Defense lawyers are still litigating for exacting details of what went on. They are combing through the evidence the prosecution has given them — including 13,346 pages of court approved “substitutions” for original Top Secret evidence — and are seeking to call expert witnesses to explain why they need more details.
“Although the prosecution’s affirmative case consists entirely of unclassified evidence of guilt,” the prosecutors write, “the defense’s oft-expressed intention to place those sources and methods themselves on trial validates the requirement for a courtroom that is certified as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility and that is configured to transmit a delayed signal for public observers.”
They add: “The worldwide pursuit of those who perpetrated the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks required the United States to employ sources and methods of intelligence and counterterrorism that remain sensitive.”
The names of nearly all the agents who interrogated the men, the troops and medical staff that took care of them, and the countries where the men were kept before they got to Guantánamo in September 2006 are all considered national security secrets.
The filing does partially respond to the judge’s order to the prosecution to explain how remote Guantánamo can handle what has been described as the largest, most complex terror trial in U.S. history: A conspiracy case against Mohammed and four accused accomplices as the alleged trainers, directors, financial and travel planners of the 19 hijackers who seized four passenger aircraft and slammed them into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, and dozens more survived with physical and emotional injuries.
To be ready for January 2019, the prosecutors propose a series of mini construction projects, the addition of office space and a sixth prisoner holding cell to be completed in November 2018. No price tag is provided. Existing base lodging — from tents to trailers to hotel and guest officer quarters — is sufficient, they say, with prudent planning that includes:
▪ Seating only one death-penalty jury at a time.
▪ Creation of “a stateside staging location and surge arrangements for peak periods during trial comprising important facets.”
▪ Judges ordering various, potentially adversarial or independent parties to not communicate because “complete physical separation,” typically known as sequestration, is not possible at cramped Guantánamo.
▪ Bringing to the base a pool of just 60 U.S. military officers at a time, in a single week, from Jan. 7, 2019 — as the judges and attorneys question them in stages to assemble a 12-member, four or more alternate military jury, called a commission.
▪ Remote video teleconferencing for some trial witnesses, with the judge’s approval.