September 11 2001

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    Military Judge Postpones Guilty Plea Proceedings in Sept. 11 Case

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    The judge asked defense and prosecution lawyers to settle on a date for the accused mastermind of the terrorist attacks to plead guilty.A military judge on Sunday postponed a hearing to receive the guilty plea of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks, so that prosecutors can seek again to nullify the plea deal.Col. Matthew N. McCall, the judge, did not freeze preparations for the hearing, as prosecutors had requested. Instead, he told defense and prosecution lawyers to agree on a week or more next month or in early January to hold plea hearings at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for Mr. Mohammed and his co-defendants, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.The judge said it was “not reasonable to indefinitely delay” the entry of pleas in the case. He also told the sides to continue to collaborate on providing answers to questions related to clauses in the plea agreements. All three plea deals were reached July 31 and ostensibly withdrawn by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III two days later. On Wednesday, however, the judge ruled that Mr. Austin had acted too late and that the pleas were still valid, lawful contracts.Colonel McCall made no mention of the fact that his next scheduled hearing, from Jan. 20 to Jan. 31, straddled the inauguration of President-elect Donald J. Trump — and most likely Mr. Austin’s departure from the Pentagon.But a defense lawyer noted that the official who had approved the deal — an Austin appointee — was likely to leave the Pentagon at the end of the Biden administration and could potentially become unavailable for questions related to aspects of the plea deals.In a rare Sunday hearing, Clayton G. Trivett Jr., the lead prosecutor, told the judge that the chief prosecutor for military commissions, Rear Adm. Aaron C. Rugh, had instructed his staff on Friday night to prepare an appeal of the judge’s decision reinstating the guilty pleas. Mr. Trivett asked the judge to halt all plea-related proceedings.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After a Bruising Debate, Trump Is Warmly Embraced in Lower Manhattan

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      This is a tale about two sides of the same street.A little after 10 a.m. on Sept. 11, way down on the tip of Lower Manhattan, a Chevrolet Suburban was pulling into the firehouse at 42 South St., which belongs to Engine Company 4, Ladder 15.The men of 4-15 look after Wall Street; the massive emblem hanging inside their firehouse depicts the statue of the Charging Bull, wreathed in flame. On this day, they wore their best class A suits, all crisp navy and patent leather, and crowded around the Chevy. A door opened and out stepped former President Donald J. Trump. The firefighters lined up to shake his hand, to give him a pat on the back.Mr. Trump made the rounds. “Hey, fellas, I didn’t see you over there,” he said, turning to shake the hand of one particularly awe-struck firefighter. “Mr. President,” said the firefighter, “great job last night.”Mr. Trump thanked him, paused and then added, “We had three-on-one.”He was talking about his televised debate, the night before, with Vice President Kamala Harris. To Mr. Trump, his opponents also seemed to include the two moderators from ABC News, who he said treated him unfairly.“There was three-on-one,” he repeated.What was that tone in his voice? Not quite ashamed, or embarrassed, exactly, or even sullen — but resigned, perhaps. Resigned to the fact that he had been bested by Ms. Harris. She had called him a “disgrace” to his face, several times, with more than 60 million people watching. She had hit him where it hurt, taunting him about the people who leave his rallies early. Perhaps what was most devastating was the fact that it all seemed to work — he had taken her bait, allowed himself to get knocked off course, and now even his friends on Fox News seemed to think he got played for a sucker.But inside the firehouse, he was still a champion.“They were going at you,” the firefighter chuckled. “You did a great job, though.” He stuck out his hand for another shake. Mr. Trump took it again, and thanked him again.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump attend New York 9/11 commemoration

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      Bereaved families, local and national dignitaries and first responders gathered in New York City on Wednesday to mark the 23rd anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people.Kamala Harris and Donald Trump attended the annual commemoration, just hours after their fiery presidential debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening.Joe Biden, the US president, accompanied Harris, his vice-president and now the Democratic nominee since Biden ended his re-election campaign in July after his own disastrous debate against Trump.Biden and Harris observed the anniversary of the al-Qaida attacks on the US with visits to each of the three sites where hijacked planes crashed in 2001: the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon near Washington and a field in southern Pennsylvania.Trump attended the event in New York with his Republican running mate, JD Vance. Trump and Harris shook hands, with tight smiles, before lining up solemnly for the ceremony.On Tuesday night, Harris had consciously crossed the stage before the debate began and thrust her hand towards Trump, introducing herself. They had never met in person before, obliging Trump to shake hands.After the subsequent handshake at the memorial and a brief exchange between the two presidential candidates, Harris positioned herself to Biden’s right, with the former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg between Biden and Trump, and Vance to Trump’s left.Missing from that central group was the sitting New York mayor, Eric Adams, whose administration is caught up in a series of federal investigations.Harris traveled to New York just a few hours after most polling declared her the winner of the debate against the Republican nominee for president in Philadelphia, with just eight weeks left before the 5 November presidential election.No remarks from the politicians were scheduled at the site of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, still sometimes popularly known as Ground Zero, where relatives read the names of those who died.Biden and Harris then went to Shanksville, where passengers on United Flight 93 overcame the hijackers and the plane crashed in a field, preventing another target from being hit.Later they headed back to Washington DC and laid a wreath at the Pentagon memorial.Almost 3,000 people were killed in the attack, with more than 2,750 killed in New York, 184 at the Pentagon and 40 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania; that figure excludes the 13 hijackers, who also died.“We can only imagine the heartbreak and the pain that the 9/11 families and survivors have felt every day for the past 23 years and we will always remember and honor those who were stolen from us way too soon,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters onboard Air Force One on Tuesday evening.Biden issued a proclamation honoring those who died as a result of the attacks, as well as the hundreds of thousands of Americans who volunteered for military service afterwards.“We owe these patriots of the 9/11 generation a debt of gratitude that we can never fully repay,” Biden said, citing deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq and other war zones, as well as the capture and killing of the September 11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden, and his deputy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUS congressional leaders on Tuesday posthumously awarded the congressional gold medal to 13 of those service members who were killed in the 26 August 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport during the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan.In New York, political tensions were high even though the event is always officially a non-partisan commemoration.“You’re around the people that are feeling the grief, feeling proud or sad – what it’s all about that day, and what these loved ones meant to you. It’s not political,” said Melissa Tarasiewicz, who lost her father, a New York City firefighter, Allan Tarasiewicz.Increasingly, tributes delivered in New York and the name-reading of those who died come from children and young adults who were born after the attacks killed a parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle.“Even though I never got to meet you, I feel like I’ve known you forever,” Annabella Sanchez said last year of her grandfather, Edward Joseph Papa. “We will always remember and honor you, every day. “We love you, Grandpa Eddie.”A poignant phrase echoes more and more from those who lost relatives: “I never got to meet you.”It is the sound of generational change. Some names are read out by children or young adults who were born after the strikes. Last year’s observance featured 28 such young people among more than 140 readers. Young people were expected again at this year’s ceremony on Wednesday.Some are the children of victims whose partners were pregnant. More of the young readers are victims’ nieces, nephews or grandchildren. They have inherited stories, photos and a sense of solemn responsibility.Being a “9/11 family” reverberates through generations, and commemorating and understanding the September 11 attacks one day will be up to a world with no first-hand memory of them.“It’s like you’re passing the torch on,” says Allan Aldycki, 13. He read the names of his grandfather, Allan Tarasiewicz, and several other people.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      After Debate, Trump and Harris Meet Again at Sept. 11 Memorial

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      Setting aside the rancor of their debate, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump met again Wednesday morning at the hallowed ground of the World Trade Center site, shaking hands and standing nearly side by side to mark the 23rd anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.It was a striking tableau of political unity less than 12 hours after the end of their contentious and personal debate — potentially the only one between them before the November election. Ms. Harris stood with President Biden while Mr. Trump stood with his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, as the former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg served as a human buffer.Mr. Bloomberg appeared to facilitate the handshake. Ms. Harris could be seen saying “thank you” to Mr. Trump.The moment was a throwback to the sense of national unity that emerged in the months after hijackers staged the deadliest terror attack in the country’s history. It recalled 2008, when Barack Obama and John McCain, then rivals for the presidency, came together at the Sept. 11 memorial ceremony in Lower Manhattan in the final weeks of their contest.Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance wore matching blue suits and red ties. Ms. Harris chatted amiably with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader.Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump were set to lay wreaths in Shanksville, Pa., where passengers aboard Flight 93 brought down their plane before it could reach its intended target, the U.S. Capitol in Washington. The president and vice president were also expected to participate in a similar event at the Pentagon, where hijackers crashed a fourth airliner in the 2001 attacks. More

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      Harris, Trump and Biden Consider World Trade Center Site Visits on Sept. 11

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      Vice President Kamala Harris, President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump are considering visits to the World Trade Center site in New York City on Sept. 11 to memorialize the 2001 attacks.Ms. Harris is planning to travel to New York City after the presidential debate, scheduled for Sept. 10 in Philadelphia, according to three people directly familiar with her schedule who were not authorized to discuss the plans.Mr. Biden, who last year marked the anniversary of the attacks on a military base in Alaska as he traveled back from a diplomatic trip in Asia, is discussing his own plans to attend ground zero, two of those people said. The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment.And Mr. Trump, who built much of his political brand in the divisive aftermath of the attacks and on anger within the Republican Party about the Middle East wars that followed, is also considering visiting ground zero, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.The annual ceremony at the site has been a somber scene that has drawn mourners and also its fair share of politicians who have held office or are running for it. The vice president visited ground zero last year alongside Gov. Kathy Hochul, Democrat of New York, several former mayors and Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, who was running for his party’s nomination for the presidency at the time.Hillary Clinton, who was the junior senator from New York when the 2001 attacks occurred, attended the memorial ceremony in 2016, when she was running for president. She fell ill as she was leaving, and was later treated for pneumonia. Mr. Trump also went to the ceremony that year, attending as he ran for office for the first time.Mr. Trump, the only native New Yorker of the group, did not make a return visit to the site in 2021, the 20th anniversary of the attacks. Mr. Biden visited all three attack sites that year and Ms. Harris spoke at the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, Pa.The anniversary that year came nine months after Mr. Trump’s term in the White House ended, following an attack by a mob of his supporters on the U.S. Capitol to try to thwart certification of Mr. Biden’s victory. Mr. Trump spent part of that anniversary in New York, visiting fire and police station houses, before returning to his adopted home state of Florida for a paid event providing color commentary for a boxing match between Evander Holyfield and Vitor Belfort.Mr. Trump has a long history of making questionable and provocative statements about what he saw on the day of the attacks.This year, the anniversary of the attacks will come just hours after a presidential debate between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump, who have not yet met in person but whose campaigns are engaged in a brawl ahead of what is forecast to be a close election. More

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      Plea deal for accused 9/11 plotters revoked by Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin

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      The US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, has revoked a plea deal for the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and two other defendants, reinstating them as death-penalty cases, according to a memo sent to Susan Escallier, who is overseeing the war court proceedings.The short-lived deal came 16 years after prosecution of the three men began.On Wednesday, Escallier announced that she signed a deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his accomplices, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi. Defense lawyers had requested that the men receive life sentences in exchange for the guilty pleas.In Friday’s memo, Austin argued that due to the “significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused in the above-referenced case, responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior convening authority”.For some victims’ families, the deal Escallier entered into destroyed any chance of a full trial that could have ended in death sentences and given people the opportunity to address the men accused of killing their loved ones, according to the Washington Post.“I would have liked a trial of men who hadn’t been tortured, but we got handed a really poor opportunity for justice, and this is a way to verdicts and finality,” Terry Kay Rockefeller, 74, whose sister Laura was killed on 9/11, told the Post.News of the original plea deal elicited sharp criticism from Republican lawmakers, including Mitch McConnell and JD Vance, who decried the deal, and the New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who accused the Biden-Harris administration of betraying the American people.J Wells Dixon, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who has represented defendants at Guantánamo Bay as well as other detainees there who have been cleared of any wrongdoing, had welcomed the plea bargains as the only feasible way to resolve the long-stalled and legally fraught 9/11 cases.Dixon accused Austin on Friday of “bowing to political pressure and pushing some victim family members over an emotional cliff” by rescinding the plea deals.Lawyers for the two sides have been exploring a negotiated resolution to the case for over a year. President Joe Biden blocked a proposed plea bargain in the case last year, when he refused to offer requested presidential guarantees that the men would be spared solitary confinement and provided trauma care for the torture they underwent while in CIA custody.A senior Pentagon official told the New York Times that the president and vice-president had no involvement in Austin’s decision to rescind the controversial deal.Mohammed and the other defendants had been expected to formally enter their pleas under the deal as soon as next week.Mohammed is accused of masterminding the plot to fly hijacked commercial passenger aircraft into the World Trade Center in New York and into the Pentagon. The 9/11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and plunged the United States into what would become a two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.The US military commission overseeing the cases of five defendants in the 9/11 attacks have been stuck in pre-trial hearings and other preliminary court action since 2008. The torture that the defendants underwent while in CIA custody has slowed the cases and left the prospect of full trials and verdicts still uncertain, in part because of the inadmissibility of evidence linked to the torture.Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Defense Secretary Revokes Plea Deal for Accused Sept. 11 Plotters

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      Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III assumed direct oversight of the case and effectively put the death penalty back on the table.Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Friday overruled the overseer of the war court at Guantánamo Bay and revoked a plea agreement reached earlier this week with the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and two alleged accomplices.The Pentagon announced the decision with a memorandum relieving the senior Defense Department official responsible for military commissions of her oversight of the capital case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his alleged accomplices for the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.The overseer, retired Brig. Gen. Susan K. Escallier, signed a pretrial agreement on Wednesday with Mr. Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi that exchanged guilty pleas for sentences of at most life in prison.In taking away the authority, Mr. Austin assumed direct oversight of the case and canceled the agreement, effectively reinstating it as a death-penalty case. He left Ms. Escallier in the role of oversight of Guantánamo’s other cases.Because of the stakes involved, the “responsibility for such a decision should rest with me,” Mr. Austin said in an order released Friday night by the Pentagon.“Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pretrial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Guardian view on Guantánamo Bay: betraying the victims of terrorism too | Editorial

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      There is no neat exit point from grief. Each anniversary, each life event, each addition to or loss from the family, can bring renewed pain to the bereaved. For relatives of the almost 3,000 killed in the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, that suffering has been compounded by the lack of accountability for their deaths.This week, the US announced that it had reached a plea deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, described as the attack’s architect, and two accomplices, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi. They will avoid the death penalty, instead receiving life sentences in exchange for pleading guilty to all the offences with which they were charged. Negotiations continue with two more men. All have been in US custody since 2002, and are held at Guantánamo Bay, in Cuba. For many relatives, there is anger that there will be no trial, and in some cases that the men will not be executed. But for others there is some relief that after 23 years there is a kind of conclusion to the case, however partial and unsatisfactory.Last year, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the first UN rights investigator to be allowed to visit since the camp’s establishment, described its use of torture as “a betrayal of the rights of victims” of terrorism, as well as breaching the rights of those who had spent more than two decades in indefinite detention. Torture was not merely the standard operating procedure at Guantánamo Bay. It was its raison d’etre. Men were taken there because it lay outside the rule of law. The abuse, however, made it essentially impossible to proceed with material derived from their interrogations, even under the conditions of a military tribunal rather than a criminal trial. Victims of torture lie so that it will stop. This week’s plea deals are not a vindication of the site’s existence: quite the opposite. Over a decade of pretrial hearings have been absorbed by litigating torture, rather than establishing responsibility for terrorism.While conditions have improved, Prof Ní Aoláin, then the special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, wrote that detainees were still subject to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”, in addition to living with the “unrelenting harms” from previous abuses. Several have killed themselves; others have been left with severe mental illness.Guantánamo Bay should never have been opened. This was the conclusion not only of human rights groups and lawyers, but of the US general tasked with setting up the detention camp, Michael Lehnert. Even without considering the moral and legal case, he – like others – quickly concluded that many detainees had little intelligence value, and insufficient evidence linking them to war crimes. Of the hundreds kept there, only 18 have been charged with a crime. In 2009, Barack Obama, then US president, vowed to shut the facility within a year. But despite releases and transfers, around 30 men are still held, at a cost of around $14m each annually.The conclusion of a legal process – however inadequate – means that for some, the detention camp will become more akin to a prison. But as Maj Gen Lehnert wrote almost a decade ago, it is hard to overstate the damage caused by its continuing existence. Repressive governments use it to deflect attacks on their own policies; violent extremists employ it as a recruiting tool. As long as it remains open, the place “where due process goes to die” will remain a stain upon the US. More

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr promises to not ‘take sides’ with respect to 9/11 if elected president

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr has made a startling pledge to not “take sides” with respect to the September 11 terrorist attacks if his long-shot presidential campaign vaults him to the White House.“My take on 9/11: It’s hard to tell what is a conspiracy theory and what isn’t. But conspiracy theories flourish when the government routinely lies to the public,” Kennedy wrote on Friday in a post on X in reference to the deadliest terrorist attack ever aimed at the US. “As president I won’t take sides on 9/11 or any of the other debates.“But I can promise … that I will open the files and usher in a new era of transparency.”The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001 after terrorists hijacked and crashed passenger planes into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington DC and a field in Pennsylvania.Kennedy’s decision to revisit one of the most traumatic subjects in American history came just three days after the noted conspiracy theorist responded to an allegation that he sexually assaulted a babysitter previously in his employ by saying: “I’m not a church boy” and “I am who I am.”That allegation – reported in Vanity Fair – came amid growing scrutiny of his independent run for president, which has fueled worries among Democrats and Republicans that he could decide November’s election by pulling votes away from Joe Biden, Donald Trump or both in key states.Friday’s statement on X was not the first time Kennedy had expressed dubiousness about the US’s official account of 9/11. In a podcast interview in September, he refused to say al-Qaida carried out the attacks – as the terrorist organization acknowledged and investigators determined long ago.Kennedy wrote on Friday that he was prompted to speak out by a recent report from the CBS news program 60 Minutes which chronicled how a man identified by the FBI as a Saudi intelligence agent filmed locations in the center of Washington just three months before 9/11.A court action from family members of September 11 victims, who contend that the Saudi government was complicit in the terrorist attacks, brought the footage to light. Saudi rulers deny the victims’ families’ claims.For his part, Kennedy on Friday described himself as “agnostic” concerning 9/11, so-called UFOs “and other contentious topics”.“My issue is transparency,” Kennedy added in a related follow-up post on X.Kennedy is polling at less than 10% of the national vote and is highly unlikely to win the presidency, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHis relation to his father, Robert F Kennedy – the New York senator who was assassinated in 1968 – and uncle John F Kennedy, who was president at the time of his 1963 assassination, has afforded his campaign attention. So has his marriage to actor and comedian Cheryl Hines.In addition to his 9/11 skepticism, peddling falsehoods about Covid-19 and vaccine safety has seemingly undermined Kennedy’s effort to attract wider support. And so have outlandish claims such as linking antidepressants to school shootings and asserting that certain chemicals in water make children transgender.The 27 June presidential debate – marked by a calamitous Biden performance that left his party in a panic as well as Trump’s rapid-fire delivery of lies and half-truths – did little to improve Kennedy’s standing.A recent HarrisX/Forbes poll found a paltry 18% of voters were more likely to vote for a third-party candidate after the debate.“Whatever shaking of the box happened with the debate, these voters aren’t really yet thinking about RFK Jr or any of the third-party candidates,” HarrisX chief executive officer Dritan Nesho later said. “None of the tickets are prominent enough at this stage to be able to capture a good share of vote – at least that’s what we’re seeing in polls right now.” More