This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” December 11, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Welcome to this special edition of “Hannity,” “Terror on Trial.” Now over the next hour, I will be joined right here in studio by family members of some of those who were killed on 9/11 as well as some of the brave men and women who were first responders on that tragic day.
Now, all of them, they are here to call on President Obama to reconsider his administration’s controversial decision to try the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his conspirator he is in a New York City courtroom only steps away from Ground Zero.
Also tonight we will hear directly from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, for U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, as well as many others.
But, first, let’s take a closer look at exactly the type of evil we are talking about.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HANNITY: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as KSM, is one of history’s most violent and brutal terrorists. He was the principle architect of the September 11th attacks as well as dozens of other plots against the U.S. and western targets worldwide.
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On February 26, 1993, a car bomb ripped through the parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing six and injuring 1,042. KSM provided the financing for the bombing, and his nephew Ramzi Yousef, was the mastermind behind the attack.
KSM and Yousef were also the brains behind what was known as the Bojinka plot. That’s a plot to blow up 12 U.S. commercial jets as they flew from China to the U.S. in 1994. The two cased flights and detonated a bomb on Philippine Airline flight 434 in route to Tokyo killing one person and injuring ten more.
But the Bojinka plan was interrupted when the Philippine authorities stumbled upon their bomb-making operation. Yousef was arrested in Pakistan in 1995, but Mohammed escaped to Afghanistan.
By 1999 KSM was working full time for Al Qaeda as their operations chief in Afghanistan. Together with bin Laden, he selected the 9/11 terrorists, arranged their financing and training, planning every detail of the attack that would kill 2,976 people.
Along with the 9/11 attacks, the self-proclaimed head of Al Qaeda’s military committee admitted to being involved in the deadly 2002 bombing of night clubs in Bali and a hotel blast in Kenya.
According to Guantanamo records, Mohammed admitted that he used his, quote, “blessed right hand” to personally behead Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.
American and Pakistani intelligence forces captured KSM on March 1st, 2003 at Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He is currently detained at Guantanamo Bay, waiting to face justice, and it now looks as if that day will soon come inside an American courtroom.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HANNITY: Now, you will be hearing from the families and the first responders throughout the next hour. But, first, my exclusive interview with the former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani.
KSM, we’re going to bring him back to New York. What does it mean for New York?
RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: It means an additional security concern over and above all the rest that we have. And one that is unnecessary, which is the worst part of it, because we don’t have to have this trial in New York.
It’s one thing if the only place you could try him was in New York, of course we would then do it. And New York City Police Department is the best at handling security. But why add this additional burden to a city that’s already considered to be one of the prime targets for Islamic terrorists?
HANNITY: It puts the city at risk.
GIULIANI: It’s already at risk anyway. Why add a risk that is not necessary? It’s one thing to add a risk that is necessary. If the only place to bring him to justice would be here in a civilian courts, fine. But when you have already created military courts, when they have been upheld now by the Supreme Court.
HANNITY: By the Supreme Court.
GIULIANI: When they have been fixed by Congress and you’re going to try other people in those courts, how do you make the distinction between the ones you are going to try in civilian courts and the ones you are going to try in military? This makes on 100 different grounds, this is one of the more irresponsible decisions I have ever seen made.
HANNITY: I think as a harsh critic of the Obama administration, I think it’s one of the worst decisions.
Here is my question though. He already admitted A to Z that he was the architect, that he helped plan all of this.
GIULIANI: Correct.
HANNITY: And even was willing to accept the death penalty. We had the verdict.
GIULIANI: Right.
HANNITY: Now, is it possible, you are a former prosecutor, is it possible that he goes into court and all the information that we gathered from him because he didn’t have Miranda rights…
GIULIANI: Of course.
HANNITY: It’s inadmissible?
GIULIANI: That’s right.
HANNITY: All of it?
GIULIANI: That’s right.
And what is the only justification for this? The justification for it is we are going to show the world that we can give a fair trial. Well, the reality is the president and the attorney general, as far as I can tell, have already said he is guilty. And they have already said he should have the death penalty. What kind of trial is that?
HANNITY: That’s a great point.
GIULIANI: This is like the old west. You are guilty, you are being to be executed, but now we are going to try you.
HANNITY: Yes, we’ll try you after the fact.
The danger seems to me is the precedent. Going back to the Supreme Court, going back to World War I, World War II, the Civil War, for crying out loud, you know, we already had established this for a reason. Do you think this is rooted in the idea that this is a man-caused disaster and not a war on terror?
GIULIANI: Yes. I think it is, as I have said before, I think this is going back to a pre-9/11 mentality. I think it’s going back to the way we looked at terrorism in the 1980s and the 1990s and ignoring all of the history from 1993 up until the attack of September 11, the attacks in London and all the other things that have happened.
We made the mistake in 1993 of thinking of it as a civil thing, as a criminal act. What we should learn from that mistake. Instead of learning from the mistake, we are now going to repeat it.
HANNITY: Do you think as I do, and we brought this up earlier in the week with former Vice President Cheney, do you think this is about putting George Bush on trial? Putting Guantanamo Bay on trial? Putting the vice president on trial? Putting the United States on trial — enhanced interrogations? Do you think there is a motivation here?
GIULIANI: I hope it’s not, but it will result in that.
HANNITY: It will?
GIULIANI: Whether that’s the intention or not, the typical defense in any trial is to put the government on trial. And that is what the defense will be doing. The defense will be putting the government on trial for their unfair methods, for alleged torture.
I mean, I don’t think a lot of it is torture, but they will allege that it is torture. Of course, a lot of it will be exaggerated. A lot of it will be lies. A lot of it will be fictitious.
And it will focus attention on what allegedly America did wrong as opposed to the horrible acts of terrorism that were perpetrated on innocent New Yorkers.
HANNITY: What’s going to be the headline? As we pick up the newspaper every day, is the headline going to be Khalid Sheikh Mohammed accuses the U.S. of waterboarding me 180 times? Is that what it is going to be?
GIULIANI: Of course it will be. That will be a very substantial part of the discussion. It will be a substantial part of the whole scenario of the trial.
And the reality is the distinction makes no sense. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand what the attorney general is saying when he says if it’s a military target, we’ll try them in a military court. But if it’s a civilian target, we’ll try them in a civilian court.
HANNITY: It doesn’t make sense.
GIULIANI: First of all, they attacked the Pentagon? As far as I can tell, that’s a military target.
HANNITY: Do you know what the answer was? There more civilians killed.
GIULIANI: We’re going to count the number? And since when is an attack on civilians not an act of war? What was Pearl Harbor?
HANNITY: An act of war.
GIULIANI: That was an act of war.
The fact is, in many ways, a military action, an act of war against innocent civilians is even more heinous than an act of war against military compounds.
HANNITY: Mr. Mayor, this is a man-caused disaster. The war on terror doesn’t exist, apparently, in this administration.
GIULIANI: That is part of the whole way that this administration is looking at things that I find very, very disturbing. This is not a man-caused disaster.
HANNITY: It’s a terror —
GIULIANI: Coming out of a very specific philosophy. It’s the philosophy that was — that underlined the entire attack of 1993, the attacks in East Africa, the attack on the Cole, the attack of September 11, the attack in London. Some of the things that have been planned for now. This is ongoing thing that is happening.
And in 1993, you can understand why it was tried in a civil court, in a civilian court as a criminal act. We didn’t understand it all at that point. We didn’t have that full history.
HANNITY: But now we know it’s a war.
GIULIANI: But now we know what it is. Bin laden, since then, has declared war on us. We have declared war on him. And why we’re treating this as if it’s some kind of a criminal act and it has to be tried in a civilian court makes no sense at all.
HANNITY: Mr. Mayor, thank you for being with us for our special tonight. We really appreciate it, thank you.
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