House Armed Services committee launches parallel investigation into 9/11 plea deal

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers on Friday announced that his committee would be launching its own investigation into the plea deal that the Pentagon reached with the suspects behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The new investigation comes as the House Oversight Committee begins its own investigation into the matter. The plea deal was announced on Wednesday, but specifics on the deal have not been released by the Department of Defense so far. However, the New York Times reported that the deal eliminated the death penalty.

Rogers, an Alabama Republican, said the deal was "unconscionable" and a "gut punch" to the families of people who lost loved ones when the Twin Towers fell, or who lost family members on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.

"I, along with much of our nation and Congress, are deeply shocked and angered by news that the terrorist mastermind and his associates who planned the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, which killed nearly 3000 innocent people, were offered a plea deal," Rogers wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, per Fox News. "It is unconscionable that the Biden-Harris Administration would allow such a plea deal.

"You, Mr. Secretary, are the Cabinet Member with ultimate oversight of the Office of Military Commissions," he continued. "Your Department allowed a plea deal with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his band of killers. Deals like this give hope to terrorists throughout the world that America is not willing to hold the worst of the worst accountable for their wicked crimes."

Rogers demanded the department turns over "all documents and communications containing terms, conditions, agreements, side-deals, or any mutually developed, related, conditional, or linked agreements with any party relating to terms and conditions of the plea agreements."

The deal was made with the attacks' alleged mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, and his accomplices Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin 'Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, at Guantanamo Bay. Mohammad has been accused of being the mastermind behind the attack, and prosecutors allege that he presented the idea of hijacking the planes and flying them into the towers to Osama bin Laden in 1996. 

Discussions related to a potential plea deal with the alleged plotters began in 2022, but stalled last year after the Biden administration refused to consider improving the prisoners' living conditions. Some of the conditions the men sought were promises that they would not be held in solitary confinement, access to their lawyers, and more contact with their families.  

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.