The Judge Who Threw Out the 9/11 Confession Once Blamed the Military’s ‘Conservative Tendencies’ for Extremism. He Wrote It Two Years Before Getting the Case.
- July 19, 2023 Lt. Col. Michael Schrama publishes an essay tying the military's “conservative tendencies” to rising extremism — two years before he is assigned the 9/11 case — War on the Rocks
- Aug. 28, 2026 Schrama, now the presiding judge, suppresses Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's 2007 FBI confession as tainted by prior CIA torture — CBS News, Washington Examiner
- June 5, 2028 new trial date Schrama set for Mohammed and three co-defendants — 17 months later than prosecutors requested — CBS News
- 183 rounds of waterboarding CIA interrogators used on Mohammed before the FBI ever questioned him, per the ruling — Deseret News
On August 28, 2026, a military judge threw out the confession that alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave to FBI agents nearly two decades ago, ruling it was the tainted product of the CIA torture that preceded it. The decision, issued two weeks before the 25th anniversary of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, dealt another blow to a prosecution already delayed by a quarter century — and set a new trial date of June 5, 2028.
Four days later, Fox News reported that the judge behind the ruling, Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, had written a 2023 essay arguing that the military’s own institutional culture was feeding a rise in extremism among troops — that its “conservative tendencies” left young service members “easy prey” for right-wing recruiters. He wrote it two years before he was assigned to preside over the case. The essay never mentions Mohammed, Guantanamo, or the 9/11 commission. Its resurfacing, days after Schrama tossed the government’s central piece of evidence, has drawn accusations of bias from the White House and from Gerald Posner, a journalist who has covered the case for two decades.
Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and held for more than three years in secret CIA facilities, where he was subjected to what Schrama’s own ruling called “extraordinary physical and mental abuse” — at least 183 rounds of waterboarding, prolonged standing sleep deprivation, forced nudity, rectal rehydration, and explicit threats to murder his son. He was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006. Four months later, FBI agents interrogated him over four days in January 2007, producing the confession prosecutors have long called their single most important piece of evidence.
Schrama ruled that confession inadmissible, finding an “unbroken continuation of the CIA’s psychological conditioning and severe coercion” carried straight into the FBI’s interrogation room — compounded by agents who never gave Mohammed a Miranda warning or told him he could consult a lawyer. “The prosecution has failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Mohammad’s statements to the F.B.I. were voluntarily given,” Schrama wrote. He excluded Mohammed’s subsequent 2007 Guantanamo statements as well. Not everyone involved in the original interrogation agrees: retired FBI agent Frank Pellegrino, who questioned Mohammed that week, has said “I couldn’t have told him in any more explicit a way that he did not have to talk to me.”
The ruling followed a separate defeat for the government. In July 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled 2-1 that then–Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (Biden administration) had legal authority to revoke 2024 plea deals that would have let Mohammed and two co-defendants avoid the death penalty — killing an agreement years in the making and sending the case back toward trial. Chief prosecutor Rear Adm. Aaron C. Rugh said the government would “review the ruling and make a decision on whether to appeal in the near future.”
Schrama’s essay, “Creating a Codified Legal Response to Domestic Extremism in the Ranks,” ran in the national-security publication War on the Rocks on July 19, 2023 — two years before the Pentagon assigned him to the 9/11 case. His byline at the time identified him as an active-duty Air Force trial judge at Joint Base Langley-Eustis and a military-law instructor at William & Mary Law School.
“As an active-duty Air Force military judge, I have seen firsthand a rising population of military members engaging in extremist activities,” Schrama wrote, calling for Congress to codify domestic extremism as its own punitive offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He argued the institution itself was part of the problem: “Volunteers have a longer initial term of service, reenlist in much higher numbers, and have a far lower turnover rate than draftees. These conservative tendencies are constantly reinforced, and young military members can be easy prey for the extreme right-wing groups that relate through similar conservative ideology.”
He backed the argument with data: a 2021 Center for Strategic and International Studies study finding military veterans and personnel behind 17.6 percent of domestic terrorism plots and attacks, and his own count that roughly 12 percent of defendants charged in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot “had some form of military experience, including members currently on active duty.” Ronald Flesvig, a spokesman for the Military Commissions Convening Authority, said the essay was published “not in his capacity as a judge for the military commissions” and declined to comment further.
Schrama, now in his mid-40s, joined the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps in 2009. He is the fifth military judge to preside over the 9/11 case since the defendants’ 2012 arraignment, a rotation driven by retirements and reassignments. The Pentagon assigned him to the case in July 2025; he held his first hearing that December.
During his voir dire — the on-record screening for bias that opens a judge’s tenure on a case — Schrama disclosed a personal connection to the day itself: he was a 19-year-old undergraduate at Georgetown University when American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon, about four miles away. He called the memory “surreal” but said he was “not personally impacted” by the attacks, telling the court, “There is nothing about that day that I believe would affect my ability to be impartial in this case.” His 2023 essay was not raised during that screening.
The essay’s resurfacing landed hard inside the West Wing. “Our judicial system is so badly broken it sides at every turn with predators, monsters and, in this case, a 9/11 mastermind,” Stephen Mueller, a Trump White House senior advisor, told Fox News. “It enables the persecution of innocent Americans who did nothing wrong, while protecting cartel killers and foreign terrorists. It’s a disgrace, it’s a travesty, it’s an outrage.”
“We have been asking for a trial date for 20 years. Hopefully, this time it is for real.”
Jim Smith, retired NYPD officer, whose wife Officer Moira Smith was the only female NYPD officer killed on 9/11
Journalist and author Gerald Posner, who has covered the 9/11 prosecution for two decades, called the suppression ruling and the trial delay “a shameful prelude to the 9/11 anniversary.” Victims’ families, who have now sat through five judges and 14 years of pretrial motions, reacted with more resignation than outrage. “It’s all going to depend on the judge,” Smith added. “We’ve been through so many, some good, but mostly officers who wanted nothing to do with this case.”
Mohammed’s own defense team read the ruling as vindication. His lawyer, Gary Sowards, said the decision “serves as a civics lesson for why the government shouldn’t engage in such shameful conduct.” Mohammed and his co-defendants have not been convicted of any charge and remain presumed innocent pending trial.
Prosecutors have not said whether they will appeal the suppression ruling, which would go to the same D.C. Circuit that upheld Austin’s plea-deal revocation last year. Absent an appeal, the case moves toward the June 5, 2028 trial date Schrama set for Mohammed and his three remaining co-defendants — Walid bin Attash, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali — nearly 27 years after the attacks and more than two decades after Mohammed’s capture. The Military Commissions Convening Authority has not commented on whether Schrama’s 2023 writings bear on his fitness to preside, and no formal recusal motion had been filed as of publication. The essay itself remains published, unedited, on War on the Rocks’ website.
Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, the fifth judge assigned to the 9/11 military commission, suppressed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s 2007 FBI confession on August 28, 2026, citing an unbroken chain of CIA coercion, and set trial for June 2028. Three years earlier, in a War on the Rocks essay, Schrama wrote that the military’s own “conservative tendencies” left young troops “easy prey” for right-wing extremist recruiters. Both are documented, on-the-record facts. Whether the second explains the first is a judgment call — one the White House, journalists, and 9/11 families are now making out loud, and one no recusal motion has yet tested in court.
