Conservative media figures suggest civilian trial of 1993 trade center bombers led to 9-11 attacks

Dick Morris: "[T]he reason 9-11 happened is that Bill Clinton treated the '93 bombing of the trade center as a crime." From the January 4 edition of Fox News' Hannity:

HANNITY: But, here's the deal, Dick, if you wrap a bomb in your underwear -- and this is an act of terror -- with the background that you have, you've got to assume that this is an act of war.

MORRIS: Yeah.

HANNITY: But this man --

MORRIS: Exactly.

HANNITY: -- this administration doesn't see that it way.

MORRIS: Exactly. They would have us Mirandizing Germans we captured on the battlefield in World War II.

HANNITY: Well, that'll be the next thing that's on the --

MORRIS: But, you know, the other point here is the reason 9-11 happened is that Bill Clinton treated the '93 bombing of the Trade Center as a crime, not as an act of war. And now Obama is going through the exact same situation.

HANNITY: Well, look, I say this often, the 9-11 Commission report, if we got one thing out of it, they are at war with us, we're not at war with them.

Palin: Trying Abdulmutallab in civilian court is “dangerous” as proven by “what happened in the 1990s and we saw the result on September 11, 2001.” Former Gov. Sarah Palin asserted in a January 5 Facebook note that Obama's “fundamental approach to terrorism is fatally flawed” and added that “treating this threat as a law enforcement issue is dangerous for our nation's security. That's what happened in the 1990s and we saw the result on September 11, 2001.”

Fox Nation highlights Palin's baseless assertion. On January 6, the Fox Nation highlighted Palin's Facebook post on its front page and reprinted her assertion that “we saw the result” of “treating this threat as a law enforcement issue” “on September 11, 2001”:

Rove claims Palin is “right on target.” During a discussion about Palin's use of Facebook as her “weapon of choice,” Fox News host Greta van Susteren read part of Palin's post, including her assertion that the 9-11 attacks were a result of the '93 civilian trials. Fox News contributor Karl Rove responded, “I think she's right on target.” From the January 5 edition of On the Record:

VAN SUSTEREN: Does the Second Amendment include Facebook? Now, why do we ask? Because that's Governor Sarah Palin's weapon of choice. She continues to use Facebook as a weapon and just took a massive swipe at President Obama. She just posted, in part: “President Obama's meeting with his top national security advisers does nothing to change the fact that his fundamental approach to terrorism is fatally flawed. We are at war with radical Islamic extremists, and treating this threat as a law enforcement issue is dangerous for our nation's security. That's what happened in the 1990s, and we saw the result on September 11, 2001. This is a war on terror, not an overseas contingency operation. Acts of terrorism are just that, not man-caused disasters.”

Karl Rove is back with us. And she uses Facebook.

ROVE: Very interesting use of modern technology.

VAN SUSTEREN: Yeah, it's like tweeting.

ROVE: Exactly.

VAN SUSTEREN: What about Governor Palin?

ROVE: I think she's right on target. Look, I thought it was -- the system didn't work. There are a lot of good people in that system, and the system can't -- we can't count on human beings being perfect all the time, nor can we count on a system being perfect all the time.

But having said that, the biggest errors that were made are the errors made by judgment after the event took place. I mean, to sit there and say, as the president of United States did, that this was an isolated extremist, when we know that he was part of Al Qaeda, and to have John Brennan, who's a very sensible and tough guy -- I got to know him during the Bush years. He's an impressive individual. For him to say there were neither upsides nor downsides to treating somebody as an enemy combatant is just simply not realistic. There are many upsides to treating a terrorist as an enemy combatant and not as a criminal defendant. And it starts with you don't have to tell them to shut up. You can, in fact, start questioning them and interrogating them. And we need every bit of information to win this war.

Claim echoes Hannity's previous assertion that bin Laden “was tipped off” as a result of '93 trial

Hannity claimed bin Laden “was tipped off that we knew his location” as a result of '93 trial. From the December 11, 2009, Hannity special, “Terror on Trial”:

HANNITY: And welcome back to this special edition of Hannity.

Now the upcoming trial of KSM and his co-conspirators will raise a whole host of legal issues, but it won't be the first time that we have put terrorists on trial.

Now, in response to the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, we tried the mastermind of the bombing and several other jihadists. So, can those trials prepare us for what is to come? Let's take a look.

[begin video clip]

HANNITY: After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the perpetrators were rounded up and put on trial in Manhattan. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's nephew Ramzi Yousef and five others were convicted and will spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

Now KSM and his co-conspirators are headed to the same court. But will this trial be anything like its predecessor's? Unlike 9-11, the '93 World Trade Center bombing was never considered an act of war.

ANDREW C. McCARTHY (former assistant U.S. attorney): It's not like a bunch of people sat around a table and said: “War? Crime? War? Crime? Which is it?”

MICHAEL MUKASEY (former U.S. attorney general): The witnesses were lined up. The evidence was lined up.

HANNITY: In addition, the trials themselves revealed the peril of prosecuting terrorists in civilian court.

MUKASEY: The government generally is required in conspiracy cases to turn over lists of unindicted -- a list of unindicted co-conspirators, and it was required to do that here. Within days, that list found its way to Osama bin Laden in Khartoum.

McCARTHY: If Al Qaeda tried to have an Al Qaeda central intelligence agency, they couldn't successfully gather the banquet of information that they get by undergoing trials in civilian court.

[end video clip]

[...]

HANNITY: And in the last trial that you were involved in -- last point on this -- isn't it true that Osama bin Laden himself was tipped off that we knew his location, and that he moved as a result of the first trial that you were involved in.

McCARTHY: Well, he was certainly -- he was certainly tipped off about a lot of what we knew about Al Qaeda. In fact, the letter that Judge Mukasey talked about was the first document ever produced by the American government that was turned over to someone outside the government that had his name on it as a co-conspirator in the terror network.

In fact, Holder testified that this charge is based on “factual inaccuracies,” “misinformation”

Holder: Co-conspirator list was “not a classified document,” but prosecutors “could have sought a protective order” to stop its release. During a November 18, 2009, Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Holder testified that there was “misinformation with regard to this whole question of this co-conspirator list” (transcript accessed via the Nexis database):

SEN. ORRIN HATCH (R-UT): Now Judge Mukasey, an experienced federal judge, has always asserted that the trials that the conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing damaged national security. For example, the prosecution is compelled by the rules of discovery to provide a list of unindicted co-conspirators to the defendants.

In 1995 this list made it all the way to Sudan into the hands of Osama bin Laden.

[...]

So is the Classified Information Procedures Act -- CIPA -- really sufficient to safeguard classified information if these detainees do or do not have counsel?

HOLDER: Well it -- it has been brought -- it has been argued that the -- bringing these cases in Article Three courts will somehow reveal information I suppose that otherwise might not be revealed, or could be better protected in the military commissions. The reality is that the Information Protection Act that exists in military commissions is based on -- on CIPA that we use in Article Three courts.

And if I might, there are -- there have been some -- there's been mis-information with regard to this whole question of this co- conspirator list, and about the phone records allegation. The co- conspirator list was not a classified document. It had -- it had (inaudible) to try to protect it. Prosecutors could have sought a protective order. But that was not a classified document.