[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 27742-27748]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           GIVING TERRORISTS A TRIAL BY JURY IN NEW YORK CITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Schrader). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  I want to follow up on what my colleague from Texas was talking 
about, as the ranking member on the Homeland Security Subcommittee on 
Terrorism. And actually, I'm the ranking Republican member on the 
Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Subcommittee under the 
Judiciary, so we have some overlapping space there.
  I know my friends, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) and the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. McCaul), in their hearts are very much 
concerned about the safety and the well-being of this country. This is 
some serious stuff that's going on here when the President of the 
United States says that we need to bring at least some of the most 
feared terrorists in the world into the most densely populated area in 
America.
  Now, having been a judge and a chief justice, having had to work out 
logistics for major trials that had a lot of publicity, nothing, 
nothing like this trial will be--I understand perhaps some of the 
ramifications that our fine President, with his experience in community 
organizing, may not quite understand. You can't bring terrorists--and 
the reason I say ``terrorists'' instead of ``alleged terrorists'' is 
because they've admitted it. You can't bring them to the most densely 
populated area in our country and not expect there to be terror to 
follow. I mean, I've tried felony cases, death penalty cases, and I 
know there are other friends here in Congress that have also. Death 
threats arise in those types of cases. I had them. I didn't worry about 
them when it was me. I worried about them when it was my family, and 
that happens.
  If you think about the consequences logistically of bringing admitted 
terrorists to the most densely populated area in America, New York 
City, where they've already struck at least twice. They tried to blow 
up the World Trade Center. It didn't work the first time. They did some 
damage, but nothing like the second time, and we're going to bring them 
right back. We know, thank God, that most Muslims are not jihadists 
like you find here with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
  But when you read the six-page pleading that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, 
the guy that they want to bring to New York for trial, said in his own 
pleading--and as I understand it, he did his own interpretation to 
English. He would make statements, and he would back them up by a 
reference and a quote in English from the Koran. He says, ``We ask to 
be near to God''--this Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who our President is 
inviting to come to New York City. ``We fight you and destroy you and 
terrorize you.'' Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said this in his pleading. And 
it wasn't just for him. It was on behalf of the other four defendants 
in this case.
  But he says, ``The jihad in God's cause is a great duty in our 
religion. We have news for you. The news is you will be greatly 
defeated in Afghanistan and Iraq, and America will fall politically, 
militarily, and economically. Your end is near, and your fall will be 
just as the fall of the towers on the blessed 9/11 day. We will raise 
from the ruins, God willing. We will leave this imprisonment with our 
noses raised high in dignity as the lion emerges from his den. We shall 
pass over the blades of the sword into the gates of heaven. We ask from 
God to accept our contributions to the great attack, the great attack 
on America, and to place our 19 martyred brethren among the highest 
peaks in paradise.'' Now, this is the guy we want to bring to New York.
  Now, having logistically set up major cases for trial, I can tell you 
that you have jailers who are going to be responsible for these people 
in jail 24 hours a day. Those shifts change constantly. You will have 
to be very attentive not only to every single jailer, but to every 
single jailer's family, because these forces will look for weak links 
in the jailer and the jailer's family.
  You will have bailiffs in the courts who will also be responsible for 
their safekeeping and security. The bailiffs and their families will 
have to be viewed as potential weak links to be utilized by the 
terrorists.
  You'll have to think about the clerks who may be marshaling evidence. 
They

[[Page 27743]]

and their families will have to worry about being targets.
  You will have to think about potential jurors. Even though the names 
supposedly would be kept secret, you have to worry about them and their 
families.
  And the judge, his name will not be kept secret. The judge and his 
family will be open targets the rest of their lives.
  This is scary stuff from a President who knows how to community 
organize better than any President we've had, but I don't believe he 
knows the organizational efforts and the weaknesses that will be 
brought out.
  I would yield to my friend from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg).
  Mr. SHADEGG. I appreciate the gentleman yielding.
  I just want to say that I hope Americans are thinking through the 
various ramifications. I think you just made an excellent point. We are 
talking about trials of terrorists in civilian courts in the biggest 
city, or one of the biggest cities in the Nation.
  You just made a brilliant point. What about the guards and their 
families, the court clerks and their families, the bailiffs and their 
families, and on and on and on, all of whom now will be exposed to 
perhaps pressure, kidnapping, threats.
  But what about, how long will this take? Are these trials that can be 
concluded in weeks? No, I don't think so. You are a judge. Do you think 
these trials can be concluded in months? Or perhaps, as our colleague 
Mr. Hoekstra pointed out on Face the Nation yesterday, these are trials 
which, if the defense exploits them, as defense attorneys do in courts 
in America, could go on for months or years, ripping open the wounds of 
the people whose family members died in those attacks. Why? Why in 
God's name are we giving terrorists the protection of trials in 
American criminal justice courts? It is insane. It absolutely makes no 
sense.
  I believe that we are exposing the people of New York, the people 
involved in these courts and the people involved in their security all 
for no reason whatsoever, and it won't just go on for a few days or a 
few weeks or a few months.

                              {time}  2115

  I would like to direct the attention of the listening audience to the 
points that were made in today's media. This is going to be a field day 
for al Qaeda to learn how America and the American system of 
intelligence gathers information, and they'll be able to drag it out in 
open public court rather than in a military tribunal.
  Somebody explain to me--I wish somebody could explain to me--why 
terrorists deserve the protections of the U.S. Constitution as if they 
had broken civil laws while they're operating inside this country. 
Khalid Shiekh Mohammed was not in the United States when he planned 
this. This was not a simple murder. This was a terrorist attack by 
enemy combatants. We may not want to call it war. We may not want to 
call it a war on terror. We may not want to accept the fact that there 
are people who hate us, as the quote the gentleman from Texas just read 
demonstrates; but it's reality. And we ought to be dealing with it as a 
terrorist threat in the tribunals set up for terrorist threats and for 
war crimes and crimes committed in the process of combat.
  There was no mistaking, absolutely no mistaking, what al Qaeda wanted 
to accomplish by these attacks, and they were not done for mere 
criminal purposes. They were done to terrorize a Nation. And we have 
lost sight of that, and I think this administration has lost sight of 
it. I think this Attorney General is making a grave, grave mistake. And 
the damage we have seen in the past when our intelligence community is 
injured because this kind of information is made public and we are no 
longer able to operate as an intelligence community protecting a Nation 
against foreign enemies should act, I think, is a risk which we should 
never be undertaking under these circumstances.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding. I know his years on the bench as 
a trial judge watching criminal trials makes it painfully clear that 
that's a procedure designed to protect defendants accused by the Nation 
of crimes under the laws and statutes of this Nation. That's not what 
we are dealing with here, and I thank the gentleman for making that 
point.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate Mr. Shadegg making the point he does about 
why would we bring them to trial here in the United States, especially 
in New York City.
  There are a lot of people that have never picked up the Constitution. 
We've got a little pocket Constitution here. But in article I it talks 
about the legislative powers. Over in section 8 it says that ``Congress 
shall have power to'' and you go down to ``constitute tribunals 
inferior to the Supreme Court.'' So President Bush made a mistake when 
he tried to create tribunals by the executive branch without getting 
Congress involved, and the Supreme Court rightfully struck that down 
and said you can't do that because article I, section 8 says this is 
something that Congress must do.
  So then Congress did that. We had the Military Commissions Act of 
2006, and this is the bill that's been slightly amended here this year, 
but it still says that, in section 948c, persons subject to military 
commissions: any alien unprivileged enemy belligerent is subject to 
trial by military commission as set forth in this chapter.
  I am in the process of drafting this legislation right now that we 
will file this week that will say they must be tried in military 
commissions so we don't have an inexperienced President that doesn't 
realize the consequences of his actions.
  Mr. McCAUL. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. GOHMERT. I yield to my friend Mr. McCaul.
  Mr. McCAUL. Are we not in a war on terror, in your view?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Pardon?
  Mr. McCAUL. Are we not in a war on terror?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Some people don't want to call it that and it may be 
unilateral at this point, but there is a war using terror going on and 
we either fight it, or we will be overwhelmed by it. So we should be in 
it, yes.
  Mr. McCAUL. My point is that that language has been taken out of the 
vernacular by this administration for whatever reason. We have our 
points as to why, but this is not being viewed as a war. What happened 
by the decision to bring in the mastermind of 9/11 to the very city 
where 3,000 Americans were murdered basically was a signal by this 
administration that the war on terror is over, that we are no longer 
going to treat terrorists as enemies of war; but, rather, we're going 
to go back to the Clinton administration years where we're going to 
treat them as criminal defendants, like Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 World 
Trade Center bomber, a criminal defendant. Not an act of war, but he is 
a criminal defendant.
  By the way, Ramzi Yousef did not get the death penalty. And he went 
to talk to his Uncle Khalid Shiekh Mohammed about flying airplanes into 
buildings, and look what happened. Moussaoui did not get the death 
penalty because a lot of evidence was held to be inadmissible in a 
Federal court.
  If they are true enemies of war, the best venue to try them is, as we 
did in World War II, by military tribunals. And the rules of evidence, 
as you know, Judge, I was a Federal prosecutor in the Justice 
Department, Southern District of New York, U.S. Attorney, one of the 
finest in the country. But the fact is you bring them on American soil, 
give them all rights under the Constitution, as my good friend from 
Arizona stated, why does Khalid Shiekh Mohammed get constitutional 
rights?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Reclaiming my time, that is a very important point. Why 
does he get American citizens' rights? He has not been to America. He 
masterminded this. He was captured overseas in a foreign country. He's 
in Guantanamo right now, and the Constitution gives us in Congress the 
right to set up a military tribunal commission system, which we did.
  But I want to come back and I'm going to keep injecting quotes from

[[Page 27744]]

Khalid Shiekh Mohammed's own pleading himself. This is the guy who our 
President and Eric Holder, the Attorney General, want to bring to the 
most densely populated area in America. On page 4 he said, ``In God's 
book he ordered us to fight you everywhere we find you, even if you 
were inside the holiest of all holy cities, the Mosque in Mecca and the 
holy city of Mecca even during sacred months.'' He said, ``In God's 
book,'' verse 9, Al-Tawbah, ``then fight and slay the pagans wherever 
you find them and seize them and besiege them and lie in wait for them 
in each and every ambush.'' This is the guy they want to yield American 
citizens' rights to who will not be able to----
  Mr. McCAUL. If the gentleman would yield, what was the first thing 
that Khalid Shiekh Mohammed said when he was apprehended in Islamabad? 
It was two things.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Take me to New York.
  Mr. McCAUL. One, I want an attorney, and, number two, Take me to New 
York. And you know what? President Obama and this administration gave 
him his wish.
  I just want to end my comments by saying you and I have tried cases. 
This is going to be a circus, a show trial of the maximum. The motions 
to transfer venue, the motions to suppress the evidence, none of the 
information we got from Khalid Shiekh Mohammed using water-boarding, 
which has protected American lives, which, by the way, this 
administration wants to investigate and put those CIA and intelligence 
people in jail. The discovery alone, as the gentleman from Arizona 
stated, will keep this thing alive for years to come, will involve 
classified information that will not be properly protected as it would 
in the military court.
  Finally, on the security issue, I think the gentleman from Texas is 
right: this will become a Mecca for the terrorists, not only to al 
Qaeda but homegrown, radicalized homegrown, whether Mr. Moussaoui is 
homegrown, radicalized, or not, people like him will come to New York 
to blow buildings up and to prey on the jury perhaps or the judges.
  Mr. SHADEGG. If the gentleman will yield, I think it's fascinating 
that we all stand here, all three of us, with backgrounds in 
prosecution. The gentleman was a Federal prosecutor. I was in the 
Arizona Attorney General's Office for many years and involved in the 
prosecutions of a number of cases. You sat on the bench. All three of 
us come here instinctively tonight because we are so repulsed by the 
notion that American criminal courts intended to provide a plethora of 
rights to Americans accused of crimes inside this country are being 
afforded to someone who is clearly a terrorist, who clearly plotted 
from outside this country, who clearly plotted acts of war, and who 
said, as the gentleman just pointed out, as soon as he was apprehended 
outside the country, I want an attorney and I want to go to New York. 
And this administration is going to give him both of those wishes? 
That's an outrage.
  I want to explore the point that my colleague Mr. Gohmert made 
earlier. This is supposed to be a Nation of laws. Laws that anticipate 
that crimes committed by war criminals, enemy combatants, terrorists 
seeking to attack this Nation and all it stands for, they weren't 
seeking to attack a random group of people on an airplane or in a 
building. They wanted to attack this Nation. The law says how that 
should be dealt with. It's supposed to be dealt with when those 
terrorists, those war criminals are apprehended, as Khalid Shiekh 
Mohammed was. They are supposed to be tried in tribunals. You just read 
us the law.
  How does Mr. Holder, how does President Obama get around the law? And 
do not the people of America have the right to demand that the law be 
followed and that these individuals be charged and tried in tribunals 
held by the military because they are war criminals? They are not 
civilians and they are not U.S. citizens and they are not afforded the 
protections of the criminal courts of the United States.
  Mr. McCAUL. If the gentleman would yield, this was clearly evident 
early in this administration under their global justice policy that no 
longer would apprehended terrorists captured on the battlefield be 
treated as enemies of war.
  Mr. SHADEGG. So we're going to read them their Miranda rights? We're 
going to provide lawyers to them out on the battlefield?
  Mr. McCAUL. Precisely. And what came out in a shocking story that has 
not been told enough, in my view, was that FBI agents were there at the 
detention facilities reading them the Miranda rights. This is where 
this administration has shifted towards treating them as criminal 
defendants in Afghanistan, with full rights of the U.S. Constitution in 
Afghanistan. And I believe it is a sad day for America when we bring 
this mastermind of 9/11 to the very city where he killed 3,000 
Americans.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Reclaiming my time briefly, the gentleman from Arizona 
asked how do they get around the law. Under section 948h of the 
Military Commissions Act of 2006, it says the ``military commissions 
under this chapter may be convened by the Secretary of Defense or by 
any officer or official of the United States designated by the 
Secretary for that purpose.'' So the Secretary of the Defense serves at 
the pleasure of the President. And that ``may'' word allows them not to 
convene, which brings them to court.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Yes.
  Mr. SHADEGG. So the Secretary of Defense may choose, pressured by the 
President, not to convene a tribunal. How then does that give the 
President of the United States the right to bring them to the United 
States and to try them in a criminal court? Because they did not 
violate a civilian law of the United States. I submit they committed 
acts of war. Does he have the power to overrule the law and bring them 
here and say they are something they are not, say they are not 
terrorists when their conduct constituted an act of terror? Or is he 
simply then obligated to hold them if they don't conduct a military 
tribunal?
  Mr. GOHMERT. The gentleman raises a very good question. The problem 
has been apparently that the Attorney General and the President don't 
want to charge them with what they've actually done, committed an act 
of war against this Nation. They want to charge them with a criminal 
violation and bring that to court. And if they do not charge them with 
the act of war that brought about the deaths of thousands of Americans, 
innocent Americans of all walks of life, if they don't want to charge 
them with the most heinous act of war against this country in our 
history, and charge them simply with a criminal violation, then they 
can bring them into the civilians courts.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Yes.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Does that then raise the issue of whether their refusal 
to charge them with the conduct they, in fact, engaged in, which I 
would argue was clearly an act of war, clearly an act of terrorism 
against the Nation, if the officials charged with the duty of charging 
them with that conduct, acts of war against the United States, acts of 
terrorism against the United States, the Secretary of the Army, the 
Attorney General, or the President of the United States, are they not 
then derelict in their duty and are they not then subject to being 
either punished by the Congress or removed from office for failing to 
do their duty to charge Khalid Shiekh Mohammed with the conduct he 
engaged in, which was an act of war against the United States?

                              {time}  2130

  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, that's another good question. But as far as a--I 
think there is a breach of a fiduciary duty when you're more concerned 
about your image among foreign countries than you are with the safety 
of individuals in New York City, it would seem to be a breach of the 
fiduciary duty to protect Americans.
  Mr. SHADEGG. If the gentleman will yield, I'll let him make his 
point.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, let me inject one more comment by Khalid Sheikh

[[Page 27745]]

Mohammed, because I'm going to keep on injecting his own words from his 
own pleading. We do not--this is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--we do not 
possess your military might, not your nuclear weapons, not yet; 
nevertheless, we fight you with the Almighty God. So if our act of 
jihad and our fighting with you cause fear and terror, then many thanks 
to God, because it is Him that has thrown fear into your hearts which 
resulted in your infidelity, paganism and your statement that God had a 
son and your trinity beliefs. That's for Christians. He also says, in 
God's book, He ordered us to fight you everywhere we find you. Oh I've 
already read that one. But he quotes from the Koran and says, soon 
shall we cast terror into the hearts of the unbeliever for that they 
join companies with Allah for which he has sent no authority. Their 
place will be in the fire, and the evil is the home of the wrongdoers.
  This is the guy we're going to bring to New York City. I yield to my 
friend.
  Mr. McCAUL. And you're going to bring him into New York. And Osama 
Bin Laden, in the late 1990s, declared war against the United States. 
He actually declared war against the United States.
  Mr. SHADEGG. And if the gentleman would yield, and he took credit for 
this act, and said it was a part of that war against the United States. 
How in God's name could Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not be at least charged 
and tried with an act of terrorism against the United States which, 
under current law, if we are in fact a Nation of laws, must be tried in 
a military tribunal? This country, the American people, get it. They 
see that in the name of political correctness we are placing an 
imprimatur on these acts that they were not acts of war, and that is 
not what the American people believe. We will rue the day, we will as a 
Nation, rue the day that we treat our enemies as criminals and not as 
enemy combatants who commit war against us.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, there is a key issue my friend raises. We treat 
them as criminals instead of as war terrorists and war criminals, 
because this won't just put New Yorkers at risk. It will not. It will 
put our soldiers at risk.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Absolutely.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I mean, having tried so many criminal cases, I can tell 
you, you know, the best thing they do is roll in, they've got 
photographers, they've got people with the rubber gloves, they take--
the latex gloves--they take DNA evidence, they take fingerprints, they 
do all of this forensic analysis of the scene as my friends both know 
because they've used that evidence. Our soldiers cannot afford to bring 
out a forensic wagon in the middle of a battlefield to check for DNA, 
to check for fingerprints, to establish a chain of custody. And both of 
my friends know, if you don't have the chain of custody on a piece of 
evidence, it's not coming in. It's one of the reasons you don't charge 
war criminals as criminals in a civilian court because our soldiers 
should not be put in harm's way trying to gather that kind of forensic 
evidence.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Every father and every mother and every sister and every 
brother of a soldier of this Nation needs to be scared because this 
undercuts our troops. This damages their morale. This undercuts their 
ability to do their job. This is a betrayal of America's fighting women 
and America's fighting men, and we need to stand up and we need to 
speak out and we need to say it's wrong. And it's not just unsafe for 
the people of New York. It's not just unsafe for the people of 
Illinois. It's not just unsafe for the people of Texas or Arizona. It 
is unsafe for every soldier we have engaged in combat. It is a betrayal 
of them in the name of political correctness.
  Mr. McCAUL. Political correctness. And when has the Constitution of 
the United States been applied to enemies who are captured on the 
battlefield outside of the United States? I don't think that's ever 
been done. I'm not sure if that has ever been done.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I would doubt it has ever happened.
  Mr. McCAUL. And this administration again wants to take the 
vernacular war on terror, they want to just erase the last, you know, 
4, 8 years. No, it was never a war. These are just criminal cases that 
need to be prosecuted and we need to treat them that way.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I think the gentleman brings up a great point of 
history, and I want to add to it. Do you know that in World War II, 
enemy combatants caught in the United States, and there were some who 
came into the United States, came ashore or came to our coasts in 
submarines, then came ashore, could not, under international law, be 
held in American civilian prisons. The reason for that is they are not, 
as of that point in time, they're not criminals, and they have not been 
convicted, and therefore cannot be punished as prisoners in American 
jails or prisons are being punished.
  And so we had to create camps where you could hold prisoners of war. 
As it turned out, we didn't adjudicate most of them. We released them 
upon the end of combat. In this case we are actually doing the 
opposite. We are not just saying that they're not enemy combatants 
engaged in acts of war and treating them separately and treating them 
as our colleague from Texas, Mr. Gohmert, points out, through military 
tribunals. We're mixing them into the American criminal justice system, 
a system designed to preserve and protect the rights of the American 
people. It's insane. And the consequences will mean that, by extension, 
we have to go into the battlefield with evidence testing and with 
defense counsels and, as my colleague from Texas pointed out, the 
notion that we have to read them their rights. This is lunacy and a 
betrayal of our military.
  Mr. McCAUL. As the gentleman knows if he will yield, a criminal 
defense lawyer in a civilian court is going to use discovery at every 
opportunity to embarrass the United States of America and to blame 
America first for the acts of a terrorist, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. And 
what concerns me the most is that they're going to make a mockery of 
our criminal justice system here in the United States and use it as a 
propaganda weapon in what I still refer to as this war on terror. This 
was one of the biggest mistakes this President has made. The decision 
to close Guantanamo Bay--I saw Khalid Sheikh Mohammed down in 
Guantanamo; it was one of the most chilling things I've ever seen, as 
he prayed, bowed over his prayer rug, to Mecca. We haven't broken his 
spirit.
  And this administration again just granted him his wish. He gets his 
lawyer now, and he gets to come to New York City, just like his nephew, 
Ramsay Yusef did, who, by the way, did not get the death penalty. And 
as I close, as I move on, I sincerely hope that--this was a huge 
mistake--but I sincerely hope that this man is given the ultimate 
punishment so he can--not only here on earth but move on to the next 
world.
  Mr. GOHMERT. And the gentleman makes a great point also, that he is 
not remorseful at all and, in fact, here he has been in prison, and 
this is filed this year, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed says, and this is 
from his pleading that he himself prepared, so our religion is a 
religion of fear and terror to the enemies of God, the Jews, the 
Christians and pagans. With God willing, we are terrorists to the bone. 
So many thanks to God. He went on to say, and he quotes the Arab poet 
that stated, we will terrorize you as long as we live, with swords, 
fire and airplanes.
  It's unbelievable that you would bring a guy like this into the 
United States of America, put our soldiers at risk for the future, 
forcing them to try to gather forensic evidence. While people are 
shooting at them they're going to have to be worried about fingerprints 
and DNA evidence and gee, did they have witnesses, getting witnesses' 
names and addresses, locations so they can come back and perhaps bring 
them to court in New York some day to testify. We just don't do this. 
We can't afford to do this when people are at war.
  Our President, this administration may not realize we're at war, but 
there are people at war with us, and we fail to respond at our own 
risk. This is scary stuff. And we have the Military Commission Act of 
2006. We're working on language that will make it a requirement so that 
it is not an option

[[Page 27746]]

for the President. I mentioned article 1, section 8 that gives power to 
Congress to constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court. As a 
constitutional law professor mentioned this weekend to me as I was 
visiting with him about this issue. He said, you know, the Supreme 
Court is really the only court in the country that has a right to exist 
under the Constitution. Every other court, tribunal, commission, only 
has their existence at the will of Congress.
  And article 3 and section 1 makes that clear: The judicial power of 
the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court and in such 
inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and 
establish. Going over, and it says, even the Supreme Court, it talks 
about all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and 
consuls and those in which the State shall be party, the Supreme Court 
shall have original jurisdiction. In the other cases before mentioned 
the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction both as to law, in 
fact, with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress 
shall make.
  We have an obligation in this Congress to rein in a President that is 
putting New York City, our soldiers, our military at risk, and we fail 
to do so at the risk of those we are elected to serve and protect from 
all enemies, foreign and domestic. I yield to my friend from Arizona.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I appreciate the gentleman for yielding. I think it's 
important to note that from the outset there have been some in this 
body who have tried to stop this moment from occurring. I introduced 
legislation as soon as I heard that the President intended to bring 
detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the United States and to close 
Guantanamo Bay. I introduced legislation back last February to prohibit 
the President from bringing a single person who had ever been detained 
at Guantanamo Bay here to the United States. Mine was one of many bills 
introduced by Republican Members of Congress to try to stop this very 
point.
  Mr. GOHMERT. If the gentleman would yield, that was a good bill he 
filed as well, and I appreciate the efforts in doing that.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Our minority leader, Mr. Boehner, introduced a bill 
identical or very similar to mine. There have been other pieces of 
legislation. I just want to make it clear that I think that this is a 
grave error on so many fronts it's hard to explain. And it's worth 
maybe trying to lay out some of those points for anybody who'd just 
listen. Number one, I think the gentleman made a good point of this 
earlier. If you bring terrorists to the United States, there is, first 
and foremost, the danger that by merely being physically present in the 
United States, they will acquire rights that they do not have in 
Guantanamo Bay, that they do not have in Iraq, or that they did not 
have in Afghanistan.
  Mr. GOHMERT. And I will add that no prisoner of war, no enemy 
combatant has ever had in the whole history of the world and of 
mankind.
  Mr. SHADEGG. And why are we changing it? For some sense of political 
correctness, because we doubt ourselves, because we doubt that we were 
attacked, because we doubt the sincerity of the insane comments you've 
just read from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed about his intention to kill us, 
about his bragging, I believe, of beheading Daniel Pearl himself?
  Those are shocking things. But that's just like the first of many 
reasons why this is a terrible policy. The gentleman did, I think, an 
excellent job earlier, that maybe the average American doesn't think 
about. But think of the risk that you are imposing upon not just the 
sworn police officers who will transport the combatants brought here, 
and the jailers that will jail them and the judges that will preside 
and the clerks that will be in the room or the bailiffs, but think of 
every single one of their family members, not just their children, 
their wives; what about their brothers, their sisters, their cousins, 
their aunts, all of whom now become targets of terrorism, because if I 
were a terrorist outside of United States and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 
was going on trial in New York, I'd say, why don't I find the judge's 
cousin? Why don't I find the bailiff's sister? Why don't I find the 
jailer's brother? And I'll capture them and hold them for ransom until 
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is released.
  We are placing literally, a countless number of Americans, guards, 
bailiffs, clerks, judges, jury members, and all their families at risk 
to afford to avowed terrorists who say the insane hatred things that 
you just read? We are putting all of them at risk to afford to Khalid 
Sheikh Mohammed the rights that our Constitution reserves to Americans 
accused of, Americans simply accused of criminal acts in America? These 
were not criminal acts in America. This was an act of war.

                              {time}  2145

  As our colleague from Texas pointed out earlier, he made no mistake. 
When Osama bin Laden declared war against the United States, it was 
not, ``I plan to go rob the United States.'' It was not, ``I plan to go 
kidnap Americans in the United States and hold them for ransom.'' It 
was, ``I am declaring war against the United States.'' And here we sit 
compliant in this process because we want to be politically correct; we 
want to be perceived as fair.
  What did we establish that was unfair about Guantanamo? Soldiers 
there have been given copies of the Koran. They've been given prayer 
mats. They are allowed time of prayer. We have spent $50 million or 
more in building and improving that facility.
  This is the first time in the course of the history of this Nation 
that we have doubted ourselves so much as to say we can't deal with 
enemy combatants who launch a war against us as we have dealt with them 
throughout history; throughout World War I, World War II, Korea, 
Vietnam. The tradition, the standards, the equity, the justice of the 
American military tribunal process has been established. And now, for 
the sake of political correctness, because somebody is unhappy, maybe 
somebody who is not a friend of the United States, maybe somebody who 
is not an ally of the United States, maybe somebody who wants to 
destroy this Nation, says, ``We don't like your system,'' so we are 
going to put them into the American criminal justice system? It makes 
no sense.
  If he had been born here, if he had been a domestic terrorist who had 
begun his activities here, maybe that could be debated, but that is not 
the case. Not born here, not a U.S. citizen, not here when the crimes 
were committed, plotted from overseas as an act of war under the 
command of Osama bin Laden--a man who had already declared war on the 
United States--and both of them part of an entity, al Qaeda, an entity 
that, as an institution, declared war against the United States
  We have to stand our ground. This is the time, America, to say enough 
is enough. We are not going to expose America's citizens--all of those 
judges, all of those clerks, all of those bailiffs, all of those 
jailers, all of those police officers who have to transport somebody. 
And it's easy for them to say, ``We are tough.'' I saw the mayor of New 
York say, ``We are tough. We can do it.''
  Well, Mayor, how are you going to feel when it is your daughter that 
is kidnapped at school by a terrorist? How are you going to feel when 
it is some clerk, some innocent clerk of the court whose daughter or 
son is kidnapped or the judge's wife or the jailer's little brother or 
little sister?
  This is political correctness run amok.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Nothing illustrates my friend's point better than Khalid 
Sheikh Mohammed's own words on page 6 of his own pleadings where he 
says, ``We fight you and destroy you and terrorize you.'' He goes on to 
say, ``So we ask from God to accept our contributions to the great 
attack, the great attack on America.'' Those are not words of a 
conspiracy to commit a crime. Those are admissions of participation and 
an act of war.
  I want to direct attention to New York City where I am sure the 
leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that are still loose are already 
planning. Think about the logistics in New York

[[Page 27747]]

City. Well, you could provide a safe environment like we have in 
Guantanamo if you closed all of the tunnels, if you closed all of the 
bridges, if you closed the area around the court and the area around 
where these terrorists, these enemy combatants, are being held. You 
close that area off. Failure to do any of those opens the easy 
possibility of one car or several cars being filled with explosives and 
driving near an area and blowing up.
  Now, you also have to stop the subways that are running underneath 
all of these areas. There is no easy way. There is just no way to 
safeguard the people of New York City.
  And my friend brings up the kidnapping of family members of 
participants in the case, but then there is the also the problem of 
those who are threatened to be kidnapped.
  Now, when you have a big trial, normally it's not uncommon to have 
bomb threats called in. How many bomb threats do you think will be 
called in during the course of this trial?
  Mr. SHADEGG. If the gentleman will yield on that point, I guess in 
order to figure out how long you'd have to close the subways and how 
long you'd have to close the bridges and how many bomb threats will be 
called in during the course of the trial, you'd have to begin by 
saying, well, how long will the trial last? And that is a pretty 
interesting question.
  In America, if we have a true criminal trial in a multiple murder 
case, those can last weeks, months, years. I don't know what the 
longest criminal trial in American history is, but I guarantee you, it 
is a lot more than a month or two. And then when you add appeals, I 
presume Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as Eric Holder envisions and as Barack 
Obama envisions, is going to get to have appeals. Maybe he'll get to 
have interlocutory appeals of rulings by the judge which could deny him 
his now, I guess, constitutionally guaranteed rights, the rights we 
cherish as citizens of the United States which we've now decided to 
extend to an avowed terrorist.
  I want to suggest that our colleague from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) was 
correct yesterday morning on Face the Nation when he pointed out that 
this could turn into a legal circus that goes on for not days, not 
weeks, not months, but years when you count Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 
all of the others that I guess Eric Holder wants to bring here one 
after another and try in the courts of the United States as if they 
were criminals.
  I am plagued by a question as I stand here. I cannot cite to you--and 
I challenge someone to let us know--what it is about the criminal--
about the military tribunal process that is not adequate. Did Attorney 
General Holder announce that there was some flaw in the military 
tribunal process that could not be remedied? Did the American Civil 
Liberties Union, have they come forward and said there is a flaw in the 
tribunal process, because I didn't hear it. It was good enough for 
prisoners of war during World War I. It was good enough for prisoners 
of war during World War II. It was good enough, I presume, for 
prisoners of war in Korea and Vietnam. How is it now that it's not good 
enough? Why are we doing this?
  Does the gentleman know?
  Mr. GOHMERT. All I can think of is you have an administration that is 
willing to bow both personally and as a Nation before other nations, 
bowing our security, our safety in ways that have never been done 
before.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Are those nations changing their military tribunal 
processes?
  Mr. GOHMERT. There is no one who has ever granted an American citizen 
the kind of rights that are being afforded--and I am sure my friend has 
been to Guantanamo, as I have, and, in fact, as you get down there, 
they utilize brilliant legal minds in conjunction with wonderful 
engineering minds to create a terrific courtroom setting with security. 
There is a bulletproof glass between the gallery and where the trial 
will take place. There are areas where people can consult, defendants 
can consult with their attorneys and that are completely secure. They 
don't have to worry about privacy issues or being bugged because of the 
austerity of those facilities. It is very well thought out. It is very 
difficult to get there. You couldn't get an attack into that area. You 
couldn't have a terrorist activity take place that would threaten that 
facility, it was so well thought out.
  Oh, and by the way, with regard to Guantanamo, my friend raised this. 
The prayer rugs, the arrows pointing which way to Mecca, the Korans 
that are provided in safekeeping--and as we know it was not a guard 
that tried to flush a Koran. That was not the case. But I asked our own 
Sam Johnson, who is in this body, who was a POW in Hanoi, if anybody 
provided him prayer books or prayer rugs or gave him a chance to pray.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I think he liked the Bible, if I know Sam Johnson.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Sam said there were no Bibles provided, but they did 
give them the chance to drop to their knees. They would put a rod 
across the floor where, when they were beat in the back and dropped to 
their knees, their knees would hit on the rod and then they were forced 
to stay with their knees on that rod. And he said, It may not sound 
like much, but over a period of hours, it becomes so excruciatingly 
painful that it's just unbearable and you hope and pray you will pass 
out. That is what has been afforded to Americans before. And we have 
seen what happened to Daniel Pearl.
  They say, well, gee, they may treat ours more harshly if we don't 
bring them to a criminal trial in New York. How much more harshly do 
you treat somebody than cutting their heads off while they are gurgling 
and trying to beg for help? I don't think that is a problem.
  We need to treat these people as the war criminals that they are, 
that they have admitted to be; otherwise, we put our Nation at great 
risk.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I think the gentleman says it right. I appreciate the 
opportunity to be here on the floor and chat with him.
  I happen to be from Arizona. I happen to be from the home State of 
John McCain. I happen to believe that there is, in fact, a duty to 
treat war criminals within the bounds of international law. I believe 
that they should not be beaten, they should not be tortured. I believe 
they should be afforded those standards that are accorded to those 
accused of war crimes through history. I personally believe they can be 
held without trial as long as the war goes on, and I believe this war 
is going on.
  We, as a Nation, can be in denial as long as we want. We can cleanse 
from our vernacular every term that the administration finds offensive. 
Janet Napolitano can say we are no longer going to call it a war on 
terror. We are no longer going to deal with radical Islam or Islamists 
or jihadists. We are going to pretend that all goes away. In my life 
experience, you cannot pretend and, by pretending, change reality.
  There are those who hate us. There are those around the world who 
hate us. There are those like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whose works you 
just read, who despise us and who desire to kill us. If we do not deal 
with them fairly, but also according to law, then we've betrayed the 
tradition of this Nation.
  Never ever, in the history of this Nation, have we taken war 
criminals, people who have committed acts of terrorism under the 
auspices of an organization--here, al Qaeda--led by a leader--here, 
Osama bin Laden--that has declared war formally and in writing against 
the United States and said somebody acting on behalf of that 
organization, having as an organization declared war against the United 
States, having engaged then in acts of war, shall be tried in American 
criminal courts designed to deal with criminals who commit common 
crimes against other citizens of this Nation. This is a betrayal of our 
soldiers, and it puts our Nation and puts our soldiers at grave risk.
  I believe Attorney General Holder will rue the day they made this 
decision and rue the day when someone is captured or killed in New York 
or held hostage as a result of this irresponsible

[[Page 27748]]

conduct. And even if that doesn't happen, it, alone, is a betrayal of 
the system we have followed since the founding of this Nation where 
those accused of war crimes are tried in military tribunals.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate so much my friend's wonderful points.
  We understand the President just recently, because of the lack of 
understanding of our military history and the Nation's history, is 
perhaps apparently the first President ever to fail to understand and 
believe that President Truman did the right thing in dropping the two 
bombs that they did.
  And so if you are an apologist for America, you believe that 
consistently we have done the wrong things, you have never been really 
proud of America before, you don't know that the Japanese had committed 
to dig in and had planned to withstand an assault even to the death of 
every single Japanese person on the island of Japan.

                              {time}  2200

  If you don't know these facts, if you don't know the fact that 
perhaps millions of lives were saved by dropping those two bombs 
because it brought the war to an end rather than forcing the Japanese, 
as their leaders intended to do, to die to the last person to repel an 
invasion, then you would be an apologist, if you simply don't know the 
facts. But this puts us further at risk. We just simply cannot bow to 
this.
  The answer will be when the American people respond and let the White 
House know and let the Department of Justice know. Burn up the phone 
lines. Let them know by constant calls. I'm not sure I would email this 
White House since they have shown what they do with the list. But at 
least burn up the phone lines letting them know that the Commander in 
Chief needs to act as a Commander in Chief, and not an apologist in 
chief and that we should not put our soldiers at further risk by 
requiring them to gather forensic evidence, that we should not put the 
people of New York at further risk, and to leave them at Guantanamo to 
be tried there.
  People who understand about war understand that in the whole history 
of mankind, the precedent is if you as a group declare war on another 
nation and you or your fellow warriors are captured, then you are held 
until such time as your fellow group will cease the war, whether it 
takes years, a 100-year war, a 7-year war, whatever it takes until you 
convince your people to quit being at war with us, then we hold you 
until the war is over, and then bring you to trial. That's what the 
precedent normally is. Whether it's 4 years as World War II, whatever 
the length of time, we hold you until your people are no longer at war 
with us as a Nation.
  In this case, if you want to rush them, bring them to trial, fine. Do 
it with a military commission set up under the Military Commissions Act 
of 2006. We are going to try to amend it so that the President has no 
choice, so that this President learns you do not have the choice to put 
New Yorkers at risk.
  It breaks my heart to think about the families of those victims of 9/
11 and what they will be subjected to. As a judge, I saw the faces of 
family members who struggled with the aspect of going through and 
reliving the trauma of the terrible crime that was committed against 
them. I saw those faces. I heard their great suffering. I'm afraid it's 
not going to be nearly what that will be collectively of a city the 
size of New York as they have to relive 9/11 on the island. They have 
to relive the possibility of further terrorist attacks.
  Certainly terrorist attacks will be threatened during the course of 
the trial. And, of course, you would expect the defense attorneys to 
wait until Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and these other terrorists have 
actually put their feet on American soil so they will be granted all 
the rights of an American citizen such as they were trying to kill as 
many of as they could. You wait until their feet are on American soil, 
and then you file your motion to change venue, then you file your 
motion for discovery, then you file your motions to examine experts and 
drag those things out as long as you can.
  I ended up being asked to take over a civil trial in Texas that 
several judges had worked on prior to me. It was outside my district. 
But every judge had been recused for one reason or another. It had gone 
on for 11 years. I was asked to take it over, and it had been a 
logistical nightmare. And I was deemed to have done an amazing job in 
wrapping the case up in 2 years when both parties said when I got into 
it that they wouldn't bring a case to trial for perhaps 5 years.
  But even working as quickly as I did and being as forceful as I was 
as the judge, not taking any extensions, not granting any type of 
continuances, forcing everything as quickly as could be done, and yet 
legally, it still took 2 years to wrap that thing up. And that was 
considered amazing.
  With what is at stake here, the City of New York should suffer no 
more. No more. I went to New York shortly after 9/11. I saw the 
suffering. We should not do that to New Yorkers again. My goodness, 
they have suffered enough.
  Having spent 4 years in the Army, being familiar with the military 
justice system, it isn't a slam dunk for anybody under the UCMJ. There 
are rights afforded individuals who are tried under the UCMJ. But that 
is the appropriate place to try people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who 
says ``We are terrorists to the bone. So many thanks to God.'' We can 
also be thankful to God that all Muslims, in fact, the vast majority, 
do not feel as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
  This man does not need to set foot on American soil. We need to have 
a President that starts acting like a Commander in Chief, not an 
apologist in chief, so that we can keep America as safe as we have been 
for the last 8 years and not as the terror will be reintroduced by the 
reintroduction of these masterminds in America.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I realize my time is now expired, and I would 
conclude.

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