S04 - Ep. 9: This Is the Weirdness
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There are no didn't costs for advice beyond the underline one expenses. Previously on cereal, IT was a ticket out of jailed card. Basically think you can put a person fifty years in prison and plus torture, right? So when you are toted by someone who doesn't believe in tota, how can disgust who believe in human rights doing this to me? Well, it's exhAusting because you're like pretending everything is pretend.

That's what we're going to play. Everybody seems to think that the intelligence mission that wantons omo was to the cases against these details for their continue detention. And i'm here to tell you that wasn't the figuration. From serial productions in the new york times. This is serial season four, one tony amo, one prison camp, told week by week, i'm saracenic, and this is our final episode.

Every couple of weeks at the blend hour of five P M on a tuesday, a group of people you've never heard of clicks into a zoo meeting. There are all family members of people who died .

on september lemons. I everyone.

everybody. There's colleen, a nurse practitioner in the bronx, and Terry, retired documentary filmmaker in boston. Diann savana, retired ordinary minister ballerina, used to work in non profits and around the present feeling, the cats tail out of my life.

Uh, barry, a graphic designer in organ. Oh, barry got a haircut and fills in new york. Retired teacher who recently turned eighty.

not eighty. I know i'm not. I'm not. They've known each .

other a long time, many of them for a decade more through career changes and new grandchildren and health troubles.

Well, well, well, yeah, what would we do without each other? Yeah, the first meeting .

I SAT in on june of twenty, twenty two, I assumed we'd be like a support group instead, the topic that day was the physical and mental well being of the five men accused of orchestrating the attacks that killed their relatives. If the men don't get the death penalty, there's a very real possibility they won't. What should the man's punishment be?

I think, you know, we're hearing that that .

the nine eleven defendants don't want to leave .

lontana o no.

because they think they're going to Florance, colorado, which is very uncomfortable. Come are worth compared to one unable FLorence color to is the site of a federal supermax prison. Unless you're a federal crime buff, i'm guessing you might not be able to name anyone incarcerated. Influence colorado these guys .

can we hand turn off ski? I that's calling SHE tells the group he .

would be fine with clear shake muhamad delage master mind of nine eleven ending up in a place like floria SHE doesn't want to put to death or tortured, but solitary for the rest of his life would be OK with her. Vallery agrees. Others think FLorence is too harsh.

I think it's like being buried alive .

in .

a sense in year your underground twenty three hours today with the light on in the cell um and you get an hour outside if you behave. It's a really in the human place.

It's very, very strict. Everything about this call seemed upside down, that this group of people would care about a humane future for the nine, eleven defendants, that the defendants might want to remain at one, Tonya, that the last people you think should be dealing with any of this end up dealing with all of this. And they weren't just doing a thought experiment here.

Their positions matter. This group is called september eleven, families for peaceful tomorrow. After Martin luthor king junior quote, wars are poor chasles for Carrying out peaceful tomorrow's.

All the members are peece necks. That's what brought the original members together in the first place. They're opposition to the U. S. Bombing campaign in afghanistan a month after the september eleventh attacks of the many family groups that formed after nine eleven.

This is the only one closely monitoring the trial of the nine eleven accused, the only one whose members traveled to every court session held for the case. Collectively, they've watched hundreds of hours of court proceedings, file multiple amicus braves. They research deeply, take out common sense but often unpopular positions, and lobby aggressively for those positions.

And especially right then, spring of twenty twenty two, this group had some political juice. The nine eleven case was at a turning point. IT had been in pretrial hearings for ten years, already ten years of waiting for someone to be held responsible for the death of their family members.

And now a solution was maybe in sight. Peaceful tomorrows have long pushed for this for an ending. Liz, one of the Younger members, tells the group shea little conflicted.

She's always been for closing one. Tonio has been one of the group's steadfast positions close IT. But then SHE visited the base again, recently took in the whole clattering machine of the case. And now she's not sure maybe IT does make more sense for the nine, eleven defendants to serve out their sentences at antonio to not close down the facility.

No, IT didn't make me question what closing IT would mean and what all of this like, what's next? What's next for else? What's for the detainees, the attorneys? And what does, what does justice look like for us? What does justice also look like for them?

Yeah, something that I never even thought that I would sit there think about, like I never in my life thought I would be concerned about, like five people who were responsible for. We're doing what they did. I never thought that that would happen.

Blizz was six years old when her father, a firefighter, was killed at the world trade center. And now here he was, twenty seven, working as a city council person in her hometown, planning her wedding on the side and on the side side, trying to think through one of the most morally and legally complex criminal cases in american history.

Most aspects of guantanamo can fairly be described as perverse to wait previous eight episodes of this series. But the one thing that at least seemed logical about one tanami was the nine eleven trial. The idea of IT was clear.

We held in our custody in the men we believed we're behind the attacks that killed nearly three thousand people in the united states. If anyone was our enemy at antonio IT was these men. If any justice was to be had IT was through this trial.

But remember how at the beginning in this series I said guantanamo was the crazy st criminal justice story we've ver seen the nine eleven case is largely what I had in mind when I applaud IT out IT describes a not so gordian in a national psychology so convoluted IT changed my animation question about the trial which used to be how will the end now my question is, will IT end ever Colin Kelly, the nurse practitioner, was my main guide for the nine eleven trial so explain IT to you i'm mistake with her Collins brother bill Kelly died on september eleventh for thirty years old in orkan finance something e trade. Collin never fully understood, but used to visit his fancy bloomberg office. He'd visit collin in the bronx, play with his knees and nephews.

On september eleventh, bill happened to be at the world trade center for a conference. So IT took a few hours before the family figured out he was in the building. Around midnight, colleen headed into manhattan with a friend to look for bill, and they perform the same impedance inner of hundreds of other family members in the shell shock city walking, walking emergency room to emergency room.

But israel bell view and Y. U. Finally, SHE said all these families ended up in a big auditorium downtown where people's names would get called.

This is a three or four the morning. And just to file, I don't know, missing person's report like we had the report.

Yeah and you did that. You met with somebody.

yes, of a female detective. I remember that um collin and her .

parents and her siblings populated a sudden demographic which eventually would squeak into a military acronym vf. ms. Victim family members. They eventually get their own section of the airplane that flies down to antonio, their own escorts and drivers on the base, their own curtain off seating area inside the gallery of the military court, their own press conferences. All that was years away in the moment, right after the attack, colleen tried to find out what happened to her brother, not the general outlines. SHE didn't know exactly what happened.

I became obsessed with understanding his last day. I wanna know what my brother was thinking when he was trapped on one hundred and six floor. I wanted understand, was he panic?

Was he okay? Was he hopeful? What was he thinking? Like he became very, very important to me, like, give you, give you, give me everything.

Give you give me everything right now, like I wanted. Note every, I don't know if bild jumped. I believe he did. I became obsessed with that question in the fall two thousand and one.

SHE went about answering that question method ally, like a detective. Several weeks after nine eleven, Colins family found out the bill hood sent blackberry messages to his boss, t. Bloomberg, after the plane hit the north tower.

The last message Colin saw was from nine twenty three A M there was a whole hour ago. The north area didn't collapse until ten twenty collin fixated on that last hour unbuild last minute. Bloomberg also gave Collins family photos of bill from that morning at windows on the world.

IT turned out they're hired photographer for the event, who'd left just before the building was hit. Collin spoke with the photographer, studied her pictures in one of them, bills talking with a man called dan recognize receiving airline glasses. That spring, the new york times published a big story, a tiktok of the final hundred and two minutes of the towers calling examined, the grain is doomed in shot of people, teammate at the blown out windows.

In one of them, he thought he recognized bill. So calling contacted that photographer went to a studio in lower manhattan. He gave her an enlarge print to take home.

He stared at IT. Yes, that looks like bill SHE thought he's at an open window. He sees the back of his head.

His ARM is reaching across the vertical window frame, reaching out to another man receiving her line. Like the guy from the bloomberg photo. Maybe bill knew him.

They're holding on to each other other's arms. This photo is partly why Colin thinks bill jumped. Also, they never found any remains of her brother, while other bodies were recovered from one hundred and six floor.

Eventually, collin was able, as he says, to let IT let go. SHE realized excavating bills last minutes was her way of trying to take away some of the pain and fear her brother must have felt, a way to absorb IT into herself, which is impossible. The energy Colin put into tracking bills last hour that ferozi y for uncovering information, and that fell, of fact, no matter how distressing.

Now multiply that a thousand fold. And that's where Colin has dedicated to the nine eleven trial. She's been to guantanamo well over a dozen times. If you can't watch the trial and person, she'll sometimes go to a remote viewing station at fourth hamilton, an army base near the verizon, a bridge in brooklin. When hearings are in session, which is most of the time, he calls up experts and attorneys to ask questions and talk strategy.

Before I knew Better, I thought the actual trial of the nine eleven accused might not matter all that much to come in five men, linguists ing. At one hanimal in prison for twenty years, already unlikely to ever be free. Why would a trial affect Collins life? Her busy life? By the way, he said me straight. SHE did care.

My god, yes, yeah, yeah, hugely. Because, you know, if bill was killed on a street corner, manhattan, where he lived, of course I would be at that trial every day when when I came to a trial. You know, that is like, you want to know all the facts.

You wanted know how this happened, who this person was, what what went on, and have people be held accountable. So we, yes, I was always really, really interested, both in the trial as a form of accountability, but also, what the hell happened that day like this? This sounds ridiculous that i'm saying this to you right now, twenty two years later, no one knows.

How did could shake mohamed do what he did? How did the high jack kers get their money? How did they get on planes? Who knew what? when? How, how all these other guys, the other four men, how are they involved?

No, I like, i'd literally, I don't know what, I don't know what they did know he was the money got. What does that mean? I don't know what that means.

Like money to do. What did you know what they would do with the money? To me like that, that's the hardest piece of this is what is IT comes back to the evidence.

Like what is the evidence against against these other four men? I really don't know. So i'm intensely, obsessively wanting to know how this all happened. And why do .

you like, you know why .

they didn't? No, i've been told by people who are not the five accused why they did IT. No, I don't know why they did IT.

I, you need to hurt from them.

Yes, it's just, it's, it's how, it's how, it's what I need, what I need.

Keep in mind, colleen is looked at everything he can get her hands on about how and why nine eleven happened. Government reports, statements by the nine eleven accused books by prominent journalists. Most extraordinary to me, SHE spent years visiting a former member of the militant group weather underground in prison.

SHE wanted to know what IT felt like when your belief system Carried. You pass natural boundaries to extreme violence, but none of IT satisfied her. In this case, Colin needs primary forces.

SHE needs specific answers that are still locked inside these specific defendants. The trial would unlock them. That's what trials or four.

The military commissions at guantanamo. O we're supposed to be our nerve trials. When the light powers prosecuted nazis and german leaders immediately following the second world war.

The murder trials were huge, efficient and by many measures, successful. They didn't fix the world, but they least held racist s and murders to account, help repair broken continent and reset a common morality. That said, war crimes, no matter how chaotic or horrific, would be adjudicated in a civilized court of law for all the world to see. It's no wonder then, that photos of the nervous trial hung on the world, the prosecution offices of the military commissions. Oh, wow, what is that on calling Kelly is wall hung, hand made primer, explaining the military commissions the opposite of the number trials in terms of efficiency and success.

This is the weirdness.

But just explain what i'm looking at. It's behind her bedroom door was a waterfall of paper giant presentation size sheet describing the special court created to try handful of guantanamo prisoners we charged with terrorism or war crimes. The nine eleven case was meant to be the main event.

This is really helpful because we all forget about the the charges against the nine eleven.

This document was for an explainer SHE did bears ago, but collin was keeping in here because so much time had passed since the nine eleven criminal k started. SHE sometimes forgets the basics also, I suspect, because the case has emulsified into her waking life, so that SHE hardly noticed that an enormous hand written record of judicial disappointment occupied physical and mental real estate in her bedroom, spitting distance from her pillow while SHE slept.

It's not good.

You can age this document by the judge calling listed on one of the sheet judge poll. He lasted the first six years until twenty eighteen. Then came judge parrell, a who left after nine months.

Then judge coin came in pledging continent uy, so important in a case of this magnitude less than a year later, coin retired. Then judge what can stepped in temporarily until judge king came aboard. Judge king lasted two weeks, yet complex.

Then judge macao, but macao had been a judge for less than two years, which was against the rules. So judge what can stepped in, temporary again. Then judge a cost of baby at the case for a minute until judge maka came back once he had two years experience under his belt.

Judge Michael is the current judge on the nine eleven case, he announced he might or might not be retiring at the end of this year. I know you're not following. This is the problem.

No one can follow this like no joke on genuine. I saw some friends and i've been seen a long time, and they know that i'm very active in this in this work. And they asked kind of what's going on and I started to explain, and I see this is a guy who's a lawyer, and he's really smart and he's really engaged on issues of great importance around the globe. And I just see, like afterwhile just glazes over. Yeah, I was kind of bomb deal.

Do you get this sense? They don't believe you like, they think you must not understand what's happening, because I can be that bad, or literally just too plica placated.

too complicated. Because you, because if you start to say something, you say a sentence, you realized you have to say another sentence to explain cause. There's no wait. There is no elevator pitch for this.

No elevator pitch, but how about we take the stairs, showed me all the way to the top and you lend me those back on a seven minutes and i'll spin you through this for the case in this for active cord, so you can understand the buying the nine, eleven cases in right now.

After we captured the five defendants, the men we believed pluton and Carried out in nine eleven attacks, we held them in C I, A custody in black sites around the world, and we tortured them. After three, four years, we sent them to guantanamo o in september of two thousand six, a couple of fall starts later, including a politically disastrous effort to bring the case to federal court in manhattan. The men eventually were arrange in may of twenty twelve at a military commission in one tana mobi.

The five defendants were college chick muhamad, while head been attash romsey bn shaba a marabouts I in with staffer a house we in the court room, they would each sit in a different row, one behind the other in the order they appear on the charge sheet, k them to house sale. So how is this court different from all other courts? And why does that work? Any Normal lawyer hearing when i'm about to lay out here is probably going to be horrified, or else think I must be mistaken.

I am not mistaken. Here we go. In Normal criminal court, a defendant has a constitutional right to confront his accuser, so if I accuse you of assault, say, I have to come to court, taken oath and testify in front of a judge jury.

In the military commissions, they'll entertain a jacked up form of hearsay evidence, which means an FBI agent can take the stand and say, years ago, I went to a police station in yemen, and the yemeni cop brought me some witnesses. He had ready interrogated when I talked to all of them, and I wrote down what they told me. But those originally yemeni witnesses don't have to be called in or taken oath or answer any questions, because the agents who spoke with them don't even know how to find them anymore.

The yemen's second hand statements made through an interpreter, mind you, can be allowed as evidence in the war court at guantanamo. And these are in any old criminal cases. These are capital cases, death penalty cases.

As one former military defensive tourney said to me, allowing that kind of here, say, quote, that would happen nowhere else. That's absolutely insane. Unquote also, torture statements derive from torture or cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment cannot be used in federal court period, but in the military commissions, it's musher something I said while I was being tortured.

You can use that in an actual trial, but it's still dispute whether the government could use my torture derived statements in patrol hearings or use something my neighbor said about me while he was being tortured. And and this is the central issue. Now they might be able to use a trial statements I made after I was tortured.

Also, all the classified stuff IT is mine boggling. The profusion and confusion over what is classified in the military commissions, the accused isn't allowed to see all the evidence against him because classified a ton of IT. Even the classification guidelines for the military commissions are themselves classified.

The events can see them on, and it's not just documents. The defense kanana Y A large number of potential witnesses, people who work in black sides, say their identities are classified. The defense can call them because they can't identify them, and if they do happen to know the name of A C I employee, current or former, they aren't allowed to contact them directly.

So those are some of the baked din problems. Now to the weirder stuff, the cases from the outset have continuously ended up, let's call, IT, interference, intrusion, infiltration, spying. Basically, the first big incident that made the news was in twenty thirteen, just as the case was getting under way, the kill button incident one monday afternoon, court, a lawyer for colleague shake muhamad was talking about evidence from c.

Black sites, and when he said the word secret, the C, C, T, V, feed from the courtroom cut off, meaning anyone watching from the spectators gallery or remotely suddenly heard nothing. White noise filled the speakers, the judge in the security officer sitting to his right. They do have the ability to cut the feed to avoid classified spills, but in this instance, the judge hadn't crossed the button and neither had the security officer someone else.

Some external body had cut the feed, and the judge didn't know who, and he was pissed. All kinds of questions erupted. Then who was listening in? What else could they hear? Was that the CIA? Did the CIA just drown out information? I didn't want anyone talking about who is in charge this thing, who was really in charge.

The kill button was only the beginning in attorney client meeting rooms, spaces that are supposed to be sacra sant. They'd hidden mikes in the shape of phony smoke detectors, or else hidden in the walls. The FBI would pray inside a defense team, in one instance, turning a defense staffer into an informer.

An interpreter assigned to the defense seem to have had a previous job at a CIA black site. So who is he really working for all this bugging and snooping? IT was hard not to conclude, was an effort to undermine the cases, to keep evidence in documentation of what happened to the men in black sites from becoming public.

This is what the C. I A feared and still fears, secrets of the torture programme becoming public. The C. I. A didn't offer any comment about this when I contacted them.

Torture has infected almost every aspect of the military commissions cases, is why so much of the discovery is classified or not available at all. It's why the men's physical and mental health is a constant topic. It's why fighting over a admissibility of evidence in the nine eleven case is is why delays and breakdown in the proceedings are legion.

Every one of these problems, the kill button that had mikes, the classification arguments, the medical issues and countless frequently ridiculous others that I do not have time in our journey here, to name all of IT, has involved litigation that causes months or half a year or several years of delays. And that is how a case which could have been about a slam dog, but fastly easier shortly. Remember, K S.

M has admitted planning nine eleven, but this case is now entering its thirteen th year of pretrial hearings. Finally, last thing I promise, appeals. Many, many legal experts who looked at the nine seven case agree that a verdict in this case cannot survive appeal, which likely eventually would end up in the supreme court.

In a statement to lawmakers, a marine regular general who served as chief defense council for the commissions, that the marriage defects mean that, quote, there are literally so many significant grounds for potential reversible error that IT is impossible to listen them all on quote. And appeals, of course, take their own sweet time. Appeals could add another decade to this case easily.

Another tourney told me in a moment of relax cRicky ss that at the rate his case was going, IT was actually possible. His clients of palette ney hadn't been born yet. So for family members of victims of the nine eleven attacks, watching the military commissions has been like trAiling a mirage.

You can hear their mounting disillusion in the v FM press conferences from guanta o over the years. At first, a lot of them, they thought I could work very honor to be here and see how our just justice stem works and the transparency, because the world needs to see that. That's from a press conference in twenty twelve when the nine eleven defendants were arrange. Two years later, you hear people start losing their patients.

If we could feel we were moving somehow .

forward towards a resolution. This woman talked about how she's been down in guantanamo once before in two thousand and nine, and watch the mental competency hearing for one of the nine eleven defendants roms, even all shaba. Now IT was twenty fourteen, and he was back watching a mental competency hearing for one of the nine eleven defendants romance, even all shaba.

But here we are standing in place since two thousand and and nine to two thousand and fourteen, five years standing in place. And it's painful. But I see there by twenty seventeen, you hear desperation.

And I don't think this is in my lifetime, and that's really what I have to say. And that makes sound negative. I'm not negative with anybody here or any of the people here is just that I went, justice done.

And I can see you like to end of the time year, okay? I know after twenty seventeen, prosecutors stop meeting with the media for peaceful tomorrow's members. Colin told me twenty seventeen was also the year they realized, oh, this is never gna work.

We've had IT like now we've had IT. This is it's endless. It's all there's always something and there's always going to be something that's one. It's like previous predial.

the prosecution was still insisting they could get this trial done, get guilty vertical against the nine, eleven defendants. But colleen and terrie and the group members had lost faith they could see clearly. Now the military commission system was a failure.

Forget about a trial. The only logical solution to ending this thing, to getting a conviction that would stick, to getting the answers they wanted. Police deals. Anyone can see that predestined the way to go, right? That's after the break.

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I've want one for my garden. Terrific for all of fire cuts. Give ideas and recommendations. Had to N Y times dot com slash holiday guide. The idea of a please agreement was that if the government took the death penalty off the table, maybe the nine eleven defendant's would plead guilty and give up their right to appeal. The case would be over.

The plea would include an extensive, likely months long sentencing hearing, almost like a own trial, and such a hearing would include a stipulation of fact. This was key to coin a stipulation of fact, a narrative in which each defendant would explain with precision exactly what they had done to make nine, eleven happen and exactly why they had done IT. And that's how, through a pledge, al calling to get the answer SHE needed.

But a medial in the nine eleven case, for a lot of people, that's a tough cell because it's the nine eleven case. It's emotional and a predial sounds wrong like the government me up or just doesn't care anymore. And no death penalty for the people responsible for nine eleven.

Why would anyone ever make a deal with these guys? That is an understandable response, especially if you have no idea how dis functional accord is. And let's face IT, very few people have clocked the ins and out of the nine eleven case, including most politicians.

While president trump was in office, a plea deal in the nine eleven case was a nonstarter. Come twenty twenty one, though, a few remarkable things happen to shake up the military commissions first, the long serving and forceful chief prosecutor, a general who'd been committed to a death penalty trial, announced he was retiring. His replacement, collen thought, might be more amenable to a plea.

Then came the sentencing hearing of magic con, the military jurors response to hearing majd khan talk about being tortured. Their recommendation for clemency offered a clue as to how the jurors might react to the torture of the nine eleven defendants, one of whom, as a result of being satirized in CIA custody, has to sit on a cushion chair in court and eventually underwent rectal repair surgery. In other words, even if prosecutors got a conviction at trial, they might not get a death sentence.

What frustration as one judge after another has been replay.

Soon after magic han sentencing, the senate judiciary committee held a hearing title closing guantanamo. The only victim family member who testified was calling her message was strong and sad family members who wanted and needed this trial to happen, he said, had already waited too long.

In may of twenty twelve, I SAT with my dear friend real sar, watching the rainman of the nine eleven accused readers. Brother abe died when he stayed behind to assist a disabled coworking on the twenty seven floor of the north tower. Reader is now deceased in twenty seventeen.

I was on the plane that montano tally hanson, the only nine eleven family member to be deposed in the pretrial hearings. Lee hanson lost his son, his daughter in law and his granddaughter on flight one seventy five. Mister hanson is now deceased.

In two and nineteen. I was on a boat crossing one can obey with Alice hoggin, mother of flight ninety three hero mark bingo. Alice hoggin is now deceased.

Colin and her cohorn had always been the happy nine eleven group, anti war, anti violence, anti antonio. In the world of victims family members, their views were squarely in the minority. But now, two decades later, IT seemed the national mood had shifted.

Benefun ness had deemed, when collin was invited to the table, five other people testified as well, non hippies, conservatives, a couple people who'd been guantanamo booster ers back in the day, who would design detail policy and the military commissions under president bush. And now nobody was arguing three deals and the only way I thank you again for your invitation and for your time and attention. Thank you, general.

A few months after the senate hearing in march of twenty twenty two, the newspaper announced prosecutors and defensive turney were in talks. They were negotiating a predial in the nine eleven case. Finally, that same spring is when I started listening in on the peaceful tomorrows zoo meetings, Colin and the rest of the group new a clear agreement.

And sentencing would take some time. One to turning on the case, estimated eighteen months. The strategy was to stay cool, which the lawyers negotiating the deal had also recommended.

Yes, the plea talks had been in the papers. The news was out there, but still they decided, let's not make a lot in voice. No big public push.

The risk of willing up opposition was too great. This thing was so fragile politically, even minor blow back. Could snow IT out so theyd lie low much?

The meetings, though.

were animated. The group worked on a list of questions they wanted the defendants to answer in the event of a sentencing question. Some of them of harvard since two thousand, and one who knew that there were twenty high jacket ers and how they were getting their tickets. They want to know who was the financial master mind? Was A K SMS nephew a moral luci?

Did he communicate to so and so that he was making this transaction? Is that maybe what you're more after? And and and what were they .

told about why the transaction was made? The finances are a big topic with this group, not only because they won't understand the inner workings of the plot, but because they won't understand the relative guilt of the five defendants. Is a mara lushy less culpable than his uncle, college chick mohamed, but more culpable than with A L.

How sali, they passed their questions along to a defense attorney working on the nine eleven case, a defensive attorney. At first this surprised me, but they were talking to defensive tourneys as much, if not more, than they were talking to prosecutors. And then they waited six months past eight months by december, nine months since the police negotiations started, everyone was getting and see. So I just.

boy, this is beyond any kind of application i've ever done before.

Hearings in the nine eleven case were on hold while the prosecution and defense tried to work IT out. They were supposed to agree on so called policy principles. By now, IT was a dry term, but IT was the meat of the deal.

If the men pleaded guilty, what would they get in return? The policy principles mostly had to do with the conditions of the men's imprisonment. They wanted assurances that as long as they were in prison, they'd have a communal situation like they have now, the ability to eat together and pray together, no solitary confinement.

Also, they wanted proper, sustained treatment for their physical and psychological trauma caused by the torture and the ability to communicate Better with their families for the pleasure progress. The prosecution needed an answer from the by administration whether they supported the policy principles, but ban wasn't saying anything at all. In the peaceful tomorrows, zoom calls, people started asking, what should we do? Should we stop our feet? Terry reminded everyone the lead tourney for a marble lui j can. He was still advising no.

because he thinks it's gonna a take the .

time IT takes and we could mess IT up so that i'm just really key aware of how little negative press three deals have gotten and how much I don't want to generate negative press. The one year mark came in, went now IT was march of twenty, twenty three, still nothing salaries. Cat was dying.

Be so careful. Blizz wedding was off. SHE is now running for mayor. Fill is suggested. Maybe they take a breather, get some distance from all the discouragement. Jay canal came to a meeting to give an update, which was no update on the deal really, but he did have something to tell them.

So I have now seen a draft of the proposed stipulation effects. And IT is extensive. IT is two hundred pages long. That's the document.

Colin and the others are waiting for the main thing they want from this play. In the two hundred page statement, jays client a mara bleu, I had laid out his background how we ended up in the situation at such a Young age. Then he talks about nine eleven.

It's really a deep examination of who exactly did what in the plot around nine eleven I mean in its very detailed on that point um finally there's .

a section about what happened .

to him in prison so you know this two hundred page document um really dives deep into into, I think basically any question that anyone would have.

This has a holy shit look on her face later. SHE told me that's what he was feeling. Holy shit. This information is out there and why do we not have IT? One of the five defendants had answered their questions in a document they couldn't see, not yet, unless there was a plea, but there was something.

And then August of last year, the public suddenly woke up. IT was the government who woke up, not peaceful tomorrows. The prosecution sent a letter to nine, eleven victim family members to a much wider group than usual, some of whom hadn't been contacted about this case, and forever letting them know the plan negotiations were happening and seeking their opinions or concerns.

And oh, man, did need an editor for this letter robotically. Matter of fact, lousy with acronyms. Sure enough, nearly a year and a half after the plain negotiations had first been reported, a whole new crop of people did have opinions and concerns.

They called the prosecution office. They called the press. They called capital hill.

The A, P. Ran a story. Clean negotiations could mean no nine, eleven offenders face the death penalty.

The U. S. Tells families. Conservatives made immediate. Hey, ted crews took to his podcast. This story is absolutely outrageous and and I think everyone hearing IT should be shocked and should be furious. Family members expressed outrage on TV. If you like, the van administration should order them not to accept this play deal.

The nine, seven, more than two thousand victim family members rote an open letter to the president protesting the pleasure, peaceful tomorrow's members were feeling like, uh, if they could just gather all the family members in the same room and explain everything they knew about how broke in the military commissions were, maybe the others would see they were never gonna a trial or the death penalty. If they wanted answers or any thread of a predial was the best they could hope for. Within a couple of weeks, president biden broke his silence regarding the police deals.

Well, he never said anything publicly but align. A prosecution court filing said the biden administration declined the so called policy principles. Biden was not on board. He would not support an assurance of no solitary confinement or an assurance of torture rehabilitation for the past year and a half, no one that seemed clear on what role the White house was playing in these unprecedented clean negotiations, in this unprecedented criminal case, in maybe the president really disagreed with the terms of the deal.

Or maybe in september of twenty twenty three, I just came down to rail poltice e he's coming up up in an election and perhaps the mother of all bad guantanamo headlines is the one that says you're negotiating sleeping arrangements and therapy with college chick mohamad, the man who claimed to have behead Daniel perl and orchestrate the most devastating terror tack in modern history. So I kept talking about, colleen, how on earth to hear the staminate for this? I would have given up years ago, probably a decade ago, found some way to talk myself out of Carrying anymore. A doctor was, at the hardest part.

just staying with IT. No, because i'm so stub n seriously stuff in being stubbing like I am not gonna let their .

failure be be mine .

as well. I am sticking with this. I don't i'm not given up until this ends some way somehow i'm not, i'm not giving up.

And so kleine e headed down to antonomasia. That's after the break.

It's molick art from new york times cooking, and i'm in the kitchen with some of our team nica returns. And what are you making for thanksgiving this year?

I'm making the chee hassle back potato time peering layers of finally cut potatoes s very easy, but it's a real stop. Genevive come. What about you?

I'm actually doing a mushroom welling ten puff payment. Ry, wrapped around the delicious savery mushroom feeling. Are you as standing, if not more so than a turkey? No matter what kind of thanksgiving your cooking.

you can find the recipe nyt cooking da com slash thanksgiving.

Because of the plea negotiations and before that covered the nine eleven case, hadn't seen much court action since twenty nineteen. Now september of twenty twenty three, the whole enterprise cracked back up again for the nine eleven case. That's five teams of roughly twenty people per team, lawyers and interpreters and analysts and the judge in his staff, plus observers and reporters and their minders and escorts.

Maybe one hundred and fifty people healing themselves to cuba, including Colin. I traveled alongside Colin chen, been to guantanamo for three a half years. He was in a brighter mood than I expected at the hotel. SHE joke that the complimentary laundry pods in her room might be listening devices.

This thing.

device IT would be throw .

all thrown in the washing. That's what activites IT like. Ten.

I didn't see calling all that much during the week I animo the vf. ms. Are closely guarded and protected mostly enough to keep media away from them. So IT felt almost illegal to seeker out in the courtroom gallery. We'd not do each other self consciously as I walked by the bfm section to get to my seat.

IT was a strange split screen experience to watch this pretrial hearing, knowing, at least strongly believing none of this is leading to an actual verdict, but also it's court. So it's interesting people arguing passionately about secrecy and the constitution witnesses ses testifying nervously or testily within the larger narrative of of inaction. There's a lot of action. This week's hearing, they were dealing with the crux of the case, whether statements the defendants made in two thousand seven after they got to guantanamo and we're no longer in CIA custody, whether those statements could be used as evidence at trial.

The statements, which are critical to the prosecution, are known as the clean team statements since they were taken by teams of government investigators who were not C, I, A, and were not, the government argues, using any form of coercion, the defense wants the clean team statements thrown out, arguing, among other reasons, that they are tainted a backdoor way for torture derived evidence to enter the trial and that the interviews were not truly voluntary, not to mention that the men were never sufficiently informed of their rights in these interviews or allowed a lawyer. The fight over whether to suppress these statements has been going on. You'll be shocked to learn for many years, in many different forms.

The week we were there, the excitement was that former FBI agent, Frank pale reno was going to be testifying. The agent who took a clean statement from clean chick mohamad antonio, he's been after K, S, M for years prior to september eleventh, probably knew more about him than anyone in law enforcement. Color Green s, testimony seemed great for the prosecution.

He came across his credible, said K, S, M, answered his questions voluntarily, but he even cracked a joker two. But pelegrina also seemed rested with anger at the position the C, I, A had put him in other F, B, I agency because of the black sites and the torture under questioning, pelegrina said, quote, I think that the whole thing from the beginning was a flaming bag of crap that we got stuck with. And quote, one defense attorney told me IT was the first time a witness had said something so plainly critical of the torture program.

Since the proceedings began a dozen years ago, a couple of other significant things had happened to hugely significant. The week before the judge had severed romsey penel shaba from the nine eleven case, deciding after about a decade of litigation that he was mentally incomplete to aid in his own defense. Rami bal shaba is generally considered the second most culpable of the five defendants, sort of like K, S, M.

deputy. The other major news was that a month earlier, a judge in the other death penalty case before the military commissions against the sauty man accused of orchestrating the deadly bombing of the U. S, S.

Coal in two thousand, that judge throughout the clean team statements in the cold case saying they were tainted by torture. These developments seem to me to point in the direction of the nine eleven case seemed like IT was disintegrating. I'd come down to guantanamo thinking the predetermined ad, but everyone saying they're not, really, they're not.

We just have to find a different way to get them done. J, K, L told reporters, the previous are sleeping, not in a coma. Sleeping right now, the feels like temperature. The writing is actually red, is ninety years.

Most evenings, a bunch of us reporters hang out on outdoor catches, and the who's court yard contract workers often sit at the tables nearby, everybody drinking, while the legging stray cats of guantanamo dart around the edges of the patio. Carol rosenberg sometimes feeds from her leftovers. Calling came to join us a couple times to talk about the case. And also to .

IT was the .

really bad fleet. She's no most of these reporters for years. SHE was at a few of them on a flight so notorious ously terrifying that people still talk about IT. John ryan was on that flight.

so was Carol. I don't know what you were doing, doing something.

Your also a terrific dormit, a former investigative reporter for the L A. Times who now writes books, including the hunt for k sm, which calling is red. He was on that flight.

and he's back here. Now, I had taken a lot of ad. Evan and I went SAT next year. instead. I.

so.

yes, i'd like, tell me everything you know about college chick, mom and I took, like, three senses of notes. And then I don't. I had trade off. I guess I.

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I'm not a war reporter, but I imagine this is sort of what it's like after hours. Mine is the danger people thrown together, trying to make sense of a protracted battle. The so called war on terror has been enormous, global. And yet sitting here, you can feel like the whole thing is funneled down to the small clutch of people, reporters, victims, atterley soldiers, drinking in the courtyard of the navy gateway in and sweets.

We started talking about how this case ends. Predial jannan says hundred percent. Terry agreement is never going to be a trial. Carol thinks maybe an statement could happen that at some point the judge might say, okay, government, if you won't produce CIA witnesses, then i'm going to pull the plug, everybody go home until you're ready to make this a fair trial, which could mean no resolution at all.

One night, jacono, the defense attorney, turns up his ring, shorts and sandals and race on his ankle from an injury I sustained in spin class. He grabbed a club soda. I ask him all these things that are happening.

The decision to several rounds have been on shaba. The U. S. S. Cold judges ruling on the clean team statements, the flaming pile of crap. Does that feel like this case might be crumbling in the defense favor? He says, look, I know you've been down .

here before. There's this temptation to feel like I have come at a pivotal moment and something important is happening um but this is our forty seventy in um and they've all felt like that like if I always feel like if you were a boxing match, we'd have one every round on points. But what does that matter?

There's no telling up points. There's no points. Um and so you know will come back in november and then will come back in february. We'll come back back and back and back.

Jays ban on this case, full time since two thousand and eleven. He's the one used to make predictions. It'll take four years to get to trial, he said at the beginning, okay, five years in twenty eighteen, he stopped time stamp.

The most you'll say now is that we're in the middle of the case, the middle. How long middle lasts anyone's guess. At least a couple more years may be longer.

Jay believes in the rightness of his mission that the U. S. Government's power cannot go unchecked or trample human rights.

He tries not to get caught up in what should happen or could happen. He says he's going to stick with this case as long as IT takes. But for a minute there, he really thought this thing might end, that the pleaders would materialize.

Maybe by the end of twenty twenty two, he started planning his next move, entertainment law. He wants to work in the music industry, even ordered slick new business cards. The kind of feel like a credit? Or do you ever. Get the sense that the prosecution feels exactly the same way you guys do on the defend side, that everyone is just like we're locked in this like falling apart train that just keeps going.

In dark moments, I feel like i'm a puppy and revenge fancy. Where somebody fifteen years ago decided that they were going to put on the show about getting the death family against these men, knowing that the military doesn't really execute people. Military are execute IT in new once this is one thousand nine hundred and sixty one.

um. And that, you know, they needed actors for their product. They need to put people in place. They need to put defense journeys in place, prosecutors in place, judge in place. I don't always feel that way, but sometimes he feels like that. And I could entirely imagine that the prosecution would feel like that that they are, you know, put up there .

to represent the forces .

of revenge and we're put up there to represent the forces of the rule of law and that there's just kind of a play that happens.

The prosecutors weren't permitted to discuss the case with me on the record, so I can't say whether they share jay's revenge fantasy feeling, but the prosecution were the ones who initiated the clean negotiations two years ago. As the road to trial was getting only longer and darker, they want this show over to.

Before the end of the week, I checked in with colleen one last time. She'd been up since three A M. SHE said her minded been turning, so SHE said he wrote IT all down to get her thoughts outside her body. She's underestimated how sad this trip was for her.

I never cried on here. I mean, like, yeah, this is like the third time I cried and I don't usually cried down here. And i'm not saying that's like gooder badges is what IT is. This trip was really emotional.

I'd seen some of that earlier in the week. Within twenty four hours of our arrival, i'd gone to find her in her hotel room a couple floors below mine. SHE was falling apart, a little missing. Her brother worried he didn't remember his voice anymore, and also just being down here again, watching this case rattle back to life.

I think i've pinned a lot of my hope for accountability in getting to the batteries on some kind of legal process, because now just feels like jesus, he was murdered. Somebody like be responsible for that.

This side of college I wasn't familiar with, i'd seen only confident, rigorous, determined, Colin, but never calling in despair.

You know, I feel like i've said this to one thousand times. We like, i'm really feeling this now. I don't know that there's ever that this is ever gonna happen. I don't know that there will ever be a trial. I've i've never i've never felt i've never questioned IT as strongly as I am now.

Waiting twenty years for a trial doesn't just deny Colin answers year after year after year. IT prolongs her grief, makes dealing with her brother's death harder if such a thing is possible. By the end of the week, collin was more collected.

SHE told me the V, F, M had met with the defense the night before. SHE cried a lot of that meeting too. He said, like jay and l. SHE knows Better than to get her hopes, but SHE realized she'd gotten her hopes up about a predial. The lawyers have talked about how close they'd come, really kind of close to a deal in the meeting.

Collin had air her most cynical and SHE worries, possibly her most realistic analysis of how this all ends, which is nothing, no trial, no predial, no ending, and that that nothingness. That is the plan, a plan that would serve the interests of some powerful stay holders, namely the CIA, which would never have to reveal the identities of the people who conducted and enabled torture, or the countries where at all happened. Also the detainees who could quietly stay here at antonio o. In the communal confinement they want presumed innocent until they die forgotten the politicians who could keep kicking this toxic can farther and farther into the distance, keep pretending its out of their hands. Who this plan doesn't serve, of course, is calling.

A post script and perhaps an anio te to this dollars trip while we were at one tonio. Another peaceful tomorrow's member was there, too, ella Murphy. Her week was so different from college.

He was so different from calling in the past few years as founding members of peaceful tomorrow's have grown in firm or died. A bunch of Young people have joined their children of nine eleven victims. Ella and her sister Jessica liao, a Young woman name chanel, started coming to the zoo.

Meanings and november. Obviously, there's self selecting, but a remarkable number of these nine, eleven kids have studied arabic in the middle east or spent time there. Let is becoming a lawyer.

He wants to criminal defense her sisters in medical. She's interested in the effects of torture on human health. The Murphy sisters have joked darkly that this was k SMS plan all along to radicalize the children of nine eleven victims against their own government.

During the day at guantanamo, o lay a met with attorneys to copious notes. During court, he was with two other Young people want to, fellow law student, another recently mental lawyer. In the evenings, they did what Young people do, played corn hole at the tiki bar, like tennis.

pec ball n first dedicated pick ball courts in the navy. We actually, that's what he says all the time, like to take a clip art.

It's not that labor was living IT up is that SHE seemed to have no expectations from this trip. SHE was an observer in the literal sense, taking IT in noting IT down. SHE admires colleen and Terry and the other members of this group, but SHE doesn't need what they need.

She's not waiting for answers from the nine eleven accused. SHE doesn't need a trial and sure a plea deal would be good to lobby for that but whatever happens to these five aging defendants, SHE doubted have meaning for her what later wants, what would be most meaningful to her, is an admission of guilt from the U. S. government.

There horrible behavior is the reason were in the situation, and the reason is dragging for so long. And the reason that even please like there will never be any like real justice, you know, because it's just also fucked up there. You know, the U.

S, S. Behavior is the reason. This is dragon laws.

Voice dropped, a guy, military uniform was walking past close enough to hear us. Did you just get herself because you said someone who looked like military? Yes.

just go down.

I understood her trepidation. IT feels somehow, herrera, or at least ungrateful with all these soldiers and sailors around, for little to say, all the government's post nine eleven effort, the endless war and the prison and the court. I know you did IT for me, you didn't in my name, but none of IT worked.

So it's time to stop. Now just say you made a huge mistake and that you're sorry lily knows it's a long shot. SHE was three years old when her father died in two thousand.

one. And in all the time since, the government has never held itself accountable, has never worked to reset our common morality as a country. But this Young person who is about to become a lawyer, IT, would be so great if you could have this little bit of hope in the forces of the rule of law.

Serials produced by Jessica White berg, dana chavez and me our editor is Julie snider, additional reporting by coral career fact checking by ben fAiling and Kelsey kodak music supervision, sound design in mixing by feb wang, original score by Sophia daily alassane, editing help from ira glass, jana and dian wu are contributing. Editors are Carol rosenberg, john ryan and raza ali. Additional production from emg, ilo, alvin mAlice and danika.

Our standards editor is Susan westling, legal review from alami, summer and ma gandi. The art for our show comes from public delon and max scooter, supervising producer for sero productions, is N A tuba. Our executive assistant is mac Miller. Sam dollar is deputy managing editor of the new york time. Special thanks to scot dream, David custom bomb, Peter blair, harvey risha kaf, gary Brown, brian minister and all the incredibly patient attorneys who worked at antonio bay and took the time to explain IT to us and to everyone at peaceful tomorrow's who allowed us to sit in on their meetings. Thanks also to jeff melman bencher and then thd Brown.