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New York City Speaks KSM

By John Batchelor on November 15, 2009 at 5:00 PM in Current Affairs

Editor’s Note: On Sundays at 11:00 ET, Larry Johnson joins the “experts panel” weekly on my West Coast syndicated radio show. Listen TONIGHT via KFI-AM. Here is an excerpt from tonight’s schedule:

Sunday 1105P: (805P Pacific Time): Larry Johnson, No Quarter, James Taranto, WSJ, Jeff Bliss, BlissIndex.com, re KS M in Manhattan, re Greg Craig quits.
Sunday 1120P: (820P Pacific Time): Continued re Afghanistan twists in the wind.

 

Bad Idea.   

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Forty hours after the news that Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his cronies removed from GITMO to NYC to be tried at Foley Square in a Federal Court, the buzz is getting louder and more political in the Big Apple. Rudy Giuliani says bad idea, “This confirms my worst expectations for the Obama administration, that they would be in denial with regard the danger of Islamic terrorism.”  Mike Bloomberg says it is less than a bad idea but somehow does not argue that it is a good idea,since Bloomberg does not do ideology or partisanship.  Former Attny General Mike Mukasey says bad idea, very bad idea.   Congressman Peter King remarks, “This is as bad a decision as any president ever made.”

KSM Speaks.
Ed Hayes told me Saturday 14 that the decision to move the KSM trial to New York is fraught with risk.  The first risk is that the five of the cronies will be tried together, and one or more of them may escape conviction because of the abuse scenario at GITMO the last seven years.  Another risk is that KSM will likely use the rial as a forum for his sadistic rubbish and whip up the jihadist groupies worldwide with exaggerated claims of being a hero for Islam who did not different that the American generals and president whom bomb innocents overseas — the kind of facile moral equivalency that usually excites the genius mass-murders of the world.  Another risk is that the jihadists will launch a terror attack on New York.  Ed Hayes regards this attack scenario as most credible.  Ed Hayes also believes that the families of the 9-11 dead will be a major factor in the drama of the trial in New York.  Ed believes that moving the trial from New York makes sense — similar to McVeigh’s trial moved from Oklahoma to Denver — but is uncertain that it will happen.    Ed mentioned that the defense counsel will face the dilemma of deciding if they should cooperate in KSM’s possible exploitation and manipulation of the trial.  

Ed’s sharpest concern is that the evidence in the trial will have the taint of being a product of torture, and that in the eliciting of the details of the water-boarding, the defense will both create sympathy for the accused and also put the United States on trial to the Ummah and Europe and Asia.

Intelligence Risk.
There is an additional risk that it hard to judge in that KSM and his four were detained and interrogated using unknown sources from many directions.  KSM was grabbed in Pakistan by unknown agents and transported without known legal authority by US forces to be incarcerated without any known legal rights for seven years.  There looks to be a mountain of information built up over this time that KSM’s defense counsel could reasonably expect to examine.  This is a death penalty case.  Perhaps KSM will do the favor of pleading guilty for himself and his cronies (which he did last December in a military court hearing at GITMO) and then sit down and vegetate.  Seems unlikely, but he might.  Perhaps the Obama administration will get lucky and the trial will last two weeks in February and will go away by Mardi Gras.  Perhaps all those NYPD on overtime will enjoy the hours.

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