Obama Demands Total Say On 9/11 Trials

Obama aides push back on venue for terrorism trials

By Jeremy Pelofsky

February 26, 2010

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration bluntly urged the Congress on Thursday to steer clear of directing where terrorism suspects should be prosecuted, pushing back against efforts to require military rather than civilian trials.

A bipartisan group of senators has offered legislation aimed at forcing the administration to prosecute terrorism suspects, like the self-professed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in special military commission trials instead of traditional criminal courts.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder ordered Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators to be tried in a criminal court in Manhattan. But concerns by some lawmakers about security costs and granting full legal rights to the suspects have forced administration officials to reconsider.

Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote leaders in the House of Representatives to express their opposition to legislation directing how and where to prosecute the cases.

"The exercise of prosecutorial discretion has always been and should remain an Executive branch function," they said in the letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Republican Minority Leader John Boehner.

"We believe it would be unwise and would set a dangerous precedent for Congress to restrict the discretion of our departments to carry out specific terrorism prosecutions," Holder and Gates said…

How is that for chutzpah? 

Didn’t Mr. Holder’s own law firm, Covington & Burling, spend the last seven years of the Bush administration trying to close down the military tribunals at Guantanamo in order to give their terrorist charges civilian trials in federal court?

Moreover, didn’t the Democrats in Congress and on the Supreme Court do everything they could to interfere with the “prosecutorial discretion” of the Executive branch when it was in the hands of President Bush?

If hypocrisy were an Olympic event, the Obama administration would be out there celebrating with the cigars and champagne.