WASHINGTON — The Obama administration appears to have abandoned plans to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and four co-conspirators on trial in Lower Manhattan, according to administration sources.
“It seems less and less likely” that the trial will take place in New York, according to a senior administration official.
The administration was facing a surge of political opposition to hosting the trial in New York. That opposition crystallized in recent days when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an early supporter of holding the trial in the city, said the security and financial costs were too great.
In a letter to the president Friday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said a New York trial heightens the risk of a terrorist attack.
“Without getting into classified details, I believe we should view the attempted Christmas Day plot as a continuation, not an end, of plots to strike the United States by al-Qaeda and its affiliates,” Feinstein said.
She told the president in the letter that he has “the flexibility to move this trial to a less prominent, less costly, and equally secure location.”
Administration officials said they remain committed to putting Mohammed and the other defendants, who are held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on trial in federal court, not in a military commission.
Although officials wouldn’t discuss locations under consideration, others have suggested Governors Island, a former military base in New York Harbor that now welcomes summertime picnickers and bike riders; the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; or Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, N.Y.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
