News organizations seek unsealing of plea deal with 9/11 defendants

WASHINGTON (AP) — Seven news organizations filed a legal motion Friday asking the U.S. military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to make public the plea agreement that prosecutors struck with alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two fellow defendants.

The plea agreements, filed early last month and promptly sealed, triggered objections from Republican lawmakers and families of some of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks. The controversy grew when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced days later he was revoking the deal, the product of two years of negotiations among government prosecutors and defense attorneys that were overseen by Austin's department.

Austin's move caused upheaval in the pretrial hearings now in their second decade at Guantanamo, leading the three defendants to suspend participation in any further pretrial hearings. Their lawyers pursued new complaints that Austin's move was illegal and amounted to unlawful interference by him and the GOP lawmakers.

Seven news organizations — Fox News, NBC, NPR, The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Univision — filed the claim with the military commission. It argues that the Guantanamo court had failed to establish any significant harm to U.S. government interests from allowing the public to know terms of the agreement.

The public's need to know what is in the sealed records "has only been heightened as the Pretrial Agreements have become embroiled in political controversy," lawyers for the news organizations argued in Friday's motion. “Far from threatening any compelling government interest, public access to these records will temper rampant speculation and accusation.”

The defendants' legal challenges to Austin's actions and government prosecutors' response to those also remain under seal.

The George W. Bush administration set up the military commission at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo after the 2001 attacks. The 9/11 case remains in pretrial hearings after more than a decade, as judges, the government and defense attorneys hash out the extent to which the defendants' torture during years in CIA custody after their capture has rendered evidence legally inadmissible. Staff turnover and the court's distance from the U.S. also have slowed proceedings.

Members of the press and public must travel to Guantanamo to watch the trial, or to military installations in the U.S. to watch by remote video. Court filings typically are sealed indefinitely for security reviews that search for any classified information.