Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera Debate Terrorist Trials In NYC

On Friday's "O'Reilly Factor," the host and his guest Geraldo Rivera had quite a lively debate on Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement concerning Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terrorists being tried in New York City.

As you might imagine, Rivera was all for it, and Bill O'Reilly, well -- not so much.

Although this wasn't on par with their classic battle over illegal immigration in 2007, it still was pretty feisty (video embedded below the fold with highlights, fuller transcript, file photo, h/t Story Balloon):

GERALDO RIVERA: But I say this. Hasan would be executed in a military court or a civilian court, just as John Allen Muhammad was sentenced to die and was executed last Tuesday night by lethal injection in Virginia. And as Khalid Shaikh Muhammad will be when he's brought, justly, to the city that was the scene of his horrible crime...

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: You're crazy on that.

RIVERA: And is convicted by a federal jury and sentenced to die.

O'REILLY: Look, there's -- there's such a thing called harm reduction. Do you know what that is? Harm reduction? That in any kind of a public exposition, you try to do the least harm you can.

RIVERA: You know...

O'REILLY: Listen, Geraldo. You've got to -- you've got to think about this. You and I are New Yorkers, and we have been forever. Geraldo is born and raised, and very -- we lived on Long Island. The pain that the 9/11 families experienced is the same today as it was eight years ago. It hasn't gone away.

You're going to have a circus trial here, a circus trial where water boarding, the CIA, the Bush administration, Dick Cheney, that's what's going to be on display, not Khalid Shaikh Muhammad.

RIVERA: I disagree.

O'REILLY: I'll tell you, I can't believe you disagree with me, because you know how much pain the 9/11 families are going to experience.

RIVERA: You remember Ramzi Yousef? Do you remember the blind Skeikh?

O'REILLY: Yes.

RIVERA: They were charged for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. I was in the World Trade Center. I looked at the hole they made. Only because their bomb was a little less powerful than they intended, the buildings did not fall down in 1993. They were tried in the southern district of New York. They were convicted and sentenced.

O'REILLY: It's a different thing. They were living here.

RIVERA: They were colleagues and brothers of these murderers.

O'REILLY: No, they were living here like Zacarias Moussaoui was in Minnesota when he was picked up. Nobody had a beef with that civilian trial. Although it was a circus.

RIVERA: Then what did Cuba have to do with these people?

O'REILLY: No.

RIVERA: We...

O'REILLY: Khalid Shaikh Muhammad was picked up in Afghanistan.

RIVERA: In Pakistan. You used -- you used the term "risk reduction." That's what Guantanamo Bay was in the minds of the bureaucrats. They said what are the risks here? The risks aren't really escape. People don't escape from maximum federal prison. The risk is the publicity or the propaganda.

O'REILLY: Terror attacks, whatever.

RIVERA: The United States Constitution might offer too many rights to these people.

O'REILLY: Would you have brought -- would you have brought Herman Goering after World War II here?

RIVERA: Guantanamo Bay was a shyster's trick to evade the United States Constitution.

O'REILLY: I don't think that for a second. I think it was a smart move.

RIVERA: And justice will be done where it deserves to be done in the shadow of the buildings they destroyed.

O'REILLY: Look, No. 1, you're insulting the military justice system.

(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: I've got 30 seconds. I've got 30 seconds. Would you have brought Herman Goering from Berlin to New York City to try him after World War II? Would you?

RIVERA: Yes.

O'REILLY: That's crazy!

RIVERA: I would have loved -- I would have loved to see him stand before the relatives of those Jewish people and the other -- and the other people that he massacred. Let him come here.

(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: ... in front of a military tribunal.

RIVERA: We have nothing to fear. These people don't scare us.

O'REILLY: Harm reduction.

Geraldo, everybody. Very passionate, as always.

RIVERA: Thank you.

O'REILLY: He like me, Geraldo. I swear.

RIVERA: I really do.