Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump's director of national intelligence (DNI) pick, said the attack on Sept. 11 likely could have been prevented if not for government "stovepiping," where government officials deliver intelligence directly to high-ranking officials without broadening communications. 

"There's a general consensus that there was a massive intelligence failure," Republican Sen. Roger Wicker said during Gabbard's hearing regarding 9/11. "This caught us all by surprise, even though the the World Trade Center had been attacked earlier. Do you think stovepipeing was a problem in our intelligence failure?"

"There's no question about it, senator," Gabbard said before Wicker asked her to elaborate. 

"Senator, when we looked back at the post-9/11 reporting and the post-assessments that were made, it was very clear, that there was stovepiping of information and intelligence that occurred at many levels, at the highest, but also at the lowest levels," she said. 

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"Information that was collected by the FBI, information that was collected by the CIA was not being shared. It was almost ships passing in the night where if there was an integration of those intelligence elements and information being shared, it is highly likely that that horrific attack could have been prevented," she said. 

TENSION BUILDS AROUND TULSI GABBARD’S CONFIRMATION WITH KEY GOP SENATORS UNDECIDED

Wicker pressed if the intelligence community could face another "stovepipe" issue in the future if plans to trim the DNI office of redundant jobs and increase efficiency, as Gabbard has said she will do, is put into effect. 

"And that's the reason, really, your position was created," Wicker told Gabbard after she said 9/11 likely could have been prevented. "There's been some discussion this morning, I again, have not been able to listen in, but I understand there's been some discussion about reforming the office of DNI, to eliminate redundancy and increase effectiveness. Do you worry that in doing so, we might be getting back to the same problem that we had in 2001?"

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"The problem that we had in 2001, senator, remains at the forefront of my mind. And as you said, this is exactly why the ODNI was created. Given my limited vantage point not being in this seat, I am concerned that there are still problems with stovepiping that need to be addressed. And in some cases, my concern would be that unnecessary bureaucratic layers may be contributing to that problem. This is where coming in and being able to really take a fresh look, given my experience and my background, will be essential to making sure that the ODNI is accomplishing the reason why it was created in the first place," she responded. 

Gabbard was elected to the U.S. House representing Hawaii during the 2012 election cycle, serving as a Democrat until 2021. She did not seek re-election to that office after throwing her hat in the 2020 White House race. 

She left the Democratic Party in 2022, registering as an independent, before becoming a Republican this year and offering her full endorsement of Trump amid his presidential campaign before Trump named her his DNI pick.

She appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday as part of the last leg of her confirmation process. Fox News Digital reported ahead of the hearing that Gabbard does not currently have a majority of its members' votes, which are necessary to move to the full Senate, according to a senior Intel Committee aide. 

Fox News Digital's Julia Johnson contributed to this report. 

A federal appeals court has delayed Friday's scheduled military court hearing where suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two co-conspirators were expected to plead guilty as part of a deal negotiated with prosecutors. 

The pause, though welcomed by the many who opposed the plea deals, prolongs a decades-long crusade for justice by the victims' families. 

The plea deals, which would have three 9/11 terrorists avoid the death penalty and face life in prison, have drawn sharp outcry from the public and even prompted a dispute within the Biden administration to undo them. 

On New Year’s Eve, a military appeals court shot down Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's effort to block the deal between military prosecutors and defense lawyers, saying Austin did not have the power to cancel plea agreements.

Then, on Wednesday, the Department of Justice appealed that ruling. 

Specifically, the court opinion said the plea deals reached by military prosecutors and defense attorneys were valid and enforceable and that Austin exceeded his authority when he later tried to nullify them.

The defense now has until Jan. 17 to offer a full response to the Department of Justice's request to have the plea deals thrown out. Government prosecutors then have until Jan. 22 for a rebuttal, with possible oral arguments on the issue to follow. 

The plea deals, offered to Mohammed and two co-conspirators, were meant as a way to wrap up the quest for justice to those who have been waiting more than two decades to see the terrorists that killed their loved ones convicted. They would allow prosecutors to avoid going to trial.

But why did the government settle for a plea deal after 23 years of building a case in the first place? 

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"I haven't spoken to a single person who thinks these plea deals were a good idea. Most people are horrified," said Brett Eagleson, president of 9/11 Justice. 

"It's our thought that this was rescinded in name only and like it was done right before the election. So, Austin was trying to save any attempts at sort of a political loss on this," said Eagleson.

In its appeal this week, the government says, "Respondents are charged with perpetrating the most egregious criminal act on American soil in modern history — the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"The military commission judge intends to enforce pretrial plea agreements that will deprive the government and the American people of a public trial as to the respondents’ guilt and the possibility of capital punishment, despite the fact that the Secretary of Defense has lawfully withdrawn those agreements," the appeal said. "The harm to the government and the public will be irreparable once the judge accepts the pleas, which he is scheduled to do in hearings beginning on January 10, 2025."

The appeal also noted that once the military commission accepts the guilty pleas, there is likely no way to return to the status quo.

Defense lawyers for the suspected 9/11 perpetrators argued Austin’s attempts to throw out the plea deals that his own military negotiated and approved were the latest developments in the "fitful" and "negligent" mishandling of the case that has dragged on for more than two decades. 

If the plea deal is upheld, the architects of the attacks that killed 2,976, plus thousands more who died after inhaling toxic dust in rescue missions, will not be put to death for their crimes.

"You would think that the government has an opportunity to make right, and you would think that they would be salivating at the opportunity to bring us justice," Eagleson said. "Rather than doing that, they shroud everything in secrecy. They're rushing to get these plea deals done, and they're marching forward despite the objections of us.

"We want transparency. We want the discovery that's been produced. In this case, we want to know who are these guys they're talking to? On what grounds does our government think that these guys are guilty? Why can't they share that with us? It's been 23 years. You can't tell me that you need to protect national security sources and methods because, quite frankly, if we're using the same sources and methods that we were 23 years ago, we have bigger fish to fry." 

The government opted to try five men in one case instead of each individually. Mohammed is accused of masterminding the plot and proposing it to Usama bin Laden. Two others allegedly helped the hijackers with finances. 

In 2023, a medical panel concluded that Ramzi bin al-Shibh was not competent to stand trial and removed him from the case. Mohammed, Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Walid bin Attash, are all part of the plea agreement that will allow them to avoid the death penalty. One other will go to trial.  

"The military commission has really been a failure," said John Ryan, a retired agent on the FBI's joint terrorism task force in New York. 

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Hundreds of people have been convicted of terrorism charges in the U.S. Ramzi Yousef, the perpetrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was convicted in 1997.

But the military commission’s 9/11 case has faced a revolving door of judges, who then each take time to get up to speed with the 400,000 pages and exhibits in the case. Col. Matthew N. McCall of the Air Force, the fourth judge to preside over hearings in the case, intends to retire in the first quarter of 2025 before any trial begins. 

McCall was assigned to the case in August 2021, and he held only two rounds of hearings before suspending the proceedings in March 2022 for plea negotiations. Another judge would have to get up to speed, and it could be another five to 10 years before a conviction, according to Ryan, who observed many of the hearings at Guantánamo. 

"You have parents and grandparents [of victims] that now are in their 80s, you know, and want to see justice in their lifetime," he said. 

"So, they would prefer to see the death penalty, but they’re sort of accepting the plea agreement here." 

In the 23 years it’s taken to go to trial, critical witnesses have died, while others have waning memories of that fateful day. 

For many years, the trial was delayed as the prosecution and the defense argued over whether some of the government’s best evidence, obtained under torture by the CIA, was permissible in court. The defense argued their clients had been conditioned to say anything that would please interrogators under this practice. 

Former Attorney General Eric Holder has blamed "political hacks" for preventing a U.S.-based trial and thereby leading to the plea deal. 

Years of proceedings in the untested military commissions system have led to countless delays. 

Holder in 2009 had wanted to try the men in the Manhattan court system and promised to seek the death penalty, but he faced swift opposition in Congress from lawmakers who opposed bringing the suspected terrorists onto U.S. soil. 

In 2013, Holder claimed Mohammed and his co-conspirators would be sitting on "death row as we speak" if the case had gone through the federal court system as he proposed. 

Ten years later, Attorney General William Barr also tried to bring the Guantánamo detainees to the U.S. for a trial in federal court in 2019. He wrote in his memoir that the military commission process had become a "hopeless mess." 

"The military can’t seem to get out of its own way and complete the trial," Barr wrote. He, too, ran into opposition from Republicans in Congress and then-President Trump. 

FIRST ON FOX: Top Republicans in Congress are introducing a new bill to stop the White House from offering plea deals to suspected 9/11 terrorists. 

A pretrial agreement between the 9/11 defendants and the government removed the death penalty as a possibility for punishment, but legislation led by Sens. Tom Cotton, Intelligence Committee chair, and longtime Republican leader Mitch McConnell would reinstate it. 

The Justice for 9/11 Act would prevent the military court from offering plea deals to the 9/11 terrorists by requiring a trial and ensuring the death penalty remains an option in sentencing.

Additionally, as President Biden draws down the population of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in the final days he is in office, the bill would also require the defendants to be kept on the Cuban island in solitary confinement and prohibit them from being extradited to another country. 

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., is introducing companion legislation in the House. Republicans now control both chambers of Congress and soon the presidency, granting the bill a good chance of becoming law. 

"For the Biden-Harris administration to have offered a plea deal without the death penalty to the very people who planned the attacks that took the lives of almost 3,000 is a betrayal to our cops, firefighters and 9/11 victims and their families. The Justice for 9/11 Act will nullify this horrendous plea deal and prevent any future ones from being offered to those who perpetrated this heinous attack," said Lawler. 

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Trials for the suspected 9/11 terrorists have been drawn out for decades, and in many cases, have not even started due to administrative delays, debates over whether evidence obtained under torture is permissible in court and the coronavirus pandemic. The plea deal was meant to quickly wrap up three of the cases without trial. 

"Those monsters should have faced justice decades ago; instead Joe Biden set the stage to let them go free," said Cotton, R-Ark., in a statement. "My bill will stop this travesty and prevent the Biden administration from replenishing the ranks of our terrorist enemies any further on his way out the door."

"In the wake of terrorist savagery, our obligation is to deliver justice. However long it takes, those responsible for September 11th deserve nothing more," McConnell added. 

MILITARY APPEALS COURT RULES DEFENSE SEC AUSTIN CANNOT RESCIND 9/11 PLEA DEALS

Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin tried to rescind the plea deals for three detainees at Guantanamo Bay, including alleged 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, amid backlash. However, last week, a military appeals court ruled he could not take back the deals reached by military prosecutors and defense attorneys and the deals were valid and enforceable.

The Pentagon has the option of going next to the D.C. Circuit federal appeals court for emergency review, but so far, there is no indication they have done so. 

A hearing is scheduled for later this week at Guantanamo Bay, where Mohammad and two other defendants could plead guilty in separate hearings, with the death penalty removed as a possible punishment.

Hearings will follow in the next week for the co-defendants Walid bin Attash, an accused deputy, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, accused of helping the hijackers with finances and travel. 

Biden has tried to wind down operations at Guantanamo Bay in his final days in office after a campaign promise to shut down the costly prison marred by a history of torture allegations.

The administration announced on Monday 11 Yemeni detainees, including two alleged bodyguards for Usama bin Laden, would be resettled in Oman, after being held for two decades without charges. The total number of men at the prison is now at its lowest since 2002 – just 15.