USS Cole retired commander rips slow-walk to justice
The former commander of the USS Cole has a November court date with the terrorist accused of masterminding the suicide bombing of his ship that killed 17 sailors — but he’s incensed that justice keeps being delayed for 9/11 families.
Both were al-Qaeda attacks, and neither should not be made to wait, he told the Herald.
“This is the systematic torture of 9/11 families. The judges need to get off their asses and do their job!” said retired naval Cmdr. Kirk Lippold.
A Nov. 19 trial date has been set for Saudi citizen Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri for masterminding the Oct. 12, 2000, bombing of the Cole, a guided missile destroyer, during a refueling stop in the port of Aden, Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed in that attack, which was a prelude to the 9/11 hijackings.
A June 2028 trial date was announced this week for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and three of his co-conspirators. Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day on Sept. 11, 2001. The terrorists will go before a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Both are death penalty cases.
What about 9/11?
Lippold, now a national security analyst and noted speaker, is urging 9/11 families to do all they can to force an earlier date for a trial.
He’s worried others — from Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, and other terrorists — are watching justice being delayed and denied.
“It’s been well over 20 years, but yet another judge is being weak and feckless by setting up a trial date for 2028,” said Lippold.
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama, the judge in Mohammed’s case, pushed the tribunal back.
Under Schrama’s 11-page order, Mohammed and three co-defendants — Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin ‘Atash, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali — will stand trial starting on June 5, 2028, Reuters reported. Prosecutors wanted to start in 2027.
Brett Eagleson, who lost his dad in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, said his group is equally frustrated.
“It’s another failure and letdown by the government and system on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the attacks,” he said. “The 9/11 families deserve better.”
He is hopeful about the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia that is playing out in a Manhattan federal court, with the next hearing coming in early October. Still, it continues to be a long slog toward some sense of closure.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attacks were citizens of Saudi Arabia who helped slam four jets into the World Trade Center in Manhattan, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pa.
American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 hit the north and south towers of the World Trade Center that morning, setting off the War on Terror.
USS Cole
A blast from a bomb-packed boat ripped a 40-foot-wide hole in Cole midship, killing 17 and injuring nearly 40 other crew members. The FBI sent “more than 100 agents from the Counterterrorism Division, the FBI Laboratory, and various field offices.”
Lippold, like the 9/11 families, has never stopped fighting for this day in court.
The Cole ambush was a prelude to the 9/11 attacks — a tragic day Lippold said he fears is being lost to history.
“There’s a generation of young people who weren’t alive when 9/11 happened. We have to remind them,” he has told the Herald, adding this week that going after Iran is proof terrorists don’t always escape.
“The Trump administration turned down any plea deal. This administration finally said we’re going to hold terrorists accountable,” he added. “You are seeing that in Iran and now with the USS Cole.”
He said jury selection will begin on Nov. 19. Al-Nashiri’s American lawyer declined comment but shared an updated photo of the Gitmo detainee.
But like Mohammed, torture while in CIA black site prisons in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay and Thailand will be a central part of the defense.
Did confessions come after waterboarding, forced nudity, extreme isolation, sleep deprivation? That has been the key question balanced against the murder of non-combatants.
But a trial is long overdue, said Lippold, and is closure all sides deserve.
