Former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on Tuesday during a radio interview with The Washington Times joked that Rep. James Moran (D-Va.) “ought to get professional help, perhaps from Maj. Nidal [Hasan],” the accused Fort Hood shooter, The Huffington Post reports.

Last week, Moran criticized opponents of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his Sept. 11, 2001, co-defendants in the Southern District of New York, Talking Points Memo reported. “They see this as an opportunity to demagogue,” Moran told TPM. “They will seize on any opportunity to do that, and that means they’ll even take a stand that’s un-American.” He added, “It’s un-American to hold anyone indefinitely without trial. It’s against our principles as a nation.”

During his interview, Mukasay was asked to respond to Moran’s comments. “I think he’s lost touch with reality. He ought to get professional help, perhaps from Maj. Nidal.” Last week, Mukasey slammedthe decision to try Mohammed in New York City.

Eric Holder (Photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

Attorney General Eric Holder has made clear he plans to seek the death penalty in the federal prosecution of the alleged Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism plotters in New York, even though the state of New York does not have a death penalty law.

Although the U.S. can impose a death penalty in federal cases regardless of state law, Holder may be “treading into territory that triggered an outcry from liberal activists against the Bush administration not so long ago” writes Josh Gerstein of Politico in a piece that fleshes out the intricacies of the case.

He recalls that when former Attorney General John Ashcroft sought a death penalty prosecution in Vermont in 2002, critics were outraged that he was abusing federal authority by forcing the death penalty on a state that did not have capital punishment on the books.

Many New Yorkers have welcomed Holder’s decision to seek death in connection with the 9/11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people. However, it is the case that the Justice Department will be seeking capital punishment in a state that does not have that option in state courts.

Writes Gerstein: “New York enacted a death penalty law most recently in 1995, so it was actually in effect at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. However, that death penalty law was struck down by the state’s top court in 2004. An effort to re-enact the death penalty in 2005 was voted down in the legislature.”

Former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on Friday criticized the Obama administration’s decision to prosecute a group of terrorism suspects accused in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in federal court, warning of safety risks to Americans and the possibility that national security information could be aired in civilian proceedings.

His speech to the conservative Federalist Society — of which he is a member — came hours after Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed “mastermindâ€� of the attacks, and four other men accused in the plot would face charges in the Southern District of New York.

Mukasey, echoing concerns he outlined in a recent piece in The Wall Street Journal, said granting the suspects access to civilian courts would present a “cornucopia [of intelligence] for those still at large and a circus for those in custody.”

Mukasey, who supports trying terrorism suspects in military commissions at Guantanamo, said KSM will be “a virtually totemic figure” in prison, potentially radicalizing others. Mukasey said he wasn’t worried about the suspects breaking free but feared holding them in New York would make the city a renewed target for attack.

The question is whether the city will become the focus of new “mischief in the form of murder,” said Mukasey, who presided over the 1995 trial in New York of the “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman, who was implicated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and convicted for plotting to blow up New York City landmarks.

At a news conference Friday, Holder said the Justice Department “has a long, successful history of prosecuting terrorists for their crimes against our nation, particularly in New York.”

He went on:

Although these cases can often be complex and challenging, federal prosecutors have successfully met these challenges and have convicted a number of terrorists who are now serving lengthy sentences in our prisons. And although the security issues presented by terrorism cases should never be minimized, our marshals, court security officers, and prison officials have extensive experience and training dealing with dangerous defendants, and I am confident they can meet the security challenges posed by this case.

Mukasey spent much of his speech lashing out at the Obama administration for reversing national securtiy policies under President George W. Bush, but he credited his successor for leaving intact intelligence-gathering methods used by the FBI and for continuing to deploy the controversial state stecrets privilege.

Mukasey, Bush’s third Attorney General, was introduced by Gerald Walpin,  the former inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service.

President Barack Obama fired Walpin this summer, amid a federal probe into whether he overstepped his authority while investigating a Sacramento-based non-profit foundation. Walpin was recently cleared of wrongdoing, and has asked to be reinstated. His firing has become a rallying cry for conservatives who accuse the Obama administration of removing Walpin for political reasons.

Mukasey said Walpin was “unceremoniously” and “unlawfully” removed.

Click here for a video of the panel on C-SPAN.

This post has been updated.

Former U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on Sunday called last week’s shooting at Fort Hood “the worst terrorist act carried out on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.”

Mukasey made his remarks in a little noticed speech to military families at a Veterans Day ceremony in central Pennsylvania. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is suspected of opening fire at the Texas military base last Thursday in an attack that killed 13 and wounded 30.

Former Attorney General Mukasey (doj)

The former Attorney General criticized the New York Times and government officials for appearing to rule out the possibility that Hasan’s shooting spree was directed or inspired by any terrorist group. Mukasey told the military families that al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has sought to create a “leaderless jihad” that promotes solo attacks, according to The Patriot-News newspaper.

“In that respect, there certainly are very close links to terrorism,” Mukasey said in the Sunday speech. “In that respect, this is, in fact, the worst terrorist act carried out on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.”

Mukasey, who is now a partner at the Debevoise & Plimpton law firm in New York, wasn’t available for comment on Monday.

Hasan was vocal about his opposition as a Muslim to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and had once worshiped at a Northern Virginia mosque with ties to radical Islam. But The New York Times on Nov. 7 published an article with the headline, “Little Evidence of Terror Plot in Base Killings.”

Instead, the Times and other news organizations have focused on the psychological strains associated with military service, depicting Hasan, an Army psychiatrist about to be deployed to Afghanistan, as having snapped under pressure. Today, however, The Associated Press and The Washington Post reported that federal authorities are looking into Hasan’s ties to an al-Qaeda linked imam.

Anwar al-Aulaqi, a former preacher at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., praised Hasan on his personal blog today as a “hero” for opening fire on U.S. service members. Hasan worshiped at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in 2001, when Aulaqi was its spiritual leader. Aulaqi, who now lives in Yemen, also counseled two of the Sept. 11, 2001 attackers in the months before they hijacked airplanes and crashed them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Federal authorities have said they suspect Aulaqi has been involved in plotting al-Qaeda attacks.

Mukasey, a former federal judge, presided over the 1995 trial of the “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman, who led a precursor organization to al-Qaeda in Brooklyn in the 1990s. Rahman was tied to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and later convicted of a plot to blow up New York City landmarks.

On Sunday he told the military families that Hasan didn’t need to have formal ties to a foreign terrorist organization to have carried out a terrorist attack. ”To tell us to believe that someone has to have a membership card in al-Qaida or any other organization in order for them to act as a terrorist, and in order for us to call what he does an act of terrorism, is to tell us to refuse to look facts in the face, and to refuse to believe what we see and hear with our own eyes and ears,” Mukasey said, according to The Patriot-News.