Sept. 11 Plea Deal Includes Lifetime Gag Order on C.I.A. Torture Secrets
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the prisoner at the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who is accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks, has agreed to never disclose secret aspects of his torture by the C.I.A. if he is allowed to plead guilty rather than face a death-penalty trial.
The clause was included in the latest portions of his deal to be unsealed at a federal appeals court in Washington. A three-judge panel is considering whether former Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III lawfully withdrew from a plea agreement with Mr. Mohammed in the capital case against five men who are accused of conspiring in the attacks that killed nearly 3,000.
The C.I.A. has never taken a public position on whether it supports the deal, and the agency declined to comment on Friday. But the latest disclosure makes clear that Mr. Mohammed would not be allowed to publicly identify people, places and other details from his time in the agency's secret prisons overseas from 2003 to 2006.
It has been publicly known for years that Mr. Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times by the C.I.A. It has also been revealed that waterboarding was done by a three-person interrogation team led by Bruce Jessen and James E. Mitchell, two former contract psychologists for the agency. Details of Mr. Mohammed's violent treatment, including rectal abuse, have emerged in court filings and leaks.
But the agency has protected the names of other people who worked in the 'black site' prisons, notably medical staff, guards and other intelligence agency employees who questioned Mr. Mohammed hundreds of times as he was shuttled between prisons in Afghanistan, Poland and other locations that have not been acknowledged by the C.I.A. as former black sites.
Now, a recently unredacted paragraph in Mr. Mohammed's 20-page settlement says he agreed not to disclose 'any form, in any manner, or by any means' information about his 'capture, detention, confinement of himself or others' while in U.S. custody.
He signed the agreement on July 31, after more than two years of negotiations between his lawyers and prosecutors, who are responsible for protecting national security secrets. Two military courts have ruled that Mr. Austin acted too late when he tried to withdraw from the settlement on Aug. 2, two days after the retired Army general he put in charge of the case had signed it.
The settlement and similar agreements with two of Mr. Mohammed's co-defendants, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, are still mostly under seal while defense lawyers seek to enforce the agreement and hold a sentencing hearing at Guantánamo Bay.
Secrecy surrounding the black site program has been one reason for long delays in starting the trial. Mr. Mohammed was first charged in this case in 2012. Defense lawyers have spent years litigating for government versions of what happened to Mr. Mohammed and the other four defendants in the case, forcing prosecutors to frequently seek permission from the military judges to withhold or redact certain evidence in the case.
The settlement does allow Mr. Mohammed to continue discussing those details with his lawyers while they prepare for a lengthy sentencing trial before a military jury. Hs lawyers have an independent obligation to keep that information classified.
Separately on Friday, the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit extended an order preventing the military judge at Guantánamo from holding plea proceedings in the case.
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