The Disappeared

From Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Spencer Ackerman, the story of an immigrant father and the radicalized son he lost first to al Qaeda, then to two decades in CIA black sites and Guantanamo Bay’s notorious Camp VII—a landmark work of investigative reporting that uncovers the operational heart of the War on Terror and the lives of the world’s most wanted terrorists within it Ali Khan believed in the American Dream. When he arrived in Baltimore from Pakistan seeking a better life for his family, he walked miles each day to his job cutting fruit salad for four dollars an hour and slept in the stockroom of the gas station he attended. Ali finally saved enough to bring his wife and children to join him in the States, and soon, their youngest son, Majid, was on the verge of securing a place in the middle class for them all: he landed a lucrative coding job out of his Baltimore high school, bought a house in the suburbs, and paid off his father’s debts. But when Majid’s mother died unexpectedly, her beloved son began to slip. On a visit back to Pakistan, before Ali could catch on, Majid fell in with a radical branch of the extended family, who introduced him to the “brotherhood” and its mysterious leader, who offered Majid the sense of belonging he so desperately sought. In a matter of weeks, Majid found himself wearing a suicide vest and couriering money that the U.S. later would claim was used to finance the Jakarta Marriott bombing. Only when he turned on the television and saw a face he recognized did Majid realize that the brotherhood’s leader was Khalid Shaikj Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11. In a historic feat of investigative reporting, Spencer Ackerman reconstructs Majid’s time in al Qaeda’s inner circle in the aftermath of the attack on the Twin Towers and follows him through the secret torture facilities where the United States would detain him for decades alongside figures like Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikj Mohammed himself. In parallel, Ackerman follows Ali Khan’s fight for news of his son as the FBI’s constant presence outside his home rendered Ali a pariah, echoing the experience of so many Muslim Americans during the War on Terror, and depicting the unwavering paternal devotion that would eventually help set Majid free. Not since Peter Bergen interviewed Osama bin Laden in 1997 has a Western journalist had such access to the al Qaeda of 9/11. The Disappeared features the first personal account of torture in a CIA black site, including the sexual assault method that the CIA attempted to cover up as a medical procedure. Ackerman also affords us history’s only glimpse inside Guantanamo Bay’s top-secret Camp VII and the first English-language report of the 2003 Jakarta bombings from the survivors’ perspectives. Unlike the few existing accounts we have of life inside Guantanamo Bay, Majid Khan’s story is not one of mistaken identity or accidental imprisonment: Majid was guilty. This is the untold story of the War on Terror working precisely as its architects designed it to. The Khans have no choice but to reckon with its consequences for their family—and we all must reckon with its authoritarian consequences for America.