Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and four other men accused in the plot will be prosecuted in federal court in New York City, a federal law enforcement official said early on Friday.

But the administration will prosecute another set of high-profile detainees -- Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, and four other detainees -- at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba before a military commission, the official said...

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected to announce those decisions 11 a.m. on Friday. The arrangements would mean that civilian prosecutors would handle those detainees accused of the 2001 terrorist attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, northern Virginia, and Pennsylvania, while the 2000 attack against the Cole would remain within the military system. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the press conference has not yet taken place.

No detainee is being moved right away. Under a law Congress enacted earlier this year, lawmakers must be given 45 days notice before the executive branch moves any Guantanamo Bay detainee onto United States soil.

The decision marks a milestone in the administration's efforts to close the Guantanamo prison, something that President Obama announced shortly after taking office he would do within a year, but which has proven difficult to achieve because of uncertainty about what to do with the detainees housed there...

Ask yourself this question: suppose that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's trial results in an acquittal or a hung jury. Would the Obama administration really let him go? If so, they are crazy. If not, why are they holding the trial?

...Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witnesses -- intelligence sources -- must expose themselves and their secrets...

...KSM has no defense. He was under American indictment for terrorism for years before there ever was a 9/11, and he can't help himself but brag about the atrocities he and his fellow barbarians have carried out.

So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda's case against America. Since that will be their "defense," the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and -- depending on what judge catches the case -- they are likely to be given a lot of it...

"Returning some of the Guantanamo detainees to New York City for trial, specifically Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, has now brought us full circle - we have regressed to a pre-9/11 mentality with respect to Islamic extremist terrorism. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed should be treated like the war criminal he is and tried in a military court. He is not just another murderer, or even a mass murderer. He murdered as part of a declared war against us - America.

"This is the same mistake we made with the 1993 terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center. We treated them like domestic criminals, when in fact they were terrorists. In the dangerous world we live in today, a nation unable to identify and properly define its enemies is a nation in danger."