The New York Times reports:

The Justice Department, in an abrupt change in policy from the Bush administration, is preparing to bring terrorism-related charges against a man identified as an operative of Al Qaeda who has been held in a military brig for more than five years, government officials said Thursday. The charges would move the case of the only enemy combatant to be held on American soil, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, into a civilian criminal court. The Bush administration had argued that he could be held indefinitely without being charged.

Within their reporting, the Times made its own position quite clear:

Jonathan Hafetz of the American Civil Liberties Union, the lead lawyer in the case, said bringing charges would “definitely be a positive step in that the government will no longer be detaining Mr. Marri without charge and returning him to the civilian justice system.” But Mr. Hafetz said the criminal charges should have been filed seven years ago, when Mr. Marri was first arrested in Peoria on suspicion of ties to Al Qaeda. He said the Supreme Court should reject any government argument that the case is moot because the issue of whether the government may indefinitely detain legal residents or those in Guantánamo remains alive. The case should go forward, Mr. Hafetz said, “to make clear, once and for all, that the indefinite military detention of legal residents or American citizens is illegal, and to prevent this from ever happening again.”

I’ll assume from those quotes that Mr. Hafetz believes the enemy should be afforded full due process under our Constitution and our national security must take a back seat to al Qaeda’s killers “right” to speedy adjudications.

Andrew McCarthy of the National Review Online explains some of the difficulties the Obama administration faces as it tries to balance protecting both the United States and al-Marri at trial in federal court:

Once the executive branch files charges, it loses control over discovery. There are rules in place, of course, but they are very elastic and they will be construed by a judge. The judge’s responsibility is not national security but to provide due process for the accused. We are still at war, al Qaeda is still trying to attack us, and it goes to school on the trove of information that comes out of civilian trials — both information in our files that must be disclosed and information that comes out in the courtroom during the public hearings and trial proceedings. The Justice Department’s best lawyers (who are very good) can try to draft narrow charges to minimize the potential damage, but — as Moussaoui’s case showed — they can’t control the judge (who, in Moussaoui’s case, authorized extensive discovery of intelligence gleaned from detained terrorists, at one point dismissed the indictment because she thought the government wasn’t disclosing enough, and even delved into interrogation tactics despite the fact that those tactics had no relevance to Moussaoui). It does not appear that al-Marri is a Moussaoui-like loose cannon — he is not going to save the day by pleading guilty.

I refer to people like Jonathan Hafetz as al Qaeda’s lawyers. Frankly, I believe they share the same ultimately goal of dictating to the American people how much freedom they will be allowed. No worries though; al Qaeda surely plans on murdering their lawyers last.