Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, center, and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees (from left: Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Waleed bin Attash, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi and Ramzi Binalshibh) will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, the Obama administration announced on Nov. 13, 2009. (AP Photos)

Post your comments below

After eight years — on the run, in secret CIA prisons, being water-boarded, in Guantanamo — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is headed to New York City.

The alleged Al Qaeda mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and five others, will go on trial in lower Manhattan, “just blocks away from where the Twin Towers once stood,” said Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday.

It will be, without doubt, the trial of this young century. A vindication for American justice, say some. A circus and a threat, say others.

This hour, On Point: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, American justice, and the trial of the century.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Evan Perez, reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General of the US Navy (1997-2000). He’s now president and dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center.

Walter Huffman, former  Judge Advocate General for the U.S. Army (1997 to 2001). He’s dean of the Texas Tech University School of Law.

Josh Gerstein, White House reporter for Politico.

Attorney General Eric Holder

Post your comments below

Attorney General Eric Holder’s appointment of a special prosecutor to inquire into CIA torture of terrorism suspects is:

1) Wrong, and a betrayal of the people charged with protecting American lives? Or 2) Needed, because these methods present one of the darkest chapters in American history — and besides that, critics charge, they don’t work.

The attorney general has stirred a political hornets nest. Former Vice President Dick Cheney calls it a politically motivated move that will have a “devastating effect” on national security. Critics on the left say Holder isn’t going far enough. Somewhere in the middle is the White House and Commander in Chief.

This hour, On Point: A special prosecutor, rule of law, and torture.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jacki Lyden, guest host

Guests:

Mark Mazzetti, national security correspondent for The New York Times. He has covered the Obama administration’s internal battle over investigating the CIA.

Mark Danner, professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. His articles in The New York Review of Books last April on the leaked Red Cross torture report triggered the disclosure of memos on prisoner abuse. He’s the author of “Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror.” His new book, “Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War,” will be published next month.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, former specialist at the CIA’s Directorate of Operations and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he focuses on terrorism and intelligence. He’s a contributing editor for The Weekly Standard, a correspondent for The Atlantic, and author of the books “Know Thine Enemy: A Spy’s Journey into Revolutionary Iran (1997) and “The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy” (2004). His recent opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal was headlined “Interrogating the CIA.”

Post your comments below

Middle East politics is stone-cold serious. Israel’s soldiers and spies and Palestinian militants compete so ruthlessly, it’s more than a little incongruous that Mideast history took a hairpin turn in 1997 with a crazy tale of Israeli assassins saving the life of the man they tried to kill.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Fast forward about a decade, and the intended victim is a savvy Hamas mastermind, and the same Israeli prime minister who tried to take him out is back in power.

This hour On Point: The story of the mission to kill Hamas leader Khalid Mishal.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jacki Lyden, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation.

Guest:

Paul McGeough joins us from Sydney, Australia.  Chief foreign correspondent and former executive editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, he has twice been named Australian Journalist of the Year and in 2002 was awarded the SAIS-Novartis Prize for excellence in international journalism by Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. His new book is “Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas.”

The Washington Post’s Pamela Constable joined us today from Kabul. The Post’s video blog of the battle for Helmand is a must-see. Also, this photo gallery by Post photographer Nikki Kahn, on the ground in Helmand.  Another good photo gallery from Helmand is by NPR photographer (yes, NPR photographer) David Gilkey.

The Associated Press offers this video of Marines in Helmand Province last month:

The BBC is at the front lines, too, with this video of British troops:

CNN’s Ivan Watson watched recently as U.S. forces blew up an opium poppy cache in Taliban territory:

U.S. Marines from the 2nd MEB, 1st Battalion 5th Marines, run out to assist after a helicopter dropped an emergency water resupply outside a compound in Afghanistan's Helmand province, on July 8, 2009. (AP)

Post your comments below

It’s full battle time in Afghanistan. American troop levels surging. Daily firefights, roadside bombings, suicide attacks. Planes and helicopters going down. Poppy fields and opium stores ablaze.

Coalition forces are on the move, fighting, dying. Just three weeks in, this month, July, is already the deadliest for U.S. troops in nearly eight years of Afghan war.

A new top U.S. commander is armed with a new strategy: “clear, hold and build.” But the Taliban has strategies, too. And critics now call the war “Obama’s Vietnam.”

This hour, On Point: We’ll go to the heart of the fighting, and thinking, in Afghanistan.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Kabul, Afghanistan, is Laura King, reporter for The Los Angeles Times. She’s recently been in the country’s far eastern region, near the Pakistan border, at Forward Operating Base Salerno. Her piece in today’s LA Times reports on a new wave of coordinated Taliban attacks.

Also from Kabul we’re joined by Pamela Constable, reporter for The Washington Post. She’s just back from Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, the focal point of the current coalition push. She’s also been in Faizabad recently, in the country’s remote northeast.

From Hardin, Montana, we’re joined by Gretchen Peters, a journalist who has covered the Afghanistan-Pakistan region for more than decade with the Associated Press and ABC News. She is author of the new book, “Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and Al Qaeda.”

From Monterey, California, we’re joined by Kalev Sepp, professor of defense analysis at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. He is a retired Army lieutenant colonel and special forces officer. From 2007 to January 2009, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Capabilities, helping to oversee global counterterrorism policy.

More links:

We’ve posted a roundup of videos and photo galleries on the recent fighting in Helmand and elsewhere in Afghanistan.

The White House believes it does make a difference. On ABC’s “This Week,” Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, defended the administration’s decision to release the so-called torture memos along these lines. He said the information was already in circulation, and cited by name The New York Review of Books. Emanuel was referring to, among other things, Mark Danner’s new article.

In fact, if you were looking for chapter and verse on the torture question prior to Obama’s moves last week, you could go straight to The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, who has published some of the facts now retroactively confirmed and supplemented by the government memos. Her book, “The Dark Side,” is a scathing indictment of the whole “war on terror” legal apparatus.

By the way, one of the legal architects of the early “war on terror”  interrogation techniques is John Yoo, who has appeared on On Point. He told Tom Ashbrook, “The original vision of the US Constitution is very flexible in wartime.” And he defended his gloves-off legal views: “The way we approach war has to change because the nature of war is new.”

Detail from 2003 memo by John Yoo, a Justice Department lawyer in the Bush administration, outlining permissible interrogation techniques.

Post your comments below

More news over the weekend on the U.S. torture debate.

Waterboarding used 266 times on two suspects. Republicans pushing back on President Obama’s release of Bush-era memos. And Obama’s chief of staff says no one – not even the Bush architects – may face charges.

From wiretapping to detainees to the red hot CIA memos controversy, President Obama has roiled some on the left. He’s too much like Bush, they say. Meanwhile, conservatives are upset over the release of the sensitive memos.

Defenders, however, say he’s found middle ground in some rough terrain.

This Hour, On Point: The debate over President Obama’s legal moves in the terrorism fight.

You can join the conversation. What’s your view on President Obama’s legal moves on the national security front? Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

Ari Shapiro, Justice correspondent, National Public Radio.

Jonathan Turley, professor at George Washington University Law School. He writes a widely-read legal blog.

Robert Turner, professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. He also serves as the associate director at UVA’s Center for National Security Law.

People are seen in front of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, on Saturday, April 4, 2009. President Obama visited the mosque on Tuesday. (AP)

Post your comments below

There was the president of the United States, introduced as Barack Hussein Obama, standing before the Turkish parliament, reaching out to the Muslim world. The president, in Istanbul, in the midst of a town hall meeting with largely young Muslims, taking their questions one by one. The president, shoes off, walking solemnly through the great Blue Mosque.

The facts on the ground in trouble spots across the Muslim world are hard to change. But President Obama is trying hard right now, for starters at least, to change the music, the message, the tone of the United States toward the world’s Muslim populations — and mend a rocky relationship that has plagued and cost the United States, and much of the Muslim world, dearly.

Can he do it? Can put it on a new path? This hour, On Point: Obama’s message and the Muslim world.

You can join the conversation. What do you make of President Obama’s outreach? Is it the right message? Can it change the context? Tilt it toward a better day?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Robin Wright, longtime diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post, currently a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She’s the author of five books, most recently “Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East,” now out in paperback.

From London, we’re joined by Ali Allawi, Iraqi Minister of Defense and Minister of Trade from 2003 to 2004, following the U.S. invasion, and Minister of Finance in the Iraqi Transitional Government from 2005 to 2006. He’s the author of “The Crisis of Islamic Civilization” and “The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace.”

From Washington, we’re joined by Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and host of “Beyond the Atlantic,” a current affairs show on Turkish Radio and Television. He is also co-director of the CSIS Caspian Sea Energy Project.

And from Chicago, we’re joined by Rami Khouri. Based in Lebanon and currently traveling in the U.S., he is director of the Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at American University of Beirut and editor-at-large for the Lebanese English-language paper The Daily Star.

Adm. William J. Fallon in February 2007. (AP)

Post your comments below

Four-star Admiral William J. Fallon had a brilliant Navy career and a mouth, it was said, that could peel paint off the walls.

He flew fighter missions over Vietnam, rose to head of the Pacific Command, then was named by George W. Bush Combatant Commander of U.S. Central Command — Centcom — the U.S. military’s top commander in the white-hot region from Egypt to Pakistan.

He oversaw the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and abruptly retired after Esquire magazine called him the last man standing between Washington and war with Iran.

This hour, On Point: The admiral who spoke his mind.

You can join the conversation. What’s your question for the fighter-pilot admiral who once ran your country’s wars? What’s your question for William Fallon today on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Gaza? On “smart power”? On Al Qaeda?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Adm. William J. (“Fox”) Fallon, retired four-star Navy admiral, Commander of CENTCOM from March 2007 to March 2008, Commander of PACOM (Pacific Command) from Feb 2005 to March 2007, and currently a Robert E. Wilhelm fellow at MIT’s Center for International Studies.

More links:

“The Man Between War and Peace,” the Esquire profile by Thomas P.M. Barnett that caused so much controversy.

Slate’s Fred Kaplan, writing in March 2008,  looked at the context surrounding Fallon’s departure.

Fire engulfs a part of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, India.

Post your comments below

In three shocking, bloody days, the whole world got a crash course in the urban landscape of Mumbai.

It was already India’s most cosmopolitan city, financial center, Bollywood movie hub. Now, it’s a familiar front-page map — a blood-stained city guide of terrorist destruction.

The Leopold Cafe. The Taj Mahal hotel. The train station. The Jewish welcome center. And on, and on.

Today, Mumbai is already back on its feet. But its three days of terrorist guns and grenades are still echoing loudly, dangerously, from India to Pakistan to Washington.

This hour, On Point: After the terror in Mumbai.

You can join the conversation. What did you see in the flames and gunfire and death toll in Mumbai? Who do you blame? And what now?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Mumbai is Somini Sengupta, India bureau chief for The New York Times. She’s been in Mumbai covering the story since last week.

From London, we’re joined by Rahul Roy-Chaudhury. A senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, he previously served on the National Security Council Secretariat in the Indian Prime Minister’s Office.

From Madrid, we’re joined by Ahmed Rashid. A Pakistani journalist and author, he’s a renowned expert on the Taliban and security issues in Central and South Asia. His most recent book, published this year, is “Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.”

And joining us from Washington is Lisa Curtis. A former CIA analyst posted to the U.S. embassies in both India and Pakistan, she has served as a senior advisor in the State Department and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee handling South Asia issues for the former chairman Sen. Richard Lugar. She is now a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Victor Juma, who lost his father, stands in front of an artist's impression of the events of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing at the memorial for the victims in Nairobi, Kenya, Aug. 7, 2008.

Post your comments below

It’s 9/11 again. Seven years now. Years of war, bloodshed, torture, military sacrifice, and deepening concern in the United States about the country’s fundamental economic and security standing — about the country’s future.

Al Qaeda set out to attack, entangle, bleed, and weaken the United States. Seven years on, we have not been hit again. Or have we? In the pocketbook, in military readiness, in global standing?

The United States is certainly entangled, bled, and — on many fronts — weakened. And Al Qaeda’s still out there.

This hour, On Point: American security, American strategy, seven years after 9/11.

Are we better off today than we were seven years ago? Even without another attack on American soil, has Bin Laden won? What should the U.S. do now to secure its homeland and its place in the world? Does John McCain have the answer? Does Barack Obama? Do you? Join the conversation and tell us what you think.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Berlin is Craig Whitlock, a staff writer for The Washington Post. He’s been covering the U.S. campaign against Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas. His front-page article in yesterday’s Post reported that U.S. and Pakistani officials are shifting tactics in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Joining us from Vancouver is Bruce Hoffman. He’s a professor of security studies at Georgetown University and a world-renowned expert on terrorism and insurgency. A revised and updated version of his acclaimed 1998 book, “Inside Terrorism,” was published in 2006.

And joining us in our studio is Stephen Van Evera. He’s a professor of political science at MIT and an expert on foreign policy and security. His recent article, “A Farewell to Geopolitics,” appears in the new volume “To Lead the World: American Strategy After the Bush Doctrine.”

The Baltimore City Fire Department Hazmat team during a simulated terrorist attack training exercise in Baltimore, July 13, 2002. (AP Photo/Alex Dorgan-Ross)

Post your comments below

When government biodefense scientist Bruce Ivins took his own life last week, the 2001 anthrax case took another stunning turn. The FBI say it’s ready to reveal its evidence against Ivins this week. The case may close. Or it may not.

But behind all the drama is an intense debate over whether the U.S. — after seven years and more than $50 billion spent — is any better prepared for a bioterror attack. Critics say the U.S. remains far too vulnerable. Others say progress has been real, if slow — and that the threat is devilishly complex.

This hour, On Point: the anthrax investigation, and the biodefense debate.

You can join the conversation. Have you followed the anthrax case? What lessons should we draw from the new revelations? Are you confident that the U.S. government is prepared for another attack? Tell us what you think.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

* * *

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Siobhan Gorman, intelligence and homeland security correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Her piece in yesterday’s paper looked at the persistence of the bioterrorism threat.

From Minneapolis, we’re joined by Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. He sits on the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. From 2001 to 2005, he was advisor to the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Joining us from Annapolis, Maryland, is Tara O’Toole. She’s CEO and director of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and a professor of medicine and public health at the University of Pittsburgh. From 1993 to 1997, she served as Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environment Safety and Health.

And with us from Washington is Alan Pearson, director of the Biological and Chemical Weapons Control Program at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. In recent years, he’s worked at the Department of Homeland Security to streamline and refine the bioterror spending.

The big news in Western media out of Al Qaeda country lately is that Al Qaeda is in trouble. That the spearhead of global terrorism is being rejected by mainstream Muslims sick of death and destruction, even rejected by onetime theorists of jihad.

New Yorker magazine reporter Lawrence Wright has gone deep on what he calls “the rebellion within,” and he joins me today. Also with us, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, who voices skepticism on Al Qaeda’s reported setbacks from the frontlines in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This hour, On Point: Testing Al Qaeda’s “rebellion within.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Lawrence Wright, staff writer for The New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11″ (2006). His latest article for The New Yorker, “The Rebellion Within,” appears in the June 2 issue.

Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani journalist and bestselling author, he writes for London’s Daily Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. His new book is “Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.”

Conservative legal hot shot Jack Goldsmith was tapped for a key job in the Bush Justice Department in part because of his “get tough” reputation on terror.

But within hours of getting inside as head of the Office of Legal Counsel — the office that sets legal boundaries for the presidency — this conservative top gun was shocked by what he saw: The law being tortured, he says, to expand the power of the presidency.

Now he’s out and telling all, about what we should learn from the wartime powers of Lincoln, FDR — and Bush.

Up next, On Point: Jack Goldsmith, and the “terror presidency.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Jack Goldsmith, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2003 to 2004, now a professor at Harvard Law School, his new book is “The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration.”

Benjamin Wittes, fellow and research director in public law at the Brookings Institution and member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law.

Six years tomorrow. Six years since 9/11.

It’s getting to be a long time. Maybe now it’s time to look at where we’ve been. If Pearl Harbor galvanized the nation in one direction, 9/11 galvanized it in many. Pro-war, anti-war, right, left, and scattered center.

Politicians and pundits have analyzed how and why. Now the psychologists are stepping in — and focusing on the impact of fear. Research finds the mere mention of death changes minds. The image of the Twin Towers exploding is a psychological supernova.

This hour On Point: where our minds have been since 9/11.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Sheldon Solomon, professor of psychology at Skidmore College and co-author of “In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror.”

Martha Stout, clinical psychologist and former faculty member at Harvard Medical School, author of “The Paranoia Switch: How Terror Rewires Our Brains and Reshapes Our Behavior — and How We Can Reclaim Our Courage.”

Graham Allison, professor of government and director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, author of “Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe.”