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Phil Hirschkorn: Embassy bombings trial a U.S. priority

Phil Hirschkorn

CNN Producer Phil Hirschkorn is in New York covering the U.S. trial of four men accused of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people.

Q: How much attention is this trial getting from the federal government and how is that likely to affect the tone of the proceedings?

HIRSCHKORN: Well the embassy bombings have been a focus of our federal government since the day they happened. This was an attack on U.S. State Department property, the two embassies. The response was handled from the top of the federal government, the president, on down. Once the federal government, early on, obtained evidence that Osama bin Laden and his network might have been behind the bombings, 12 days later, President Clinton ordered retaliatory strikes on behalf of the U.S. government.

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Since then, it's been a top priority of the Justice Department. The Justice Department has decided to pursue the death penalty against two of the four defendants who are accused of having direct roles in the bombings. And it's also been a top priority of the federal prosecutors in the U.S. Southern District of New York, which is one of the most prestigious jurisdictions in the country. The prosecution team that is handling this case is part of a special unit for these types of cases. This is the same office which in the 1990s prosecuted the World Trade Center bombing suspects and members of the failed Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman conspiracy to blow up the United Nations and the Lincoln Tunnel.

I think this interest is as much political interest as it is law enforcement interest. By that I mean you will hear the prosecution outline, in a sense, a political theory of who Osama bin Laden is and what his network is and what it allegedly has been doing over the last decade.

The theory of the prosecution is that bin Laden's network stems from the end of the war in Afghanistan, which the United States supported. The United States financed the Mujahadeen, the rebels, to deter and boot out the Soviet invaders from Afghanistan. The prosecution will allege in its opening statement that in the late '80s, bin Laden opened a safe house for refugees and for fighters and that this evolved into his military camp, which took on a different agenda -- instead of fighting the Soviets -- they fought the United States, which, in their view, was an infidel whose military occupied holy places such as Saudi Arabia and did things that, politically, bin Laden didn't agree with.

Q: Please give us an idea of the level of security surrounding this trial.

HIRSCHKORN: Security is very tight, both inside and outside the courthouse. The courthouse is in lower Manhattan, in an area where there is a cluster of courthouses, government buildings, City Hall and other municipal buildings.

The perimeter around this area is protected in a number of ways. You have -- during the days court is in session -- U.S. marshals, armed in uniform, patrolling the sidewalks. A side street, which leads to the jail where the defendants are incarcerated, and their courthouse is blocked off at both ends. The street has metal barriers that rise out of the pavement to prevent cars --or potential car bombs -- from getting access. There are several dozen large, round, steel columns -- they're green -- sticking out of the ground, placed in the pavement. They're several feet above street level. Again, these are barriers to prevent any kind of vehicle from making contact with the facade of the courthouse.

Inside the courthouse, as per usual, there are at each entrance, metal detectors and baggage X-ray machines. You have to pass through those even to get into the courthouse. Everybody does. But then, if you are trying to get to the courtroom, you have to again pass through another metal detector and have your baggage inspected by marshals right outside the courtroom. So security is very tight.

Q: In your coverage of this story, you have mentioned how the defense has left a door open to a possible appeal later on in the process. Would you explain that?

HIRSCHKORN: Up until now there have been many defense motions on a number of subjects including jury selection. The door opened to appeal with jury selection on Thursday and it has to do with this: the defense didn't like the way jury selection went down. Specifically, they didn't like the way the judge did all the questioning of all the jurors. They started out a month ago with a pool of 1,300 people who had each filled out questionnaires with more than 90 questions about their backgrounds, their points of view, their knowledge of the case. And with that as a basis, every one of those people came though the court for one-on-one interviews which the judge -- and only the judge -- conducted.

If the defense attorneys wanted to ask follow-up questions they had to submit them in writing and it was at the judge's discretion whether those questions would be asked. The defense lawyers felt in general that the judge didn't probe deeply enough, time and time again, with jurors.

After the jury pool was whittled down to 12 and the alternates, defense attorneys jointly made an oral motion that the jury be scrapped and they should start over and do the questioning differently. The judge immediately shot that motion down, but because they gave the judge an opportunity to fix what may -- down the road -- prove to be a faulty jury, if an appeal is needed, this could be one of the grounds they could use to pursue it.

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Links to United States Embassies and Consulates Worldwide
Patterns of Global Terrorism: 1999
FBI Websites Document Evidence Against Bin Laden
Dept of State/International Information Programs:
Ussamah Bin Laden
US District Court, Southern District of New York
U.S. State Department - Counterterrorism
Terrorism Research Center
Africa News on the World Wide Web

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