Plea deal for 9/11 terrorists draws blowback from families, Republicans

A plea deal for the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks and his two accomplices is being slammed by some families of the victims, New York City firefighters and high-profile Republicans.

Critics say the agreement will effectively prevent the public from ever knowing what really happened, and contend that those most responsible for nearly 3,000 deaths deserve nothing less than death.

Republicans are pointing their ire directly at President Biden and Vice President Harris — even though the White House said it played no role the negotiations. 

“The Biden-Harris Administration has done the unthinkable: they’ve agreed to a plea deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11th attacks, and two of his accomplices,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) wrote in a post on the social platform X.

The deal with the Office of Military Commissions, announced Wednesday, includes a life sentence for Mohammad and the two others, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi, in exchange for a guilty plea. All three are awaiting trial at the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and had faced the death penalty.

Two others held at Guantánamo Bay and charged with plotting the 9/11 attacks have not yet signed a plea deal.

While the settlement brings partial closure to a case that has languished across two decades, many family members of those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are unsatisfied.

The union representing New York City firefighters said its people are “disgusted and disappointed” with the arrangement.

“On behalf of New York City firefighters, especially the survivors of the September 11th terrorist attack who are living with the illnesses and injuries that were inflicted upon us that day, we are disgusted and disappointed that these three terrorists were given a plea deal and allowed to escape the ultimate justice while each month three more heroes from the FDNY are dying from World Trade Center illnesses,” Andrew Ansbro, the president of the FDNY-Uniformed Firefighters Association, said in a statement Thursday. 

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) called the agreement a “sweetheart deal” and directed blame at the Biden administration.

“Now just think about the point that we’ve gotten to. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris have weaponized the Department of Justice to go after their political opponents, but they’re cutting a sweetheart deal with 9/11 terrorists,” Vance, former President Trump’s running mate, told attendees at a campaign rally in Glendale, Ariz., on Wednesday evening. “We need a president who kills terrorists, not negotiates with them.”

And Brett Eagleson, the president of the group 9/11 Justice, a self-described “grassroots movement” of families of the victims, also said Thursday that his organization was “deeply troubled” by the plea deals.

In an interview with The Hill, Eagleson said there was a “sense of betrayal” after the plea deal was reached without consulting the families, who have long opposed any plea agreement.

“All Americans deserve the right to have justice, and we deserve a trial,” he said. “The real tragedy here is that what a plea deal does is that it subverts the truth, it subverts the justice system, and it denies the family members access to a trial. And the reason a trial is so important is because it helps us to understand what happened that day.”

Some families are also suing Saudi Arabia in an ongoing civil lawsuit in a Manhattan court as they seek to hold the kingdom accountable for its alleged role in orchestrating the attacks, along with a full accounting of what happened on 9/11.

Eagleson said that the plea deal complicates their ability to get at the truth and find out what the five conspirators knew of alleged Saudi involvement.

“I understand that members of the public and family members are going to have an opportunity to ask them questions,” he said, “but it still remains unclear to me how those questions are to be asked [and] whether or not the answers to those questions are going to be admissible anywhere else.”

The three men are accused of providing training, money and other assistance to the 19 terrorists who hijacked four commercial jets and crashed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City; the Pentagon in Arlington, Va.; and a field in Shanksville, Pa. — the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil.

Mohammad, also known as KSM, is accused of being the chief mastermind of the 9/11 plots along with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, whom U.S. troops killed in 2011.

The three men, along with the two others who did not sign the deal, were first charged together and arraigned in June 2008. They were charged jointly and arraigned again in May 2012. Those charges were in a military commission, or a tribunal, to try suspects during war. 

A separate indictment of the five 9/11 conspirators was reached in 2009 in New York under the Department of Justice, but Congress in 2011 blocked any transfer of the prisoners from Guantánamo Bay to stand trial.

The military commission set up at Guantánamo Bay has only ever convicted eight people, six through plea deals. Four of them have been overturned. The only person ever convicted of a charge related to the 9/11 attacks is Zacarias Moussaoui, referred to as the 20th hijacker because he was detained in August 2001 before the attacks. 

The plea deal was reached this week amid concerns that evidence obtained via the Central Intelligence Agency’s intense interrogation of the three men — denounced as torture by critics — is not admissible in court. 

Adam Hickey, a former U.S. federal prosecutor who helped indict the five defendants accused of conducting the attacks in the federal case, said the U.S. likely secured the best deal it could by avoiding a trial.

“The military commission process has seemed unable to get to a trial,” he said. “That begs the question of whether they ever would have gone to trial in a military commission, whether the military commissions are capable of the kind of complex national security prosecutions that” federal courts handle.

“I don't see what the alternative was,” Hickey added. “Anyone who says you should have held out for a trial seems not to have been following the [years] of delay in the military commissions.”

Rear Adm. Aaron Rugh, the chief prosecutor for the Office of Military Commissions, notified the families of victims of the 9/11 attacks of the deal, saying that in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, “these three accused have agreed to plead guilty to all of the charged offenses, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet.”

The pretrial agreement was reached after 27 months of negotiations with military prosecutors that began in March 2022.

The White House learned of the commission's decision Wednesday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Thursday. 

“We had no role in that process. The president had no role, the vice president had no role, I had no role and the White House had no role,” Sullivan said. Biden did “direct his team to consult as appropriate with officials and lawyers at the Department of Defense on this matter. Those consultations are ongoing.”

But such insistence is unlikely to quell anger among family members and Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).

“The Biden-Harris Administration’s cowardice in the face of terror is a national disgrace,” McConnell wrote on X. “The plea deal with terrorists, including those behind the 9/11 attacks, is a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend America and provide justice.”