Earlier this year, Kevin Ohlson made a secret trip to upstate New York.

Ohlson,  then Attorney General Eric Holder’s chief of staff, supposedly was visiting his family. York. He also made what appeared to be a routine check at a federal prison in Otisville.

But as recounted by The Washington Post Sunday, the trip was anything but routine. Ohlson was looking for a place to house Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-admitted Sept. 11 mastermind,  while he stood trial in the Southern District of New York. Ultimately, Justice Department officials abandoned the idea,  deciding that the decision to house Mohammed in upstate New York would not alleviate the political heat the administration already was taking over housing him in Manhattan during his trial.

Earlier this month, Holder  announced that the administration was abandoning plans to try Mohammed in a civilian court, and instead he would be tried in a military commission.

The Attorney General had announced in November 2009 that KSM and his alleged accomplices would be tried in a Manhattan federal court as part of President Barack Obama’s effort to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center. But after backlash from Republicans and Democrats, the White House said that it would consider using military commissions for the prosecutions.

The Post story presents an extensive account of the administration’s efforts to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and transfer detainees held to a prison in the U.S. That plan,one of  Obama’s high priorities, later was overshadowed by his extensive effort to pass health reform legislation.

Among the anecdotes recounted in the Post story are that:

• Administration officials, including the president himself were shaken when the president asked DOJ attorney Matthew G. Olson, how many Guantanamo detainees could be prosecuted. Olson, who headed an interagency task force reviewing the case of every detainee, responded that fewer than 20, which later increased to 36.  The president appeared upset at the number, since during his election campaign, he had said that nearly all of the prisoners would be prosecuted or transfered. White House officials, according to the newspaper, were in such “disbelief” that they directed DOJ officials to write a memo explaining why more could not be prosecuted. In many cases, the intelligence gathered on the men was not court-worthy, the newspaper said.

• DOJ officials felt “sandbagged” by the New York City Police Department when department officials presented inflated security estimates on the cost of housing the detainees in the city. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly talked about creating security rings around the courthouse, at an annual cost of about $200 million a year. That estimate came two months after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had welcomed Holder’s announcement that Guantanamo detainees would be tried in a Manhattan courthouse less than a mile from Ground Zero.

• Obama did not press Holder when the Attorney General called the president to inform him that he would be returning the case against Mohammed and his four co-defendants to the Defense Department.