The 2026 KSM confession ruling is the Guantanamo military commission decision, issued by Lieutenant Colonel Michael Shramma in late August 2026, that John Kiriakou reported on his September 1 briefing as news “that has never been reported anywhere else”, the moment the American torture regime made the trial of the man who planned the September 11 attacks legally impossible.
What the ruling said
Kiriakou’s summary: “A military judge has thrown out what may be one of the most important pieces of evidence against KSM, his confession. Why? Because the CIA tortured him. Because the CIA waterboarded him 183 times. He confessed in the most minute details how he conceived of the attacks, how he planned the attacks, and how he worked with Osama bin Laden and others to implement the attacks. And now literally none of that can be used against him.”[1][2]
The FBI’s Guantanamo mistakes
The ruling did not stop at the torture-era interrogations. “The trial judge now, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Shramma, went even further, concluding that KSM’s subsequent interrogations at Guantanamo in 2007 are also inadmissible. The judge also found that FBI agents intentionally failed to explicitly tell KSM that he had a right to remain silent, that he had a right to consult an attorney, and that what he told them could be used against him at trial.”[3][4]
What remains
“Without the confessions, prosecutors would need to rely on documents, on telephone intercepts, and transcripts of other conversations to put him on trial. But some of those are also being challenged.”[5]
Kiriakou’s verdict
The trial, Kiriakou expects, will not happen. “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is never going to be released from Guantanamo. He’s in what amounts to a legal no man’s land. He’ll never be released, but he’ll never be executed for his crime. He’ll probably never even go on trial.”[6]
Whom Kiriakou blames
“Thanks to the likes of former CIA director George Tenet, former CIA deputy director John McLaughlin, former deputy directors for operations Jim Pavitt and Jose Rodriguez, former directors of counterterrorism Jose Rodriguez and Cofer Black, he will never be held to account for the murder of 3,000 Americans in one single morning.”[7][8]
The line Kiriakou repeats
“KSM is a very bad man who doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air that we breathe, but he will continue to breathe that air. And it’s all the CIA’s fault.”[8]