October 11, 2026
Last week, military judge Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, ruled that the US government failed to establish that Mustafa al-Hawsawi, an alleged facilitator of the 9/11 attacks, gave voluntary confessions to the FBI in January 2007, after more than 3 years in CIA custody. Hawsawi allegedly provided money and logistical support to the alleged 9/11 hijackers. After he was captured in 2003, he was sent to a CIA black site where he was subjected to torture. Hawsawi was sodomized and raped through an unnecessary rectal exam that left him with permanent damage.
Prosecutors asserted that the confessions made to the FBI in 2007 were voluntarily given even though Hawsawi was previously tortured for years and the FBI failed to provide Miranda warnings and access to counsel. Judge Schrama concluded that the prosecution failed to establish voluntariness by a preponderance of the evidence. Schrama also wrote that the prosecution had the legal burden of establishing that the FBI interviews, "were not inherently coercive in their own right."
On Wednesday, Judge Schrama suppressed statements made to the FBI by Walid bin Attash ("Khallad") after the CIA tortured him from 2003 to 2006. Schrama wrote that the torture of Khallad, "included sleep deprivation, required standing, loud music, sensory deprivation, extended isolation, reduced quantity and quality of food, nudity, and rough treatment."
Khallad is noteworthy because he is the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole Bombing in 2000 and the CIA knew that he was associated with two known Al Qaeda operatives, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who were granted US visas and lived openly in the United States in 2000 and 2001. Hazmi and Mihdhar were two of the alleged Flight 77 muscle hijackers during the 9/11 attacks and received significant financial and logistical support from Saudi intelligence operatives Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan while they lived openly in the United States. Hazmi and Mihdhar also received support from cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, who was executed in a CIA drone strike in 2011.
The CIA failed on multiple occasions for 18 months to notify the FBI about Hazmi and Mihdhar's US visas and presence in the United States. At that time, the FBI was actively investigating the USS Cole bombing. When the CIA finally notified the FBI less than 3 weeks before the 9/11 attacks, they purposely withheld from the FBI that Hazmi and Mihdhar were connected to Khallad as a result of their attendance at a major Al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000 that the CIA closely monitored.
Prior to 9/11, the CIA withheld from the FBI a photograph of Khallad from the January 2000 Al Qaeda meeting that would have enabled the FBI to know that Khallad was connected to Hazmi and Mihdhar. The CIA gave the FBI photos of Hazmi and Mihdhar from the Malaysia meetings but withheld the Khallad photo. As a result, the FBI treated the search for Mihdhar as a low-priority intelligence investigation instead of an urgent criminal investigation.
Per the Canestraro declaration, FBI agent Steve Bongardt (CS-12) who was investigating the USS Cole bombing stated that, had he and the other FBI agents been shown the photograph, they would have immediately linked Hazmi and Mihdhar to Khallad, who is the alleged USS Cole bombing mastermind. The investigation would have turned into a criminal investigation with the full resources of the FBI Field Office being deployed in order to catch Hazmi and Mihdhar in the summer of 2001.
In the summer of 2001 while "the system was blinking red", the CIA likely knew that Hazmi and Mihdhar would be involved in an upcoming terrorist attack. The former deputy head of the CIA's Alec Station, Tom Wilshire, who was working as a liaison to the FBI, wrote to the CIA's Counterterrorist Center (CTC) on July 13, 2001 that Khallad was a "major league killer who orchestrated the Cole attack and possibly the Africa bombings".
On July 23, 2001 Wilshire sent another email to the CTC stating, "When the next big op is carried out by UBL, hardcore cadre, Khallad [bin Attash] will be at or near the top of the command food chain-and probably nowhere near either the attack site or Afghanistan. Khalid Midhar [sic] should be [of] very high interest anyway, given his connection to the [redacted]." As the deputy head of Alec Station, Wilshire prevented Doug Miller and Mark Rossini from notifying the FBI of Mihdhar's US visa in January 2000.
By torturing alleged Al Qaeda operatives such as Hawsawi and Khallad in violation of the US Constitution and international law, their trials have remained stuck in the pre-trial phase for years. It is very unlikely that Hawsawi, Khallad, KSM or Ammar al-Baluchi will ever be put on trial. Ramzi bin al-Shibh, an alleged facilitator of the 9/11 attacks, has been declared mentally incompetent to stand trial due to the torture that he endured.
It is conceivable that the US national-security state decided to torture the alleged Al Qaeda conspirators and facilitators because testimony extracted through torture is unreliable and illegal. By preventing the trials from ever occurring, information regarding what the US intelligence community knew about Al Qaeda prior to 9/11 can remain concealed. The NSA and CIA monitored the Al Qaeda communications switchboard in Yemen that was run by Mihdhar's father-in-law and the NSA and CIA monitored Bin Laden's satellite phone. If Al Qaeda played a role in the 9/11 attacks, then information obtained through monitoring the communications hub and the satellite phone would be of the utmost relevance to understanding what the US intelligence community knew about the 9/11 plot.
The 9/11 attacks were used by the US national-security state as an excuse to launch wars of aggression that murdered millions of people. We were told to trust the US government that Al Qaeda attacked the United States because "they hated freedom", while credible evidence of Al Qaeda's involvement in 9/11 remains concealed.