Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for being here. It's the Brian Kilmead Show. We come to you from 48th, usually from 48th and 6th in Midtown Manhattan, but today we're in Jersey City overlooking where the Twin Towers once stood, commemorating 25 years since the 9-11 attacks, going over some of those moments, talking to people that were affected, seeing how people are responding, wondering how our country is doing 25 years later, while saluting those who gave their lives and/or the life of anyone in Al-Qaeda, Islamic extremists in part of that category. This hour, we're going to be joined by people who know this quite well.
Frank Pellegrino, retired FBI special agent who interrogated Khalil Jake Mohammed and got his confession in detail. He said, Not only did I do 2001, I did 1993. And I planned on doing more. And let me tell you all about it. But now, that happened in 2007, I understand.
But now we hear from a judge that we'll have to throw that out because it came under, they say, torturous circumstances.
So, in 2028, we'll have to deal with that because that's when his court date is. But let's bring Andy McCarthy, who knows all about courts and terror. He was actually part of the team that tried the blind shake when he was assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He also has a fantastic column today, puts this whole thing in perspective.
25 years after 9-11, the terror is passed, yet we're still losing the war. Andy McCarthy, welcome back. Brian, great to be with you.
So, first off, what are your reflections when that attacks happen? I imagine you were one of the few that could think to yourself: a plane just hit that the World Trade Center, I bet you it's Bin Laden. Were you thinking that? Uh instantly. Uh I I was actually a little surprised when Some people in Washington later said that it wasn't until the second plane hit that we knew the country was under attack.
But I don't they had not dealt with What we had dealt with in the Southern District of New York for the eight years prior. To 9-11, including the propensity that these guys had to go back to and plot against. uh targets that they'd hit. Previously, as they had hit the World Trade Center in 1993.
So I instantly. Knew that we were under attack. And I think, Brian, you have to know that history. to understand 9-11 and the importance of President Bush in particular attaching war to the effort that went forward because the important thing here in terms of the non-recurrence of 9-11, the fact that we haven't had another attack, is that we move from a law enforcement paradigm which was not effective to a law of war paradigm which has kept us safe. Right, do the laws work in trying these terrorists?
You did it with the blind shake, a guy that was a scholar, as you point out. Uh Ruthless. But not crazy. Uh but he was a physical mess. But you have to try him through our court system.
Are our our civ court system equipped to try terrorists?
Well, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. The record shows that we absolutely can conduct trials. that give you a reliable result and afford the people who are accused with the due process that the Constitution requires. But as a national security strategy, which is more important than Dispensing due process to individual people at trial. For the protection of the country, The court system can't work, and it's obvious why not.
You know, these attacks, Brian, were coordinated. outside the United States in ungovernable bad lands like Peshawar, Pakistan on the on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The writ of our courts don't run there. They're contemptuous of American jud uh justice. Our law enforcement agencies can't operate there.
So obviously, You can't run a national security strategy on courtroom prosecutions when the Justice Department is not able to apprehend. the people who were behind the attacks. Think about it. Bin Laden was under indictment by the Justice Department since 1999 when he was killed a dozen years later. At the time that 9-11 happened, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad had been under indictment by the Justice Department for five years.
We could indict them, but we couldn't stop them, let alone capture them.
So Andy McCarthy We uh evidently they're saying that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's confession Was gotten under torture. He was tortured in order to give it, so therefore, they're going to throw it out of court, should they? And I don't know if he was, but I know he was put under extreme interrogation, and then he gave great detail. Of the attacks, what he was going to do, what he did in 93, what he did in 2001, and what he planned on doing after. And now they're saying in 2028, when we go to try him, we have to throw it out.
Well, I'm of a few different minds on this, Brian. First, I think that Winston Churchill was right. about Nuremberg. When he initially was against the idea of having trials of the Nazis. The idea that we had to give them a due process trial proceeding.
before you could put to death. People who were war criminals and deserved to be put to death. I've never believed that that was. sensible and there are many people I can attest to this from having been a prosecutor there are many people who absolutely must be neutralized but w who we could never try in court. Forget about coerced interrogation.
We can't try them in court because it would require Under the due process rules, giving up too much intelligence and the sources of intelligence.
So, Congress should find a different way to deal with this situation of terrorists who deserve to be executed but who can't, as a practical matter, be tried. If you're going to have an American trial, You can't use force uh uh uh evidence that's been obtained by forcible uh methods. You just can't. It's not a trial. But I what what I question is the idea that you have to have a trial in order to do this.
That's what m has never made any sense to me.
Well, there's a military court in Guetma. We try them there, right? You still can't use forcibly obtained Forget about whether it's torture or not, because the issue is not whether it rises to the level of torture. If you use physical force to overcome someone's will to make them speak, that can't be used as evidence.
Now, that having been said. I'm very skeptical because as you noted, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wanted everyone to know he was responsible for 9-11. And as I said before, he was already under indictment in 1996 for a terrorist plot, the Bojinka plot, which was also known as Manila Air. Uh he also killed Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street journalist, and has never been charged with it. Yeah, so I'm very skeptical of this idea that even if you can't use the confession evidence that was that was uh gotten by waterboarding, that you don't have enough evidence to try Khalid Sheikh Muhammad.
I found that very hard to believe. Andy McCarthy, our guest. Andy, I want you to hear this. As you know, we have the reading of the names every year. And this year, we included the people that have died from post-9-11 illnesses.
And sadly, it's between, I think, 6,000 and 9,000. But Terry Strada whose husband Tom was killed at the age of 41 with three little kids, including one child, one week old. is now the national chair of the 9-11 Families United. Listen to what she said, Cut 50. And my husband, Tom Strada, you are missed more with each year that passes.
But how can it be 25 years and still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder? Yes. We finally made it into a court and have proved that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia fomented a rancid culture of anti-American terrorism around the globe and then sent its agents to support the radical Islamist hijackers so they could attack you and all of our loved ones.
So she went on to call out every leader that was there and said, why didn't you do anything, including Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, everybody. And then she had a message for the vice president: do something. uh your reaction to Terry Strada. I agree with her. I've for years said that we are owed an accounting Not only Brian of the sawdie role, But also the 9-11 Commission pointed out that Iran provided logistical support.
For the 9-11 suicide hijackers to let them get from place to place to carry out. The attack.
So I think from for 25 years, We've been owed a full accounting of the roles of those countries in these attacks, and I must say. Given that We we were on We were unremorseful. at all about exposing the role of the American intelligence agencies, the failure of the FBI, the failures of the CIA. We were remorseless about that.
So why we protect these countries I has always been lost on me. My sense is, and you tell me if you buy this, they have a sprawling royal family. And Bin Laden was, evidently, Bin Laden's family were successful architects and builders. He was one of like 52 kids his ridiculous father had.
So that kid ends up being a smart but unsavory terrorist. They look to the West as their enemy, and you know what bin Laden's done, and thankfully he's dead. Is it possible that members of the royal family, without being sponsored by the government, are issued this? This wasn't a Saudi policy, but Saudi royal family complicity? I I I think Brian what the record shows Is that The Saudi official policy was alliance with the United States against radical Islamists.
However, there were a number of people who were official Saudi government people who were attached to that government. who abetted terrorists. It's kind of like dealing with Pakistan. They're not of one mind. about this issue.
You know, they officially say they're cooperating with the United States, and then yet when we found bin Laden, where was he? He was like down the block from the Saudi military. I mean the Pakistani Military Academy.
So, you know, these countries have long played a double game. And I have to say, I think we get much more cooperation from Saudi Arabia now. uh under the current regime Than we did. We don't have as much of a problem from Saudi Arabia today as we did 25 years ago. But at that time, I would say Qatar has now taken over this role, but at that time, the Saudis were the leading propagators of Sharia supremacism, which is the ideology of the jihadists, in the world.
in terms of the amount of money that they poured into institutions to indoctrinate people in this ideology. I mean you can look at Saudi Arabia and looks I haven't been there. But if you see MBS, and you understand they changed their curriculum, they're giving women actually rights to live a life, they're trying to focus their population, young, on economics and education, and they got the Wahhabism officially out of their curriculum. You see an evolution. And MBS was probably in fifth grade, what's he, 37?
So no one could say MBS, you were part of that.
So it might be a time that there could be something, yet the Saudi government is pushing back on this. Do you have any idea, and this is not, I don't mean to spring this on you, but do you have any idea where the court system is on this? Uh The problem is that there have been a number of lawsuits. But the there are intelligence doctrines that allow The federal government, particularly the executive branch, when some when Material that's relevant to a trial is classified, and the government represents that making it public. would be harmful to national security, they can stop it from being made public.
So it's not that people can't bring cases in court, it's just that if it's classified information, the government does not have to declassify it. Got it. Um right now, uh Andy How does it feel for you 25 years later knowing That you were ahead of the game because you started researching, you got the blind shake case, and you researched to try this guy, and you realize he is Muslim Brotherhood. You realize he's a scholar, you realize everyone's pointing to him. This is not only a guy that wants to blow up every bridge and tunnel in New York City, this guy's got global aspirations.
And then when 9-11 happens, you're one of the few people who would say, I knew these guys were capable of this. What's it like for you today?
Well, I'm thankful, Brian, that we haven't had a recurrence of the attack. And I think it was a lot of fits and starts in political arguments over the last 25 years, but we did get to a counterterrorism strategy that protects the country. and is a more whole of government approach than having just the Justice Department try to handle it, which it it can't do by itself. I think the big problem we continue to have is that we've never faced up to the ideology.
So for example, people ask me all the time, what do you think of what happened on the campuses after October 7th and the Hamas atrocities of that day? And my only response, and I've been complaining about this for a number of years, but if the Muslim Brotherhood established the Muslim Students Associations in the 1960s, we've had four generations of students. go through that robust program. And I don't know what you would expect if you allow that sort of thing to fester for half a century. You wake up one morning after something like October 7th and the campuses are aflame.
In favor actually saying things that echo what you hear from Hamas.
So I think it's been a big mistake. Not to confront the ideology. It's a totalitarian political ideology. We should be able to call it out without being seen as condemning all of Islam. Uh I hear you.
And the other thing is I never forget the video. of the Palestinians in Gaza cheering. the news that uh that our towers were burning and eventually would fall and 2,934 people would lose their lives. They cheered that day, and that video exists. I don't imagine their sentiment has changed today.
Andy McCarthy, thanks so much. Always great having you on. Thanks, Brian. Appreciate it. All right, we'll be back.
I have a few minutes to take some of your calls and some reflections as we look back at 25 years since 9-11. Also, eventually, I'm going to get to what happened last night at the RNC. Yours from the Brian Killmeat Show. It's Brian Killmeade.
