onto a lawsuit seeking damages from four Saudi princes, saying they have been financing al Qaeda and thus are responsible in large part for the attacks that killed their loved ones.

The family members demanded to be be [sic] heard on the White House’s stance during a series of closed-door meetings at the State Department and the Justice Department last week.

The Supreme Court is expected to meet Thursday to decide whether to take the families’ case, which was rejected by a federal appeals court last year. The administration’s opposition to a Supreme Court review has dampened hopes among the 11 families for a reversal.

“Myself and the other family members are unanimously upset,” said Doug Connors, whose older brother was killed in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. “We feel that our government hasn’t supported us as victims.”

A U.S. district court dismissed the suit against the princes, a Saudi banker and a Saudi-based charity in 2006, and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling in August 2008. … READ THE REST

Among the suit’s key assertions:

Senior Saudi officials and members of the royal family or their representatives served as executives or board members of the suspect charities when they were financing al-Qaeda operations. Overall, the Saudi government substantially controlled and financed the charities, the lawsuit alleges.

The charities laundered millions of dollars, some from the Saudi government, into al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups and provided weapons, false travel and employment documents, and safe houses.

Regional offices of the charities employed, in senior positions, al-Qaeda operatives who helped coordinate support for terror cells.

Although the lawsuit argues that the Saudi government “intended” the 9/11 attacks to happen, the public record supporting that allegation is thin, and lawyers suing the kingdom have yet to generate direct evidence that any senior Saudi official conspired with al-Qaeda to attack the United States.

Instead, the lawsuit compiles hundreds of incremental disclosures from U.S government and other sources and weaves them together to form one basic assertion: Al-Qaeda’s development from ragtag regional terrorists into a global threat was fueled by Saudi money, some of it from the government.

And the charities, the lawsuit contends, were the money’s conduit.

With the help of charities affiliated with the Saudi government, the lawsuit contends, al-Qaeda spread to the vicious 1990s Balkans war, which pitted indigenous Muslims, their al-Qaeda allies, and other mujaheddin against Serbs and Croats.

The organization then leapfrogged to attack Western targets, including two U.S. embassies in East Africa, the U.S. destroyer Cole, and finally the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In May, the New York Times reported:

[Solicitor General] Ms. Kagan noted that the Supreme Court had historically looked to the executive branch to take the lead on such international matters because of “the potentially significant foreign relations consequences of subjecting another sovereign state to suit.” The government said in its brief that the victims’ families never alleged that the Saudi government or members of the royal family “personally committed” the acts of terrorism against the United States “or directed others to do so.” And it said the claims that were made — that the Saudis helped to finance the plots — fell “outside the scope” of the legal parameters for suing foreign governments or leaders.

Last June, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act provides exceptions that allow citizens to sue foreign nations:

Plaintiffs must show that whatever harm was caused was the result of criminal behavior or some other action outside the boundaries of normal government operations.

Once that high hurdle is cleared, U.S. citizens can sue under circumstances, including: Cases of personal injury or death, or damage to or loss of property, occurring in the United States if caused by negligent acts of omission or commission by a foreign government.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has done extensive reporting on the lawsuit:

Part 1 Pinning the blame for 9/11

Part 2: How Cozen took on a kingdom for 9/11 liability

A former al-Qaeda fighter accuses a Saudi charity

Law’s exceptions allow citizens to sue foreign nations

A timeline traces events in the lawsuit (pdf)

Cozen O’Connor dealt blow in 9/11 lawsuit

Another tack in terror-financier lawsuit

High court is urged to block 9/11 suit against Saudis

Phila. firm files brief on behalf of 9/11 victims (most recent report)

Project home page: Sept. 11 lawsuit: Suing the Saudis

Our Department of Justice is looking more and more like the Guantanamo Bay Bar Association each day.

The editors at the Washington Times wrote this morning:

A deal is in the works to send Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Saudi Arabia, but don’t ask the attorney general about it.

Executive Order 13493 on Jan. 22 appointed Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. co-chairman of the Special Task Force on Detainee Disposition, the interagency group charged with determining the status of persons captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations. But according to Justice Department regulations, Mr. Holder is required to recuse himself from certain detainee matters because his law firm represented the detainees.

The Legal Times reported in March that there are more than a dozen such conflicted lawyers at the department. This includes five of the top 10 officials in the department, including the attorney general; Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden; Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli; Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Tony West; and Lanny A. Breuer, chief of the Criminal Division, who, like Mr. Holder, hails from the firm Covington & Burling LLP.

Justice Department lawyers who worked at firms representing detainees have been advised to refrain from handling related matters even if the lawyers were uninvolved in their firm’s work related to the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo. This is a stricter standard than that required by the American Bar Association’s Rules for Professional Conduct, which would only require recusal in cases in which the attorney was “personally and substantially involved” in the case. The natural conflict of interest is that lawyers whose firms do pro bono work on behalf of detainees should not also make detainee policy.

Covington & Burling represented 17 detainees from Yemen. There are about 200 Yemenis still at Guantanamo [sic - about 100 of the remaining 229 detainees are from Yemen]. One reason for the large number of Yemenis is that Yemen does not have facilities to hold them. It’s also relevant that previous released detainees have used Yemen as a gateway to return to terrorism. This is why we want to send them to Saudi Arabia, although Yemen’s government denies the deal is done.

Covington’s detainee work has caused the firm some embarrassment. The firm’s David H. Remes made headlines in 2008 by removing his pants at a news conference in Yemen to protest what he said were inappropriate body searches. He left the firm shortly thereafter. Former Covington attorney Marc D. Falkoff represented Kuwait-born Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi and included poetry written by the inmate in an anthology he co-edited in 2007: “Poems From Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak.”

Mr. Falkoff described the poets as “gentle, thoughtful young men” whose verse was free of hatred. As Debra Burlingame reported in the Wall Street Journal, Abdullah was released in 2005 and next heard from in a martyrdom video posted on an al-Qaeda Web site celebrating his suicide truck bombing of an Iraqi Army compound in Mosul. This gentle poet killed 13 soldiers and wounded 42 others in the attack. … READ THE REST.

Here is then Covington lawyer David Remes advocating on behalf of Yemeni detainees (click on image to read the story).

Here is al-Ajmi blowing himself and 13 of his fellow Muslims up, in Iraq two years later, using a 10,000 lb truck bomb:

Debra Burlingame wrote about al-Ajmi here.

Notes:

Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Tony West represented “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh.

Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden’s former lawfirm, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, was involved in detainee litigation and argued on behalf of detainees in Boumediene v Bush before the Supreme Court. Incidentally, former DAG Jamie Gorelick of ‘the Wall’ fame is currently a partner there.

Reuters reported yesterday what we already know, that the ‘ticking time-bomb’ scenario the Leftists disparage as fear-mongering is one al Qaeda would gladly set a clock for and see go off:

DUBAI, June 21 (Reuters) - If it were in a position to do so, Al Qaeda would use Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in its fight against the United States, a top leader of the group said in remarks aired on Sunday.

Pakistan has been battling al Qaeda’s Taliban allies in the Swat Valley since April after their thrust into a district 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital raised fears the nuclear-armed country could slowly slip into militant hands.

“God willing, the nuclear weapons will not fall into the hands of the Americans and the mujahideen would take them and use them against the Americans,” Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the leader of al Qaeda’s in Afghanistan, said in an interview with Al Jazeera television.
…
Abu al-Yazid, also known as Abu Saeed al-Masri, said al Qaeda will continue “with large scale operations against the enemy” — by which he meant the United States.

“We have demanded and we demand that all branches of al Qaeda carry out such operations,” he said, referring to attacks against U.S.-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But, according to many (such as at Think Progress and the Huffington Post), 9/11 was a “one off,” just a minor mass murder in the big picture of geo-political affairs — nothing to learn from or remember about the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or that hole in the ground outside of Shanksville so move on.

WJHG TV, an NBC affiliate in Panama City, Florida reports:

Arias’ brother, Adam, was killed when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed during the September 11th terrorist attacks. Arias was randomly selected to go to Guantanamo Bay this January and witness a competency hearing for accused terrorist Ramzi Binalshibh.

Arias says, “When I was in Gitmo, the defendants looked tanned and relaxed and quite cocky. They proclaimed how proud they were that they had killed almost 3,000 Americans.”

Arias is back from two weeks of meetings with the Military Commissions Prosecution Team in Orlando and the Department of Justice Task Force in the nation’s capital. Arias believes that President Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo Bay is misguided. He says he met many people who agree with him: “An elderly fireman, who retired, who lost his son on 9/11, looked around the table and said, ‘How many people here are in favor of closing Gitmo?’ Two hands went up. ‘How many people here are in favor of keeping Gitmo and the tribunals open?’ Forty hands went up. That man said, ‘Bring that to the president, tell him what 9/11 families really want.’”

He says that under the President’s current orders, a multi-agency task force will review each case in the detention center, with guidance to put as many in federal court as possible. But, he claims this provides terrorists with more rights than they deserve, and he cautions that prosecuting attorneys would have to divulge sensitive information in court just to get a conviction.

“We would actually betray our allies in the field that way. So, that would give insight into the ways, means, methods in which we collect information to thwart terrorist attacks. So, we’re putting human lives in danger by doing that.”

Arias says a justice system that punishes war criminals is vital to winning the War on Terror. He offers an argument against those who say Gitmo can be used against us: “Prior to 9/11, there was no such thing as Guantanamo Bay Detention Center. Al-Qaeda needed no recruitment tool other than hatred to kill 3,000 Americans on 9/11.”

For those family members of the victims of terrorism unable to attend the Department of Justice’s meetings, but still interested in expressing views, the DOJ “welcome[s] written submissions.” Please send your written comments via email (nsd.ovt@usdoj.gov) or fax (202-514-4275) to the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism (OVT) no later than June 26, 2009. Click here for a few questions to consider when writing them.

Today I had the honor and privilege of joining other family members and victims of terrorism in meeting with members of the Guantanamo Review Task Force and the Detention Policy Task Force at the Department of Justice. I learned a lot about what our new President is doing and what he has the members of the task forces working on. After doing my own research and listening to the others present today I do not believe that there is a valid reason to close Guantanamo Bay. We are at WAR with TERRORISTS. OUR CONGRESS enacted the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to deal with the issues at hand, including the prosecution or release of detainees who were captured during the current war.

Do you really want these terrorists to face trial within the US along with the rights afforded to US citizens with the strong possibility that they will get off on a technicality? Do you want these dangerous terrorists to be held within the U.S.? The President ordered Guantanamo Bay closed within a year and he has made statements to the effect that this base is a black eye on our country. I heard from many family members today who have visited the base and can attest to the conditions. These prisoners are treated better than ordinary U.S. citizens who have committed crimes! They have access to laptops, get to meet frequently, and can pray whenever they want-they are NOT being tortured! (see Inside Gitmo) And why should our military be made to feel for even a second that they have not served our country bravely and that we are anything but grateful for all of their sacrifices? I am nothing but proud of our military and their selfless efforts all around the world.

Why should the United States or its citizens feel that they have to apologize to the world for being attacked or go on a PR campaign to improve its image? We do not! I feel that our President puts us at shame when he recently said in a trip overseas that he will restore America to its greatness. WE ARE A GREAT NATION, WE ALWAYS HAVE BEEN A GREAT NATION, AND I AM PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN. I don’t need to apologize and the President should not be apologizing to the world for me or for the U.S. for actions that are necessary to bring justice to the over 3000 victims and their families and to prevent further terrorist attacks on our nation.

Did you know that there is talk of reading terrorists their rights and excluding statements made by detainees who are not read their rights? Are we forgetting that we are at war? Are we forgetting all of the people [who] have died over the last 10 years for our country? Are we doing all we can to prevent the next terrorist attack?

Please know that if we do not begin to speak up now that we will lose our chance. Forward this email, write your own, call or write your politicians and demand that justice be served (and swiftly). The current actions of our President will make our country a mockery of the world when we can’t even effectively deal with known terrorists, some of which have already tried to plead guilty but were denied the chance to do so when President Obama stopped the Military Commissions.

We are wasting time and energy that could very well be spent on preventing future attacks or aiding all of the survivors of the attacks that have already occurred. Let the intelligence community do their job that they were assigned to do and stop getting in their way. Don’t bring known terrorists to U.S. soil when there is an effective way to deal with them already set up. Stop listening to the liberal media who are trying to fill our heads and headlines with exaggerations, lies, and one-sided arguments. As a family member said today, “Closing Guantanamo is the easy and lazy thing to do.” Stop this travesty of justice!

In honor of all of those who serve our country and all of the victims of terrorism and their families,

God bless America!

Melissa Long
June 17, 2009
Voices of September 11

——

Editor:

Melissa Long’s fiancé was murdered during the 9/11 attacks upon our nation.

For those family members of the victims of terrorism unable to attend the Department of Justice’s meetings, but still interested in expressing views, the DOJ “welcome[s] written submissions.” Please send your written comments via email (nsd.ovt@usdoj.gov) or fax (202-514-4275) to the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism (OVT) no later than June 19, 2009. * Click here for a few questions to consider when writing them.

* The deadline for submitting comments has been extended to June 26, 2009.

——

Update, 3:45 PM EDT: We thank Michelle Malkin for linking over and Military Families United for cross-posting Melissa’s letter.

Defense lawyers and others who advocate on behalf of the detainees at Guantanamo allege Military Commissions would deny their clients a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves in a court of law. They are deceiving you, as the four-page comparison chart below clearly shows. (Click each page to enlarge it. You may also download it and send it to everyone you know.)

As you read the chart, think of 9/11, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and our embassies in Africa, Daniel Pearl and al Qaeda’s mutilation and maiming of tens of thousands of people worldwide. The detainees at Gitmo are war criminals who acted outside the laws of war and protections of the Geneva Conventions; Military Commissions would afford them far more human rights than those they gave the people they slaughtered.

Notes:

1) Download chart here: Word doc or pdf file.

2) President Obama recently administratively changed some Military Commission rules. He granted detainees more rights to choose their counsel, prohibited “the use of statements obtained by cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, regardless of when the statements were obtained,” and placed the burden on the prosecution to show why hearsay should be admitted into evidence by “demonstrating that a reasonable commission member could find the evidence sufficiently reliable under the totality of the circumstances to have probative value.” The latter comports with international standards.

In Washington today and tomorrow, the DOJ’s Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism (OVT) is briefing American family members of those murdered by terrorists, as well as those injured during terrorist attacks. The stated purpose of the briefing is to:

…[offer] those interested the opportunity to meet task force members, hear an overview of task force work, and express views about the policy questions the Detention Policy Task Force is studying. Please click on the link for the Detention Policy Task Force to see some of the questions that the task force is considering. [password required] … For those unable to attend the meetings, but still interested in expressing views, we welcome written submissions. Please send your written comments via email (nsd.ovt@usdoj.gov) or fax (202-514-4275) to OVT by June 19, 2009.

In advance of the briefings, the Department of Justice issued a press release on June 9, 2009 that is posted below (in black). A response from 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America is interjected in red and blue.

Department of Justice Press Release Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Fact Sheet: Prosecuting and Detaining Terror Suspects in the U.S. Criminal Justice System

I. Terror Prosecutions in the Southern District of New York
Since the 1990s, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) has investigated and successfully prosecuted a wide range of international and domestic terrorism cases — including the bombings of the World Trade Center and U.S. Embassies in East Africa in the 1990s.
FACT: From 1993, starting with the first World Trade Center bombing, to the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, Al Qaeda killed 265 people and injured another 5,496. In the same period, a total of 29 people were convicted in major terrorism trials, only a handful of which were high-level operatives. Many of those responsible for the deaths of Americans and others were never apprehended. Those who were tried received platinum due process. And yet, 9/11 occurred. 3,000 more deaths in one day. The criminal justice system is not designed to protect American citizens from future terrorist attacks by covert, militant wahhabi organizations operating in global networks, carrying out martyrdom operations, with assistance from foreign states (Sudan, Saudia Arabia, Syria, Iran, Somalia, former Iraqi regime) and like-minded terrorists organizations (Hamas, Hezbollah). These are not street criminals who plague individuals. These are committed jihadists who pose an existential threat to the United States. When captured, Al Qaeda members are dedicated to continuing jihad, whether through propaganda or physical assaults on their captors. They are proud of their crimes, and are not interested in American justice. They are interested in undermining American justice. They are war criminals. Criminal indictments issuing from U.S. federal grand juries in the 1990s did not stop Osama Bin Laden or make the world a safer place.

Major Historical Cases in SDNY:
1993 World Trade Center Bombing: After two trials, in 1993 and 1997, six defendants were convicted and sentenced principally to life in prison for detonating a truck bomb in the garage of the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring hundreds more. One of the defendants convicted at the second trial was Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the attack.
1994-95 Manila Air Plot: Ramzi Yousef and two others were convicted in 1996 for plotting to plant bombs aboard a dozen U.S. commercial aircraft that were timed to go off as the planes were flying over the Pacific. The defendants were sentenced to substantial prison terms. Yousef concocted the plan with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is currently detained at Guantanamo Bay and has been indicted in SDNY for the Manila Air conspiracy since 1996.
1995 “Blind Sheikh” Trial: Ten defendants associated with a mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y., were convicted of plotting to blow up the World Trade Center, United Nations headquarters, and various bridges, tunnels and landmarks in and around New York City. The lead defendant, Omar Abdel Rahman, also known as the “Blind Sheikh,” was sentenced to life in prison, while his co-defendants were sentenced to prison terms ranging between life and 25 years.
Bin Laden Indictment and Embassy Bombings Trial: Shortly after the August 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, SDNY indicted Usama Bin Laden and approximately 20 alleged al-Qaeda loyalists for conspiring to murder Americans worldwide. Many of the defendants were also charged for their roles in the attacks on the U.S. Embassies in East Africa, including three defendants who were convicted after a six-month trial in early 2001. Those three defendants, and a fourth al-Qaeda member who was tried with them, were all sentenced to life in prison.
FACT: The conspicuous absence, after nearly nine years, of any USS COLE prosecutions. The imminent trial of ABD AL-RAHIM AL-NASHIRI under the Military Commissions Act was suspended by President Obama. FACT: The total number of convictions in major terrorism cases in federal court, after hundreds of millions of dollars in litigation costs, from 1993 to 2001, was 29 people, most of whom held small roles in the larger conspiracies. In fact, some of those who participated in the bombings were never apprehended or tried. There was virtually no intelligence value to these prosecutions. Indeed, due to federal discovery rules, sensitive classified information deemed “material to the defense,”was ordered by the presiding judge to be handed over by prosecutors. In the Rahman “Blind Sheikh” case, a list of 200 un-indicted co-conspirators was given to the defense and in Osama Bin Laden’s hands within days. This told Al Qaeda who was known to U.S. law enforcement authorities, and who was not. See, former SDNY prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy, “The Intelligence Mess: How the Courts Forced Me to Give Osama Bin Laden Sensitive Information,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 20, 2006
FACT: The federal rules for handling classified evidence in criminal trials continues to be a problem for prosecutors. The Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) was written to prevent defendants in espionage cases from engaging in “graymail,” threatening to reveal classified evidence in open court in order to pressure the government to drop charges. Prosecutors were faced with the choice of “disclosing or dismissing.” The current problem involves terrorism defendants who use discovery rules to force the government to disclose classified information which can be conveyed to their confederates. Disclosure of classified evidence, e.g. sources, methods, names of infiltrators, strains relationships with foreign intelligences services who want their counterterrorism operations and cooperation with the U.S. to remain secret..
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