Attorney General Eric Holder's original plan to try them in a civilian court in New York City met with criticism so fierce that it threatened to derail Obama's promise to shut the U.S. military's Cuban prison.
As difficult as the politics are concerning how and where to try the most notorious terror suspect in U.S. custody, that's only one step toward the even more fraught and complicated goal of closing Guantanamo where Mohammed and nearly 200 other terror detainees remain.
Closing Guantanamo was a signature promise of Obama's presidency, and it is still unkept well past his original deadline of January. Failing to keep it would have huge implications for the president, both with his base of supporters in the Democratic Party and in his efforts to remake America's image around the globe.
Holder decided in November to transfer Mohammed and four other accused Sept. 11 terrorists from Guantanamo to New York City for civilian trials. City officials initially embraced the idea.
But they later reversed themselves, citing the enormous costs, security and logistics of hosting a 9/11 trial
- making things awkward for the Obama administration. And then the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing altered the political dynamic further, as Republicans focused anew on Obama's terrorism policies in general, including the trials.
The drumbeat of policy criticism, combined with the increasingly loud outcry from New York, made it nearly impossible for the White House to hold on to Holder's decision without review. That review is not finished, so no new recommendation is yet before the president. A decision is not expected for weeks, said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss private deliberations.
But the recommendation almost certainly will be for a switch to a military process for the five accused men, said administration officials.
The reason for the probable reversal is simple: The more the trial controversy spun out of control, the harder it was becoming to make progress on other, already difficult issues crucial to closing Guantanamo, such as securing funding from Congress for the closure, arranging a replacement facility in the United States and planning other trials.
White House officials now see the Mohammed trial decision as the key to unlocking those logjams.
Republicans in Congress, including Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have proposed a ban on trying terrorism defendants in any American community.
The administration believes a civilian trial is doable, even preferable, as a demonstration of U.S. commitment to rule of law. Officials have cited the numerous terrorism trials held previously in U.S. criminal courts. They also argue that decisions on how to prosecute defendants are not for lawmakers to make.
But the White House also wants to move on.
As the Obama administration has been forced to defend its terrorism policies, the White House has taken control of the decision-making process on major terror trials and in negotiations with key lawmakers, all with greatly reduced input from the Justice Department.
