CNN's Liebermann: Austin, White House Could Have Squashed 9/11 Plea Deal Years Ago if They Wanted to

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Source,” CNN Pentagon Correspondent Oren Liebermann said that the White House and the Pentagon should have known that there was a process to try to reach a plea deal with the three defendants accused of involvement in the September 11 terrorist attacks, including accused plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, that was reached this week and revoked on Friday by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and “Had Austin or the White House wanted to stop this process and say, look, a plea deal is off the table, they could have done that at any point over the course of the past two-and-a-half years.” So, “You have to believe that part” of the reason for the revocation of the deal “was the ferocity of the bipartisan backlash and the ferocity of the backlash from the victims’ families when they were notified of this and then when it was announced publicly.”

Host Kaitlan Collins asked, “[T]he White House said yesterday they were not aware of this plea deal until it was struck. Do we know if Secretary Austin was aware of this?”

Liebermann responded, “The plea deal itself, at this point, that much is unclear. But what we’ve reported and what others have reported for more than two-and-a-half years is that plea deal discussions were in the works. So, this shouldn’t have been a surprise to the Pentagon or to anybody else that there was a process that was ongoing to try to get to a plea deal. Had Austin or the White House wanted to stop this process and say, look, a plea deal is off the table, they could have done that at any point over the course of the past two-and-a-half years. And that’s part of why this is such a surprise that Austin simply and quietly posts a memo in which he relieves the woman who is in charge of the military court at Guantanamo Bay and revokes the plea agreements that had gotten to this point. You have to believe that part of that was the ferocity of the bipartisan backlash and the ferocity of the backlash from the victims’ families when they were notified of this and then when it was announced publicly.”

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