Debra Burlingame, the director of the National September 11 Memorial Foundation, has an op-ed in today’s Journal. At a White House meeting shortly after his inauguration, the president promised Burlingame and others whose family members had been killed by al Qaeda that there would be “swift and certain justice” for the perpetrators. Burlingame says that she and they were won over by the new president, who assuaged “their fears that the review of some 245 current detainees would result in dangerous jihadists being set free.” Just a few months later:
Binyam Mohamed — the al Qaeda operative selected by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) for a catastrophic post-9/11 attack with co-conspirator Jose Padilla — was released 17 days later. In a follow-up conference call, the White House liaison to 9/11 and Cole families refused to answer questions about the circumstances surrounding the decision to repatriate Mohamed, including whether he would be freed in Great Britain. The phrase “swift and certain justice” had been used by top presidential adviser David Axelrod in an interview prior to our meeting with the president. “Swift and certain justice” figured prominently in the White House press release issued before we had time to surrender our White House security passes. “At best, he manipulated the families,” Kirk Lippold, commanding officer of the USS Cole at the time of the attack and the leader of the Cole families group, told me recently. “At worst, he misrepresented his true intentions.”
Burlingame has one example after another. Read the whole thing.
