Many of you who read Just the Facts know my 2003 book, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11. It reached #2 on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list that fall. Its final chapter, “The Interrogation,” broke the story of what Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah told CIA interrogators shortly after his capture. There’s front-page news today that brought me back to it —and what the coverage is missing.
A military judge, Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, has set a June 5, 2028 trial date for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and three of his Guantánamo Bay co-defendants, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi. Schrama rejected prosecutors’ request to begin in January 2027, ruling that it left too little time to resolve the pending motions to suppress evidence derived from CIA interrogations. A trial date was set once before, for January 2021. It came and went. A fifth original co-defendant, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, was severed from the case in 2023 after …