Obama nears compromise on Guantanamo trials
by Lucile Malandain
WASHINGTON -President Barack Obama appears near a compromise to allow military tribunals to move forward for the alleged September 11 plotters in exchange for a deal to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

Influential Republican Senator Lindsey Lindsey Graham has offered a deal that would allow Obama to fulfill his pledge to close the criticized Guantanamo Bay detention center at a US base in Cuba if the president agrees to use military courts.

Graham said a decision by the White House to revert to military trials would be "an act of leadership well received by the public" and would help secure an agreement to close the Guantanamo center.

"We need a legal system that gives due process to the detainee, but also understands they didn't rob a liquor store," Graham told CBS television recently.

"We're at war, and some of this information is very sensitive and classified."

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said a decision may not come for several weeks but that the president was examining a number of options: "The president's obviously strong equity in this is seeing that, after many long years, that justice is brought," he said.

Obama's administration had announced it would try self-confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others in civilian courts in New York.

But the plan for the "trial of the century" ran into a backlash from Republican lawmakers who have introduced legislation to require a military trial

Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow of governance at the Brookings Institution specializing in legal issues, said the Obama administration "underestimated" the degree of political opposition to a civilian trial in New York.

"The result is that the political opposition to it is now such that they can't really do it anymore," he said.

The legal issues are challenging as well, say analysts and former officials of the administration of President George W. Bush.

Juan Zarate, a former Bush national security adviser for counterterrorism, said the issue has been muddled by a change in legal strategy after the transition from the Bush administration, which favored military trials.

"They've tried to apply a tiered legal system, a criminal legal system, a military commission system and a preventive detention system," he said.

"All of that is inconsistent if you're going to inject the al-Qaeda figures into the civilian system."

Zarate noted that a Guantanamo task force has recommended that 35 of the remaining detainees face a trial of some sort.

"Unless these individuals have pre-existing indictment against them... I think it's going to be very hard for the administration to justify using the criminal justice system," Zarate said.

Human rights groups have criticized any move for a military trial, saying it would not provide the due process and openness needed to bring legitimacy.

However, the plan has encountered growing opposition from groups criticizing the cost of providing security in Manhattan.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg changed his mind after initially backing the civilian trial in Manhattan, suggesting that the highly sensitive case could instead proceed on a military base.

David Rivkin, a former Justice Department official under Bush who is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the issues should be examined on a case-by-case basis but that military trials should not be ruled out.

"Military commissions are both consistent with international law, consistent with our legal and political traditions and fully constitutional. They can go forward, it doesn't matter how many detours you've taken on that path," he said.

Rivkin said officials may be politically embarrassed by flip-flopping, but "they have not forfeited their rights to try (the suspects) them in military commissions merely because they announced that they were planning to try them in the civilian justice system."