The military judge who last week threw out Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s 2007 confession previously wrote that the U.S. military’s “conservative tendencies” were fueling a domestic extremism crisis in the ranks.
Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, an Air Force judge overseeing the military commission handling the 9/11 case, ruled the confession from the accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks was not given voluntarily and tossed it out. The ruling pushed back the trial’s start date, with prosecutors’ request for a January 2027 start rejected in favor of June 2028 — days before the 25th anniversary of an attack that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
The decision wasn’t made public right away. Journalist and author Gerald Posner called it a “shameful prelude to the 9/11 anniversary.”
The scrutiny that followed dug up a 2023 essay Schrama wrote for the national security publication War on the Rocks, titled “Creating a Codified Legal Response to Domestic Extremism in the Ranks.”
What the Judge Wrote
Before landing on the 9/11 commission, Schrama served as an Air Force trial judge at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, worked as a staff judge advocate and defense counsel, and deployed in 2019 to Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. From June 2017 to January 2019 he specialized in environmental law.
In his essay, Schrama argued the military legal code needed a new provision specifically targeting extremism, writing: “As an active-duty Air Force military judge, I have seen firsthand a rising population of military members engaging in extremist activities.”
He cited a 2021 Center for Strategic & International Studies study claiming military personnel were behind 17.6% of domestic terrorism plots and attacks, and noted that 12% of those charged in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot had some military background, including active-duty members.
“Military institutions tend to become more conservative and isolated from civilian society… 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.”
Schrama argued the Uniform Code of Military Justice and federal criminal code fall short because domestic extremism isn’t a specific criminal offense. “Codifying domestic extremism as a punitive article under the military code would provide a means for commanders to adequately address the rising tide of domestic extremism,” he wrote.
He also pointed to a 2019 case involving a Coast Guard officer who pleaded guilty to gun and drug charges after prosecutors said he stockpiled weapons and planned to kill Democratic politicians, Supreme Court justices and TV journalists. “Despite describing Hasson as a domestic terrorist, federal prosecutors chose these more minor charges due to the fact that no domestic terrorism statute currently exists,” Schrama wrote.
Official Response
Ronald Flesvig, a spokesperson for the Military Commissions Convening Authority, declined to comment on Schrama’s ruling or his essay, saying the essay was published “not in his capacity as a judge for the military commissions.”
Mohammed’s case, along with three co-defendants — Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin ‘Atash, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali — has sat in pretrial proceedings for years. Schrama became the fifth judge assigned to the case in 2025.
White House senior advisor Stephen Mueller told Fox News: “Our judicial system is so badly broken it sides at every turn with predators, monsters and, in this case, a 9/11 mastermind.” He added the system “enables the persecution of innocent Americans who did nothing wrong, while protecting cartel killers and foreign terrorists,” calling it “a disgrace, it’s a travesty, it’s an outrage.”
