‘They Are Still Trying to Kill Our People’

On the morning of September the 11th, 2001, our nation awoke to a nightmare attack. Nineteen men armed with box cutters took control of airplanes and turned them into missiles. They used them to kill nearly 3,000 innocent people.

We watched the twin towers collapse before our eyes, and it became instantly clear that we’d entered a new world and a dangerous new war.

The attacks of September the 11th horrified our nation. And amid the grief came new fears and urgent questions. Who had attacked us? What did they want? And what else were they planning?

Americans saw the destruction the terrorists had caused in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania, and they wondered if there were other terrorist cells in our midst poised to strike. They wondered if there was a second wave of attacks still to come.

With the twin towers and the Pentagon still smoldering, our country on edge, and a stream of intelligence coming in about potential new attacks, my administration faced immediate challenges. We had to respond to the attack on our country. We had to wage an unprecedented war against an enemy unlike any we had fought before. We had to find the terrorists hiding in America and across the world before they were able to strike our country again.

So in the early days and weeks after 9/11, I directed our government’s senior national security officials to do everything in their power, within our laws, to prevent another attack.

Nearly five years have passed since those initial days of shock and sadness. And we are thankful that the terrorists have not succeeded in launching another attack on our soil.

This is not for the lack of desire or determination on the part of the enemy. As the recently foiled plot in London shows, the terrorists are still active, and they are still trying to strike America, and they are still trying to kill our people....

The terrorists who declared war on America represent no nation. They defend no territory. And they wear no uniform. They do not mass armies on borders or flotillas of warships on the high seas.

They operate in the shadows of society. They send small teams of operatives to infiltrate free nations. They live quietly among their victims. They conspire in secret. And then they strike without warning.

And in this new war, the most important source of information on where the terrorists are hiding and what they are planning is the terrorists themselves.

Captured terrorists have unique knowledge about how terrorist networks operate. They have knowledge of where their operatives are deployed and knowledge about what plots are underway.

This intelligence -- this is intelligence that cannot be found any other place. And our security depends on getting this kind of information.

To win the war on terror, we must be able to detain, question and, when appropriate, prosecute terrorists captured here in America and on the battlefields around the world....

Most of the enemy combatants we capture are held in Afghanistan or in Iraq where they’re questioned by our military personnel. Many are released after questioning or turned over to local authorities if we determine that they do not pose a continuing threat and no longer have significant intelligence value. Others remain in American custody near the battlefield, to ensure that they don’t return to the fight....

Some of these individuals are taken to the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It’s important for Americans and others across the world to understand the kind of people held at Guantanamo. These aren’t common criminals or bystanders accidentally swept up on the battlefield.

We have in place a rigorous process to ensure those held at Guantanamo Bay belong at Guantanamo. Those held at Guantanamo include suspected bomb-makers, terrorist trainers, recruiters and facilitators, and potential suicide bombers. They are in our custody so that they cannot murder our people....

In addition to the terrorists held at Guantanamo, a small number of suspected terrorist leaders and operatives captured during the war have been held and questioned outside the United States, in a separate program operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.

This group includes individuals believed to be the key architects of the September the 11th attacks and attacks on the USS Cole [in 2000], an operative involved in the [1998] bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and individuals involved in other attacks that have taken the lives of innocent civilians across the world.

These are dangerous men, with unparalleled knowledge about terrorist networks and their plans of new attacks. The security of our nation and the lives of our citizens depend on our ability to learn what these terrorists know.

Many specifics of this program, including where these detainees have been held and the details of their confinement, cannot be divulged. Doing so would provide our enemies with information they could use to take retribution against our allies and harm our country....

Terrorists held in CIA custody have also provided information that helped stop a planned strike on U.S. Marines at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti. They were going to use an explosive-laden water tanker. They helped stop a planned attack on the U.S. consulate in [the Pakistani city of] Karachi using car bombs and motorcycle bombs. And they helped stop a plot to hijack passenger planes and fly them into Heathrow or the Canary Wharf [banking district] in London.

We’re getting information vitally necessary to do our jobs, and that’s to protect the American people and our allies.

Information from the terrorists in this program has helped us to identify individuals that Al Qaeda deemed suitable for Western operations, many of whom we had never heard about before. They include terrorists who were sent to case targets inside the United States, including financial buildings in major cities on the East Coast.

Information from terrorists in CIA custody has played a role in the capture or questioning of nearly every senior Al Qaeda member or associate detained by the U.S. and its allies since this program began. By providing everything from initial leads to photo identifications to precise locations of where terrorists were hiding, this program has helped us to take potential mass murderers off the streets before they were able to kill....

Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland. By giving us information about terrorist plans we could not get anywhere else, this program has saved innocent lives.

This program has been subject to multiple legal reviews by the Department of Justice and CIA lawyers. They determined it complied with our laws....

I want to be absolutely clear with our people and the world: The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it and I will not authorize it....

The CIA program has detained only a limited number of terrorists at any given time. And once we have determined that the terrorists held by the CIA have little or no additional intelligence value, many of them have been returned to their home countries for prosecution or detention by their governments.

Others have been accused of terrible crimes against the American people. And we have a duty to bring those responsible for these crimes to justice. So we intend to prosecute these men, as appropriate, for their crimes.

Soon after the war on terror began, I authorized a system of military commissions to try foreign terrorists accused of war crimes.

Military commissions have been used by presidents from George Washington to Franklin Roosevelt to prosecute war criminals, because the rules for trying enemy combatants in a time of conflict must be different from those for trying common criminals or members of our own military.

One of the first suspected terrorists to be put on trial by military commission was one of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards, a man named [Salim Ahmed] Hamdan. His lawyers challenged the legality of the military commission system.

It took more than two years for this case to make its way through the courts. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the military commissions we had designed, but, this past June, the Supreme Court overturned that decision.

The Supreme Court determined that military commissions are an appropriate venue for trying terrorists, but ruled that military commission needed to be explicitly authorized by the United States Congress.

So today I’m sending Congress legislation to specifically authorize the creation of military commissions to try terrorists for war crimes....

We’re now approaching the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. And the families of those murdered that day have waited patiently for justice. Some of the families are with us today. They should have to wait no longer.

So I’m announcing today that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Abu Zubeida, Ramzi Binalshibh and 11 other terrorists in CIA custody have been transferred to the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

They are being held in the custody of the Department of Defense.

As soon as Congress acts to authorize the military commissions I have proposed, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on September the 11th, 2001, can face justice.

We will also seek to prosecute those believed to be responsible for the attack on the USS Cole and an operative believed to be involved in the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania....

These men will be held in a high-security facility at Guantanamo. The International Committee of the Red Cross is being advised of their detention and will have the opportunity to meet with them.

Those charged with crimes will be given access to attorneys who will help them prepare their defense, and they will be presumed innocent.

We will continue working to transfer individuals held at Guantanamo and ask other countries to work with us in this process. And we will move toward the day when we can eventually close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay....

This nation is going to stay on the offense to protect the American people. We will continue to bring the world’s most dangerous terrorists to justice, and we will continue working to collect the vital intelligence we need to protect our country....

Free nations have faced new enemies and adjusted to new threats before and we have prevailed.

Like the struggles of the last century, today’s war on terror is, above all, a struggle for freedom and liberty.

The adversaries are different, but the stakes in this war are the same.

We’re fighting for our way of life and our ability to live in freedom.

We’re fighting for the cause of humanity against those who seek to impose the darkness of tyranny and terror upon the entire world.

And we’re fighting for a peaceful future for our children and our grandchildren....