829: Two Ledgers

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2024

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For years, Majid believed that if he could testify in court about what happened to him when he was held in a CIA black site, a judge and jury would give him a break. Finally, he got a chance to see if he was right.

Prologue: Ira talks about the exciting new series that Serial is doing about Guantánamo Bay. We’re airing two of those episodes on the show – one this week and one next. (2 minutes)
Act One: Majid Khan struggled with his identity when he was young. And then he realized exactly who he wanted to be – a member of Al Qaeda, carrying out orders for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He did bad things. But are the things that the U.S. Government did to him worse than his actual crimes? (38 minutes)
Act Two: Majid finally gets his day in court. At his sentencing hearing, he describes to the jury what his interrogators did to him. (20 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Transcript

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0:00.0	A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show.
0:05.0	If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, this American Life.
0:10.0	org.
0:11.0	From W.B.E.C. Chicago, it's This American Life, I'm Eric Glass. I want to play something for you today, and before I do, I want to get in front of something.
0:20.0	The story is about Guantanamo. And I think lots of us hear Guantanamo at this point,
0:24.0	and we think, it's heavy and it's complicated,
0:27.0	and is it really still going on,
0:29.0	and don't I really know everything I already need to know about Guantanamo.
0:33.0	Maybe you've heard,
0:35.0	Al-Kurbroker Sarah Kane and Dana Chivas over at Cereo,
0:38.0	they've been rolling out season four of cereal,
0:40.0	and it's all about Guantanamo.
0:42.0	And the premise of the show is,
0:44.0	enough time has passed that all these people who were there in its heyday
0:47.0	could finally talk publicly about what really happened.
0:50.0	What was it like to work there,
0:52.0	what it was like to be in prison there?
0:53.0	And you hear all these ordinary people who are thrown into this extraordinary situation
0:57.0	where there were guards and interrogators and commanders and detainees
1:00.0	and this invented offshore prison with its own weird brand new rules and you finally
1:05.2	get a very clear sense of what it was like in there. But there are two episodes that
1:09.6	they made that about stuff that's just happened down there in the last couple years
	...

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