in the united states as i seriously explored in the last year, i am confident that the justice system could have performed with the same distinction that has been its hallmark for over 200 years. now, unfortunately, since i made that decision, members of congress have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any guantanamo detainees to trial in the united states, regardless of the venue. as the president has said, those unwise and unwarranted restrictions undermine our counterterrorism efforts and could harm our national security. decisions about who, where, and how to prosecute have always been and must remain the responsibility of the executive branch. members of congress simply do not have access to the evidence and other information necessary to make prosecution judgments.
i ve been told the defense department plans to announce other charges against other high-profile defendants as early as next week, one being the alleged mastermind of the bombing of the uss cole in 2000. these are all proceedings that will be taking place in guantanamo. at the time how did the administration justify the decision to pursue civilian trial as opposed to military commissions, michael? you know, this was very much a part of the core philosophy of most of the people in the obama administration, in top legal jobs, and during the obama campaign that civilian justice is better than military justice or at least military commission justice. a lot of that was push back, grew out of opposition by then-senator barack obama and most other democrats to everything president george w. bush was doing.
explored in the last year. i am confident that our justice system could have performed with the same distinction that has been its hallmark for over 200 years. now, unfortunately, since i made that decision, members of congress have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any guantanamo detainees to try in the united states regardless of the venue. as the president has said, those unwise and unwarranted restrictions undermine our counterterrorism efforts and could harm our national security. decisions about who, where, and how to prosecute have always been and must remain the responsibility of the executive branch. members of congress simply do not have access to the evidence and other information necessary to make prosecution judgments. yet, we have taken one of the
the best place to bring them, but in regard to the amount of time it took, and remember in 2009 we were in the process of reforming the military commissions, and there was local concerns about bringing the cases to manhattan and we had to deal with that and then congress started to deal with the restrictions they put in place. we tried to fight them. we have made this decision as quickly as we could taking into all of the factors, and as i indicated we considered bringing this case within another location other than manhattan but within the new york district court. and there was a concern about the death penalty bringing the cases in guantanamo. well, it is an open question of whether someone can plead guilty and still receive the death penalty is a question. and when does the commission
something opponents could still throw at the president. i should add another unknown now, is what could pop up over the next several months. yes, there s the economy, yes, there s health care, yes, there are these wars. but there could be the unknown thing that pops up that opponents could use against the president that could become major baggage in the 2012 campaign. i want to talk about the five 9/11 conspirators, khalid shaikh mohammed, they re going to be tried at gitmo. we expect to hear from attorney general eric holder at the top of the hour but what s the word on this from the white house? reporter: the white house press secretary jay carney was hit hard with that today, questions about whether or not the president is flip-flopping. you might recall back to the beginning of this administration when the president in his first executive order said he would close down gitmo in a year, that did not happen. this administration has favored trying these cases in civilian courts, a