This is a trial balloon. I’m not 100 percent certain that what I am suggesting is wise, politically astute, or even that it would work legally. I have not thought through all of the implications of what I am going to suggest here. But maybe, just maybe, it is the answer–or an answer–to the problem of how to try KSM and the 9/11 conspirators.
There have been a great many creative proposals for a KSM trial, and I won’t try to rehash them all. But in the realm of the politically plausible, there are only two options: a military commission and a trial in an Article III court.
I think the government should pursue KSM and his colleagues in both.
Call it the John Allen Muhammad model. The old D.C. area sniper case is strangely instructive here.
