Mukasey: 'Amateur Night' at Justice Department Over Terror Trial Confusion

Former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Tuesday blasted the Obama administration's decision to try Sept. 11 conspirators in a civilian courtroom, calling it "amateur night" at the Department of Justice.

Mukasey served as attorney general in George W. Bush's administration and was the judge in the early court dealings with American terrorist Jose Padilla and in the case of two foreign terrorists convicted in relation to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He said the back-and-forth has made the Justice Deparrtment look like it can't make up its mind.

"It makes it look like amateur night down there. Yes. It makes us look weak. It is weakness," he said.

Mukasey said accused mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators should be tried before military commissions outside the United States.

"There are huge differences between the way you're supposed to deal with the guy who tries to stick up a 7-Eleven and a terrorist," Mukasey said in an interview Tuesday on Fox News.

"It is a mockery of the rule of law to take people who are charged with violating all the rules of war and put them in a situation that's better than the one they would have been in if they followed the rules of war," he said.

Mukasey is calling on the administration to try the terrorist suspects at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, arguing that the detention center is "custom built" to handle such trials.

"There's a courtroom that can deal with classified information -- store it safely and electronically," Mukasey said of the facility, adding that it can "hold these people in a remote, secure and humane location."

The location of the terror trials has been the subject of intense controversy as the White House and several lawmakers spar over where and how to try the suspects.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced in November that the trial for Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators would be held in a civilian courtroom just blocks away from the where the World Trade Center once stood.

The administration later asked the Justice Department to consider other locations, but White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that no decision has been made.

Mukasey blasted the ideas, saying, "New York poses a tremendous, the biggest, security threat."