Quote:9/11 defence teams request testimonies from FBI officials amid spying claims

Lawyers request testimony from officials including Joanna Baltes, chief of staff for deputy FBI director Mark Giuliano

The defence now appears to be pointing to potential conflicts within the prosecution. Photograph: Janet Hamlin/EPA

The defence teams for the accused 9/11 perpetrators have formally requested testimony from four officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, one of whom is a senior official, deepening a conflict that began with revelations that the FBI attempted to insert an informant into their ranks.
Defence lawyers said late on Wednesday that they had formally requested testimony from the two agents that approached a classification specialist assigned to the defence team, as well as an FBI special agent assigned to the 9/11 prosecution team.
But the defence also wants testimony from a senior FBI official detailed to the prosecution: Joanna Baltes, the chief of staff for the deputy FBI director, Mark Giuliano.
Baltes is not currently at Guantánamo. In court on Tuesday, defence lawyers openly speculated, without providing evidence, that she might have played a role in the FBI's unexpected involvement in an apparent inquiry seeking the source of a media leak an unclassified manifesto written by accused 9/11 architect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
"There's a real question about whether there's a dual role [Baltes plays]," said Walter Ruiz, a lawyer for 9/11 co-defendant Mustafa Ahmed al-Hasawi.
"If there's a dual role, there's a huge question about a potential conflict of interest."
The move to call Baltes to testify comes with several unknowns. Chief among them is if the military commissions have the power to compel her to testify. Army Colonel James Pohl, the judge in the 9/11 tribunal, appeared unsure on Tuesday if he possessed that authority.
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its willingness to allow Baltes or the three FBI agents to give testimony in the case.
Additionally, the military commission prosecution team is adding a Justice Department lawyer as a "special trial counsel" assigned to address any aspects of the FBI inquiry issue involving the prosecution. The lawyer, whose name was not immediately released, will not play any direct role in the 9/11 trial.
The defence lawyers said this week that their possible investigation as part of a leak inquiry potentially places them in a conflict of interest, pitting their need to defend themselves against their obligations to defend their clients. The prosecution has rejected that contention as premature.
Now the defence appears to be pointing to potential conflicts within the prosecution. Two sources said the FBI special agent assigned to the prosecution, Jim Fitzgerald, was the one who received the Mohammed document on 20 December from Brigadier General Mark Martins, the chief military commissions prosecutor who has prioritised making the commissions domestically and internationally respectable.
But the process has been called into question by the fact of the apparent FBI inquiry. On 6 April, two FBI agents approached a classification specialist at his home after church and got him to sign documents that indicated an ongoing informant role.
The existence of an ongoing inquiry into the defence, its basis, and the extent of the defence's penetration has now crowded out proceedings in the pretrial stage of the 9/11 case, further delaying the actual trial, more than 12 years after the terrorist attacks.
Several family members of the victims who had travelled to Guantánamo to attend the pretrial hearings expressed anger on Wednesday with the FBI and the Obama administration for potentially jeopardising the military trial outright.
It was unclear to attorneys late on Wednesday whether Pohl will hold a court hearing on Thursday morning.

Quote:The military trial of five alleged 9/11 conspirators could be in limbo amidst allegations of FBI spying on the defense team. FBI agents questioned a contractor working as a security guard for one of the suspect's lawyers earlier this month. The contractor was forced to sign a confidentiality form, a move attorneys say turns him into a de-facto informant. The military judge overseeing pre-trial hearings has opened the way for an inquiry. Prosecutors had hoped for jury selection to begin early next year, but the defense says the trials could now be delayed until 2017. Attorney James Connell said only one person appears to have come under FBI questioning so far.

James Connell: "Our preliminary investigation leads us to hope that it may be combined, you know, that we may have nipped this in the bud just after it started. Is that gonna turn out to be true? I don't know. But so far, we don't have information that the investigation has spread beyond Mr. [Ramzi] Bin al Shibh's defense security officer."

The spying allegation follows previous claims by the attorneys that Guantánamo Bay prison officials have monitored their communications.