Debra Burlingame--the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame, III, pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and my fellow board member of Keep America Safe--emails:
Today Attorney General Eric Holder will announce that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several of his fellow 9/11 co-conspirators will be brought to New York City and tried in federal court. No doubt the Attorney General will invoke the phrase, "Swift and certain justice." This is a sham. There will be nothing swift and nothing certain about it.
The trial will be a travesty. The prosecutors at the Southern and Eastern Districts fought over these career-making cases like vultures at a kill. But who will be the vulture? In open court, it will be Khalid Shiek Mohammed who will hold forth, mocking his victims, exulting in the suffering of their families, ridiculing the judge, his lawyers and the American justice system, and worst of all, rallying his jihadi brothers to kill more Americans as the men and women of the US military risk their lives in the mountains of Afghanistan and the sands of Iraq. All, just blocks from where 20,000 body parts were dug out of the rubble of the Twin Towers.
Remember KSM's famous opening line when he was grabbed in Rawalpindi? "I'll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer." Thanks to the Obama admnistration, it looks like he'll get his wish. And he'll do his best-with the help of this top-drawer lawyers and much of the media-to make the real defendants at the trial the CIA interrogators-and the American government.
How will this help achieve what our president claims he wants to achieve--"restoring respect for America"? Is that what he really wants?
