GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Reputed al Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheik Mohammed complained Thursday that he couldn't get a pad of paper to prepare for his capital-crimes court appearance.

His nephew, Ammar al Baluchi, asked a day earlier for access to a law library. The alleged 9/11 co-conspirator, a computer engineer, complained to his military judge that he prepared a motion but his jailers wouldn't give it to the court. For 10 days.

Congress may have given war-on-terrorism captives the right to act as their own lawyers in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, but based on pretrial hearings this week for the men accused of killing nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon and the prison camps haven't provided the ''worst of the worst'' with the tools to defend themselves.

''I don't underestimate how hard it is,'' said Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, the judge in the mass-murder trial for which conviction can be the death penalty.

He pledged ''modifications,'' but no master plan. ``We're going to deal with those things as they come along.''

''We're looking into it,'' said a Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon.

Wednesday and Thursday, the judge met individually with four of the five men accused of plotting, financing and training the 9/11 hijackers to ask them whether they had been intimidated by Khalid Sheik Mohammed into acting as their own attorneys.

In the process, Kohlmann tried to dissuade them from acting as their own attorneys, partly because they can't travel from their island confinement to interview witnesses, and partly because they won't see before trial all the classified evidence that might be used against them.

''I know. It's five years torturing. For sure, a lot,'' cracked Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind whom the CIA admits it waterboarded into spilling al Qaeda secrets.

None was dissuaded. Only one of the five, Mustafa al Hawsawi, a Saudi accused of financing the attacks, said he was considering whether to accept his Pentagon attorney.

Another, Yemeni Ramzi bin al Shibh, who allegedly helped the hijackers find American flight schools, boycotted his hearing. He refused to leave his cell. A military medical board is examining whether he is mentally fit to stand trial. A hearing is scheduled for Aug. 15.

The war court has long been plagued by translation problems, even before the U.S. Supreme Court shut down an earlier format as unconstitutional.

SELF-REPRESENTATION

When Congress and the White House got together to legislate new commissions, they added some modifications -- among them a provision to let detainees defend themselves at trial. Captives didn't want U.S. forces in uniform as their lawyers.

On Thursday, Kohlmann said in court that there is no requirement to translate all military commission paperwork into Arabic for detainees defending themselves.

But he said he would ``take the idea under advisement.''

Moreover, the chief prosecutor Army Col. Larry Morris said by telephone from the United States that the Pentagon was in ''a dynamic process'' to give the accused ``the best ability to defend themselves.''

This week, the issue was how to move legal papers between a prison camp that inspects all material between lawyers and their clients, and between detainees and their legal advisors.

Because the CIA interrogated the 9/11 accused secretly -- at undisclosed overseas locations -- the circumstances of their captures, as well as techniques used on them and by whom, are national security secrets.

That is why they are isolated on this remote base, out of earshot of other detainees -- and forbidden from meeting with one another.

When Waleed bin Attash, accused of running the 9/11 hijackers' training camps, asked permission to meet with his fellow defendants, Kohlmann told him to file a motion.

Work with your consultants,'' Kohlmann said. You're going to have to do it the way the lawyers do it.''

DELIVERY REFUSED?

But three detainees said in court they prepared handwritten motions for the judge, a Marine colonel with top secret security clearances. All said their guards refused to deliver the motions.

Boise criminal defense attorney David Nevin said that was but one illustration of a system failure.

Nevin, hired by the American Civil Liberties Union to advise Mohammed, said the captive ``doesn't have paper in his cell. And you all know that lawyers can't function as lawyers without paper.''

Does the man who allegedly admitted to orchestrating the 9/11 attacks ''from A to Z'' have any tools required to practice law?

''He has a voice. He has a brain,'' Nevin said. ``But other than that, no.''

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