Secretary Austin commits an act of decency by reversing shameful deals with 9/11 terrorists

In an order issued Friday night, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin canceled the Biden-Harris administration shameful agreements with 9/11 terrorist masterminds that would have spared them the death penalty.

Secretary Austin, a former Army general before becoming secretary, reserved the power to reach these agreements. Addressing the bureaucrat in charge of the failed prosecution, He wrote: “Effective immediately, I hereby withdraw your authority in the above-mentioned case to enter into a pretrial agreement and reserve that authority for myself.” He added: “I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements you entered into on July 31, 2024 in the above case.”

Well done general.

I say “general” instead of “secretary” as a compliment. Discussing with a retired Navy captain friend whether Austin was forced to step up as fall guy for the White House or chose to do it himself, my friend speculated, “Austin is he woke up this morning and realized he's a general in the United States Army, and then he did the right thing.”

The move has halted, at least temporarily, a decision by the Biden-Harris administration to accept a plea deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the confessed architect of the 9/11 attacks in the United States, and two high-level accomplices. Instead of the execution that the three men deserve, they would have received life imprisonment.

Such an act would have been morally degenerate and a symbol of a sick civilization that no longer has self-confidence or a sense of justice. I would have broken faith with those Americans died on September 11 and the tens of thousands more who died or were maimed, physically and mentally, in the war that the terrorists started that day.

Incredibly, the White House abdicated responsibility for the plea deal. A the spokesman remarked“The president and the White House played no role in this process.” This seems like a lie or a subterfuge to me. At the very least, the White House staff and the National Security Council initiated a process designed to produce this outcome. Most likely they fired while making it look like others were in charge.

Which is worse: if the White House didn't know about the KSM love deal or if they did?

CNN it echoed the conventional wisdom that has stalled the judicial process in the nearly 23 years that have passed since the September 11 attacks: “Prosecutors in the case had been discussing the possibility of a plea deal for more than two years, which would have avoided a long and complicated trial for questions about the admissibility of evidence obtained during torture.”

what rubbish Leave it to the collection of legal eagles in the Pentagon and elsewhere in Washington to pursue such a simple matter.

All that is required is for a court to confirm the terrorists' status as principal illegal combatants and hand down a death sentence. The three terrorists and their compatriots detained at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba specifically targeted civilians in a massive terrorist attack and launched an unprovoked war of aggression against the United States. These were obscene violations of the law of war. Given these acts and the fact that they were not wearing uniforms, they were and remain obvious illegal combatants just as qualified to pay the ultimate price as the German and Japanese military officers killed after World War II.

In his order, Austin referred to the Military Commissions Act 2009. The law amended the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to address the then-liberal Supreme Court's incorrect 5-4 decision in 2008 that sought to extend the civil rights of American citizens to terrorist enemy combatants. These decisions, along with a lack of leadership and determination, are part of the reason why the architects of 9/11 have been chilling in sunny Cuba for more than two decades. They will also ensure that the Biden-Harris administration ends without a definitive resolution.

If re-elected, former President Donald Trump should take a different path, using better precedents.

Trump would once again be the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and the supreme military commander charged with the responsibility of protecting and defending the United States. It does not need the permission of any legal eagle to perform its duties and no mere law or erroneous decision of a court that expands the power not granted to it by the Constitution can limit its constitutional authority.

President Franklin Roosevelt was right when faced with how to handle German saboteurs captured by the United States in 1942 during World War II. Having left their uniforms, the men were therefore spies and illegal combatants. Roosevelt's attorney general, Francis Biddle, worried that the men were to be tried as felons and would have only a few years in prison. Roosevelt's written response: “I want one thing to be clearly understood, Francis. I will not hand them over to any US Marshal armed with a writ of habeas corpus. Understand?”

The Supreme Court sided with Roosevelt. The saboteurs landed on June 12, 1942. They were captured, tried, found guilty, and later executed on August 8, 1942, a period of less than two months.

In fixing the broken court process, there may be an instinct to resort to something like the Nuremberg Trials who tried Nazi war criminals, eventually sentencing many to death after long deliberation and no small amount of concession. A better model is the Philippine War Crimes Commission established by General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander of the Allied Powers and the effective dictator of Japan after the war. While part of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the commission moved more quickly and with less fanfare to execute some of the worst war criminals responsible for atrocities committed in the Philippines, then an American colony. Importantly, the Commission was accountable to MacArthur, who could modify judgments as necessary and to whom the military members of the Commission were accountable. There was no lofty stance on impartiality: the accused were given due process, but their fate was sealed and justice served.

To close this chapter of history, a re-elected Trump should charge his Secretary of Defense with convening and concluding a trial for these three top terrorists and others still held at Guantánamo within the first 100 days of his second mandate The long-awaited trial should end with a short fall from a long rope and the executioner finally bringing justice to the 9/11 terrorists.

Christian Whiton was a senior adviser to the Trump and George W. Bush administrations. This article was first published in Capitalist Notes on Substack.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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