President Barack Obama, under pressure from political opponents, seems ready to reverse his bold promise to put the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on trial in a civilian courtroom in the heart of New York.
Instead of the "trial of the century" with the Obama administration demonstrating it could convict the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a federal courtroom, the White House is reportedly reconsidering a widely discredited Bush-era military tribunal trial.
Rights groups and many Americans who believed Mr. Obama's presidency would herald an end to the murky, brutal and reputation-sapping treatment and special offshore trials of terrorist suspects are appalled.
The American Civil Liberties Union has launched a media campaign that features a series of images showing Mr. Obama morph into his predecessor, George W. Bush.
In a letter to the President, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero, said, "It would be a colossal mistake to reverse the ... decision to try these defendants in federal criminal court and again relegate these landmark trials to irretrievably defective military commissions."
White House officials have said any decision on changing Mr. Mohammed's trial back to a military tribunal may be weeks away. The delay is needed, apparently, because the Obama administration is also making a deal with Republicans on closing the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, another presidential promise that has been repeatedly deferred.
Mr. Obama wants to move hundreds of terror suspects held at Guantanamo, a naval base leased from Cuba, to a renovated Illinois prison, but Republicans have threatened to block the money needed to shut the notorious facility.
The outlines of a deal are emerging.
"If we could get Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-conspirators of 9/11 back in the military commission, it would go down well with the public," said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican.
Last November, when he announced the Obama administration's long-awaited decision to put Mr. Mohammed on trial in civilian courts, Attorney-General Eric Holder said, "We need not cower in the face of this enemy … our institutions are strong, our infrastructure is sturdy, our resolve is firm and our people are ready."
He added that federal courts had successfully handled more than 300 terrorist trials while the military tribunals created by the Bush administration has completed only three.
"After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September 11 will finally face justice," Mr. Holder said.
Putting the five men alleged to have planned the 9/11 suicide hijackings on trial in New York may have been principled and popular outside the United States, but it was widely opposed by many Americans. Facing outrage from New Yorkers who didn't want either the expense or the disruption of a long trial costing hundreds of millions and clogging downtown Manhattan, the White House backed down. Instead, it said, alternative locations - perhaps in Washington, perhaps on an island in New York habour - were considered.
But initially, the administration insisted that only the location of the trial, not whether it would be held in a civilian court, was under reconsideration.
Although the President has already missed his self-imposed deadline of closing Guantanamo within a year of taking office and has already restored some Bush-era practices, such as indefinite imprisonment without charge for some terror suspects deemed too dangerous to release but too difficult to convict, a flip-flop on the trial of Mr. Mohammed would be the most obvious reversal to date.
"I would not look back as fondly as I once did on that second day in office," said retired major-general William Nash, one of 16 high-ranking officers the White House rounded up to flank Mr. Obama when he announced the closing of Guantanamo and an end to military tribunals.
The Obama administration has always planned to retain military tribunals for a handful of terrorist suspects, including Canadian Omar Khadr, although those trials were widely expected to be overshadowed by the high-profile civilian court trials of big-name suspects.