HC Alum on team prosecuting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

required_details
Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:01:04 +0000

WASHINGTON — Maj. Rob McGovern had long since left NFL glory behind on 9/11 for other forms of heroism, prosecuting drug dealers for the Manhattan DA while serving in the Army Reserve.

After watching the twin towers fall he raced home, donned his fatigues and spent four days helping to recover remains from the rubble.

In a turn of fate that would strain even Hollywood’s imagination, 11 years later McGovern will confront Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 conspirators as a prosecutor in their death-penalty trial at Guantanamo Bay.

“Those people went to work on a Tuesday morning and they had every right to go home that night,” McGovern told NFL Films in 2007. “And yeah, there’s an anger there.

“They didn’t do anything wrong, I don’t give a damn what somebody says about our foreign policy. It’s not an excuse for killing people, or killing civilians in particular,” he said.

The seventh of nine kids from Oradell, N.J., McGovern’s play as a 6-foot-2, 225-pound linebacker for Holy Cross earned him a 10th-round pick in the 1989 NFL draft.

He played four seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs, Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots.

McGovern, 45, then headed for New York and earned his law degree at Fordham University. He interned for federal Judge Kevin Duffy during the trial that ended in the conviction of four co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

After 9/11, McGovern was called to active duty as an Army lawyer. He deployed to Afghanistan and later to Iraq, advising superiors and prosecuting insurgents.

Back home in 2005, McGovern argued in the prosecution of Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar in the March 2003 “fragging” murder of two officers at Camp Pennsylvania, Kuwait.

Akbar was convicted and sentenced to death. His sentence is now under appeal.

McGovern chronicled his journey in 2007’s unapologetically titled “All American: Why I Believe in Football, God, and the War in Iraq.”

Read more: [Maj. Rob McGovern was in the Army Reserve on 9/11 and helped at Ground Zero, now he’s part of team prosecuting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - NY Daily News](Maj. Rob McGovern was in the Army Reserve on 9/11 and helped at Ground Zero, now he’s part of team prosecuting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – New York Daily News)

Read full thread