Will Obama ever move the 16 worst terrorists in Gitmo?

With the recent trade of five Taliban commanders for Bowe Bergdahl, and some of Osama bin Laden's bodyguards cleared for release behind them, it's plain that President Obama is determined to fulfill his campaign vow to shutter Gitmo.

But what will become of the Cuba-based military prison's most dangerous al Qaeda terrorists, many of whom were directly involved in the 9/11 attacks? Will they end up on American soil?

These 16 "high-value detainees," who mostly hail from Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, are the worst of the worst still held in custody — unrepentant, unreformed and unlikely to ever be repatriated.

There are 149 prisoners left at Guantanamo, and Obama seems inclined to send them back to their home nations on the flimsiest of excuses. But these 16 are so dangerous not even he can let them go.

The president and his attorney general always have wanted to transfer them to federal prisons inside the US, but Congress slammed the door, outlawing the transfer stateside of foreign terrorists and insurgents.

In recent months, however, the administration has taken several steps that appear designed to try to make it happen anyway.

For one, the federal Bureau of Prisons has purchased a maximum-security prison in the Midwest, dedicating almost $54 million to renovate, reopen and staff the 1,600-bed facility in Thomson, Illinois. The mothballed prison could start housing highly dangerous inmates by the end of 2016 at a total cost of about $195 million.

The administration had at one time proposed transferring hardcore Gitmo detainees to the Thomson Correctional Center, but nixed the plan amid local outcry over 9/11 fiends living next door. Now it insists it will use the prison only to relieve crowding elsewhere in the system.

Republican lawmakers aren't buying it. They suspect it's a step toward relocation of Gitmo detainees.

In a countermove, they've earmarked $69 million to build a new high-security detention center at Gitmo to house, indefinitely, admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the rest of the high-value al Qaeda captives, most of whom were transferred to Gitmo from CIA black sites in 2006.

The House Armed Services Committee last month inserted funds for the new "high-value detainee complex" in its military spending bill. The facility would replace the secret Camp 7 building that currently jails KSM and other former CIA captives.

The administration, meanwhile, has renewed its lobbying campaign to convince the public that these al Qaeda monsters wouldn't pose a threat to homeland security if they were moved onto domestic soil. It's part of a push to persuade Congress to lift the statutory ban on bringing al Qaeda's worst into the country.

The Obama administration might move terrorists currently being held at Guantanamo Bay to a maximum-security prison in Thomson, Illinois.Photo: Getty Images

Last month, in a legal brief, Attorney General Eric Holder assured congressional leaders of both parties that relocating the hardened terrorists to stand trial inside the US would not result in any of them turning up on a city street one day.

In a nine-page, unclassified report, his legal team expressed confidence that "existing statutory safeguards and executive and congressional authorities provide robust protection of the national security."

However, it went on to say in the back of the report that Gitmo enemy combatants held in stateside prisons "will have the right to maintain actions challenging their detention through writs of habeas corpus." They would also have the right to seek dismissal of evidence obtained through "torture."

In other words, these al Qaeda fiends, some of whom have taken oaths to carry out suicide attacks on America, could gain a host of rights — pressed by an army of ACLU lawyers — that could make their trials and detention here decidedly less safe for the public than the administration concludes at the top of its legal brief.

"I remain concerned we would wind up with terrorists released and taking up residence in the United States," Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), House armed services panel chief, said in a statement.

Not to worry, Holder argues, he'll secure their convictions and throw away the keys. He cites April's swift conviction of bin Laden's terrorist brother-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, who now awaits sentencing from a federal prison in New York.

A US Army guard opens the gate at Camp Delta at Guantanamo.Photo: Getty Images

But public safety isn't Gitmo's only benefit. By keeping top al Qaeda operatives out of civilian court, the military can gather intelligence on the enemy and protect the country from future 9/11 attacks.

The administration blew that chance with Ghaith, opting to bring him here instead of Gitmo after he was captured overseas in 2013. The move prevented the military from interrogating him about al Qaeda operations and terror plots in the pipeline.

The administration seems more interested in pandering to the ACLU and the Democratic Party's anti-war base than marshaling an effective offense against al Qaeda, which is retrenching across the globe.

Holder may even be circling back, at least intellectually, to his 2010 plan — dropped after fierce opposition — to try KSM and four other 9/11 plotters in Manhattan. "I think the decision that I announced at that time was a correct one," he said in a recent New York City visit.

Within a year of that PR disaster, Obama issued a little-known executive order making it easier to clear hardcore Gitmo detainees for release.

The order set up a parole board packed with sympathetic Justice and State Department officials. It allowed terrorists to lawyer up and even review classified information. And it left open the possibility that prisoners at some point might be transferred to the US.

Amanda and David Norris, of Sterling, Illinois, protest against the Obama administration's plans to house Gitmo terrorists in the Thomson Correctional Center.Photo: Getty Images

The administration reasons that the nation's prisons already hold hundreds of incredibly dangerous people, from mass murderers to rapists, so what's a few al Qaeda terrorists in them?

Only, Gitmo's 16 monsters aren't like other criminals. They're sworn enemies of America, foreign-sponsored militants who not only helped the hijackers topple two of our skyscrapers but helped them attack and destroy a section of our military headquarters, slaughtering 2,624 of our citizens.

So, it's perfectly appropriate for the military to deal with them, indefinitely, right where they are.

Paul Sperry is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington."