Thread by @carolrosenberg

Good morning from Guantanamo Bay's Camp Justice on Day 2 of the first pandemic era hearings in the 9/11 case. Lawyers resume questioning the new military judge today on his background, relationships for potential conflicts.

Prosecutors, who typically go first, said they'd go last this time. The lawyers may also have an opportunity to say which of Judge McCall's vacated rulings they want revisited, revived. Here's my report from yesterday's interrupted session.
nytimes.com/2021/09/07/us/…

We are in lunch recess at Camp Justice. Lawyers for some of the 9/11 defendants have been asking the judge, Colonel Matt McCall, about his memories of that dark day.
He was in Hawaii, 6 time zones away, had not yet joined the Air Force. And a roommate woke him to watch the news.

He said he only found out later that his brother, a long-time resident of Queens, was in Manhattan that day, unharmed. He said he knows no victims of the attacks, has not read the 9/11 Commission Report nor the Senate Study of the CIA black site program tha waterboarded KSM.

He said he was saddened by the scale of the loss of the 9/11 attacks but not surprised. "Not to sound jaded," he said, "but the fact that there was a terrorist incident didn't shock me." Lots of groups "have a beef with the United States."

This is your 3 p.m. update from Camp Justice. Defense and prosecution lawyers have completed questioning the judge and will have until Friday morning to mull over whether they want to challenge him for bias or conflict. A few interesting items from the post-lunc session...

As I was saying, a few interesting items from the post-lunch session...
The defense lawyer Cheryl Bormann questioned the judge, Colonel McCall, about how he educated himself on Islam before a before a 2006-07 deployment to the Central Criminal Court of Iraq.

He said he read:
Bernard Lewis' "The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East" and
Thomas Friedman's "The Lexus and the Olive Tree."
Both apparently came from the Air Force Chief of Staff's recommended reading list.

Bormann cast Lewis an extremist and quoted him as saying this "One of the things you've got to do to Arabs is hit them between the eyes with a big stick." Around that time the defendant Ramzi bin al Shibh was on his knees praying inside the court.

Later, Mr. bin al-Shibh's lawyer, David Bruck, asked the judge if he was prepared to withstand the kind of pressure one should expect presiding in this, undoubtedly the biggest case of his career.
Mr. Bruck posited that the case could go to trial or entirely off the rails.

Judge McCall, a colonel, replied that he did not aspire to become a general or immigration court judge, and was not up for retirement for another three years. Once he leaves the Air Force, he said, he planned to engage in hobbies, spend time with family and "enjoy my time off."

Prosecutor Clay Trivett got the judge to clarify for the record that, after a first false start, Colonel McCall was appointed to this case on Aug. 20, 2021 -- two years and one day from when Judge McCall began to preside in his very first court-martial case.

About that false start...
Here's the article I wrote back then, which the judge identified as his first hint that there might be a problem. (Unclear to me is why he didn't receive the prosecution filing that protested his selection.)
nytimes.com/2020/10/16/us/…

Mr. Trivett also asked the judge to study each and every name of the 2,976 victims listed in the 9/11 case charge sheet -- to make sure he recognized not a one.
"That's fair," Colonel McCall replied.
Based on today's back and forth, that may prove to be his trademark response.