Our military has been gutted under Biden and Kamala. Now it’s gotten even worse.
Because the Pentagon made a stunning admission that is leaving jaws on the ground.
In a late Friday move, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin revoked a contentious plea deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and his accomplices Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi.
The plea deal, which Austin yanked, would have swapped death penalties for life sentences in exchange for guilty pleas to lesser charges. By overriding retired Brig. Gen. Susan K. Escallier, the ex-Army lawyer appointed to manage the remaining 9/11 cases in Guantanamo, Austin has put the death penalty back into play.
“I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused in the above-referenced case, responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior convening authority,” Austin stated in an August 2 memo to Gen. Escallier.
“Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024, in the above-referenced case.”
Florida Republican Rep. Mike Waltz, a retired Army Green Beret with multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, criticized the original plea deal.
“At least Sec. Austin cleaned it up, but now what?” Waltz wrote on X after the memo’s late Friday release.
The defendants have been held by the U.S. since 2003, accused of their roles in the September 11, 2001, attacks that murdered nearly 3,000 people in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania.
The criminal proceedings have been bogged down in years of pre-trial wrangling over whether evidence was tainted due to their treatment in CIA black sites.
Military prosecutors, in a letter to 9/11 victims’ families, admitted that their earlier plea deal decision would provoke “mixed reactions.”
“The decision to enter into a pre-trial agreement after 12 years of pre-trial litigation was not reached lightly. However, it is our collective, reasoned, and good-faith judgment that this resolution is the best path to finality and justice in the case,” the letter read.
The plea deal faced harsh backlash from 9/11 survivors, such as Andrew Ansbro, a New York City firefighter and current leader of the FDNY-Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York.
“We feel betrayed and disgusted that they’ll not face ultimate justice of the death penalty and that these terrorists were offered a plea deal which will allow them to live into old age with contact with their families, while NYC firefighters continue to die because of their actions,” Ansbro stated.
“We’re still losing three firefighters a month to the effects of 9/11 at Ground Zero,” he added.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill joined the chorus of condemnation against the plea deal for the 9/11 mastermind and his associates.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called it “a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend America and provide justice.”
He lambasted the Biden-Harris administration, saying it demonstrated “weakness in the face of sworn enemies of the American people.”
“The only thing worse than negotiating with terrorists is negotiating with them after they are in custody. The families of their victims and the American people deserve real justice,” McConnell stated.
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
