Another Obama Friday Night's Greatest Hits--we gave Gitmo terrorists use of laptops

• News released on getaway day- With teams of lawyers working around the clock
  

to make life as difficult as possible for US survivors of Islamic terrorism, anything is possible.

• Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and at least 4 other terrorists were given US taxpayer funded laptops in their cells for at least 15 months, September 2008 until at least January of this year for use in preparing for their defense.
  

"The Pentagon allowed five captured al Qaeda members currently held at the Guantanamo Bay prison to use laptop computers in detention, raising concerns among security officials that the terrorism suspects could pass sensitive data to terrorists in the future, according to U.S. officials.

• The computers, without Internet access, were provided to Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other suspected 9/11 conspirators at the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba
  
• after approval by senior Pentagon officials in September 2008.

The battery-powered laptops were kept in the detainees' cell areas, and limitations on their use were imposed, defense officials said. The practice continued until January, when charges against the five were temporarily dropped after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the men would be tried in civilian court, not by military commission.

• Mr. Holder then backed off plans to hold trials in federal court in New York City and said this week that a decision on where to conduct the trials is expected in the coming weeks.

In addition to Mohammed, the other al Qaeda members who were given computers were Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi. The computer access was granted by Guantanamo authorities before an Oct. 6, 2008, ruling by Marine Corps Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann, a military judge, that formally granted the five terrorism suspects the right to use computers, said Col. Les Melnyk, a Pentagon spokesman....

• "The detainees' access to laptops and their interaction with lawyers is one element of an ongoing CIA and Justice Department investigation into
  
• whether lawyers representing the detainees compromised the safety of covert CIA interrogators. Lawyers
  
• showed the prisoners privately obtained photographs of CIA interrogators in an attempt to have the terrorism suspects
  
• identify the interrogators in order to call them as witnesses in future trials.

The agent-identification effort is part of a joint program of the

• American Civil Liberties Union and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
  

called the John Adams Project."...

• from Washington Times article by Bill Gertz, "Gitmo suspects allowed laptops," 3/10/10, via mention on John Batchelor show