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bjbjLULU For more on Saturday's proceeding and the wider case, we go to Arun Rath, who
has been reporting military justice stories for our PBS partner "Frontline," and Josh
Meyer, co-author of the new book "The Hunt For KSM." He now teaches and directs a program
at a Medill Journalism School's National Security Initiative. Both attended the session at Guantanamo.
So, gentlemen, starting with you, Arun, take us inside that room. What was it like for
this marathon session? ARUN RATH, "Frontline": Well, the gallery room, which is where the
journalists who were in the pool selected to go in, as well as the 9/11 family members
and some representatives from NGOs, it's actually -- it's part of the courtroom, but it's separated
by double-paned, supposedly soundproof glass. For security reasons and also so that they
-- what we hear is we hear the court loudspeaker played on a 40-second delay, sort of like
what a shock jock would use, so obscenities don't get out on the air. This is so that
they can stop, you know, the proceedings and people won't hear if something comes up for
security reasons. MARGARET WARNER: And, Josh Meyer, it sounded -- from reading the accounts,
it sounded as if KSM, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was very much in the lead among the defendants
in sort of his behavior. JOSH MEYER, co-author, "The Hunt for KSM": Yes. Yes. I mean, he stayed
true to form. He's the leader of the group. And he's a very disruptive presence in the
courtroom. But what's different about this from the last time I was there in 2008 and
the last time we saw him publicly is in that case he was very defiant, very loud, had a
lot of outbursts. And in this case, he was basically showing his opposition by not saying
anything, not doing anything and telling the others to do the same. MARGARET WARNER: And
then, what, some of them took out prayer rugs and started praying? ARUN RATH: Yes. One of
them, Waleed Bin Attash -- Waleed Bin Attash -- removed his shirt in the middle of the
proceedings to show his alleged scars from torture. The judge obviously told him to knock
that off. Another one stood up to play at an unscheduled time in the middle of the proceedings.
And then there was Ramzi Binalshibh, one who shouted out in the middle of the proceedings,
saying that he was worried that they were going to kill him and make it look like a
suicide, that he wouldn't be back again. MARGARET WARNER: And the defense attorneys raised a
lot of objections too. JOSH MEYER: Yeah. I mean, it's pretty clear from their objections
that this is going to go on forever. One of the attorneys told me that it could be years,
maybe four years, before there's a trial. But what they were doing and what they said
that their clients was doing just protesting, a silent protest for what they said was the
unfairness of the whole system from front to back. MARGARET WARNER: As we saw that defense
attorney, Connell, say, but to what end? I mean, is to just lay the groundwork for a
future appeal? ARUN RATH: I think there was a lot of that. During the questioning. . . MARGARET
WARNER: Because they can appeal to federal court. Right? ARUN RATH: Right. I think there
was a lot of questioning of the judge, bringing up issues. One attorney basically questioned
his qualifications. The other questioned his objectivity. There were a lot of laying the
groundwork for appeals in the future. MARGARET WARNER: Now, the torture issue, how is it
-- I mean, some of the objections, again, as we heard from Connell, had to do with trying
to introduce the idea that their clients had been tortured or mistreated. JOSH MEYER: Right.
MARGARET WARNER: What is the -- will they be allowed to testify about that? What does
the defense want to do with that in terms of strategy? JOSH MEYER: Well, you know, that's
one of the big questions, is so much of this process is top-secret and classified that
we don't even know whether they're going to be allowed to do that. The lawyers for the
-- you know, for the five men say that they're not even allowed to discuss this with their
clients, their time in captivity, what the CIA did to them, whether they're going to
be able to introduce into court. So, of course, that's extremely important. Whether they can
-- there's an assumption that they're going to get convicted. But whether they get the
death penalty, the torture issue I think will be extremely important in terms of a mitigating
factor. ARUN RATH: And, as we ve heard, they're not going to be using evidence in court that
was derived from the harsh interrogation techniques. But the defense is contending that, you know,
these guys were tortured right from the get-go And anything that has come out of their mouth
since then, even though it was obtained by supposedly what they called the clean team,
who went in and obtained interviews without using these techniques, it's still tainted
by the torture and they are going to try to have it thrown out for that reason. MARGARET
WARNER: Now, remind us about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the role he played you ve just
written a book about the hunt for him -- the role he played in al-Qaida in the years when
it was most effectively, you know, operational. JOSH MEYER: Yeah. Well, it's interesting.
And that's a good question. There's a big disconnect there. I think most of the American
public think that Osama bin Laden is the guy who did 9/11. And when you really look at
it, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is. He was the guy who brought the plot to bin Laden in '96,
had to spend two years talking him into it. Finally, he got the green light to do it and
he got a little bit of manpower and some money from bin Laden. But he did it himself pretty
much as an independent contractor. He kept his independence from al-Qaida so he could
run it his way. And during that whole time, he was also plotting as many as a few dozen
other attacks. After 9/11, he personally decapitated Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter.
So, when people think of bin Laden, he actually was the guy sitting up in a corporate office
not doing much in terms of actual operational stuff. KSM is the guy that was out there traveling
around the world and getting things done. MARGARET WARNER: Now, about four years ago,
I think, at a hearing, he -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed proclaimed that he was behind 9/11.
Does the way their attorneys acted suggest now they have a different strategy? ARUN RATH:
Well, it. . . MARGARET WARNER: In other words, he's sometimes described as the confessed
or self-professed mastermind. ARUN RATH: Well, I think what they would say again is that
that statement was made even though -- that same thing, that's where he admitted to killing
Daniel Pearl. But this was made after he spent all those -- time in the black sites and after
the torture. So I think they will say again that is still tainted by the. . . JOSH MEYER:
Yes. MARGARET WARNER: There's been this huge debate of course about whether they should
be in a military or civilian/federal court. How different are the procedures in this proceeding
than they would be in a civilian trial? JOSH MEYER: I think they're very different. I covered
at least part of the embassy bombings in 2001 of the guys that were charged with blowing
up two American embassies in Africa. And it was a much more transparent system. You had
family members of the victims in court with them, so they could stare them down. You had
witnessed being brought in, tons of evidence being read, a lot of cross-examination. And
it remains to be seen if that's going to happen here, but I think that the difference is that
this proceeding is being done on a military base in the middle of nowhere, so people can't
even get there. MARGARET WARNER: And the jury of course is not going to be -- is going to
be military officers. JOSH MEYER: Right. ARUN RATH: Right. This is much closer to the Universal
Code of Military Justice, even more so than the Bush military commissions were. JOSH MEYER:
Yes. ARUN RATH: And one of the interesting things, though, is that while there are issues
with transparency in it, there are other ways in which -- for instance, Saturday, one of
the reasons it was so contentious was the questioning of a judge, the voir dire proceedings
are -- in some ways, they're more empowered in the military system than they are in the
civilian. MARGARET WARNER: So how long will it be before they actually get to the substance
of these charges? JOSH MEYER: Well, I think starting next month they're going to start
looking at the motions. And the lawyers told me that they're going to file literally hundreds
of motions, from their access to discovery, from their ability to talk to their clients
in confidence, from the resources they have been provided. You have to remember the U.S.
government has spent 10 years now investigating 9/11. And there's a presumption in a case
like this that the defense is supposed to have at least some parity in terms of defending
their clients. And so there's a lot of issues that have to be adjudicated. MARGARET WARNER:
Some years to go. JOSH MEYER: Yes. MARGARET WARNER: Well, Arun Rath and Josh Meyer, thank
you both. JOSH MEYER: You're welcome. ARUN RATH: Thank you. urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags
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place For more on Saturday's proceeding and the wider case, we go to Arun Rath, who has
been reporting military justice stories for our PBS partner "Frontline," and Josh Meyer,
co-author of the new book "The Hunt For KSM Normal Microsoft Office Word For more on Saturday's
proceeding and the wider case, we go to Arun Rath, who has been reporting military justice
stories for our PBS partner "Frontline," and Josh Meyer, co-author of the new book "The
Hunt For KSM Title Microsoft Office Word Document MSWordDoc Word.Document.8