Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-09-11 Friday

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Headlines for September 11, 2026; “Horror to Last a Lifetime”: Juan González on Covering 9/11 Attacks in NYC 25 Years Ago Today; Forever War: How 9/11 Unleashed U.S. Violence on Civilians Abroad & Attacks on Rights at Home

From New York, this is Democracy Now. It was 25 years ago today. I'm going to interrupt this tape conversation. Just a little while ago, we heard a loud sonic boom-like crash, and we heard sirens. Well, it appears that planes crashed into the upper floors of both World Trade Center towers, minutes apart. We're in Chinatown. We're not far from the World Trade Center buildings. This is all unfolding as this broadcast takes place.

Clouds of smoke engulfing the World Trade Center. Memorials are being held today to mark 25 years since the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. We'll re-air a portion of Democracy Now's initial coverage and hear co-host Juan Gonzalez read his New York Daily News column. just after the attack headlined a horror to last a lifetime. Then we look at how post-9-11 policies in the so-called War on Terror have reshaped the country and the world. We'll speak to Asmant Khan of the Center for Global Journalism at Columbia. She won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the massive civilian death toll from U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

It was an era marked by rapidly proliferating official and unofficial wars, extreme government secrecy, a subversion of democratic debate, expanding presidential power, dozens of secret prisons overseas, widespread torture, the advent of drone strikes, the rise of the counterterrorism industrial complex and private contracting, overhauls of immigration policy, and restrictions on the freedoms of speech, and press, rights to privacy, and a blank check in the name of national security. And we'll speak to Jameel Jaffer,

director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. The lawless detention of immigrants in the weeks after the attacks was one of the first signs that we were operating in a new paradigm. And it contained the seeds of many of the abuses that we saw later on, that we see around us today. Jamil Jaffer and Asmat Khan just helped organize a symposium called the Forever War and the First Amendment. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report.

I'm Amy Goodman. In Yemen, Saudi forces have carried out airstrikes on the port city of Mocha. After Houthi fighters routed Yemeni government forces and seized control of Yemeni. the Umbuds' entire Red Sea coastline and strategic island of Perim. The group's rapid advance has consolidated its power over the Babal Mandib Strait, a narrow maritime passageway through one of the world's most important trade routes. The Houthis have said they won't disrupt international shipping, but reiterated threats to attack vessels from Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps says it struck a U.S. naval drone in the Strait of Hormuz. Separately, projectiles hit two vessels off the coast of Oman, setting one of the ships on fire. At least 15 vessels have been struck by Iran or the U.S. over the last week near the Strait of Hormuz. The latest attack sent the price of oil skyrocketing further to about $110 a barrel, with U.S. diesel fuel prices soaring to more than $6 a gallon for the first time ever. In Dallas, Texas, the Republican Party wrapped up its first ever midterm convention Thursday night, with Vice President J.D. Vance delivering a keynote address in what could be a preview of a presidential run at the 2028 Republican nomination.

Vance delivered a combative speech attacking Democrats as the party of hatred. Earlier in the evening, violent threats rang out from the crowd as Texas Senator Ted Cruz delivered a speech attacking political opponents as Islamists and communists. When Mandami says he wants to seize the means of production, he means it. When Abdul al-Sayed says he has a, quote, obligation to comply with Sharia law, he means it. And when James Talarico says he wants to dismantle capitalism, he means it. He should be shot. Someone shouted out at least three times as Senator Cruz spoke. This came just minutes after Cruz condemned the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk one year ago in assassination attempts on President Trump.

Trump also spoke at the RNC for a second straight. evening asking supporters to pledge to, quote, cheat like hell, unquote, to help Republicans win the midterms. Trump repeated his promise to send all U.S. adults a $5,000 check, but only if Republicans retain control of both chambers of Congress. Trump faced an immediate backlash to his proposal. Wisconsin Congress member Mark Pocan commented, quote, so now it's $5,000 bribes that Trump will never deliver to attempt to make voters forget what they're paying for gas and food. Whatever happened to those promised doge checks, Americans are not fools. We know he lies daily, Congress member Pocan said. President Trump faced an immediate backlash

to his proposal on Wednesday to send $5,000 checks to every year. U.S. adults of Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in November's elections. The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the state of Missouri from using a new congressional map gerrymandered to give Republicans an advantage in November's midterm elections. It was the second time this week the Supreme Court issued a ruling on the case in its emergency docket after a Trump-appointed federal judge in Missouri issued confirmation. order about the new map. In Ukraine, at least two people were killed and eight others wounded this morning as a Russian drone struck a gas station in Kiev.

Elsewhere, the city of Pavlovod is marking a day of morning after a Russian drone hit a shopping mall Thursday, killing five people and wounding 67 others. Two other shopping malls were targeted by Russia earlier in the week. Ukrainian officials say Russian attacks on private businesses and civilian infrastructure are rapidly growing. The Russian strikes follow an attack by a Ukrainian seaborne drone on Sochi that killed 38 people, that left 38 people injured, and come after Ukraine launched its deepest ever attack inside Russia on two natural gas. facilities in the Arctic, nearly 2,000 miles from Ukraine's border in western Siberia. Nepal's governments demanding $20 million in compensation from a United Nations fund set up to cover loss and damage from the climate crisis as rescue and recovery teams continue to search for more than 5,000 people who remain missing more than two weeks after a glacier's

collapsed, triggered a devastating flood and landslide. Over 1,200 people are confirmed dead. On Wednesday, a UN coordinator said Nepal is bearing the brunt of a climate crisis. It had little role in creating. The devastation Nepal has experienced is an extraordinary stark illustration of the losses and damages that climate vulnerable countries are increasingly facing. Nepal has contributed very little to global greenhouse gas emission. Yet, it is experiencing profound human and economical consequences from a changing climate. Meanwhile, an alarming new study finds climate feedback loops, including melting permafrost, warmer wetlands and lakes, and raging wildfires could amplify the effects of global heating by as much as 30 percent by the

end of the century, adding an additional 0.4 degrees Celsius of warming to an already overheating planet. Here in New York, state, local, and national politicians are gathering at the site of the former World Trade Center towers today to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. A quarter century later, more than 145,000 people are still being treated for illnesses related to the collapse of the Twin Towers, according to Center from the CDC's World Trade Center Health Program. That includes 57,000 cancer patients. Nearly 10,000 people have died from 9-11-related illnesses. This is retired Fire Department paramedic, Lieutenant Conrad Matos, who rushed to the World Trade Center on 9-11 and worked on recovery efforts at Ground Zero for months. he was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2020.

I was devastated. Because to be honest with you, I don't know if I would have ran in the way I ran in back on 9-11. I might have thought things a little differently because we went in, we didn't have enough equipment. We didn't have masks, respirators, nothing. Ahead of today's 9-11 commemorations,

the group September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrow, led a rally at Union Square on Thursday in front of the Gandhi statue, followed by a peacewalk and a candlelight vigil at Ground Zero. This is Colleen Kelly, one of the group's founding members. Our mission began is this. September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrow's is an organization founded by family members of those killed on September 11th who have united to turn our grief into action for peace. After headlines, we'll revisit Democracy Now's coverage of the 9-11 attacks and look at how the so-called war on terror reshape the U.S. and the world.

ISIS sent a documented immigrant from Somalia to the notorious detention camp at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Adam Abdullah came to the U.S. as an asylum seeker in 2023. He had a valid work permit, social security number, no criminal history, was working as an auto mechanic in St. Paul, Minnesota, when federal agents arrested him last December at the start of Operation Metro Surge. During a brief phone call from detention on Tuesday, Abdullah told Minnesota public radio he was shackled by his wrists and ankles and flown to Guantanamo about two weeks ago after what immigration officials said would be a deportation flight to Somalia. From Miami, they say, okay, now we go to Somalia. First we go Cuba for refueling and then we go some other countries to Somalia.

Instead, Abdullah was sent to Guantanamo's Camp 6, built 20 years ago to detain people accused of terrorism. Abdullah says he's among eight Somalis being held there. Last year, the ACLU sued the Trump administration seeking to stop. stop the transfer of immigrants to Guantanamo, citing punitive conditions of confinement, isolation, and retaliation. In Maryland, local officials are demanding accountability after ICE violently clashed with protesters when federal agents swarm the streets of a residential neighborhood in the city of Frederick last week.

Video released by the group Hagerstown Rapid Response shows ICE agents driving onto sidewalks and grass, where protesters and witnesses had formed human chains. Agents surveilling a house in the Tasker Chance neighborhood also beat up peaceful protesters protecting the home with batons. ICE remained there for about 40 hours with some residents too afraid to leave their homes to go to work or school. Frederick City Council President, Cesar Diaz, said ICE threatened residents with remarks like, quote, we see you, we know where you live, and we have your license plate.

More footage shows an ICE agent pointing a gun at the people on the ground. Meanwhile, when Frederick Police asked ICE whether it had a warrant to enter the House under surveillance, federal agents reportedly refused to answer. In Denver, Colorado, officials and civil rights groups have filed a federal lawsuit attempting to block the Trump administration from deploying federal immigration agents to voting sites nationwide. The lawsuit accuses Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen, an acting head of ICE, David Venturella, of allowing agents to patrol polling sites in violation of federal laws. And may the plaintiffs say armed federal agents swarm the parking lot of an active polling site in San Antonio, Texas,

to detain a person in plain view of voters. Meanwhile, in Syracuse, New York, ICE agents entered a polling site in June to interrogate a volunteer over a social media post. The lawsuit follows these remarks by Homeland Security Secretary Mullen last week. ICE isn't there to patrol the polling places. We're there to enforce specific threats. The only reason why we would be at polling places if there is a threat to that polling place or we're serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down. Florida has banned undocumented students from enrolling in public universities.

The move comes after a unanimous vote by the Republican-controlled Florida Board of Governors. There are as many as 8,000 undocumented students graduating from Florida high schools annually and over 50,000 undocumented students enrolled in state universities, according to the Florida Education Association. Florida's already revoked in-state tuition for undocumented students. Robert Casanello, president of the United Faculty of Florida, said in a statement, quote, rather than increasing our university system's capacity to educate Florida's future workers and leaders, this rule stymies growth and closes doors that have helped our communities, he said. Anthropic has published a threat intelligence report showing how bad actors have attempted to use artificial intelligence models to design weapons, launch cyber attacks, and surveil adversaries.

Among several potential plots uncovered by the report was an attempt by one user to write a grant proposal for gain of function research. into a mosquito-borne virus that could make the pathogen more virulent and transmissible. This week, Anthropic admitted to a fourth incident in which a so-called misaligned AI tool gained access to the open Internet and hacked into external systems. The rogue AI agent only stopped its cyber attacks when it exhausted its token limit. Anthropic admitted to the breach on Wednesday just after. after one of its researchers, Jacob Coxon, publicly resigned, warning the race to produce super-intelligent machines poses an existential threat to humans. Meanwhile, an investigation by

the American prospect finds Anthropic is building out an extensive monitoring system to keep tabs on activists who oppose the rapid development of AI. And Naza, a film that portrays the Israeli military's use of secret AI-powered systems to deliberately and systematically target and kill civilians in Gaza received a record-breaking 24-5-minute standing ovation during its premiere Thursday at the Venice Film Festival. This tops the previous record-setting ovation of 22 minutes for the voice of Hindrajab last year. Naza is the latest work by Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and filmmaker Rachel Zor, who both won an Oscar for the documentary No Other Land, along with Palestinian co-directors Basaladra and Hamdan Bilal. Naza was shot in secret

on rooftops in Tel Aviv across three years and builds on testimony from Israeli military intelligence sources who spoke on the condition their identities be concealed. The film's title references an acronym used by the Israeli military as a shorthand for civilians. billion killings in Gaza, including of children. This is Yuval Abraham speaking from Venice. Part of why we wanted to make this film is because I think that hearing testimonies from officers who themselves were operated, these systems of killing, designed them, can make the denial of the crimes harder.

And there is a direct correlation between the silence or between the denial of the crimes and their ability to persist. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. Coming up, it's been 25 years since the 9-11 attacks. Stay with us. Somebody cry.

They're crying in the street. Yeah. I see some they're crying in the street. Now I'm not. Go. Zishon B. seen crying in the streets. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York with Democracy Now co-host Juan Gonzalez and Chicago. Hi, Juan.

Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. Memorials are being held today to mark 25 years since the 9-11 attacks on. September 11, 2001. Moments of silence will be held to mark the time hijackers flew planes into each of the World Trade Center towers when the Twin Towers collapsed and when hijacked planes separately crashed into the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The first plane hit the World Trade Center at 8.46 a.m. 2,977 people were killed in the attacks, as far as we know.

Nearly 10,000 more people have died from 9-11 related illnesses connected to the collapse of the Twin Towers. 25 years ago, Democracy Now was broadcasting from the Attic of DC TV, downtown community television in Chinatown. just blocks from Ground Zero. We were the closest national broadcast to the World Trade Center site. It was a beautiful blue sky day. It was primary day here in New York. We were on the air when the first plane hit. This is a clip from the – we were on the air when the second plane hit, the first plane hit

a few minutes before the show. This is a clip from the documentary. steal the story, please, featuring our initial radio coverage overlaid with archival video from that day. I'm going to interrupt this tape conversation. Just a little while ago, we heard a loud sonic boom-like crash, and we heard sirens. Well, it appears that planes crashed into the upper floors of both World Trade Center towers minutes apart.

We're in Chinatown. We're not far from the World Trade Center buildings. This is all unfolding as this broadcast takes place. Clouds of smoke engulfing the World Trade Center. That was 25 years ago today as Democracy Now broadcast from DC TV just blocks from ground zero. We spent hours on the air. At the time of the attacks, Democracy Now co-host Juan Gonzalez was a columnist at the New York Daily News. Juan, you wrote a column that would appear the next day.

It was headlined, a horror to last a lifetime. Yes, Amy. As you mentioned, this was a mayoral primary day in New York City. And I had actually been up early in the morning. I was already in Brooklyn at the polling places, interviewing voters in the mayoral primary when we got news, when the news began to spread about the first plane and then the second plane hitting the trade center.

And so I sort of tried to head, leave the polling places and try to head to lower Manhattan. But of course, all the subways were shut down, all traffic on all the bridges into and out of Manhattan was shut down. And there was total gridlock and panic, really, in the streets of Brooklyn. But I eventually was able to run over the Brooklyn Bridge

on foot and as thousands of people were fleeing Manhattan. I think it was the only one heading in the opposite direction until I got downtown. And as you know, covering a major catastrophe is a daunting task for those of us who are reporters. We don't have the full information at first or who or what caused it. The number of victims are the full extent of the damage. Yet we still have to inform the public of the little we know and what we've learned. So I'm going to read the column that I wrote early that evening for the next day's daily news. A block from the mountain of rubble that had once been the World Trade Center,

Fire Chief Tom McCarthy stumbled toward a traffic divider and sat down to catch his breath. The back of his uniform had been ripped away. His right arm was in a sling. And his head was so covered with ash that his eyes seemed like tiny slits. Don't move, Chief, said a paramedic who rushed up to help. We'll get you to an ambulance and a hospital right away. I'm okay, McCarthy said, waving him off. Take care of the guys in worse shape first.

The medic started pouring water over McCarthy's head and eyes to wash away the ash. Feels great, the chief said, breaking into a smile. I can see again. McCarthy and the men of Battalion 32, left their firehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn, yesterday morning, after the second plane crashed into the second tower at the World Trade Center. We were watching it on TV, he said. Then a few seconds later, we felt the explosion all the way in Red Hook.

That's when I knew it was going to be a long day. They arrived at the scene on West Street sometime after 9.30. McCarthy had just gotten instructions to deploy his men and was heading toward the burning towers when he heard yet another explosion about 20 stories high in two world trade. The building started coming down and everybody ran, he said. It was like being on the beach

with this big wave coming at you. Only this wave was concrete and steel and glass. McCarthy was hit and went down almost immediately. A piece of the trade center got me, he said. But it's my guys I'm worried about. A few blocks away, another lucky and exhausted fireman from the latter company 113 and Crown Heights, Brooklyn, was taking off his boots and saying a few quiet thanks. I thought it was all over for a while, said the firefighter.

A bunch of us went into the lobby of the Marriott Hotel to rescue another trap firemen when the whole building collapsed on us. We all grabbed onto a pillar and in the middle of the lobby, and that's the only thing that's saying. us. By early afternoon, word was already spreading that the number of missing firefighters and cops might make this the darkest day our city's uniformed services had ever seen. For Don Dominico, a Port Authority engineer who worked on the 88th floor of one World Trade Center, the day had started like so many others. Domenico had reported to his job at his 7.30 starting time.

He was busy at his desk when a humongous explosion shook the building from above. The blast came from the first plane striking the building. The ceiling started collapsing. Fowel cabinets tumbled over, Domenico said. A bunch of us regrouped and headed for the stairs. They raced down smoke-filled staircases, passing injured in dazed people as they went. Just when I got outside and was crossing the plaza, Domenico said, I heard another explosion and saw a glass.

and steel all over the place. He fell on a car hood and suddenly there was so much smoke and debris that he couldn't see a few feet in front of him and could barely breathe. He felt his way along a row of parked cars until he found a door that was unlocked and he sought refuge inside the car. He rifled through the glove compartment of the car, found some tissues and started spitting out the thick, black muck that had filled his lungs. Rahim Terrain. a customer service representative for Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield was on the 20th floor of one World Trade Center talking on the telephone to a client when the first plane hit.

He looked out the window and saw flames shooting down and people falling. He and other employees scrambled for the exits and made it out safely. As the fire raged out of control, he headed toward the Brooklyn Bridge, along with thousands of others, a river of people, fleeing the chaos and terror of downtown Manhattan. Terrain was a third of the way across the bridge when he heard another explosion and turned back to look. Stunned, he watched one of the towers,

this marvelous jewel symbol of the world's greatest city, collapsed like a house of cars. As long as I live, I'll never forget what I saw today, he said. In a few short hours, Our nation had aged in ways impossible to measure. And all over town last night, thousands of grown men and women who had once thought themselves such hardened New Yorkers

that nothing could shake them, managed to find their way home. The lucky ones, those who survived without serious injury, held their children and loved ones tight in their arms. they took long, warm showers to wash the ashes from their bodies. And when they were alone in their beds, many saw the wave coming at them again. And they cried like frightened children at the horror they had witnessed. And I think that is what so many people who went through that day will never forget,

just a total way that in a moment, life can change. in ways that no one ever expected and situations and a catastrophe like that changes people forever. Juan, that was such a powerful column. And just for people to understand that column, a horror to last a lifetime that you wrote for the New York Daily News that appeared in the paper on September 12, 2001, you're not only writing this unbelievable column, but you're living through it. And that's your incredible talent. That is your remarkable journalistic ability that we started with this week, with your critical exposés of the toxic nightmare that would unfold at ground zero as workers were sent back being told that the environment was safe.

We're going to link to your columns at DemocracyNow.org. And coming up, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Asmard Khan of the Center for Global Journalism and Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, both from Columbia University. They have just finished a two-day symposium at Columbia called the Forever War and the First Amendment. Back in a minute. As the days go by For seasons of our lives I still see birds that fly

Like them you fly away for me When the rain hits the ground October takes our love away And leaves are falling down Like tears drops on my face I remember yesterday we said As the days go by

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. The legacy of September 11th shaped so much of the last 25 years from the thousands who were killed on that day and the families who lost loved ones to the first responders and volunteers who rushed toward danger

only to later to fall ill from exposure to toxic air, to the U.S. government's response to 9-11, which reshaped our politics, institutions, and culture. The reverberations to 9-11 changed the world and continued to impact people globally today. Over the last several days, a symposium at Columbia University convened journalists, scholars, lawyers, and activists to explore the legacies of the war on terror, specifically focused on the impact on democratic rights, including the freedoms of speech and the press. The symposium was hosted by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and Columbia's Simon and June Lee Center for Global Journalism. This is a video produced for the event called the Forever War and the First Amendment.

On September 20, 2001, nine days after the deadliest attack in United States history, President George W. Bush stood before a joint session of Congress and said, Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It was the start of the forever war, a seemingly endless proliferation of open-ended conflicts waged against poorly defined enemies in North Africa, the Middle East, South and Central Asia, and even here, inside the United States. Good evening. American and British forces have begun attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan tonight. In October 2001, the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan. A year and a half later, the Bush administration led the country to war in Iraq on the basis of false claims about weapons of mass destruction.

It was to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. Vice President Cheney made clear the U.S. government was willing to disregard established legal rules in the prosecution of this new war. We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly without any discussion using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies.

The CIA established black sites in Poland, Thailand, and elsewhere, and suggest that arrested prisoners to interrogation methods the U.S. had previously prosecuted as war crimes. Prisoners were tortured in U.S. military facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Later, the CIA and military deployed armed drones to carry out hundreds of targeted killings, including in places far removed from actual battlefields. These policies all but abandoned the post-war human rights, framework that the U.S. was largely responsible for building. The Forever War reshaped American democracy and society as well.

Surveillance programs proliferated from the NYPD's targeting of New York's Muslim communities to digital surveillance operations of unprecedented scope and reach. Today, the president signed a big new anti-terrorism bill that would expand the government's ability to track down terrorists, but at some cost. Anti-terrorism legislation criminalized forms of peaceful speech and association. National security was used as a justification for keeping the public in the dark about the most consequential questions, and secret evidence, secret hearings, and even secret judicial opinions became normalized. The press struggled to fulfill its role, and when journalists did

report on controversial and covert programs, they did so in the shadow of the Espionage Act, which the government deployed against journalist sources and threatened to deploy against journalists themselves. Repressive policies imposed in the name of national security did not go unchallenged. Victims and targets of the government's policies filed hundreds of cases in court, often with the help of human rights and civil liberties organizations. Communities that had been targeted unfairly built new organizations to advocate for fairness and defend themselves against discrimination. and a new generation of journalists founded new media institutions to report what legacy newsrooms had missed and asked questions they had failed to.

That video produced for the symposium at Columbia University called the Forever War and the First Amendment. It was narrated by Asmachan, who joins us now, an investigative reporter for the New York Times Magazine, director of the Simon and June Lee Center for Global Journalism, at Columbia, where she's also an assistant professor of journalism at the J-school there. Her multi-part series, the civilian casualty files, was awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. And we're joined by Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, previously deputy legal director at the ACLU, where he argued cases around issues like surveillance, censorship and other human rights and national security issues for many years, the author of the drone memos, targeted killing, secrecy, and the law.

Jamil, talk about this today that the two of you put on symposium, the Forever War and the First Amendment, as we move today after this 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. Sure, yeah, well, first, Amy, thanks so much for having me on again. So the symposium is about how the war on terror tested and transformed the First Amendment and the freedoms of speech and the press. And as you know, those freedoms were tested right away, you know, in the days and weeks after 9-11 with the closure of immigration hearings, the Patriot Act, which expanded government surveillance powers, eventually the expansion of the material support laws, which reached for the first time certain kinds of speech,

the use of the Espionage Act against journalists' sources, and you've covered all of those things, but those are all in different ways tests of the First Amendment. And so the symposium has been a kind of look back on all of those tests. of the First Amendment to kind of evaluate, did the First Amendment play the role that we needed it to? And then also we were looking at the ways in which the decisions that collectively we made in the months and years after 9-11, how those decisions relate to the world we find ourselves

living in now, because there's so many policies that the Trump administration has now put in place that are built on the legal arguments and the policies put in place, you know, over the course of successive administrations after 9-11. And, Jamil, I'm wondering if you can talk especially about the policy that developed of extraordinary rendition where effectively the government and collusion with other governments around the world kidnapped and disappeared people into black hole sites and where that stands in terms of the legality as far as the Supreme Court is concerned? Yeah, I mean, I think that that policy,

the extraordinary rendition policy, is sort of emblematic about our collective decision to surrender the values that we thought we were supposed to defend. The rendition policy was one of the policies that the Bush administration put in place in the years immediately after 9th, 11, you know, obviously we were, we also saw the adoption of torture policies by the CIA and the military. The CIA was torturing prisoners and CIA black sites around the world.

Eventually, those torture policies found their way into places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. So this was a real departure, not just from U.S. law, but from the entire international human rights framework that the U.S. had a big hand in building after the Second World War. And, you know, one of the really, you know, when we talk about the departure from those important norms and principles after 9-11, we often focus on the Bush administration, the decision of the Bush administration to, you know, depart from those norms, the decision of the Obama administration to normalize some of those departures. But I actually think that the biggest failure was not in the executive branch. The biggest failure was in the courts. Because, one, you were asking about, you know, what's the status of the, what's the legal? status of these policies, you know, almost without exception, the courts have refused to address

the lawfulness of these policies. You know, all sorts of cases were brought against national policy, national security policies put in place after 9-11. Almost all of those cases brought by human rights victims or by human rights organizations were thrown out on grounds other than the merits. They were thrown out because the plaintiffs were found to lack standing. They were thrown out because the questions were found to be political questions that are, you know, relegated to the political branches to decide, or they were thrown out on immunity grounds. They're thrown out on all sorts of bases, but not on the merits. The courts just almost without exception refused to address the merits. And it's a remarkable and I think really dispiriting thing that 25 years after 9-11, we have a.

almost no law, certainly from the Supreme Court, almost no law, on the legality of these really controversial policies that, you know, in some cases were introduced by the Bush administration and others, you know, introduced by later administrations. The real failure on the part of the courts. What about the Department of Homeland Security? Most young people in the United States today don't realize that that was created after 9-11 and it's had such a big, impact on law enforcement and other repression now across the country. Yeah, I mean, I think that we are seeing this in a lot of ways. We're seeing the institutions and the authorities that were put in place after 9-11

now being repurposed by the Trump administration. And, you know, it's shocking, but not entirely a surprise because from the beginning, it was easy to see that these institutions could very readily be repurposed to suppress domestic dissent, not just the Department of Homeland Security, but all of the surveillance authorities that were put in place after 9-11, the material support laws, the espionage act, all of these things were initially justified, or their use was initially justified by reference to foreign threats. And now increasingly we're seeing the Trump administration use these things to suppress domestic dissent, even in fact the arrests and the detentions and the threatened deportations of student

protesters, non-citizen student protesters, all of that is also built on authorities that the executive branch and the political branch is put in place after 9-11. I want to bring Osmat Khan into this conversation. You spent over five years researching the U.S. Air War. And as part of your reporting, you went to different bomb sites in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan. It was a remarkable series for which you won the Pulitzer Prize among the pieces, the human toll of America's air wars. That's from 2021. I'm looking at a piece you wrote last year, Hegset Cuts Pentagon work on preventing civilian harm. Follow the trajectory for us.

What came out of your reporting, for example, under Austin, then the Secretary of Defense, what was put into place to more protect civilians than what's happened today? I would say if we go, and thank you for having me. If we go back five years, we, as we were drawing down from Afghanistan, there was a bit of a reckoning that seemed or appeared to be happening among the lessons learned from the Forever Wars. My own reporting, that first five years of it had just finished, and there was a really devastating civilian loss and a very apparent understanding that the U.S. government knew very little about how many civilians it was actually killing. You know, my own reporting years earlier had shown that the U.S. government thought that it's air war in Iraq and Syria, for example, during the war against ISIS, had killed maybe less than 1% of all of the strikes that they had done had resulted. in civilian casualties. But the ground reporting that we had done systematically showed that the number was, in fact, 31 times higher. So the publication of that reporting coupled with this broader investigation where I sued for the government's records about what it claimed had happened

and went on the ground myself to go compare by speaking to people on the ground doing these things the military had not done in their investigations and assessments, it was very clear that there was systematic civilian loss, that this was routine, that there were recurring problems that were happening again and again and were going unaddressed. And I will say that in that time period, that work landed in a way that led to, for example, Secretary Austin at the time overhauling civilian casualty policy, introducing a... This is under Biden. This is under the Biden administration. And, you know, I had my own doubts and concerns about, you know, whether that would be impactful, would they be investigating on the ground, these things that I think are necessary. But what we've seen under the Trump administration is a rolling back of all of those measures.

Secretary Hegseth has cut that office. But I will say regardless of administration. And that office was called the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Office. Yes, yes, yeah. the Center for Excellence that they had created as they dubbed it. And, yeah, it has, many parts of it have been wound down. It is not entirely non-existent today. But that policy, you know, there was a very immediate effort by the Trump administration

to hamper down as soon as they came into office as many parts of that as they could. But I will also say that we have seen over administrations, whether Democrat or Republican, not a great deal. focus on civilian harm. I mean, maybe this moment, that brief moment, was something different in the wake of the drawdown from Afghanistan. But over time, we've seen incredible civilian laws take place under both Democrat and Republican administration. And when looking at the piece, you did Heggsef-Cut's Pentagon work on preventing civilian harm was almost exactly a year before the first day of the U.S. Israeli strike on Iran. That first day was the strike on Minab in southern Iran,

the primary school where so many girls and some boys and their teachers, over 170 people were killed. To this day, the Pentagon has not released a report on this. And President Trump now calls it fake news. That is true. And on that same day, I've also done reporting that showed that the was another missile that hit a different school, along with the sports recreation center, along with my colleagues and the visual investigations team at the New York Times, that showed one of these same missile, this prism missile they call it. They call it a precision strike missile, that these thousands of tungsten pellets killed 21 civilians, one of whom was just a toddler. So we've seen these patterns continue, and when I look at the causes, so for example, you bring

up the girls' school in Minab, or you bring up some of these most latest strikes on a wedding convoy. When we start to examine what some of the early understandings of why they may have taken place, whether that's outdated intelligence, you know, there's a belief among some that the military had relied on outdated intelligence, thinking that this school was in fact a military installation. Or, for example, in this recent wedding convoy, there are early reports that suggest that they had mistaken it for something nearby. All of these causes are things that I regularly found in my reporting as leading causes for civilian casualties. And by the way, J.D. Vance, who's now being talked about because he headlined the Trump Republican

Midterm Convention, has said in the last weeks, you know, if we make a mistake, we admit it when it came, for example, to the bombing of the wedding convoy. But why would you believe that? if they haven't even investigated Monop or have investigated and decided they will not release the results. You know, I did file a FOIA request for that investigation, and I've been back and forth with Centcom over the results of it. And it's been, you know, an unpleasant experience, but my FOIA experience with Centcom and with the Defense Department has always been unpleasant. It's meant that I've often had to sue with reporters committee for freedom of the press, with attorneys at the times. this is a regular occurrence. So yes, they're being far less transparent, but what I will say is that a lot of these causes that I'm seeing echo the causes I saw under repeated administrations. There

are underlying issues that apparently that Office of Civilian Protection had not solved, or that the Defense Department maybe has fought in implementing, maybe some of the lessons learned of that office or of others. But these are regular occurrences. They go and address, And that human toll, these individual stories, it's so much more than just the numbers that we hear of, you know, how many people, how many civilians have been killed. These are families and loved ones. And that's important on a moral issue. But it's also important when we understand our place in the world and the effect that we have and what's enabled by what we do and also by what we fund. And I'm speaking specifically about weapon sales.

And Asma, I'm wondering if you could talk about, you know, the shifting, legal landscape after 9-11, the secrecy, the expanded surveillance and persecution under the Espionage Act and beyond how that affected the ability of journalists, especially in the mainstream of commercial media to properly report on wars and federal policies, and what the impact has been of independent media and whistleblowers going to organizations like WikiLeaks to bring out stuff that was not previously being, had not previously been revealed. If you go back to that climate after 9-11, Americans were shocked and devastated and heartbroken, and journalists were asking, how did this happen? What intelligence did we miss?

How did the U.S. government fail? And their efforts were largely concentrated on answering these very important and fundamental questions. But we also saw Newsrooms Institute shifts. So they started making beats for covering national security. There was a real reworking of what kinds of things legacy media was covering. And, you know, in many ways, that's incredibly important. But it also meant that more and more journalists were dependent on the federal government for intelligence assessments, what they deemed incredibly important to understanding and answering those questions that felt so urgent at the time.

And what you wound up having is, you know, a broad understanding. that legacy news media in that time period was incredibly dependent on anonymous sources, sometimes unvetted intelligence, leaks to journalists that oftentimes came from an administration that was trying to lead the public to war. And later on, you would see these sort of mea culpas in major news organizations about what they had gotten wrong and why. I think the most famous is the lead up to the Iraq war. I think many people, are familiar with the failures, the unvetted intelligence that made its way onto the very front pages of major newspapers. But I think it was also something deeper. I think we saw a fundamental shift

take place in the presumption of guilt or innocence. I think that the label of terrorism or the designation that an individual was associated with a group, just the mere allegation itself would be so damning. And so we went from what would ordinarily be a presumption of innocence. until somebody is proven guilty to what I founded my reporting was often a presumption of guilt unless you can prove yourself innocent. And the bar for proving yourself innocent was so much higher than the bar for intelligence used to lethally target and kill someone in the first place. And that gap was enormous. You know, you've had some of the guests from my own reporting on this show, a man named Basim Razo, for example, whose homes were targeted in the middle

of the night of his and his brother. And Basim woke up one night to see the stars over Mosul to find out that his wife, daughter, brother, and nephew were killed. You know, the roof of his house was gone. He's looking up. He learns his loved ones have been killed. He sets out on a quest for justice. And he has one of the most rigorous cases I've ever seen. And he's one of so many, like probably thousands at this point civilians that I've spoken to and interviewed and whose stories that I've documented and told. But he had such a bulletproof case, and him proving his innocence to the U.S. government was so high and took so much labor. And yet, when I obtained the records about the intelligence used to target him, what I realized was that, you know, they provided lots of

information about, well, this may have happened, that may have happened. And a very, what they said in this document was that actually we may have confused his home for something else next door or nearby, which, you know, I learned ISIS had previously occupied something down the street or down the block and had left weeks earlier. But when you looked at that intelligence, which was based on just a little bit of filming during the hottest hours of day and a lot of confirmation bias, what you saw was a real gap between what was used to lethally target somebody and then what it took to clear your name. And that flipping, I just give this as an example, that flipping of a presumption of guilt versus innocence, that has taken place across the board. And I think media organizations have been

very resistant to, you know, examining the complexity at times when somebody has been accused of some association. And I think it's reflected more broadly in the public's attention, too. Just that climate after 9-11 was very effective in rewiring our thinking about who is guilty, who's innocent and what presumptions there should be and what the threshold of intelligence or assessment or what evidence we need to see should be. Jamil, we only have about 30 seconds, but the Trump administration is now extending these terrors' designations to all of these gangs in South America and Ecuador and Venezuela and other countries. Your assessment of that?

Well, I mean, I think that the boat strikes are plainly unlawful. I think that their murder. The ACLU has a great case that they brought against those strikes. They've also sued to get the memo that purportedly justifies the strikes. Hopefully the courts will be more aggressive here than they have been, you know, in over the past 25 years. We have to leave it there, but this is something, of course, we'll continue to cover Jamil Jaffer, Director of the Night First Amendment Institute, previously Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU and Asma Khan, director of the Simon and Junely Center for Global Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. That does it for our show. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez.