Who is Majid Khan and why is his story so important?

Khan graduated from a Maryland high school and was working at his family's gas station in 2001. He was recently released after twenty years of detention and torture at the hands of our authorities...

On February 2, 2023 the BBC reintroduced Majid Khan to the world. He was recently released from US custody after spending half of his life in detention for purported intentions to carry out terrorist attacks against the United States.

Khan was never charged with any activity connected with the events of September 11, 2001. 

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Before I explain why Khan’s story is so relevant today, I would like to recount something that happened to me one morning in the summer of 2004…

I was dead asleep after having worked a particularly busy 24 hour shift at a hospital in upstate NY when I heard someone knocking at my front door. Though exhausted, I was more startled than annoyed. I didn’t have any friends or family in town. I thought it was a solicitation visit or a delivery person and that the person would just go away. They didn’t. The knocks grew louder and the person began shouting my name.

It was a detective from the local police department. He didn’t have a warrant but politely asked me if he could come in and look around. I didn’t have anything to hide except the squalor that only a recent divorcee would tolerate. I let him in.

“What’s going on?”, I asked.

After taking a quick look around at the dirty dishes, unfolded laundry and stacks of take-out containers the officer said, “I understand you have a book about making bombs. Is this true?”

I rubbed my eyes. I thought I was dreaming. Was there really an armed police officer standing in my living room suspicious that I was involved with making explosive devices?

This was 2004, less than three years after the events of 9/11. Our country was at war with terrorists who lived among civil people like us in two different parts of the world. News networks were reminding their viewers of mounting death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan. We had just been introduced to a new cabinet department called “Homeland Security”.

We were also living under a new set of laws that we were told would protect us from an insidious enemy that hatched their plans in remote caves in Asia and had sleeper cells throughout the world. The enemy was crafty, diabolical and would stop at nothing to extinguish the light of freedom, the experiment in liberty called America.

Surveillance of our communications to protect our freedom may have seemed paradoxical to some, but in the end, our cooperation was necessary for the greater good. In any case, the draconian measures spelled out in the Patriot Act were only going to be temporary.

Nevertheless, in my living room stood a man with a gun and the authority to use it.

I was only able to respond to the detective with stunned silence, so he asked me again. I suddenly remembered that I owned “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” by Richard Rhodes. It was a fascinating book that chronicled the breakthroughs in theoretical physics at the beginning of the 20th century that led to the development and deployment of the first fission bomb upon human beings.

I pulled it off of a bookshelf and handed it to him. He leafed through it quickly and handed it back.

“Okay. I am sorry to have intruded, doctor. Have a nice day.” 

By this time I had snapped out of my stupor of a sleepless night and the shock of being questioned. “Whoa! Hold on a second. How on EARTH did you know I owned this book?”

He shook his head, “I can’t tell you that.”

He made his way to the front door when I once again appealed to him to help me make sense of what was going on. He turned back and looked me in the eye and said, “I cannot give you details, but let me ask you this, did you have your air conditioning serviced recently?”

The apartment complex’s superintendent knew my name, my face and which apartment I lived in. He also was in my apartment the day before to fix my air conditioner. He must have seen the book on my bookshelf, read the word “bomb” and called the police. That was what we were told to do back then. See something? Say something!

But still, couldn’t he have been a tad bit more discerning? Would an underground instruction manual on making bombs really have the word “BOMB” on the cover? There’s a big difference between a “bomb” and an “atomic bomb”. Did “Winner of the Pulitzer Prize” emblazoned on the book make him pause before calling the cops? 

It might have, but in the end he ended up reporting me anyway. I can’t help but think that ultimately it came down to how much the public were suspicious of people who look like this:

Me. Circa 2004

Yup. That’s me, not Majid Khan. That’s my photograph from my New York State medical license in 2004.

Who is Majid Khan?

Unbeknownst to me at the time, there was a young man named Majid Khan who was one of a number of individuals who were enjoying the CIA’s hospitality at one of their so-called “black sites”, secret detention centers located outside the country and outside any oversight whatsoever.

To reiterate, Khan was never charged with any activity connected with the events of September 11, 2001. 

Department of Defense/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

The bulk of the case against him was summarized in a missive sent from Rear Admiral D.M. Thomas, Commander, Guantanamo Bay Detention Center to the United States Southern Command in 2008. Rear Admiral Thomas recommended that Khan remain in US Custody because he was considered to be of “high risk” to US interests and allies and of “high intelligence” value.

The U.S. Government believed that Khan was being vetted by Al-Qaeda during a two year period after the 9/11 attacks. During that time he willingly participated in a “dry-run” assassination mission against then Pakistani President Pervaz Musharrif. There were no explosives involved, Musharraf was not present and nobody was hurt. It was a test of his loyalty to Al-Qaeda.

Khan also served as a courier for money used by the organization to conduct a bombing of a Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia in August of 2003. US Authorities admit that he may not have known what the money was for.

The evidence for his transgressions came from statements made by two other Al-Qaeda operatives, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali as well as his own testimony.

Khan prior to 9/11

According to US Authorities, Mr. Khan immigrated to the United States with his family in 1996 and graduated from high school in Maryland in 1999. He worked at his family’s gas station and paid taxes. Then, after the events of 9/11 he became radicalized and went to Pakistan where he spent time with his uncle and cousin who, apparently, were Al-Qaeda operatives. This is when the vetting period began.

He was eventually arrested by Pakistani authorities in 2003 who turned him over to the United States. Khan effectively left the face of the earth for three years. He was held at a CIA “black site” where he was subjected to their “interrogation techniques”.

He ended up in Gitmo in 2006 awaiting sentencing. The Bush administration prohibited him from speaking with an attorney because, as the AP reported, “he could reveal the agency's closely guarded interrogation techniques.”

"Improper disclosure of other operational details, such as interrogation methods, could also enable terrorist organizations and operatives to adapt their training to counter such methods, thereby obstructing the CIA's ability to obtain vital intelligence that could disrupt future planned terrorist attacks," the Justice Department wrote.

The Center for Constitutional Rights argued against the government's efforts to deny CCR attorneys access to Khan in a response brief filed November 3, 2006. In the brief, CCR argued that efforts by the Bush administration to deny Khan access to counsel, "ignores the Court's historical function under Article III of the Constitution to exercise its independent judgment," and used its classification authority to hide illegal conduct when the court had sufficient tools to prevent disclosure of sensitive classified information.

In other words, the CCR attorneys were pointing out the obvious. The courts are given the constitutional authority to act independently of the executive branch and that they have the power to prevent secrets from being revealed. There were no constitutional or practical grounds for the Bush administration to override court authority in this or any matter.

In any case, as reported in the NYTimes, The Senate Intelligence Committee's C.I.A. Torture Report, released December 9, 2014, revealed that Khan was one of the detainees subjected to "rectal feeding", which his lawyers described as a form of rape, as part of his ″torture regime″ at the black site prison. Khan's "lunch tray", consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins was pureed and rectally infused," says the report.

Was Justice Served?

Khan’s story disgusts me to the core.

It isn’t because of my encounter with the “authorities” in 2004. The detective was polite, respectful and fair. He was doing his duty while also offering me a tacit explanation of the situation out of courtesy and not any obligation. My concern is with how far the public will go once they have been goaded into a frenzy from deluges of fear-based narratives.

The case against Majid Khan is based solely on testimony from Al-Qaida operatives and his own “admissions” extracted through three years of “interrogation techniques” including regular waterboarding in ice-baths. In 2006 extraordinary rendition, torture and unreliable testimony is all that was necessary to incarcerate a person for 15 years prior to a court hearing. 

If this seems vaguely unconstitutional to you, you would be right. These powers were granted to our government through the Patriot Act, a 131 page document that we can be sure few people outside academia and organizations like the ACLU have ever read. Among the myriad of provisions afforded our authorities to “protect” us, this is perhaps the most controversial: indefinite detention without trial based on “secret” evidence or on suspicion alone.

Senator Russell Feingold, in a Senate floor statement, rightly claimed that the provision "falls short of meeting even basic constitutional standards of due process and fairness [as it] continues to allow the Attorney General to detain persons based on mere suspicion."

Nevertheless, the American people, stunned by the tragedies of 9/11, were convinced that the Patriot Act would keep them safe. Indefinite detention only applied to immigrants and not to American citizens.

Somehow we have been okay with the idea that for two decades individual rights afforded us through the Constitution need not apply to everyone. It’s obvious to me that if the protection of individual rights under the Constitution is applied selectively and not universally we will have undermined the Constitution itself. After all, if we allow our authorities to determine who has rights and who doesn’t, we won’t be living in a free country; we will have created a police state. It seems that the term “Patriot” was diabolically co-opted to lend legitimacy to enforcing restrictions on freedom itself.

The Act was reauthorized several times by different administrations until it expired in 2020. Khan, a Saudi born Pakistani, took the full impact of the legislation on the chin (and in other places too).

Our authorities believe that Khan was “radicalized” by the events of 9/11. I would contend that if he is still radicalized today, it is from the treatment he endured in custody with no legal recourse. To say that the provisions in the Patriot act are counterproductive would be an understatement. I can’t think of a better way to seed terrorism than torturing people into confessing and denying them legal representation and due course.

How did Khan get “radicalized”?

Let’s take a closer look at the idea that it was 9/11 that radicalized Khan. Why would an attack on the United States executed by islamic extremists drive a young muslim working at his parents’ gas station in Maryland to join them? He was paying taxes, obeying laws and enjoying the freedom that life in this country afforded him.

By all accounts, this was not a person who overtly or secretly held radical anti-American sentiments prior to September 11, 2001. Why would he somehow feel empowered by the heinous acts of that day?

Here are some excerpts from a handwritten letter to his lawyers as reported in the Baltimore Sun:

"I was 'practically' an American who lived a comfortable live [sic] under freedoms of America, who never lived in caves or Afghanistan."

"Think of me as a human being ... not a terrorist,"

"I ask you to give me justice ... in the name of what U.S.A. once stood for and in the name of what Thomas Jefferson fought for ... allow me a chance to prove that I am innocent."

Khan was never given that chance. Perhaps these were disingenuous statements offered to appeal the USG to let him go. That’s how our authorities saw them. He remained detained at Guantanamo for another 15 years after this letter was written.

It is true that he was a practicing Muslim prior to 9/11 and that he subsequently left his regular life in Maryland to seek out a connection with a terrorist organization, but why? He had not yet been subjected to indefinite detention or torture. Are we to believe that he went from pumping gas to volunteering for assassination missions because of his faith? Why would the events of that day “radicalize” him and not other Muslims? Did he see something that others didn’t?

Perhaps the answer is here:

For those unfamiliar with the 9/11 “truth” movement, the building shown in the video is World Trade Center’s Building 7 (WTC7), a 47 story steel framed skyscraper that fell into its own footprint at nearly the rate of gravity at 5:20 pm on September 11, 2001. It had a few isolated fires and sustained minor damage from the collapses of the twin towers several hundred yards away. It was not hit by a plane. It was barely given any attention by mainstream journalism.

My wife showed me that 30 second clip in 2017. I was shocked by what saw. I was also shocked to learn that I had been unaware of that building and what happened to it for over 16 years.

Many people who are better qualified than I to discuss the technical problems with the official explanation of why that building fell have written volumes on the topic. I plan on writing more about 9/11 here in the future. 

Here’s another old and widely watched video that drives the point home:

The events of that day are more relevant now than ever before. To those of you who have seen through the deception orchestrated over the last three years I commend you. It’s not easy to comprehend such things like furin-cleavage sites, gain-of-function research, Antibody Dependent Enhancement, absolute and relative risk reduction, etc. etc. But one doesn’t need an electron microscope to know that something fishy was going on that sunny Tuesday morning in Manhattan.

There are probably only a handful of people on this planet that know what exactly happened to Building 7 on that day with absolute certainty. One thing we all know is that no mainstream media journalist asked any questions about it.

The finite-element computer model constructed by the National Institutes for Standards and Technology (NIST), the organization tasked to explain what happened to that building, did not behave the way the building did. That is the ultimate test of a hypothesis.

To be clear, if I were tasked to validate or refute NIST’s explanation, I would build a computer model, apply the assumptions and parameters used by NIST and see what the model predicts. Luckily we don’t have to because NIST did it themselves. They have, for all intents and purposes, proved their own hypothesis wrong.

Twenty-one years later, they have not offered any explanation, clarification or correction to their hopelessly inept report that suggests that the unseating of a single column (one of 80) resulted in an immediate, symmetric and global collapse with hundreds of thousands of tons of intact steel and concrete putting up little or no resistance to gravity. Nevertheless, the “official” explanation continues to be held as unassailable fact by “respected” journalism that paradoxically shirks its own mission by refusing to ask questions. ANY questions.

If I were an investigative journalist for the New York Times, this would be a short (and far from complete) list of questions that I would ask about 9/11:

• Why does NIST’s model of WTC7’s collapse not behave the way the building did?

• Why did NIST not look for explosive residues at ground zero?

• How can the 9-11 Commission explain how cellular phone calls were made in flight by passengers on the plane that crashed in Shanksville, PA in 2001 when it is still impossible to do that now, twenty one years later?

• How can a Boeing 767 fly at 580 miles an hour at only a thousand feet of altitude be steered with uncanny accuracy by inexperienced pilots with single engine licenses flying jumbo jets for the first time when experienced pilots were unable to execute the task on flight simulators despite multiple attempts?

• Why were the official testimonies from over a hundred firefighters who heard multiple explosions in the twin towers prior to their “collapse” excluded from the 9-11 Commission Report?

• Where is the video footage from dozens of external cameras on the Pentagon on that day? If the public is allowed to see planes hitting the twin towers why can’t we see the one that hit the most defended building on the planet?

• What happened to the twin towers? They didn’t leave large piles of debris and HVAC equipment on the ground. They disintegrated, covering lower Manhattan under a blanket of pulverized concrete three inches deep.

• Why didn’t NIST offer any technical explanation of the collapse sequence of the twin towers? That was, after all, their primary task. (If you think they did, read NIST NCSTAR 1-6D in its entirety like I did).

If authorities refused to answer these questions I would then write a brief article titled something like “Government Officials refuse to answer basic questions about 9/11”. It’s not that hard. Why hasn’t the NYT with its headquarters a mere 40 blocks from Ground Zero ever ran a piece like that? They aren’t serving their readers or Democracy which requires a free and independent press to hold tyrannical powers in check. Through their reticence they are acting on behalf of tyranny itself.

Here’s a building we are more familiar with (the North Tower):

Is it falling down? Or is it blowing up? If we need an expert to tell us the difference, we have some serious challenges ahead of us. 

Perhaps Majid Khan saw something different from what most Americans were told they were seeing on that day. There was an attack on America on 9/11. There is no doubt of that. But who were the real culprits and what were their intentions? If we were to dutifully answer those questions we may begin to understand what happened to Khan. And to us.

I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have been born in this country which allows me to claim inalienable freedoms as a birthright. The scientific credentials that I possess were attained through federally sponsored student loan programs. These same credentials have probably afforded me the benefit of the doubt in countless situations, including the one in 2004.

At this moment I am grateful to be able to express myself openly without the threat of a trip to a gulag or worse. If we are to uphold the vision of the architects of the Constitution, to form a more perfect union and “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” we must be willing to ask hard questions of ourselves and our authorities.

What are your thoughts on 9/11? Do you see any parallels between those events and what has transpired over the last three years?