Asset X first came to the C._.A.’s attention in the spring of 2001

Asset X, whose real identity is an official secret, had been telling his C.I.A. handlers for months: that he could lead them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,

April, 2007, Michael Hayden, then the director of the C..A., testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that another senior Al Qaeda operative, Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in 2002 and tortured, had led the C..A. to Mohammed. “Until that time, KSM did not even appear in our chart of key al-Qa’ida members and associates,” Hayden said.

On October 16, 2001, a C._.A. officer wrote in an e-mail, “I believe KSM may have been the mastermind behind the 9-11 attacks.”

Asset X first came to the C..A.’s attention in the spring of 2001, the Senate report says, months before the 9/11 attacks. C..A. officers did not meet him until after the attacks took place. It’s not entirely clear how Asset X had access to Mohammed—so many phrases are blacked out—but it appears that it was through a third, unnamed party, who trusted him. On September 27, 2001, a C._.A. officer sent an e-mail to his colleagues about Asset X titled “Access to Khalid Shaykh Muhammad.” Asset X was willing to help, for a price, the e-mail said.

https: //www. newyorker.com/news/news-desk/khalid-sheikh-mohammed-can

Soros & NoName

Profiles in Courage contains eight profiles of United States senators facing difficult moral and political dilemmas. The last chapter includes an account that reminds me in many ways of NoNames’s fight against torture, namely Robert Taft’s battle against what he considered to be the “victor’s justice” tribunal at Nuremberg and its imposition of arguably ex post facto law on the defendants. Whatever one thinks of his argument, demanding better treatment for Goering is probably about as close politically as one can get to arguing that it is wrong to torture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/john-mccain-s-profile-courage