Reopening The KSM Trial Debate

The administration had faced mounting pressure from New York political figures to find somewhere else to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and now they're considering alternatives: the White House has asked the Justice Department to look at alternative venues.

This comes after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg opposed the trial site in lower Manhattan (he urged the administration to take the trial elsewhere in a phone call Thursday) and New York's two Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and freshman Kirsten Gillibrand, said they were open to alternatives and Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) of Brookley, who chairs the House Committee on Small Business, also had asked DoJ to consider an alternate cite, predicting that the trial would deter business in New York City.


The New York Democrats' main complaint was the cost to New York: the cost of security--which would have to be beefed up around the trial and, presumably, across the city--and harm to shopping and business during the trial.

If this was a week of pivots--with President Obama calling for a spending freeze, reaching out for bipartisanship, and praising free trade in the State of the Union--a changed trial location could represent another one, though not a change in philosophy on the KSM trial.

Most of the partisan debate over Obama counterterrorism policies recently has focused on the decision to try suspected terrorists in federal courts, rather than in military tribunals, a debate that was raised again with the Christmas bomber, Abdulmutallab. But as The New York Times reports, the administration isn't backing off its policy to try KSM in a criminal court--just the location of the trial.

The Obama administration faces a unique challenge in law enforcement decisions: it took office after the Bush administration's Justice Department was widely believed to be politicized, with allegations of cronyism and taking political orders from the White House. Given that context, the Obama White House has avoided the appearance of intervening too heavily in DoJ's business, and Holder presented his decision of how to handle the alleged 9/11 conspirators on his own--as a product of his own, independent deliberation as the nation's top law enforcer, apart from the heated political debate that has surrounded counterterrorism legalities.

Yet, the White House is held accountable for those decisions, and both the logistical problems of the cost to New York and the concerns of New York elected officials falls more directly under the White House's purview.

In this case, it appears pragmatism has driven the re-thinking.