al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Military Commissions

U.S. Attorneys vie to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, national security be damned

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U.S. Attorneys are vying to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court, national security be damned:

The U.S. attorney’s offices in Alexandria and Manhattan are embroiled in intense competition over the opportunity to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and his co-conspirators, according to Justice Department and law enforcement sources.

At a time when many state officials are determined to keep suspected terrorists out of their jurisdictions, federal prosecutors are in a hidden struggle to have potentially history-making trials held in their districts. “There’s competition on all of these guys, and that’s to be expected — these are big cases,” said a Justice Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity Monday because of the sensitivity of the deliberations.

The two U.S. attorney’s offices have a history of competition, ever since Alexandria prosecutors were chosen to make the case against Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person involved in the Sept. 11 conspiracy to be tried in the United States. The competition over Moussaoui grew so intense that it led to a compromise: The case was brought in Alexandria by a Justice Department team that included a New York-based prosecutor.

This is all about them, the U.S. Attorneys, not “swift and certain justice.” It would be the case of their lifetimes, pave the path to their fame and glory, guarantee them book deals and partnerships at white shoe law firms after government service, and only end up an enormous propaganda victory for al Qaeda.

al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Debra Burlingame, Eric Holder, Gitmo, Guantanamo, Richard Reid, Supermax

Revenge of the ‘Shoe Bomber’: by Debra Burlingame (supporting documents, links, more info)

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Today, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled ‘Revenge of the ‘Shoe Bomber’: The terrorist sues to resume his jihad from prison. The Obama administration caves in,’ Debra Burlingame writes:

Last May at the National Archives, President Barack Obama warned that “more mistakes would occur” if Congress continued to politicize terrorist detention policy and the closure of Guantanamo Bay. “[I]f we refuse to deal with those issues today,” he predicted, “then I guarantee you, they will be an albatross around our efforts to combat terrorism in the future.”

On June 17, at the Administrative Maximum (ADX) penitentiary in Florence, Colo., one of those albatrosses, inmate number 24079-038, began his day with a whole new range of possibilities. Eight days earlier [June 9, 2007 pdf file at link], the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver filed notice in federal court that the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) which applied to that prisoner — Richard C. Reid, a.k.a. the “Shoe Bomber” — were being allowed to expire. SAMs are security directives, renewable yearly, issued by the attorney general when “there is a substantial risk that a prisoner’s communications, correspondence or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury” to others.

Reid was arrested in 2001 for attempting to blow up American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami with 197 passengers and crew on board. Why had Attorney General Eric Holder decided not to renew his security measures, kept in place since 2002?