Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey spoke to Senate Republicans this afternoon, hours after he blasted Attorney General Eric Holder’s handling of the civilian trials for the five alleged planners of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Michael Mukasey

Republican leaders declined to say what Mukasey spoke about at the Senate GOP’s weekly lunch. The last Attorney General of the George W. Bush administration, Mukasey said on the Fox News program “Fox and Friends” this morning that Holder’s decision to try self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators in a New York civilian court made it look like “amateur night” at the DOJ.

“[Mukasey] has been a leader, as you know, not only as Attorney General, but since leaving as Attorney General, in helping everyone understand the difference between someone who tries to bomb a convenience store on one hand and someone who tries to blow up a plane on another,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said at press conference following the lunch meeting.

McConnell went on to praise Sen. Lindsey Graham for bipartisan legislation the South Carolina Republican unveiled today that would prohibit the DOJ from using funds to prosecute KSM and his alleged accomplices.

“I think the administration is going to retreat here,” the minority leader said.

Elsewhere on Capitol Hill Tuesday, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair and FBI Director Robert Mueller testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about the man who allegedly tried to ignite explosives in his underpants on a Dec. 25 Detroit-bound airplane flight as a civilian.

Sen. Christopher Bond (Mo.), the panel’s ranking Republican, criticized the Obama administration’s decision to treat Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a civilian.

The Republican senator said “treating terrorists like common criminals can cost us life-saving information.”

Mary Jacoby contributed to this report.

Attorney General Eric Holder and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey slammed his successor on Tuesday morning, declaring it “amateur night” at the Justice Department and labeling current Attorney General Eric Holder weak for his handling of terrorist trials.

According to the Huffington Post, Mukasey criticized the Justice Department’s indecision over whether to try self-proclaimed Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a New York City criminal court during an appearance on “Fox and Friends.”

“It makes it look like amateur night down there,” he said. “Yes, it makes us look weak. It is weakness. And I can’t understand the reason for the vacillation. I can’t understand the choice to bring it to New York in the first place other than showboating.”

Mukasey argued that KSM should be tried in military court at Guantanamo.

“Gitmo has been custom-built to deal with cases precisely like this,” Mukasey said. “There’s a courtroom that can deal with classified information, store it safely and electronically. There’s a detention facility that can hold these people in a remote, secure and humane location. it was built specifically for these kinds of trials. Secondly, New York poses a tremendous, the biggest, security threat. And as well, it is a mockery of the rule of law to take people who are charged with violating all the rules of war and put them in a situation that’s better than the one they would have been in if they had followed the rules of war.”

Video embedded below.

The Justice Department is now “scrambling” to assess sites outside Manhattan for a civilian trial of accused 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged al-Qaeda terrorists, the New York Times reported late Thursday night, in an update to a previous version of the article that said a “chorus” of opposition had arisen.

The updated New York Times story suggested the administration’s response to the trial location issue was evolving quickly on Thursday, and that the Justice Department may have been caught off guard by the strength of the opposition to a Manhattan trial.

Earlier Thursday evening, the New York Daily News reported that the White House had “ordered” the Justice Department to evaluate other locations for a trial, while Fox News reported that the White House “has begun discussing alternate locations with the Justice Department.”

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s opposition to trying five alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in federal court in Manhattan has ballooned into a major political problem for the Obama administration. It lent momentum to moving the trial out of the city.

According to the New York Times, “the apparent collapse of what had seemed since November to be a settled decision to hold the trial in lower Manhattan” became clear when New York’s senior senator, Democrat Charles Schumer, said Thursday he was encouraging the Obama administration “to find suitable alternatives.” New York’s junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, also a Democrat, added she was “open to alternative locations,” the newspaper said. And New York’s Democratic governor, David Patterson, reiterated his opposition to the trial location.

Meanwhile, the New York Daily News reported Thursday night that the White House had “ordered” the Justice Department to evaluate other locations for a trial, though it cited no source for the information. Fox News reported that the White House “has begun discussing alternate locations with the Justice Department.”

Department spokesman Dean Boyd told The New York Times that no decision has been reached on moving the trial.

The growing uproar over the trials is a political setback for Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced his decision in November to try the accused 9/11 plotters in New York, including the self-confessed 9/11 “mastermind,” Mohammed. The alleged terrorists had been held at the military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which the administration has been trying to shutter.

Holder has also come under criticism by conservatives for the decision to charge alleged Christmas Day airplane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab criminally rather than hold him as a military detainee for questioning by intelligence experts. Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell (R) decried that decision Wednesday evening in giving the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech.

Opposition to a civilian trial for KSM, as Mohammed is known in government circles, cropped up immediately after Holder announced his decision in November. Within hours, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who served under George W. Bush, slammed the decision in a speech before a meeting of the Federalist Society in Washington.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Attorney General John Ashcroft and other conservatives piled on, arguing that military tribunals are a more proper setting to weigh charges against the alleged 9/11 plotters.

But what brought the controversy to a boil were remarks on Wednesday by Bloomberg, who had previously supported the trial in federal court, blocks in lower Manhattan from the site where the World Trade Center towers were brought down in 2001 after al-Qaeda operative crashed hijacked commercial airliners into the buildings.

Bloomberg, a Republican, objected to the security costs, estimated to be $200 million a year for a Manhattan trial. “It would be great if the federal government could find a site that didn’t cost a billion dollars, which using downtown will,” he told reporters Wednesday, according to The New York Times. On Thursday Bloomberg stepped back a little from his earlier comments. “[W]ould I prefer that they did it elsewhere? Yes, but if we are called on, we will do what we’re supposed to do,” he said, according to the Times.

According to the Daily News, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly catalyzed opposition among Manhattan business leaders, who then leaned on Bloomberg to reverse his position. Kelley gave a speech arguing the trial would be too disruptive and costly at a Jan. 13 policy charity event, the tabloid reported.

“What turned this around was when Ray made a presentation to the Police Foundation,” the Daily New quoted an unnamed source. “Everyone went from thinking, ‘Justice will be served’ to thinking ‘We are screwed.’”

In Congress, New York Republican Rep. Peter King (R)  introduced a bill Wednesday to cut off financing for civilian trials of accused 9/11 terrorists, and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) said he would introduce companion legislation in the Senate next week.

A prosecutor in Boston is facing a three-judge panel today to determine whether he should be disciplined for allegedly withholding exculpatory evidence in an incident that led to another federal judge releasing accused mobsters from prison, The National Law Journal reports.

In 2007, District of Massachusetts Chief Judge Mark Wolf sent a complaint letter to the Massachusetts Bar Counsel about Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Auerhahn. In the letter Wolf detailed missteps by Auerhahn in prosecuting alleged mobsters Vincent Ferrara and Pasquale Barone. A government witness recanted some statements about the defendants’ involvement in a murder, which Auerhahn did not disclose, Wolf said in the letter.

Auerhahn’s alleged misconduct conduct occurred between 1991 and 1993 but was not disclosed to the court until August 2002. A year later, then-U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan asked Wolf to hold off on referring the matter to the bar counsel’s office until the Justice Department’s internal ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility, had completed its investigation.

In January 2005 OPR issued a 112-page report concluding that Auerhahn had acted in “reckless disregard of discovery obligations” and “exercised poor judgment,” although the ethics office found no evidence of intentional misconduct. Sullivan issued a written reprimand to Auerhahn.

In January 2008, Wolf sent a letter to then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey criticizing the Justice Department’s handling of Auerhahn. Wolf followed up with another letter to Attorney General Eric Holder in April 2009 asking for further review of the matter.

In the meantime, the bar counsel complaint was handed off the federal court case to Judge Joseph Tauro of the District of Massachusetts. Tauro selected district court judges George O’Toole Jr., William Young and Rya Zobel to sit on the three-judge review panel.

Four generals advocated the closure of Guantanamo at the National Press Club on Thursday (photo by Ryan J. Reilly).

In a letter to President Barack Obama, a group of retired U.S. generals say they are “deeply concerned by the hysteria permeating the public debate” around closing the military prison at Guantánamo Bay and filing cases against terrorism suspects in civilian court. They say opponents are using the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day as a reason to advocate for torturing suspects to gain intelligence.

“Opponents of your plan to close Guantánamo are using the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as an excuse to renew their calls to keep the Guantánamo prison facility open and to oppose bringing terrorist suspects to justice in federal courts,” reads a letter from 33 retired flag and general officers.

“We know from experience that torture does not produce reliable intelligence, and acting on information derived through such abuse is dangerous, to our troops, and to our nation.”

In a separate letter, retired U.S. Marine Corps. Generals Joseph P. Hoar and Charles C. Krulak, co-chairmen of the group of 33, wrote Sen.-elect Scott Brown (R-Mass.) to request a meeting to discuss issues regarding the treatment and detention of enemy prisoners.

Four of the retired generals who signed the letter to Obama, Gen. David M. Maddox, Lieut. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, Major Gen. William L. Nash, and Brigadier Gen. James P. Cullen, appeared at the National Press Club where they criticized those who wanted to keep detainees as enemy combatants.

“The president and his national security team are undeterred by those who wish to spread the message of fear and retreat,” said Maddox, who said that misinformation has dominated the public debate over the issues.

“Some have suggested that suspects like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man accused of attempting to bomb Flight 253, do not deserve the protection provided in our federal courts and should instead be subject to military tribunals. On the contrary, we believe that Abdulmatallab and his ilk should be treated as the would-be mass murderers they are. To bestow on him and others like him the designation of “enemy combatant” reinforces their claims to be jihadist warriors,” write the generals.

James P. Cullen (photo by Ryan J. Reilly)

Republican critics, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former Attorney General John Ashcroft have criticized the plan to close Guantánamo, arguing that it compromises national security.

Soyster had the opposite view. He said the hysteria was “unwarranted and dangerous.” He said that experienced intelligence officials have for years used “tried and true techniques” that have allowed the U.S. to collect relevant information and prevent future attacks.

Cullen, who lost friends in the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, said it would be wrong to compromise the U.S. judicial system. He also said the civilian judicial system has been much more successful at convicting terrorists, with a 90 percent conviction rate, whereas military tribunals have seen only one out of three terrorism suspects convicted.

The Obama administration is considering holding a trial in Washington, D.C., for alleged terrorist Riduan Isamuddin, the Guantánamo Bay detainee who is suspected of planning the deadly nightclub bombing in Bali, Indonesia, in 2002, The Associated Press reported Friday.

According to the AP, “U.S. officials briefed on the plan” said other terrorism trials could be held in Washington and New York City under a proposal being discussed by the administration. The officials said the Obama administration could make a decision in a matter of weeks, though the idea of trying Hambali in D.C. has been floated for months.

In August The Washington Post reported that DOJ officials were considering trying Isamuddin — better known by his nom de guerre, Hambali – in Washington, apparently as a kind of consolation prize for D.C. not being considered to host the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial.

At the time, the  Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of Virginia were vying to prosecute the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, after Attorney General Eric Holder decided Mohammed should be moved out of Guantanamo Bay and tried in federal court. Manhattan won out over the Alexandria, Va.-based Eastern District, helping to secure its reputation as a premier venue for prestigious national security cases.

On Sunday, The Washington Examiner reported that “security experts” said Washington wasn’t equipped to handle Hambali. The Examiner said facilities in Alexandria, Va.,  where al-Qaeda supporter Zacarias Moussaoui’s was convicted, would be a better fit.

Department of Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said Attorney General Eric Holder hasn’t even decided if the Hambali case will be tried in military or civilian court. ”The attorney general has made no decision on forum for this case, let alone on where such a case would be tried if it were sent to federal courts,” said Boyd.

Despite DOJ’s unwillingness to confirm or deny the reports, The Hill reported Friday that Republicans were slamming the potential move. ”Moving terrorist detainees to within a mile of the White House and blocks from the U.S. Capitol for show trials is a mistake,” Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

Alexandria Mayor Bill Euille similarly criticized the prospect of having the trial in his city. ”The city’s opposed to having any terrorist tried in our city,” he said. “It’s not about what we’ll be known as but protecting the quality of life of our residents.”

Hambali was allegedly Osama bin Laden’s point man in Indonesia, facilitating communications between al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah, the terror group said to be responsible for the Bali nightclub attack that left 202 people dead.

Hambali denied any connection to al-Qaeda at a preliminary military tribunal in 2007. Since his capture in 2003, Hambali was held at a CIA “black site” and the detention facility in Guantánamo Bay.

President Barack Obama’s self-imposed deadline to close Guantánamo Bay is less than a week away, though the president has acknowledged it will not be met.

Closing the detention center has proved to be a difficult task as the administration has been unable to find countries that will take detainees cleared for release. Obama has also had to confront the complicated legal and political issues connected with moving detainees into the U.S. court system.

In August, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. Attorney’s offices in Alexandria and Manhattan were “embroiled in intense competition” over the opportunity to prosecute 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other terrorism suspects connected to the attacks. Holder ultimately chose New York to host the trial, a move that immediately came under fire.

“KSM’s first response when he was captured was ‘I will see New York with my lawyer,’ ” former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said on Fox News Channel. “He got instead a military commission. Now, of course, he is getting the fate of his dreams, which is a courtroom in New York City.”

The Justice Department has also faced major hurdles in its efforts to provide security for the trial. Earlier this month, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg estimated the cost of security operations for the trials at more than $200 million.

According to the AP, authorities have already started to review the security measures need to try Hambali and others in federal court in Washington.

Trying detainees like Mohammed and Hambali in civilian courts also presents a host of prosecutorial issues. Some have questioned if evidence obtained through “harsh interrogating techniques,” like water-boarding, would be admissible in court. Critics also fear that such trials would disclose sensitive information that could help terrorists.

While Holder has decided that the U.S courts can handle Mohammed’s trial, and possibly Hambali’s, this may not be the case for all of the nearly 200 detainees still at Guantánamo. Holder is currently going through detainees’ files to determine who can be tried in a U.S. court and who should remain in the military commission system, where the rules of evidence are laxer and defendants have fewer rights.

This report has been updated to reflect that The Washington Post broke the news of Hambali’s possible District of Columbia trial in August.

The chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts used the investiture ceremony of Boston-based U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz on Monday to press prosecutors about their priorities, The National Law Journal reported today.

Mark Wolf (Gov)

With Attorney General Eric Holder in attendance, Chief Judge Mark Wolf asked Ortiz whether her staff is “being put to their highest and best use when two-thirds of the defendants in this federal district court are indigent and must have Criminal Justice Act counsel,” according to the NLJ.

Wolf has been vocal about what he sees prosecutorial misconduct in the district, and the gun and drug cases that Bush U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan tried in district court, The NLJ said.

“I hope as you develop the priorities for the performance of your office you will consider questions like” those, Wolf said at the ceremony, according to The NLJ.

Ortiz, the state’s first Hispanic and female U.S. Attorney, downplayed the judge’s remarks in a statement to the NLJ. Though the U.S. Attorney said at the ceremony that fighting terrorism is her “first priority,” she also said her office will focus its attention on crimes ranging from human trafficking to environmental crimes, The NLJ said.

Carmen Ortiz (DOJ)

“I believe our Assistant United States Attorneys will be put to their highest and best use regardless of who represents the defendants,” Ortiz said in the statement. “We will bring cases based on where the evidence takes us, not based on who is paying the bill.”

We reported in May that Wolf rebuked Massachusetts Assistant US Attorney Suzanne Sullivan for withholding evidence that could have helped a defendant in a gun case.

Wolf also wrote a letter to Holder in April expressing his “renewed hope” that the Attorney General would address judges’ concerns about prosecutors’ conduct. Then-Attorneys General Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey did not respond to similar letters from Wolf.

Wolf added in the letter that U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan’s decision to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the mishandling of the Sen. Ted Stevens public corruption case “confirms that other judges share my concern.”

The U.S. intelligence community is near completion of a major assessment of the national security threat posed by international organized crime, according to administration officials and experts.

The National Intelligence Estimate, which could be finished as soon as January, was conceived more than two years ago to address the dangers posed by Eurasian criminal groups’ suspected infiltration of energy and other strategic markets.

But its focus broadened over time to include a wide swath of criminal syndicates and issues, from drug-trafficking by Mexican cartels to the relationship between terrorism and organized crime, the officials and experts said.

“Globalization has done great things for organized commerce, but it’s also helped organized criminal groups to advance as well,” said one senior Justice Department official, who spoke in general terms about the threat.

The threat was underscored in recent weeks, as reports emerged of an FBI investigation into a major cyberattack on Citibank Inc., which Citibank denies. And the Justice Department announced drug charges in New York against alleged Al-Qaeda associates arrested in Ghana during a Drug Enforcement Administration sting.

NIEs are produced under a classified process and carry the full weight of the U.S. intelligence community’s judgment. The existence of the NIE on international organized crime has not been previously reported.

The assessments are compiled by the National Intelligence Council, a research arm of intelligence community that reports directly to Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair. The NIC incorporates in its estimates expertise from inside and outside of the federal government.

The estimate’s focus expanded over time as more agencies sought to reap the benefits of inclusion, including increased funding and more say in policy direction. In this case, the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, State and Treasury contributed to the NIE, the officials said. The National Intelligence Council is expected to release a public overview of the threat assessment, increasing its visibility and impact, experts say.

“I think it’s going to open this field up to some serious academic research and funding,” said Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University. “We’re going to be focusing on a whole range of issues that we haven’t thought enough about, and connecting the dots on other issues.”

A sensitive subject: Russia

One effect of broadening the NIE is that it allows the Obama administration to sidestep the diplomatically sensitive issue of Russia, where authorities have long suspected that the tentacles of organized crime reach into the government.

In 2008, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey gave a speech that identified as the top security threat organized criminals who control significant positions in the global energy and strategic materials markets, threatening U.S. geopolitical interests.

He never mentioned Russia. But as an example, Mukasey pointed to Semion Mogilevich, who is thought to be at the pinnacle of Russian organized crime and is said to have influence over large portions of the natural gas industry in former Soviet-bloc states.  (Mogilevich is wanted in the U.S. on racketeering charges, and the FBI recently placed him on its Top Ten Most Wanted list.)

Russian control of energy supplies and transport networks is a security issue for the European Union, which relies heavily on Russian natural gas. But Russia controls the spigot for pipelines that service Central and Western Europe through the former Soviet state of Ukraine. Twice since 2006, Russia has cut off gas to Ukraine in payment disputes, affecting EU supplies.

Of further concern to intelligence analysts is the murky ownership of some middleman companies crucial to European energy supplies.

In 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department’s organized crime unit was investigating the ownership of a Ukrainian energy trading company named Rosukrenergo AG, half owned by Russian state company OAO Gazprom.

In response to U.S. concerns about who ultimately controlled Rosukrenergo, company representatives met with the DOJ in Washington to disclose the ownership stake of a Ukrainian businessmen with ties to Mogilevich – the suspected organized crime figure on the FBI Most Wanted list, the Wall Street Journal reported.

There’s also the case of  William Browder, a U.S. native and British citizen who founded Hermitage Capital Management, once the largest foreign investment fund in Russia but now accused in Russian courts of tax evasion.

Hermitage has denied evading taxes. It has countered with allegations that a government-affiliated “criminal enterprise” siphoned off $230 million in taxes paid by Hermitage units. Browder has retained the law firm of former Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate.

Hermitage has filed an application for judicial assistance in the Southern District of New York federal court, asking the U.S. to compel access to information it says it needs to defend itself in Russia.

In a recent declaration filed in the case, Neil Mickelswaithe, a British solicitor and outside counsel to Hermitage, said the fund is the victim of a “criminal enterprise” in Russia spanning senior offices of the Russian Interior Ministry, the Russian Federal Security Service (the successor to the KGB), senior Russian tax officers, and certain Russian court judges and “numerous private individuals in Russia, some of whom have previous criminal convictions.”

U.S. authorities have long suspected billionaire Oleg Deripaska, one of Russia’s most powerful tycoons, of having ties to Russian organized crime. Deripaska, who made his fortune in the post-Soviet aluminum industry, is close to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, often traveling with him abroad. He presides over a business empire that spans metals, finance and construction.

Deripaska, who has denied any ties to organized crime, had been barred entry to the U.S. for years. But recently, the FBI made secret arrangements to allow him into the country to seek his assistance in an ongoing criminal probe, the Wall Street Journal reported. In two visits to the U.S. this year, Deripaska also met with executives of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Co.

Putin and other Russian officials have raised the visa issue with their U.S. counterparts, and in the past Deripaska hired high-powered Washington lobbyists — including former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) — to make his case for entry into the U.S.

New approach more measured

The Obama administration, in contrast, has been careful not single out any country or group. Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, in a speech and in interviews given at the Interpol General Assembly in October, noted continuing threats posed by Mexican drug cartels, South Asian heroin-trafficking syndicates, and traditional crime families from Asia and Eastern Europe.

Ogden made no mention of strategic markets. The apparent shift in message is reflected in the intelligence estimate, officials said.

Under Mukasey, the Justice Department pushed for a finished product before President George W. Bush left office. After a draft NIE was circulated late in the Bush administration, officials in the departments of Homeland Security, State, Treasury advocated a broader sweep, officials said. The recommendations were ultimately passed on to the Obama administration.

“When the Justice Department first started working on the estimate, there was much more focus on energy issues,” said George Mason’s Shelley, who was first contacted in March by government officials involved in drafting the estimate.

“They asked me what I thought was wrong with it, and I told them they needed to broaden the scope and the geographical range. There’s a tendency to stovepipe too much. When you broaden the scope, you are able to see the diversity of the problem and the relationship among
the different aspects of transnational crime,” she said.

The Obama administration has been actively highlighting fronts in the battle against international organized crime.

In November, the State Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement co-hosted a symposium in Honolulu. The event drew attention to criminal networks that span East Asia, the Pacific and Latin America — and that engage in a broad range of criminal activity, including drug, gun and human trafficking, money laundering and corruption.

Earlier this month, officials from the departments of Commerce, Homeland Security and Justice, as well as the White House, met with entertainment industry executives to focus on intellectual property crimes. The connection between piracy and organized crime is
well-documented, particularly in Asian countries such as China.

At the event, billed as the first of its kind, Attorney General Eric Holder called on the international community to respond.

“This is a problem that the United States cannot solve by itself,” said Holder. “We want to confront these nations, quite frankly, where too much of this occurs.”

Narco-trafficking also a danger

Violent Mexican cartels, responsible for thousands of killings south of the border, have emerged as a singular threat. Their vast drug-trafficking networks reach deep into the U.S., and law enforcement officials fear a scenario in which the cartels rent their smuggling routes to terrorists.

“If you were to ask me what is the biggest organized crime threat, I would say it’s more the cartels in general and other organized crime syndicates engaged in narco-trafficking and other illicit activities,” said David Luna, director for anti-crime programs at the State Department’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. “They’re not just in our backyard, they’re actually in the U.S.”

The link between terrorism and crime is also of growing concern, officials said. The case of the three alleged Al-Qaeda associates charged in New York, who are believed to be in their 30s and originally from Mali, appears to show a direct link between the terror group and drug traffickers. Authorities long maintained that Al Qaeda and the Taliban profit from the heroin trade in Afghanistan. Michael Braun, who retired as DEA’s chief of operations last year, told The Associated Press the case was “the tip of the iceberg.”

Decade-long focus

The intelligence community’s interest in international organized crime dates back more than a decade. In the mid-1990s, intelligence officials began work on a separate estimate, with the help of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, said Jim Moody, a former FBI Deputy Assistant Director who oversaw organized crime investigations.

The estimate, he said, “helped get rid of a lot of barriers to sharing information” between the intelligence and law enforcement communities and set priorities for developing intelligence on international criminal groups.

But its impact was curtailed by the events of Sept. 11, 2001. “Given the trauma that the country faced after the 9/11 attacks, international organized crime was relegated understandably to a second-tier national security priority” as the Bush administration redistributed resources to deal with terrorist threats, the State Department’s Luna said.

Officials said they hoped the estimate would cement international organized crime as top national security priority, motivate agencies to develop stronger policies and make an argument for increased funding.

Jay Albanese, former chief of the International Center at the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Justice Department, was cautiously optimistic.

“Estimates are a mixed bag,” he said, adding that international organized crime is neither easily quantified, nor easily defined.

“This puts those of us in the crime businsess at a severe disadvantage,” said Albanese, a criminologist and professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. “It’s very diffcult to say with any degree of accuracy how much we should be focusing on human-trafficking versus arms-trafficking.”

Mary Jacoby contributed to this report.

Sen. Jeff Sessions and Attorney General Eric Holder (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) criticized Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other suspected terrorists in federal court on Sean Hannity’s program this weekend

Sessions, who appeared at a ceremonial event with Holder on Friday, called the Attorney General’s decision “unthinkable” on Hannity’s “Terror on Trial” special.

Some highlights:

• Guiliani: “And what is the only justification for this? The justification for it is we are going to show the world that we can give a fair trial. Well, the reality is the president and the attorney general, as far as I can tell, have already said he is guilty. And they have already said he should have the death penalty. What kind of trial is that?”
• Mukasey: “KSM’s first response when he was captured I will see New York with my lawyer. He got instead a military commission. Now, of course, he is getting the fate of his dreams, which is a courtroom in New York City.”
• Sessions: “It’s unthinkable to me. And I have not been able to understand it. There is no doubt about it. All the nations of the world provide for these kinds of trials outside their normal system for people who are attacking them, warriors, unlawful combatants, people who are trying to destroy the government of which they are a part.”

View the entire program on YouTube, also embedded below, along with a slideshow of photos from the filming of the episode.

Michelle Bachmann has criticized Eric Holder's handling of the 9/11 trials (file photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

In a press conference in front of the Supreme Court on Thursday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and GOP House members joined Republicans who have criticized Attorney General Eric Holder for his decision to hold the trial of confessed 9/11  mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City.

“The decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City and give him all the benefits and perks reserved for American citizens is a slap in the face of the 9/11 victim’s families, the American people, and the men and women who risk their lives to defend our liberties each and every day,” said Bachmann in a statement released after the news conference.

Bachmann was joined at the news conference yesterday by Andrew McCarthy, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in New York who prosecuted “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman and others involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Bachmann has emerged as a conservative leader in the Tea Party movement, leading a rally against the health care reform bill on Capitol Hill last month. Her controversial statements have made her a regular on the cable news circuit.

“If President Obama admits that we are a nation at war, then we should act like one,” Bachmann said in her statement. “Justice for the 9/11 attackers should be swift and conclusive, something that won’t be done when KSM exploits the abundant appeals and legal loopholes he has been inexplicably awarded as a foreign combatant.”

Other House members in attendance included Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), reports Talking Points Memo.

To recap, here are some of the conservatives who have come out against the trial:

• Dick Cheney
• Ed Meese
• John Ashcroft
• Michael Mukasey
• Joseph DiGenova
• Rudy Giuliani

The Republican mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, has supported the trial.