Austin Revokes 9/11 Plea Deal
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One of Biden’s least good appointees was Lloyd Austin as Secretary of Defense, who might be the lowest profile SoD in my lifetime. That in itself isn’t necessarily a problem, but the whole “I had a heart attack and aren’t going to tell the president for several days” thing was not so great and in fact, probably should have led to his resignation.
In any case, while I have few thoughts on the 9/11 plea deal on the merits, I really don’t understand what Austin overturning it is supposed to accomplish.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Friday overruled the overseer of the war court at Guantánamo Bay and revoked a plea agreement reached earlier this week with the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and two alleged accomplices.
The Pentagon announced the decision with the release of a memorandum relieving the senior official at the Defense Department responsible for military commissions of her oversight of the capital case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his alleged accomplices for the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.
The overseer, retired Brig. Gen. Susan K. Escallier, signed a pretrial agreement on Wednesday with Mr. Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi that exchanged guilty pleas for sentences of at most life in prison. In taking away the authority, Mr. Austin assumed direct oversight of the case and canceled the agreement, effectively reinstating it as a death-penalty case. He left Ms. Escallier in the role of oversight of Guantánamo’s other cases.
Because of the stakes involved, the “responsibility for such a decision should rest with me,” Mr. Austin said in an order released Friday night by the Pentagon.
I dunno, maybe work this out beforehand?
But of course Austin is just caving to Republicans.
By then, prosecutors in the case had alerted the decision to family members of those killed in the attacks, some of whom expressed disappointment and anger that a death sentence was no longer possible. So did Republican leaders.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the longtime Republican leader, called the plea agreement “a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend America and provide justice.”
Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas called the deal “disgraceful and an insult to the victims of the attacks,” and introduced legislation intended to nullify it.
I guess I can see not wanting to make a big political issue out of this? Although does anyone actually care about the 9/11 terrorists so long as they never get out of prison? Obviously they are never going to be executed. I guess we will continue this charade until the last one dies in prison. Maybe then we can take care of other key issues around our national security, like the POW/MIA flags.