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The alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, like the Senate intelligence panel's Democrats, has come out against President Donald Trump's nomination of Gina Haspel to lead the CIA. Both Mohammed and the Democrats question whether Haspel, a longtime CIA agent, is fit to run the agency given her involvement in the torture of prisoners following the attacks in 2001. Haspel is due to appear Wednesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee for her confirmation hearing. The Al-Qaeda leader, who was captured in March 2003 and was reportedly tortured, asked a military judge Monday at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,...

The man who says he was the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack seeks to justify the plot as a “natural reaction” to US foreign policy in a blistering letter sent to then President Barack Obama from the Guantanamo prison. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, one of five Guantanamo prisoners facing trial by military commission for their alleged roles in the hijacking plot, also writes in the letter released Wednesday that it does not matter to him if he receives a life sentence or the death penalty from the tribunal. “If your court sentences me to life in prison, I will...

As his time in the White House winds down, President Barack Obama received an unusual piece of mail: a letter from accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Officials confirmed that the letter arrived at the White House to CBS News, but are declining to provide further details. Mohammed is awaiting his death-penalty trial at Guantanamo Bay, accused of planning and orchestrating the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. The Miami Herald, which first reported on the letter, says it was written in 2014, and was only delivered...

The Department of Defense and the Office of Military Commissions will allocate seats for news media aboard military chartered aircraft for travel from Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland to Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to cover military commission pre-trial proceedings scheduled for United States v. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad et. al., Jan. 25 - Feb. 3, 2017. Travel originates at Andrews AFB, Maryland on Monday, Jan. 23, 2017; return flight from Guantanamo to Andrews AFB, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2017. Due to a limited number of seats aboard the flight and limited accommodations at Guantanamo Bay, selection is not guaranteed. However, there...

ORANGE PARK, FLA. — The death of a Navy commander found in a room at the Astoria Hotel on Feb. 12 was ruled a homicide, the Orange Park Police Department announced Wednesday. The Jacksonville Medical Examiner's Office made the ruling on Feb. 13 in the death of Cmdr. Alphonso Doss, 44, of Pensacola, according to the release from the OPPD. Doss' manner of death is not being released at this time while the OPPD and the Clay County Sheriff's Office investigate. Doss reported to Naval Education and Training Command in Nov. 2011, according to the Navy. While in Jacksonville, he...

Lawyers in the upcoming trial of an alleged top Al Qaeda leader reached a compromise Thursday to allow his defense attorney to submit written questions to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with government lawyers allowed to review the questions and answers from the presumed Sept. 11 mastermind to ensure no classified material is included. If government national security officials clear those replies, that could lead to highly dramatic testimony from Mohammed during the New York trial of Sulaiman abu Ghaith, possibly through a closed-circuit feed or videotape from Guantanamo Bay. The complex turn of events came after Mohammed agreed to help the...

Instead of blowing people up, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attack wants to bring converts to Islam by subtler means of persuasion. Khalid Sheik Mohammed is seeking to convince members of the military tribunal trying him at Guantamo Bay he has renounced violence. In a 36-page manifesto published in the Huffington Post, he even argues, “The Holy Koran forbids us to use force as a means of converting” and reaching “truth and reality never comes by muscles and force but by using the mind and wisdom.” “Don’t believe the media that the mujahedeen believe that Islam spread in...

A convicted terrorist serving life with no parole plus 240 years for masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing has reportedly filed a lawsuit arguing he should be let out of solitary confinement. "I request an immediate end to my solitary confinement and ask to be in a unit in an open prison environment where inmates are allowed outside their cells for no less than 14 hours a day," he reportedly wrote in confidential government records obtained by The Los Angeles Times. His terror acts were funded by Al Qaeda and his uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is allegedly the...

WASHINGTON—Military prosecutors won't say whether they plan to use newly disclosed tape recordings in the upcoming trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed even though the tapes could solve the prosecution's problems with tainted evidence. A new book says Justice Department prosecutors were stunned to learn three years ago that the U.S. military had secretly tape-recorded incriminating comments that Mohammed made to fellow detainees during daily prison yard conversations but was not planning to use them at military tribunals. In "Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency," journalist Daniel Klaidman says Mohammed was...

Attorney General Eric Holder today will announce that self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be tried in a military commission, CBS News has learned. A source says the commission will be held at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Trying Mohammed in a civilian court and closing the Guantanamo prison were once some of the Obama administration's top priorities, but political realities have hamstrung both goals. Holder previously recommended that Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 plotters be tried in New York City...

WASHINGTON – Responding to Justice Department memos declassified by the Obama administration last week, former Bush administration officials claim that CIA agents who repeatedly waterboarded Sept. 11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were not bent on torture but simply treating a raging case of head lice and dandruff. Fecal Harpy, a spokeswoman for former Vice President Dick Cheney, said Obama’s decision to release the memos had forced Cheney and other members of the Bush administration to counter with their own disclosures of sensitive information. Cheney was a tireless advocate of waterboarding in the aftermath of 9-11. “We hate to do this,...

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration is leaning toward trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in a military tribunal, reversing a Justice Department pledge to put them before a civilian court. Administration officials said moves by Congress as well as by local and state governments are all but foreclosing the civilian-court option. Members of Congress have moved to cut off funds for a civilian trial, while local governments have expressed reluctance to play host to such a trial.

Top advisers to President Obama are close to a decision recommending that the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks be prosecuted in a military tribunal, The Washington Post reported Friday, citing unnamed administration officials. According to the report, the president's advisors have grown increasingly wary of bipartisan opposition to the planned civilian federal trial in New York City, mere blocks from where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in the spectacular attack on the World Trade Center. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and prominent state Democrats, who initially embraced Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try Khalid Sheikh...

U.S. May Abandon Civilian Trial For 9/11 Suspect Attorney general hints Mohammed may be tried before military commission WASHINGTON - Attorney General Eric Holder is leaving open the possibility of trying professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before a military commission instead of the civilian trial originally planned for New York City. "At the end of the day, wherever this case is tried, in whatever forum, what we have to ensure is that it's done as transparently as possible and with adherence to all the rules," Holder told The Washington Post in an interview published in Friday's editions. "If...

The feds may still try the 9/11 terror thugs near Ground Zero, President Obama said yesterday, shocking critics. "I have not ruled it out, but I think it's important for us to take into account the practical, logistical issues involved," Obama told CBS News anchor Katie Couric. "I mean, if you have a city that is saying no, and a police department that is saying no, and a mayor that is saying no, that makes it difficult," Obama acknowledged. The White House asked Attorney General Eric Holder late last month to look for alternatives to a trial in Manhattan Federal...

This fiasco disgusts Americans. A February 1 Rasmussen survey discovered that only 16 percent of likely voters want terrorists to enjoy the same legal rights as U.S. citizens, while 74 percent disagree. Meanwhile, HumanEvents.com (which often posts my columns) has gathered 126,665 signatures on its online petition demanding KSM and company’s ejection from civilian court. “These proceedings will make the O. J. Simpson trial look like a traffic-court hearing,” says Marc Thiessen, author of Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack , a new bestseller on the Obama administration’s soft-on-terror...

Accused Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried and convicted and is likely to be executed, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Sunday. Interviewed on CNN's "State of the Union," show, Gibbs said: "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to meet justice and he's going to meet his maker. He will be brought to justice and he's likely to be executed for the heinous crimes he committed." Gibbs did not confirm reports that the Obama administration has begun looking for places other than the heart of New York City to prosecute self-professed mastermind Mohammed and four accused co-conspirators...

The Obama administration has abandoned its plan to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, on trial in Lower Manhattan, according to administration officials. The reversal marks the latest setback for an administration that has been buffeted at every turn as it seeks to close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And without the backdrop of Ground Zero for a trial, the administration will also lose some of the rich symbolism associated with its attempt to forge a new approach to handling high-value al-Qaeda detainees. "New York is out," said an administration...

A group of eight New York lawmakers have written to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder expressing concern about plans to prosecute the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks in Manhattan, AFP reported Thursday. The members of the House of Representatives and state officials, said they agreed with President Barack Obama's decision to prosecute five men accused of the attacks before a civilian court. But they warned that the courthouse selected for the trial, just steps from the site of the World Trade Centers among the attack's targets, was poorly chosen.

The White House ordered the Justice Department Thursday night to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan. The dramatic turnabout came hours after Mayor Bloomberg said he would "prefer that they did it elsewhere" and then spoke to Attorney General Eric Holder. "It would be an inconvenience at the least, and probably that's too mild a word for people that live in the neighborhood and businesses in the neighborhood," Bloomberg told reporters.