J. Wells Dixon moved to New York from Hartford on Sept. 11, 2001, to start a job as an associate at Kramer Levin Frankel & Naftalis. At the time, he says, he could never have imagined that 14 years later, he’d be representing a defendant who is now a cooperator against some of the defendants in the 9/11 attacks.
Dixon’s client, Majid Khan, whom he shares with cocounsel, Jenner & Block partner Katya Jestin, a former prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York, is the only one of 14 so-called high-value detainees who has pleaded guilty to any crimes. Khan has acknowledged working with Khalid Shaikh Mohammad in Parkistan after 9/11 on other terror plots, including couriering funds to al-Qaida associates to fund a hotel bombing in Jakarta and discussing other possible terrorist strikes in the U.S.
Khan, a Pakistani who grew up in Baltimore and received political asylum in the United States in 1998, is just one of dozens of detainees represented over the years by Dixon, the senior staff attorney overseeing the Guantánamo cases for the Center for Constititional Rights (CCR). Unlike Khan, the rest of his clients have never been accused of a crime. While most have been repatriated or transferred to third countries over the years, Dixon still represents four detainees, including Khan.
