zacarias moussaoui serving life sentence after being tried in article 3 criminal courts. prosecuting terrorists in military commissions makes sense in some cases. but requiring for all al qaeda terrorists in each and every case is not in the national security interest of the united states of america. in fact, it would severely limit our ability to handle some of the biggest threats. to understand why this proposed amendment would be such bad policy, consider two cases where al qaeda tried to use operatives to attack our homeland, but we captured and arrested the terrorists instead. first, as has been mentioned, mazi bulla zazi, a legal permanent resident of the united states arrested in 2009 as part of an al qaeda conspiracy to carry out suicide bombings on the new york subway system. then christmas day 2009, umar farouk abdulmutallab attempted to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear while on board northwest airlines flight 253. aqap claimed responsibility for the attack and said abdulmutallab had been trained and tasked to carry out the plot. in both cases

she was begging for the authority to wiretap zacarias moussao moussaoui's laptop. she said she had that authority and she blamed bureaucratic ineptitude and fear of taking action. that is important because those cultural problems i take as our critique, those problems persist. >> in the front row. >> it was the humphrey case that set up the wall. when i was in the reagan justice department, before that gw a 47. we had to take down fiza cap because they said it has become a criminal case and it is illegal to keep any tap up. >> 9/11 show you couldn't maintain that distinction because it was built on this idea from the cold war that foreign national-security threats would be from abroad and it was primarily criminal and what 9/11 showed was the enemy could infiltrate the country and planes were hijacked in the united states. when you can cross the border to carry out attacks, that distinction between foreign down. >> this was in the 1980s anti-black -- piggyback -- there was an incident. was these people at the justice terrorist organization that one could identify s

i did field work in an area nearby where zacarias moussaoui grew up and in october of 2001 i read an article. somebody had been picked up before 9/11 at a flight school in minnesota and i realized he had grown up in this area which i was familiar with that he had a background i knew something about. he is the son of moroccans who had moved to france before he was born that had difficulty growing up in an area that was not receptive to north africans. >> host: what was your relationship with the people involved in this trial? how did you cover the trial? what was that process? >> guest: i was the only academic to think of going to this trial. i had a friend from graduate school who told me she had a connection to the trial and i learned quickly that anyone was able to go. any person could go as long as there was space in the court room. so i thought i need to go there and the trial was in alexandria, virginia, in the eastern district court. that site was chosen because the pentagon was in that district and they were trying to have the trial somewhere in the same area where one of the

the bush administration used the federal courts to prosecute and sentence zacarias moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker. convicted in 2006, sinced to life -- sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 9/11 attacks. the obama administration has successfully used the federal courts when they prosecuted damage beulah zazi in 2009 for his role in the new york subway bombing flat, and in connection with the times square bombing when they prosecuted umar farouk abdulmutallab the so-called underwater bomber in 2011 in connection with the christmas day bombing in detroit. if the ayotte amendment had been law these prosecutions would have been thrown into doubt. in fact, prosecution might not have been possible in any forum because if a court determined that a military commission lacked jurisdiction and if the ayotte amendment precluded jurisdiction of a federal court, there couldn't be prosecution in any form whatsoever. now, that could have actually been the outcome in the case of ahmed warsami, a member of al-shabaab. he was indicted in federal court earlier this year on charges of providi