Connecting the dots on two posts from yesterday about the Obama administration beginning to fix the disconnect and listen to America.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, shortly after his 2003 arrest and in a recent photo.

This is a follow-up on two posts from 1-29-10 entitled "Obama begins to fix the disconnect & listen to America: Administration Considers Moving Site of 9/11 Trial" and "Yes; fixing the disconnect & listening to America continues: Obama faces dwindling options in his effort to close Guantanamo Bay."

From The Washington Post:

The Obama administration has all but abandoned its plan to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, on trial in Lower Manhattan, according to administration officials.

The reversal would mark the latest setback for an administration that has been buffeted at every turn as it seeks to close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Its options for closing the prison had already been dwindling, and without the backdrop of Ground Zero for a trial, the administration would lose some of the rich symbolism associated with its attempt to forge a new approach to handling high-profile al-Qaeda detainees.

The decision to reconsider the plan for Mohammed's trial comes after a surge of political opposition to holding it in Manhattan, a venue that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. described in November as the "right place."

Moving the trial in the wake of political objections would not augur well for the administration's plans to bring other leading Guantanamo Bay detainees to other federal jurisdictions. Administration officials have said they plan to put about 35 Guantanamo detainees on trial, either in federal court or in military commissions.

Republicans and a number of Democrats in Congress have demanded that the detainees be tried in a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, arguing that they are enemy combatants in a war with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, not criminals deserving of the protections of civilian court.

But the decision to bring Mohammed and his cohorts onto U.S. soil for a civilian trial is a linchpin of Holder's tenure, and an administration official said the Justice Department would not back down on the central principle of trying the men in federal court and inside the United States.

But the administration would appear to have few good alternative locations.

The administration also hopes to acquire a state prison in Thomson, Ill., both to hold military commissions and to house detainees who are deemed too dangerous to release but unprosecutable. Conceivably, the Thomson facility, which would be guarded by the military, could also house a federal courthouse and a federal prison wing for detainees such as Mohammed.

Officials said they have not decided where to turn, and the administration still needs funding from Congress to acquire the prison in Illinois. One official said several domestic locations are under review.

Others, including relatives of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, said the administration should reconsider its decision to close Guantanamo Bay.

"I applaud the president for recognizing that a better decision needs to be made," said Hamilton Peterson of Bethesda, who lost his father and stepmother on United Flight 93, which went down in Shanksville, Pa. "But it seems insane to those of use who have visited the pristine $40 million courthouse in Cuba that he would not use it. I would hope he would also revisit the issue of military tribunals."