ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Now some Guantanamo news - a judge has ruled that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other men charged with the September 11 terror attacks are allowed to plead guilty and spend life in prison rather than face a death-penalty trial. That's even though Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin rescinded those plea deals a few months ago. NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer covers Guantanamo, and she's here to explain. Hey, Sacha.
SACHA PFEIFFER, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: So has the defense secretary been overruled by a Guantanamo judge?
PFEIFFER: Yes, he has. And this is part of a roller-coaster of a legal debate over how to resolve the 9/11 terrorism case, which has still not gone to trial more than two decades after those attacks. It's been gridlocked for years. So this summer, prosecutors and defense attorneys and the person who oversees the U.S. military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - which is where this case is happening - they all agreed that plea deals or settlement agreements were the best way to end it. In other words, forget about trying to have a trial, which seems hopeless. Instead, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - the alleged mastermind of 9/11 - and his co-defendants would admit guilt and get life sentences.
Those plea deals were announced in July. At first, it seemed like finally, finally, this never-ending case was going to end. But two days later, Secretary Austin reversed them. He says he was caught off-guard and thinks there should be a trial. And now a Guantanamo judge says Austin cannot do that retroactively, and the plea deals should go forward.
SHAPIRO: But how can a judge at Guantanamo Bay have legal grounds to overrule a decision by his boss, the defense secretary? Like, doesn't Lloyd Austin have the final word in a military court?
PFEIFFER: The judge says that Austin had already deputized the head of the military court to make plea deals if that person thought plea deals were the right thing to do. And the judge says, once Austin has delegated that authority, he cannot take it back just because he disagrees with the decision. The head of the military court is considered independent. It's meant to be immune from political pressure. So the judge says Austin acted beyond the scope of his authority and acted too late by trying to reverse the plea deals after they were already made.
SHAPIRO: Well, this, as you said, has been going on more than 20 years. So can this judge's decision now be appealed?
PFEIFFER: Potentially, but the Pentagon hasn't said yet how it plans to proceed. When the deals were announced, there was some outcry from members of Congress who thought the Biden administration was going soft on terrorists. But for now, the judge said he's going to move ahead with having KSM and those two other men enter guilty pleas.
SHAPIRO: You mentioned the political pressure. Could this be wrapped up before President-elect Trump takes office?
PFEIFFER: The judge has not given a timeline for taking guilty pleas, so Gitmo lawyers don't know yet whether this will happen before the inauguration.
SHAPIRO: So many lives were affected on September 11. About 3,000 people were killed in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the plane crash in Pennsylvania. What are you hearing from their family members?
PFEIFFER: There is a group of family members angry about the plea deals because they want the 9/11 defendants put to death, and they think new secrets could come out at trial. There's another group that says, we understand how you feel, but going to trial seems so futile that plea deals are the only practical resolution. One family member I've interviewed many times, Elizabeth Miller, points out that the plea deals do require the defendants to answer questions about their planning of the attacks, and that could yield some of those secrets people hope for. Here is Miller.
ELIZABETH MILLER: We will finally know the exact information of the who, what, where, when and why these men did what they did and how they did it. And I think that's something that's really important, that we should all be focusing on, that these plea agreements can give us.
PFEIFFER: And Ari, for now, she says she's just hoping the plea deals will stick and that this long legal process will finally end.
SHAPIRO: That is NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer. Thank you.
PFEIFFER: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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