threat but for various reasons it s difficult for us to try them in article iii court. some of them are going through a military commission process, but there s going to be a challenge there. now, at that stage, i m presenting a plan to congress about how we can close guantanamo. i ll not going to automatically assume that congress says no. i m not being coy, david. i think it s fair to say there s going to be significant resistance from some quarters to that but i think we can make a very strong argument it doesn t make sense for us to be sending an extra hundred, 200, 300, $500 million, a billion dollars, to have a secure setting for 50, 60, 70 people. and we will wait until congress
absolutely khalid sheik mohammed and the others were doing everything they could to slow down and obstruct the process. they were completely definality, wouldn t answer the judge s questions, wouldn t put on their head sets so they couldn t hear translations forcing the judge to order a verbal translator to repeat everything said because he had to make sure that they at least that the defendants heard what was going on in court. right. so that slowed the process down. ramsey bin al sheba one of the other key alleged planners of the 9/11 attacks twice disrupted things, once getting up and starting to pray and other times claiming there had been threats on the defendants and they ve been trying to kill us and make it look like suicide. in addition the lawyers are raising objections left and right to everything going on in the military commission process and at the end of the day, after the defendants declined to enter pleas one of them
was a lot of debate with some democratic members on this issue. so when you don t even have all of your own party s support on capitol hill for this, at this point then it was just simply laying the groundwork for doing this so we knew a couple weeks ago they had to announce they were going to restart the military commission process down in guantanamo bay and then, of course, we knew that a couple weeks later it would be followed by this announcement. does the white house consider this to be a defeat in light of all the effort to hold these trials? would they consider it a defeat? i don t think they would look at it as a defeat but it certainly is a broken promise. this is day one of him in office. the first full day in office, signs the executive order, this was all part of this to try to both close down guantanamo, get rid of military commissions, do this in federal court, and you talk to prosecutors and they believe they can do this better. you know, there is some question about
desperately for a venue where they can hold this trial. if they can t find one, there s an article in the washington post today that suggests where holder sort of hints that maybe they will have to go back to this whole military commission process if congress forces them to do it. so it s just a kind of big embarrassing mess. and what does he tell you about how this has been allowed to develop within the administration, within the white house? there must be big struggles over this whole process. well, i do think this has been part of the problem. basically, the people who would have handled the politics here would be the white house political team. they call them the front office. and they would have maybe worked with the attorney general to try to sell this policy in new york and make sure that the trial happened. they were not on-board really. rahm emanuel, who is the chief of staff, and is the chief of staff to president obama, always had he was always opposed to doing these
in guantanamo was challenged in so many different court challenges. so they re looking desperately for a venue to hold this trial. and if they can t find one, there s an article in the washington post today that suggests where holder sort of hints that maybe they will have to go back to this whole military commission process, if congress forces them to do it. so it s just kind of a big, embarrassing mess. and how what does he tell you about how this has been allowed to develop within the administration, within the white house. there must be big struggles over this whole process? well, i do think this has been part of the prb. basically, the people who would have handled the politics here would be the white house political team. they call them the front office. and they would have maybe worked with the attorney general to try to sell this policy in new york and make sure that the trial happened. they were not on board, really. rahm emanuel, who was the chief of staff, and is the