How odd

The Los Angeles Times has this curtain-raiser by Terry McDermott on tomorrow's session of the KSM military commission at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station. It lists the following odd events from the case:

• The FBI several years ago placed an informant on one of the defense teams.
• It was determined that someone, probably within the CIA, monitors the proceedings in real time and once shut down a hearing because of a presumed danger of classified information being revealed.
• Listening devices were found in a room where defense attorneys meet with their clients. One of those meeting rooms, it was discovered last year, was part of a former black site.
• The Marine general who heads the defense teams was placed under house arrest last year.
• A black site the court had ordered to be preserved as potential evidence was destroyed.
• Several people the prosecution intended to call as witnesses have died.
• The entire court travels together in a charter aircraft for the hearings; in 2017 their flight nearly crashed landing in a heavy wind.
• Because the crimes carry a potential death penalty sentence, each of the lead attorneys for the defendants has to have experience trying capital cases. An entire slate of hearings had to be canceled because one of those attorneys broke her arm and couldn’t travel.
• Defense lawyers are unable to talk with their clients about anything the government decides is classified. For years, this included all issues having to do with the prisoners’ treatment past or present. Anything that happened to the defendants while in American custody was considered presumptively classified.