Getting ready at GITMO

Carol Rosenberg reports here for The New York Times on preparations for the upcoming trial of five men charged with plotting the 9/11 attacks. How's this for a fine lede:

After a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck in the Caribbean, the Navy captain in charge of this remote Pentagon outpost declared a tsunami warning. Word reached the base school and boats on the bay but never got to the war court, where pretrial hearings were underway in the case of the five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“It was a significant logistical problem that nobody in the court knew,” James G. Connell III, a defense lawyer who had ducked under his courtroom table when the first temblor rolled through, protested to the judge the next day.

Col. W. Shane Cohen, the military judge, has scheduled jury selection for the death-penalty trial to begin early next year. It will be by far the most prominent and complex legal proceeding in the nearly two decades since the first prisoners arrived at the base. And Guantánamo is not yet ready.