Fareed Zakaria | BIO
CNN Anchor, “Fareed Zakaria – GPS”

The trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is 'perhaps the biggest challenge in the history of federal law enforcement'

Jeffrey Toobin | Bio
CNN Senior Legal Analyst
New Yorker Columnist

The federal courts face an unprecedented challenge in trying accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo detainees for the terrorist attacks that took 3,000 lives, says CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Mohammed, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi and four other Guantanamo detainees are being transferred to New York to face trial in a civilian court for the September 11 attacks, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday.

They will face trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York - a short distance from the World Trade Center towers that were destroyed in the September 11 attacks. Holder said he expects the government to seek the death penalty in the cases.

Mohammed is the confessed organizer of the attacks on New York and the Pentagon. But his confession could be called into question during trial. A 2005 Justice Department memo - released by the Obama administration - revealed he had been waterboarded 183 times in March 2003, a technique that President Obama has called torture.

CNN spoke with Toobin on Friday morning. A former assistant U.S. attorney, Toobin is a senior analyst for CNN and author of "The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court."

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A U.S. miliary guard stands inside the Camp V area at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Michael V. Hayden
Special to CNN

I know that the story has moved on, that the outline of the journalistic narrative has been set, and that the "first draft" of history has been just about finalized. Before the ink dries though, I would like to offer at least a footnote.

And this footnote has to do with President Obama's decision in April to release opinions drafted by the Department of Justice that detailed the CIA's interrogation program for high-value al Qaeda detainees.

Specifically, it has to do with the argument made publicly and privately by the administration that its hand was being forced by a pending decision in a Freedom of Information Act case by the American Civil Liberties Union before Judge Alvin Hellerstein in New York.

Indeed, when Obama visited the CIA the Monday after the release of the documents, he specifically cited this argument in his remarks to the work force.

He said that he released "... the Justice Department Office of Legal Council (OLC) memos as a consequence of a court case that was pending and to which it was very difficult for us to mount an effective legal defense. ..."

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Ruben Navarrette Jr. says the administration's probe of CIA interrogations will demoralize agents who fight terror.

Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Special to CNN

The Obama administration actually has me feeling sorry for the Central Intelligence Agency. This week, the administration hit the CIA with both barrels.

First, it announced that the intelligence agency would no longer be responsible for interrogating suspects in terrorism cases. This task will now be conducted by a new group of interrogators overseen by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

There's hope and change for you. Those who applaud the change probably hope it means no more headlines like the one this week about how CIA interrogators threatened al Qaeda prisoner Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri with a gun and an electric drill to get information.

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The Central Intelligence Agency is under fire for harsh interrogation techniques used after 9/11.

Gloria Borger
CNN Senior Political Analyst

No matter which way you look at it, the question is painfully difficult: What - if anything - do we do about the post 9/11 behavior of some CIA agents who worked feverishly to interrogate prisoners they believed had information that could save American lives?

First, we now know definitively what we always suspected - that agent actions were sometimes abusive, perhaps even illegal, as they tried to obtain information.

The just-released Justice Department report shows, among other things, that agents choked one detainee repeatedly and threatened to kill another prisoner's children. Not pretty stuff.

But here's what we also know, thanks to another report (purposefully) released by the CIA as a response to the Justice document: Some interrogations worked.

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Dick Cheney is criticizing the latest Obama move.

Alexander Mooney
CNN Ticker Producer

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is again taking aim at President Obama, issuing a statement Monday suggesting the administration's decision to name a prosecutor to investigate CIA interrogations under President Bush fuels "doubts about this administration's ability to be responsible for our nation's security."

"The people involved deserve our gratitude," Cheney said in the statement. "They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions."

The former vice president also said documents released Monday prove enhanced interrogation techniques yielded valuable information that "provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda."

"This intelligence saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks," Cheney said. "These detainees also, according to the documents, played a role in nearly every capture of al Qaeda members and associates since 2002."

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Program Note: Tune in tonight to hear more from Andrew Sullivan on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

Andrew Sullivan
The Atlantic

I'm not a lawyer so I will leave the legal parsings to others. But I do want to note something quite odd in Andy McCarthy's latest defense of torture as national policy for the US. He wants to argue that those who waterboarded terror suspects were not torturing per se because they were intending to procure intelligence, and not torturing purely for the hell of it.

I don't believe there's much evidence that the intent of the torture program was sadism, although obviously once you condone torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners in any war, the sadism will emerge. And I see no evidence that those who waterboarded Zubaydah were doing it for the evil joy of it (although we don't know who the torturers were exactly in that case, or most others). But this is all irrelevant. The crime of torture is not about sadism. It is specifically about getting intelligence. The UN Convention's definition couldn't be clearer on this:

Read More of Andrew Sullivan's blog posts...

AC360°

What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the questions posed in a 1971 simulation of prison life conducted in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University.

The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Twenty-four undergraduates were selected out of 70 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Those selected were chosen for their lack of psychological issues, crime history, and medical disabilities, in order to obtain a representative sample. Roles were assigned based on a coin toss.

Take a look at the Stanford Prison Experiment web site, which features an extensive slide show and information about this classic psychology experiment, including parallels with the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

CNN

Attorney General Eric Holder is tasked with pioneering a legally feasible plan to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison.

Attorney General Eric Holder's Guantanamo Review Task Force is struggling to sort the prison detainees into five neatly ordered lists, as government lawyers try to somehow fashion a plan which will clear expected legal challenges while satisfying skeptical lawmakers and a nervous public.

Every turn appears more complicated as the weeks pass.

On the immediate heels of a demand by Congress for a clear and specific plan for emptying Guantanamo, one of President Barack Obama's top aides, David Axelrod, promised Thursday that Congress would receive such a plan, and declared the president's address Thursday represented a "framework for a plan." Administration officials indicate the plan itself is probably months away.

During an address on national security at the National Archives in Washington, Obama defended his decision to close the detention center at Guantanamo, and he outlined categories in which to separate the remaining detainees.

The framework calls for putting the names of the 240 remaining detainees into five piles, then trying to resolve the legal complexities of each.

The first group, which government sources and defense attorneys estimate at several dozen detainees, would be brought to the U.S. and tried for crimes in civilian courts. But those cases would be limited to instances in which prosecutors believe they can win convictions under criminal procedures and rules of evidence. Those would include competent legal representation, defendant's Miranda rights, direct witness testimony absent hearsay, and sharing with the defense "Brady" material — evidence which could help their case.

The government identified only one name on that list Thursday when the Justice Department announced Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, indicted in the East Africa embassy bombings, would be tried in New York. Major terrorist figures have been successfully prosecuted in New York amid tight security.

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