If you didn’t like the outcome of this odyssey through uncharted legal territory before Lloyd Austin reversed it, blame the C.I.A., Mitch McConnell and almost every other member of Congress who served in 2009 and 2015.
Lower Manhattan skyline after a Boeing 767 hit the World Trade Towers on Sept. 11, 2001. (Michael Foran, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
UPDATE: On Saturday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin threw out the plea deal without comment. See
By John Kiriakou
Special to Consortium News
The U.S. Defense Department announced Wednesday that Khalid Shaikh Muhammad (KSM), the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as two co-defendants, had agreed to plead guilty to multiple charges of terrorism and would escape execution, serving consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole instead.
The agreement brings to an end, at least for KSM, Walid bin Attash, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, an odyssey through uncharted and unprecedented Defense Department legal territory. The announcement led to mixed feelings from many of the 9/11 victim families, human rights activists and the legal community, and there are certainly lessons to be learned.
The deal, according to the Associated Press and attorneys for the defendants, is actually quite straightforward. The three will serve sentences of life without parole. In exchange, the Pentagon has promised to not impose capital punishment and will allow them to remain at Guantanamo for rest of their lives. (They reportedly don’t want to experience the harsh winters at the Supermax penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.)
Much of the commentary around the deal is negative, unsurprisingly. The New York Post, for example, wrote that the deal “dishonors the victims of terror.” And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell released a statement saying disingenuously that:
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s weakness in the face of sworn enemies of the American people apparently knows no bounds. The plea deal with terrorists…is a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend American and provide justice…The Administration’s decision to spare these mass murderers from the death penalty is an especially bitter pill.”
June 16, 2010: U.S. soldiers run infront of Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp Delta detention center. (Joint Task Force Guantanamo, Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0)
Oh, how quickly they forget. If you want somebody to blame, blame the C.I.A. And Mitch McConnell and almost every other member of Congress who served in 2009 and 2015.
Let me begin by saying that I can tell you from first-hand experience that KSM and his codefendants were absolutely guilty of planning and carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks. These are very, very bad people. They have the blood of nearly 3,000 Americans on their hands. They deserve to be punished severely. Many Americans, perhaps even most Americans, probably believe they deserve the death penalty for what they did. But that’s not going to happen for some very specific reasons.
As an aside, I was the C.I.A.’s chief of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan from January to May 2002. At one point in March of 2002, after my team had captured so many Al-Qaeda fighters that we had literally filled the Rawalpindi Jail, I sent a cable to C.I.A. headquarters asking what to do with the prisoners.
The response was quick: Put them on a C-12 cargo plane and send them to Guantanamo. The idea was that they would remain at Guantanamo for three or four weeks until the Justice Department could determine in which federal district court — the Southern District of New York, the Eastern District of Virginia, or the District of Massachusetts — they would be tried.
They would then be transferred to the United States, where they would appear before a jury of their peers and, presumably convicted, sentenced, and many hoped, executed. But that never happened.
A Big Fish for the Agency
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003 after his capture. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
Enter the C.I.A. KSM was a very big fish for the Agency. And rather than turn him over to the Justice Department once he was captured, the C.I.A. elected to send him instead to a series of a half-dozen or so secret prisons around the world, where C.I.A. officers and contractors subjected him to merciless torture.
Sure, KSM and the others eventually confessed to planning and carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks. But they probably would have confessed to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, if they had been asked. And in the end, nothing that they had told the C.I.A. could be used against them in the Guantanamo military tribunal because it had been extracted through torture.
Waleed bin Attash in 2010. (International Committee of the Red Cross, family of the subject, Wikimedia Commons, CC0)
As a result, there was a real chance that even the stacked deck of a Pentagon military tribunal would have had to find them not guilty.
At the same time, our elected representatives on Capitol Hill, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion, passed a measure in 2009 to forbid any Guantanamo prisoner from being transferred to the United States to face trial.
That vote was 68-29 in the Senate and 281-146 in the House. And in 2015, Congress passed a bill forbidding the president from closing the facility. That vote was 91-3 in the Senate and 370-58 in the House. As a result, these heroes of the rule of law made Guantanamo permanent.
So, what is a terrorism defendant who has been tortured by the C.I.A. to do? He accepts the fact that he will never, ever be free and he takes the best deal his attorneys can negotiate, figuring the government would have continued to argue “national security” to delay the military tribunal indefinitely. At the end of the day, they just simply didn’t want to risk the death penalty.
And what is a Guantanamo military prosecutor to do? He goes public that the C.I.A. blew it, that the likes of KSM and his friends could have been convicted two decades ago and probably would have been executed by now if the C.I.A. had simply followed the law.
But here we are, nearly 23 years after the attacks, and many of the 9/11 families feel robbed. They feel that their family members died violently and unnecessarily and their killers get to live. That’s the sad truth. But don’t blame Joe Biden. It’s not his fault. Blame the outlaws at the C.I.A. We should never forget (or forgive) that they subverted the Constitution just because they could.
Mustafa Al-Hawsawi, undated. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
And what of the issue of plea bargains? Again, from first-hand experience, I can tell you that they’re used as cudgels. In my own case, after my arrest for blowing the whistle on the C.I.A.’s torture program, I was offered a plea deal that I eventually accepted.
I believed in my heart that I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I knew that if there had been such a thing as an “affirmative defense,” where I could have said that I did what I did in the public interest, I would have been acquitted at trial.
But in the end, I was offered a sentence of 30 months in prison. I asked my attorneys what my likely sentence would be if I were to turn down the government’s offer, go to trial, and lose. The answer was 12-18 years. And indeed, at my sentencing, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia said on the record,
“I see you have a plea deal, Mr. Kiriakou. I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit. But I’m compelled to accept it. If it were up to me, I would give you 10 years.”
Well, imagine the alternative if your name is Khalid Shaikh Muhammad or Walid bin Attash or Mustafa al-Hawsawi. The alternative is the death penalty. Nobody wants to roll those dice.
UPDATE: On Saturday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin threw out the plea deal without comment, effectively sending the cases for all three defendants back to square one and putting the death penalty—and the possibility of acquittals—back in play.
Austin’s calculus was almost certainly political. Americans have short memories, and the politicians and editorial writers on the right had a field day with the plea deal, promoting the ridiculous notion that KSM and his cohorts had somehow gotten away with something. They hadn’t.
But it’s an election year. And the White House has to project an image of strength. In the meantime, nothing at Guantanamo will change. More years, and perhaps decades, will pass with these prisoners remaining in limbo.
The military tribunals will drag on. There will likely be no trials for anyone. And Guantanamo will, of course, have to remain open. Indefinitely. What a system we’ve given ourselves.
John Kiriakou is a former C.I.A. counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
These are great comments of an aware, involved citizenry…from all over, starting with Johnstone’s thrown gauntlet.
Must…have…death.
…… “Life is not measured by the breaths we take; but, by the moments that take our breath away;” AND, imo, “life” has gone way f/wrong when John Kiriakou is advising, “Don’t blame Joe Biden. It’s [NOT] his fault. Blame the C.I.A.” Blame, Mitch McConnell. Blame “almost every other member of Congress who served in 2009 and 2015.”
“Nearly 23 years later,” Joe “Patriot Act” Biden, Joe “NATO Expansionist” Biden, Joe “Bankruptcy Bill” Biden, Joe “1969 Crime Bill-Lock ‘Em Up” Biden, Joe “Dementia Addled, Truth Challenged” Biden; AND, Comma La Harris, “own every despicable aspect of” the deception, destruction, death, past & present, executed, from sea to shining sea, from the West Bank of Jordan to the Gaza Strip, from Syria to Somalia, in the Middle East, Far East, & Ukraine, No One Is Exempt. No On Is Safe!!!
“Nearly, 23 years later” people “feel robbed,” suckered, duped, & screwed by U.$. Presidents 40-46, the M.I.C., 4-$tar Generals, the USG’s Secretaries of Defense, the Dept. of Injustice, the “Alpha-BetaAgencies,” &, Homeland $ecurity. No doubt, “the System is broke! The System has been bought & paid for!!!”
…… For example, AUKUS vs. David McBride – “In the United States, there is no affirmative defense. David McBride, like Edward Snowden, Jeffrey Sterling, Daniel Hale and like me, [John Kiriakou] was forbidden from standing up in court and saying, “Yes, I gave the information to the media because I witnessed a war crime or a crime against humanity. What I did was in the public interest.”
….“Those words, “in the public interest” are never permitted to be spoken in a court in the United States or Australia,” .i.e., DAVID McBRIDE was “sentenced to five years and eight months in prison for telling the truth, “prosecuted for dissemination of official information. He will not be eligible for parole for 27 months.” (MAY, 2024) hxxps://consortiumnews.com/2024/05/16/john-kiriakou-the-heroism-of-david-mcbride/
NEEDED: A Duopoly Destroyer strategy.
“We, the People,” can begin by denying Democrats every opportunity to whitewash &/or sugarcoat Biden’s-Harris’ “history,” past & present. Deny Democrats the DNC’s succession plan, i.e., Harris, sans Biden, 2024-???, malfunctioning on an extremely low level of intelligence, mental acuity, diplomacy, statesmanship and, zero to none, connection to humanity. IMO, Comma La Harris is “Biden” HER time. Hiding from HER public. Spamming, by saturating, TV & MSMedia “News”papers w/manufactured, scripted, choreographed, fake, phoney, fraudulent Comma La Harris stuffing. Thirty (30) second camera shots, of how “Demockracy” lives, i.e., POTUS, Biden’s-Harris’ l.a.r.ping, “live action role playing,” for the cameras, “White House residents who think they’re president.”
Ever since, that cowboy from Texas started his own war in Iraq w/the $enator’s, from Delaware, Authorization for War, “have so many been manipulated by so few.” Going forward, deny Democrats every opportunity to beat U.S., w/a baseball bat and/or pummel U.S., w/a crowbar. The gig is up!
The DNC’s Party of War w/V.P., Comma La Harris, “is NOT a vehicle for social reform; but, in fact a graveyard!!!”
Keep your head on a swivel and your eyes *“on the plastic, smiley-faced serial killers in high places,”…i.e., Biden-Harris, an Image of Defeat, public speaking sans heart, a soul, bones! Biden-Harris, et al, “the hollow men.” My country ‘tis of thee. Sweet land of misery. To thee I sing, “F/Off.” Keep your dirty, grubby, bloody hands to yourself.
Onward & Upwards w/courage, common sense & caution! Ciao
* Caitlin Johnstone
Brava!
I’ve always found it hard to believe that these defendants were responsible principals, as opposed to enlisted patsies, for the hugely complicated and well coordinated attack on the WTC, no matter how vociferous and public their condemnation of the US and their positive response to the attack. As for Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s original confession, the torture to which he was subjected would have coerced a confession from almost anyone (except perhaps a Julian Assange)- and the latest confession to extract a plea deal was a sucker punch if I ever saw one.
My sense is that the real perpetrators were Cheney and his cabal- including G.W. Bush (the Vice President’s lackey), Perle, Wolfowitz, Libby, Feith, and a closed group of Pentagon and CIA operatives such as Cofer Black- together with the foreknowledge, if not the complicity and collaboration of Netanyahu.
As a result, it was those who committed the war crimes that killed, maimed and displaced so many millions of innocents- and it is those who should be prosecuted and condemned to multiple consecutive life sentences in solitary confinement.
And Austin, a useless political tool who will say or do anything if it serves his sponsors, including Raytheon who has, and will in the future provide him with a gourmand feeding trough after he again passes through the revolving door.
So, on what “first-hand experience that KSM and his codefendants were absolutely guilty of planning and carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks” does Kiriakou know this??
Apparently, the sheik was reported years ago of having declared that he killed Daniel Perle. If so, and the admission was not coerced, why was he not prosecuted for that?
Please clarify.
“Let me begin by saying that I can tell you from first-hand experience that KSM and his codefendants were absolutely guilty of planning and carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks.”
How is this known and substantiated (the evidence) given their being tortured and “they probably would have confessed to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby”?
Hard to take the word of Kirakou that these guys were “bad” people. But years of torture and imprisonment and little accurate investigation of 9/11/01 is what we are left with. So similar to what goes on with the Julian Assange case. USA is not looking like a country where justice is found and is it possible that the USA represents the “good” guys in the world?
It seems that KSM & the others get to stay in Guantanamo till they die, as in the deal.
Personally, I think that if W (dub-ya) & cronies weren’t the perpetrator of this nightmare, then at the very least they allowed it to happen. Why are they still running free? Our government “officials” are infamous for blaming others for the rape and pillage they unleash around the world. Why would this be any different? Afterall, they got what they wanted – namely war!
I used to teach a 1-credit seminar course for college freshmen. Basically, a course on how to make a successful transition from high school, where you mostly do what you’re told, to college, where you mostly do what you choose.
We had a class meeting scheduled on the afternoon of September 11th in 2001. I remember a phone call from my girlfriend after the first plane hit the Trade Center and I remember television images of the second plane colliding, making it clear that this was no accident. I remember the shock and confusion that I felt.
Many teachers cancelled their classes, in part because many of our students came from New York City. I did not. When it came time for my class, we gathered outside on the grass under a shade tree to talk about what was happening. And I asked this question of my students: What would make anyone so angry that they would carry out an attack like this, killing peaceful citizens just going about their everyday business?
I didn’t ask, Who did this? I just asked, Why?
Twenty years on, I have yet to see any effort to answer that question on the part of the major journalists, policy makers, or public intellectuals. I have, however, seen a lot of anger, fear, retaliation, retribution, revenge, and war. And the appetite for retribution is still not satisfied.
And as I write this comment I feel deeply, deeply sad. Sad and a bit heartbroken. I don’t cry easily any more but my cheeks are wet.
I’m not a US citizen, but I saw the second plane hit on TV with one, who said he couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to strike the World Trade Centre. I was astonished.
This kind of isolated discussion over an issue as 9/11 considering where it lead us and why it happened is very, very, very American. And I mean that not in a friendly way. I mean not to criticize Mr. Kiriakou but the US information space as an entirety. It still goes without saying that 1 US victim is worth 1M non-US victims. The US is God´s own country and thus its inhabitants are God´s blessed first borns. If everything else fails, exceptionalism will still enlighten our dear American hearts because whether you vote Trump or Harris, whether you take the red pill or the blue you will always be part of the nation-state family, “my country, right or wrong”. There is something utterly twisted and sick about that, even frightening. If a society seriously believes in capital punishment and is capable shedding so many words as now it does on this question in this context it betrays itself as primitive, vindictive, medieval.
On the other hand this I know myself is a projection only. A couple of years after 9/11 I visited the city. When I left Manhattan to see the real NY I encountered normal Americans and more than once I heard comments that were pointing into the direction that NYC in fact had deserved it. Expressed by some more openly than by others. I doubt that in todays 24/7 surveillance anyone would muter such honesty to contradict the favourite narrative and admit such dark feelings.
Kiriakou leaves out the question of whether it was an “inside job,” at least by allowing it to happen. Why DID the US fly over 30 Saudis home when ALL other aircraft were grounded? The real perpetrators of the crime are still hiding, while Guantanamo exists to deny prisoners their due process rights to a fair trial. The real “bad guys” are the ones who used 9-11 as a pretext for endless war. That has taken many more than 3,000 people.
We really don’t know how many planes were grounded. I recently watched a docu drama and the boy band guru Pearlman was able to fly his band home the same day too he said “per GW Bush”.
Isn’t a judge coercing a plea, improper?
Joe Biden was one of those Senators. Why not say Don’t blame Trump. Because our media is biased too. Maybe we should all just look in the mirror and censor ourselves.
I question the vocabulary here, and worse, the implicit support for depraved levels of torture in the name of “our” freedoms. I worked down the street from the WTC, so I have every reason for ire and prejudice, yet, Americans still need to to respect the the rationales and real grievances of those who committed these awful crimes. Much like the Viet Cong in an earlier era, they and the Palestinians today were using the long known and really only path a David has against a Goliath. The self righteousness of the West, particularly the U.S., in condemning others while exalting “our” rights —- to their natural resources, for example, and to defile, over and over, their national sovereignty, holy places, women and children —- offers an object lesson in self delusion on an enormous scale.
Well said, Dallas. You’re right on the mark!
Thank you for this admirably unbiased observation. But my question would be exactly who has seemed to have learned any lesson as a result? Certainly not the leaders responsible for our misbehavior. Has the American public learned to throw out the governments and media allies which have for so long and so consistently lied to it to convince it to support their international criminality? The only true sign of learning would be the response “Well, perhaps we actually did kind of deserve that because we let it happen” when such reminders occur: such would represent taking responsibility for living in a nominal democracy. Perhaps it’s downright silly to expect such maturity from a population that has been so thoroughly propagandized for most of its life. At any rate it’s nce to see an occasional glimmer of such competence in places like this one.
Indeed. Given the failure of Americans to throw off total zionist control by the regime that rules over them, it’s absurd to claim that KSM did anything wrong (apart from cooperating with people linked to the CIA and Mossad).
When the USA kills three thousand foreign civilians in one of its illegal or pointless wars, it’s known as collateral damage – or hailed as a victory since men killed are often automatically deemed enemy combatants.
Lt. William Calley was responsible for the massacre of five hundred Vietnamese civilians at My Lai, one sixth the number killed in the September 11 World Trade Centre attacks. Was he treated one sixth as harshly? Was he only waterboarded thirty times? Of course not. He got three days in prison and three years of house arrest, and none of the other savages involved were even charged. All this bleating about human rights and so on by the US establishment, and many of its citizens, rings hollow
I agree with you on this question. I also oppose the death penalty. It, like the countless imperialist wars, is state-sanctioned murder. Even in the case of the likes of KSM, to pretend that he and his cohorts are the only ones guilty of murder and that the United States is not guilty of the same crime many times over, is hypocritical in the extreme.
as a one-time Councilor in domestic violence and student of history, especially American history, America’s behaviour has been as an abuser, a bully boy. Psychological abuse includes name calling denoting the accepted superiority by the abuser. US has consistently abused indigenous peoples throughout the world and has learned nothing from history. It is time accept the fact that by its actions since at least the 1600s, Us has deserved the reputation as the world’s worst perpetrator of institutional abuse, domestic abuse writ large.
IF I may add this, and I don’t mean to be argumentative, I think it is not “the US” or “America” that is guilty. The 3,000 victims of 9/11 did not deserve to be victims as retribution for what their “leaders” brought on–and did so with numerous implications that they were instrumental and involved in it. These need thorough discussion, questioning, and airing out (finally). It was not the German people responsible for the horrors of WW2. It is not “the people” of America responsible for what has happened to this country. To demonize an entire people based on the machinations of lunatics in power is incorrect. In this case we need to look to those 90’s “thinkers” indicated in these comments who leaped jubilantly to full spectrum dominance, to project for a new “American” century, globalism, robbing fellow nations, and smothering the thinking abilities of the domestic populace. New Nero’s and Hitlers gleefully assumed the helm.