Soccer Dad

Bringing mohammed to new york

When called upon by CBS, legal analyst Andrew Cohen often states the obvious and occasionally adds an interesting insight about legal matters that are in the news. But when the law and politics intersect, he can be counted on to take the stand of the Democratic Party on the issue. Take the issue of holding terror trials in New York. In a recent op-ed he claims to debunk myths surrounding having the trials in New York as opposed to military tribunals.

Let's see his third "myth."

Three: Trying Mohammed in New York will significantly raise the risk of another terrorist attack there. Fact: No one can determine how big that increased risk would be. But New York has long been able to safely host trials of terrorism suspects -- including the trial that followed the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center -- and its security systems are among the world's finest. I have seen, during the Zacarias Moussaoui trial in 2006, just how intense security can be in terrorism cases. It's awe-inspiring.

What Cohen dismisses, former AG Michael Mukasey, point out, exacts a very high cost.

The challenges of a terrorism trial are overwhelming. To maintain the security of the courthouse and the jail facilities where defendants are housed, deputy U.S. marshals must be recruited from other jurisdictions; jurors must be selected anonymously and escorted to and from the courthouse under armed guard; and judges who preside over such cases often need protection as well. All such measures burden an already overloaded justice system and interfere with the handling of other cases, both criminal and civil.

Judge Mukasey is not employed simply by being paid for his opinions, but has actually presided over some of these cases.

Worse, as Mukasey wrote earlier, the openness of these trials incurs serious security risks by allowing potentially damaging information out.

In fact, terrorism prosecutions in this country have unintentionally provided terrorists with a rich source of intelligence. For example, in the course of prosecuting Omar Abdel Rahman (the so-called "blind sheik") and others for their role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other crimes, the government was compelled--as it is in all cases that charge conspiracy--to turn over a list of unindicted co-conspirators to the defendants.

That list included the name of Osama bin Laden. As was learned later, within 10 days a copy of that list reached bin Laden in Khartoum, letting him know that his connection to that case had been discovered.

Again, during the trial of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, an apparently innocuous bit of testimony in a public courtroom about delivery of a cell phone battery was enough to tip off terrorists still at large that one of their communication links had been compromised. That link, which in fact had been monitored by the government and had provided enormously valuable intelligence, was immediately shut down, and further information lost.

Cohen set up and knocked down straw men, while ignoring the real costs and risks associated with trying terror suspects in federal court.

Related: Please see Seraphic Secret:

Military tribunals are a time honored and effective method of dealing with foreign combatants. The U.S. has made use of military tribunals since The Revolutionary War.

Jonathan F. Keiler

The Goldstone report and the decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in federal court undermine fundamental principles of law accepted in the West since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The Westphalian peace and the body of law that followed empowered the armies of nation states and weakened non-national armies associated with religious movements or ideologies, as well as the mercenary bands and bandits that had plagued Europe for hundreds of years.

The ideologues on the left who represent Guantanamo inmates and write reports on Gaza -- call them pre-Westphalians -- are committed to empowering just the opposite: religious and ideological terrorists, criminals, bandits and other non-state actors who thrive on anarchy. They do this under the color of promoting "humanitarian law" and protection of individual rights.

and James Taranto who catches on to an inadvertent admission by Gov. Paterson of New York.