Lawfare Daily: The 9/11 Case in Guantanamo

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2025

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Twenty-four years ago today, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, another hit the Pentagon, and another went down in a field in Pennsylvania. It was the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in American history. But the men the United States accuses of perpetrating the attacks haven't been held accountable. In fact, they haven't even gone to trial.

For today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett talks with John Ryan, a journalist at Lawdragon and author of the book, “America's Trial: Torture and the 9/11 Case on Guantanamo Bay,” to help explain why. They talk about John's 10 years covering the 9/11 case, why it's so hard to report from Guantanamo, why the case has been bogged down in pretrial proceedings for over a decade, and what torture has to do with it all.

Note: Orpett referred to Lawfare's recent coverage of the 9/11 case, including pieces about Secretary Austin's withdrawal, the military commission's ruling upholding the pleas, the D.C. Circuit's reversal, and the recent suppression ruling in the Ammar al Baluchi case.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This fall marks 15 years of Lawfare, and we're celebrating the only way we know how
0:07.0	by gathering our community of readers, listeners, and contributors for an in-person celebration in Washington, D.C.
0:15.7	Get your tickets today at lawfairmedia.org slash 15 years.
0:27.0	Hey, it's Adam Grant from Worklife, a podcast from TED.
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1:00.7	Learn more at freshworks.com.
1:07.8	The prosecution thought that this was a no-brainer, there's no way you're getting access to actual witnesses, you know, unfettered access.
1:16.2	And defense teams thought that they should be able to conduct the investigations as they saw fit,
1:20.6	while complying with their obligations, which they had to join the case to protect classified information.
1:29.0	It's the Lawfare podcast.
1:30.9	I'm Natalie Orpat, executive editor of Lawfare, with John Ryan, a journalist at Law Dragon,
1:36.9	who has spent the last decade covering the 9-11 case in the Guantanamo Military Commissions.
1:42.5	When they connected those interviews, they typed up their notes in memoranda on a CIA laptop.
1:49.5	And if the detainees during these sessions talked about their abuse by the CIA, that had
1:57.0	to be documented in a separate document that would be removed from the official statement that were presented for the court case.
	...

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