Judge Julia Gibbons testifies before an appropriations subcommittee in 2007. (uscourts.gov)

The federal judiciary is requesting $22 million in fiscal 2011 to cover expected costs associated with “high-threat” trials of suspected terrorists.

The request, the first of its kind, acknowledges “certain security and logistical challenges” unique to terrorism trials but steers clear of the raging debate over whether suspected terrorists should be prosecuted in federal court or by military tribunal.

Still, opponents of civilian trials could use the request to bolster arguments that prosecuting suspected terrorists in federal court is too pricey and endangers surrounding communities.

The $22 million is part of the federal judiciary’s $7.3 billion budget request, which was presented to a House Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday.

Judge Julia Gibbons, who chairs the budget committee of the Judicial Conference, the federal judiciary’s policymaking body, said the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in Alexandria, Va., underscored the need for additional resources.

During the 2006 death penalty trial of Moussaoui, a convicted 9/11 conspirator, the city bogged down with armed guards, rooftop snipers, bomb-sniffing dogs, blocked streets and identification checks.

“High-threat trials in the federal courts present certain security and logistical challenges that must be addressed,” Gibbons said.

Gibbons, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, also pointed to the cases of “shoe bomber” Richard Reid in Boston and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in Detroit.

Abdulmutallab, who is accused of attempting to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day, has been the focal point of the debate over whether the criminal justice system is equipped to handle suspected terrorists. Republicans have criticized the Obama administration, saying valuable intelligence was likely lost when FBI agents read him his Miranda rights. The White House has said Abdulmutallab began cooperating with authorities after initially clamming up.

Gibbons made no mention of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed 9/11 mastermind, whose planned trial in  Manhattan was abandoned in the face of bipartisan opposition. (The Obama administration has proposed spending $73 million for security, detention, litigation and transfer of the Mohammed and four alleged 9/11 co-conspirators, who are being held at the military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay.) The Obama administration is in the process of deciding whether the suspects should be tried in military tribunal or federal court.

The $22 million, Gibbons said, would be for security, juror expenses and court-appointed defense counsel costs in “high-threat” terrorism trials. While the Justice Department is responsible for the U.S. Marshals Service, which protects court officers and buildings, the federal judiciary employs additional security guards, a courts spokeswoman said.

Gibbons said her committee would work closely with Congress to refine the request “once we have a better understanding of the number and location of high-threat trials that will take place in federal court.”

See Gibbons’ full remarks below:

I would like to turn briefly to an issue that has been widely discussed in recent months: the issue of whether suspected terrorists should be prosecuted in federal court or by military tribunal. As a neutral party in our system of justice, the Judiciary, of course, has remained silent in this debate. The decision on the appropriate venue to prosecute suspected terrorists will be determined by the Administration and Congress, as is appropriate.

My only comment on this topic is that high-threat trials in the federal courts present certain security and logistical challenges that must be addressed, such as those experienced with the Moussaoui case at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, and the Reid (shoe bomber) case at the federal courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts. A case currently in federal court that has been widely publicized is the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who has been charged with attempting to detonate an explosive device on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on December 25, 2009. He was indicted in federal district court in Detroit and is being held awaiting trial. As with any high-threat trial in federal court, the Judiciary works closely with local and federal officials as appropriate to provide a safe and secure venue for the proceedings.

The Judiciary’s fiscal year 2011 budget request includes $22 million for security, juror expenses, and court appointed defense counsel costs associated with high-threat trials. We will work closely with the Committee to refine this estimate once we have a better understanding of the number and location of high-threat trials that will take place in federal court.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, today blasted Attorney General Eric Holder’s defense of the Justice Department’s handling of the alleged Christmas Day bomber.

Jeff Sessions (Getty Images)

Holder on Wednesday wrote in a letter to Senate Republican leaders — including Sessions — that he made the decision to bring criminal charges against the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Holder added that his decision is “fully consistent” with the practices and policies of the federal government.

That did not satisfy Sessions. “I think this letter, in terms of accuracy and professionalism, fails,” Sessions said in remarks at a Senate Judiciary Committee business meeting today. “We’re entitled to better than this.”

Conservative senators have been critical of the administration’s decision to charge the alleged bomber criminally rather than put him in military custody for interrogation. Senators have sent numerous letters to Attorney General condemning the decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a civilian. Read our previous reports on three of the letters here, here and here.

Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans yesterday demanded a hearing with Holder. Panel Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said one is already in the works for March.

Here are some passages from Holder’s letter that Sessions criticized:

• Holder: “I made the decision to charge Mr. Abdulmutallab with federal crimes, and to seek his detention in connection with those charges, with the knowledge of, and with no objection from, all other relevant departments of the government.”
  • Sessions: “This statement stands in stark contrast to the testimony of Homeland Security Secretary [Janet] Napolitano, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Michael Leiter, and FBI Director Robert Mueller, all of whom said they were not consulted on the decision. And in fact, it does appear from the letter, if you read it carefully, that the decision was made before they were notified. It had already been made and a lawyer had already been appointed and he’d clammed up.”

• Holder: “Since the September 11,2001 attacks, the practice of the U.S. government, followed by prior and current Administrations without a single exception, has been to arrest and detain under federal criminal law all terrorist suspects who are apprehended inside the United States. The prior Administration adopted policies expressly endorsing this approach.” He added: “In fact, two (and only two) persons apprehended in this country in recent times have been held under the law of war. Jose Padilla was arrested on a federal material witness warrant in 2002, and was transferred to law of war custody approximately one month later, after his court-appointed counsel moved to vacate the warrant. Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri was also initially arrested on a material witness warrant in 2001, was indicted on federal criminal charges (unrelated to terrorism) in 2002, and then transferred to law of war custody approximately eighteen months later.”
  • Sessions: “These two statements cannot be reconciled.”

• Holder: “In Mr. Padilla’s case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the President did not have the authority to detain him under the law of war.”
  • Sessions: “He cites the holding of the reversed Second Circuit decision—that the President lacks the authority to detain a U.S. citizen as an enemy combatant on U.S. soil—without mentioning that the Supreme Court ruled one year later, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, that ‘[t]here is no bar to this Nation’s holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant… A citizen, no less than an alien, can be part of or supporting forces hostile to the United States or coalition partners’ and ‘engaged in an armed conflict against the United States,’ … ’such a citizen, if released, would pose the same threat of returning to the front during the ongoing conflict’.”

• Holder: “[W]hen the Bush administration attempted to deny Jose Padilla access to an attorney, a federal judge in New York rejected that position, ruling that Padilla must be allowed to meet with his lawyer. Notably, the judge in that case was Michael Mukasey, my predecessor as Attorney General. In fact, there is no court-approved system currently in place in which suspected terrorists captured inside the United States can be detained and held without access to an attorney; nor is there any known mechanism to persuade an uncooperative individual to talk to the government that has been proven more effective than the criminal justice system.”
  • Sessions: “That is a misrepresentation of the situation. He never acknowledges that he is comparing apples to oranges. Judge Mukasey didn’t grant Padilla a lawyer as part of his arrest or interrogation. He granted Padilla a lawyer much later when he was filing a petition for habeas corpus to challenge the legality of his detention, and eventually he was appointed one. But not the night of his arrest.”

• Holder: “Richard Reid, a British citizen, was arrested in December 2001 for attempting to ignite a shoe bomb while on a flight from Paris to Miami carrying 184 passengers and 14 crewmembers. He was advised of his right to remain silent and to consult with an attorney within five minutes of being removed from the aircraft … pled guilty in October 2002, and is now serving a life sentence in federal prison.”
  • Sessions: “He cites how Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was charged in the civilian criminal system, but fails to acknowledge that there was no military commission system in place at the time of his arrest in December 2001. The military commission system wasn’t brought under congressional authorization until 2006, when we passed legislation to do that.”

• Holder: “[T]he Bush Administration used the criminal justice system to convict more than 300 individuals on terrorism-related charges.”
  • Sessions: “Since May 2009, [Republican] Senator [Jon] Kyl [of Arizona] and I have been asking the Attorney General to explain the basis for this most questionable claim. To date, we have received no response to our repeated requests … for this information. If this figure is valid, why is the Attorney General not willing to explain it?”

The chairman and ranking Republican the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee asked Attorney General Eric Holder today to remove the alleged Christmas Day airplane bomber from federal custody and treat him as a military prisoner.

Joe Lieberman (Gov)

Susan Collins (Gov)

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who allegedly tried to ignite explosives in his underpants on a Dec. 25 Detroit-bound flight, is being held by federal authorities as a civilian. Panel Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the committee’s ranking member Susan Collins (R-Maine) and other conservative senators say the opportunity to gain valuable intelligence now may be lost, since Abdulmutallab is being treated as a criminal suspect with rights against self-incrimination.

“Though the president has said repeatedly that we are at war, it does not appear to us that the president’s words are reflected in the actions of some in the Executive Branch, including some at the Department of Justice, responsible for fighting that war,” Lieberman and Collins said in a joint letter to Holder and John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism. “The unilateral decision by the Department of Justice to treat Abdulmutallab — a belligerent fighting for and trained by an al-Qaeda franchised organization — as a criminal rather than a [unprivileged enemy belligerent] and to forgo information that may have been extremely helpful to winning this war demonstrates that very point.”

Here is the full letter.

Last week, Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) demanded to know who decided to let FBI agents read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights and treat him as a civilian. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Thursday he believes Holder was responsible for the decision.

DOJ spokesman Matthew Miller defended the Obama administration’s handling of Abdulmutallab. “Those who now argue that a different action should have been taken in this case were notably silent when dozens of terrorist were successfully prosecuted in federal court by the previous administration,â€� Miller said in the statement, citing the prosecutions of al-Qaeda operatives Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui. Read Miller’s full statement here.