Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is shown in this file photograph during his arrest on March 1, 2003. (REUTERS/Courtesy U.S. News & World Report)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senior Obama administration officials may recommend that accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be prosecuted in a military trial, U.S. officials said on Friday, in what would be a policy reversal after intense political pressure.

But any decision on where and how to try Mohammed and four other suspects in the 2001 attacks on the United States is still weeks away, a White House official said.

"The White House is continuing to review what the available options are that would bring the 9/11 detainees to justice," the official said.

Attorney General Eric Holder had originally planned to have the five men tried in a civilian court in New York City, where most of the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks were killed.

But opposition from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and lawmakers in Washington prompted a change in plans.

The administration for weeks has publicly acknowledged it was considering a shift as a result of concerns over the cost and disruption of a civilian trial in New York and the requirement that the suspects receive full legal rights.

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Obama administration was now getting closer to recommending that Mohammed be tried by military tribunal given the dwindling options for a civilian trial.

The possible shift won plaudits from Republicans as a "step in the right direction" but they signaled they would continue to push Obama for more, including keeping open the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, despite his pledge to shut the controversial facility.

"I hope that next they will realize that Guantanamo Bay is best equipped for the detention and prosecution of terrorists, not a prison inside the U.S.," said Representative Lamar Smith, the senior Republican on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.

The Washington Post, which first reported the possible shift, said that if Obama agrees to his advisers' likely recommendation, the White House could get the funding it needs to close the Guantanamo prison from Congress.

When Obama took office in January 2009, he set a one-year deadline to close the Guantanamo facility but various political and diplomatic complications have arisen to force a delay.

New rules
A group of retired military officers who favor civilian trials argued the revised military trial system was untested and its rules about secret evidence and access to lawyers were not that different from criminal courts.

"It would be a huge, huge mistake to send some of the worst criminals in the world to a courtroom where everybody is there for the first time," retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral John Hutson told reporters.

Last year, new rules were approved for military trials that banned coerced testimony and limited hearsay evidence against suspects. Administration officials have argued that only a handful of terrorism suspects have been tried in a military setting, while scores have been tried in criminal courts.

A bipartisan group of senators has offered legislation aimed at forcing the administration to prosecute terrorism suspects, like Mohammed, in the military system.

That legislation, along with local opposition to the New York trials, has caught the Obama administration off guard and forced the reconsideration.

The administration plans to prosecute almost three dozen terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay but has not announced where all the trials will be held and whether they will be criminal or military.

So far, only one Guantanamo detainee has been sent to federal criminal court for trial, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who has been accused of being involved in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.