Trail Of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

Floor Speech

TRAIL OF KHALID SHAIKH MOHAMMED -- (Senate - November 16, 2009)

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to speak about the decision announced last Friday by the Attorney General to bring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other 9/11 coconspirators to the United States from Guantanamo Bay to stand trial in the Southern District of New York.

Of course, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is the self-described mastermind of the 9/11 tragedy where 3,000 Americans were killed. This is a terrible--a terrible--decision by the Attorney General and by the administration for any number of reasons, but I would like to explain why I believe this decision should be reconsidered by the Attorney General and the President of the United States--because of the risk at which it puts Americans and because this provides Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a self-described superterrorist--this gives him everything he could have ever wanted, which is a platform to spew his hate-filled ideology and one in which he can recruit other like-minded individuals all around the world who may be watching.

One of the things I am always amazed by in our great country is how short our memory is. Of course, we are a nation at war after 9/11. But this is a war unlike any other this Nation has ever fought. We are at war with a murderous ideology, with ruthless killers who wear no uniforms and use civilians as human shields. Treating these war crimes like ordinary criminal events and trying these killers in an article III or a Federal court under the Constitution is simply reverting to a pre-9/11 mentality.

What do I mean by that? Mr. President, you will recall that the 9/11 Commission investigated the causes of what happened on September 11, 2001. One of the things they identified was the wall separating the sharing of intelligence which was shared among the intelligence community, and what information was developed during a criminal investigation had to be kept separate from ordinary intelligence collected by our military and our intelligence community. One of the things the 9/11 Commission unanimously said was that we needed to tear down that wall and share information, as we can consistent with the law, in order to protect the American people.

Simply put, the trial of the 9/11 coconspirators, not in a military commission at Guantanamo Bay but in a Federal district court in Manhattan, one of the most populous portions of our country, is simply forgetting the lessons we should have learned on 9/11, which the 9/11 Commission so eloquently laid out for us and demonstrated.

But let's focus on who Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is, lest we have forgotten. According to the 9/11 Commission Report:

KSM [Khalid Shaikh Mohammed] describes a grandiose original plan: a total of ten aircraft to be hijacked, 9 of which would crash into targets on both coasts.

They included those eventually hit on September 11 plus: CIA and FBI headquarters, nuclear power plants, and the tallest buildings in California and the State of Washington.

Further quoting the report:

KSM [Khalid Shaikh Mohammed] himself was to land the 10th plane at a U.S. airport and--after killing all adult male passengers on board and alerting the media--delivering a speech excoriating U.S. support for Israel, the Philippines, and repressive governments in the Arab world.

The 9/11 Commission report concluded:

This is theater, a spectacle of destruction with KSM [Khalid Shaikh Mohammed] as the self-cast star--the superterrorist.

This is whom the Attorney General announced we will be bringing from Guantanamo Bay to a court in Manhattan to try as a common criminal. But he is anything but a common criminal. He is guilty of nothing less than war crimes against innocent Americans. According to this decision, the Attorney General is going to be providing him the forum he can use in order to proclaim himself as the ``superterrorist'' and in order to attract like-minded ideologues to his sick and twisted ideas of jihad. A criminal trial only gives Khalid Shaikh Mohammed the platform he has sought for years: a platform to expound his hatred to his would-be followers around the world.

The second reason this is a bad idea is because our civilian courts and procedures are ill-suited for terrorism trials because we cannot put judges in charge of national security.

I have high regard for the men and women who serve on our judicial benches around the country. I myself was a judge for 13 years in Texas. But our experience with terrorist trials shows that civilian courts are an inappropriate forum for a trial of war crimes.

As a result of information--this is one example why--as a result of information disclosed during the trials related to the East Africa Embassy bombings, Osama bin Laden became aware of cell phone intercepts, which prompted his organization to discontinue cell phone conversations. Because of the evidence disclosed in the trial, they simply realized they were being eavesdropped on and quit using cell phones, denying us that intelligence.

During the trial of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade bombing, terrorists became aware of a communications link that provided enormously valuable intelligence to U.S. officials. This link, too, was shut down after the disclosure in that trial.

Then there was the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the Blind Sheik. A secret list of unindicted coconspirators in the prosecution wound up in the hands of Osama bin Laden in Sudan.

During the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, prosecutors inadvertently leaked sensitive material to defense counsel. Here is what the judge had to say about that case, which she characterized as ``like a circus.'' She said:

[Lawyers] are talking about the contents of sealed hearings [to the media], if I see any more [of] what I think are inappropriate leaks, I'm going to ask the FBI to start an investigation.

But that trial never even made it to a jury. Moussaoui's lawyers tied the court up in knots so he could use the trial as a platform to air his anti-American tirades. The only reason the trial ultimately ended was because at the last minute Moussaoui decided to plead guilty. That plea relieved the government of the choice between allowing a fishing expedition into its intelligence files or dismissing the charges altogether.

One thing we can see with great confidence is that the

trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a Federal district court in Manhattan will become the same kind of media circus times 10. It will give Khalid Shaikh Mohammed a platform to inspire his fellow terrorists.

Prosecutors will be forced to reveal U.S. intelligence on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the methods and sources for acquiring that information, and his relationships with fellow al-Qaida operatives around the world. That information will allow al-Qaida to develop more effective plots and to alert operatives whose cover is blown. This information will enable al-Qaida to detect our means of intelligence gathering and to push forward into areas we know nothing about.

Congress has made clear that U.S. civilian courts are not the appropriate venue to bring terrorists to justice. That is why we passed, in 2006, the Military Commissions Act. The military commissions were specifically designed to prevent sensitive disclosures and to protect classified information and sensitive sources and methods. Of course, we know from our work on these military commissions that they have a long history in our Republic--dating back from the Revolutionary War, to the Civil War, and to World War II--and they are an appropriate forum for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other terrorists.

As a matter of fact, the Attorney General made the baffling decision to try some of the worst of the worst--a superterrorist such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed--in a Federal district court in Manhattan and to leave other terrorists for trial in Guantanamo Bay before military commissions. And I say, if Guantanamo Bay and military commissions are good enough for these other terrorists in the opinion of the Attorney General, they ought to be good enough for terrorists such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his fellow 9/11 coconspirators.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other terrorists, simply put, should not be brought to the United States. They should not be granted the same rights and privileges as American criminal defendants. They should stay at Guantanamo Bay and be prosecuted through the military commissions established by Congress under the terms circumscribed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

I ask my colleagues to remember that on July 19, 2007, we had a vote on this sense-of-the-Senate resolution: It is the sense of the Senate that detainees housed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including senior members of al-Qaida, should not be released into American society, nor should they be transferred stateside into facilities in American communities and neighborhoods. That sense-of-the-Senate resolution passed 94 to 3. Rarely do we see such unanimous, bipartisan opposition for the very acts the Attorney General announced last Friday, and it is with good reasons, some of which I have had the opportunity to discuss today. But there are other reasons that I will look for opportunities to come back and talk about to my colleagues.

I would ask the President of the United States to overrule the decision of his Attorney General because it is ill-advised. It will make America a more dangerous place, and it will allow terrorists such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed--it will provide them the platform to spew their hateful ideology and encourage others to join them in killing innocent Americans and other individuals.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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