In connection to the above, Laurie mentioned Khalid Shaykh Mohammed when she was on John Gibson's program, too. He has been captured since Laurie gave this interview (excerpted) with PBS in 2001 . . .Mark Steyn: America is winning
KSM is known in al-Qaeda circles as The Brain, and his picture on the FBI Most Wanted list shows a cold but dapper fellow with a trim beard like the Westernised Arab academics who play the talkshow circuit or, indeed, an assistant choreographer on a Broadway revival. . .
By contrast, the fellow seized in Rawalpindi is a wreck haggard, bleary, unshaven, a loser whos run out of everything except back hair. Asked to account for the stark difference in appearance, several experts pointed out that hes a master of disguise. In that case, the master of disguise is doing a great job of convincingly passing himself off as a guy whos been sleeping in a hedge for a month. The state of KSM provides a glimpse of the career options available to top al-Qaeda honchos: either, like bin Laden, you go into deep cover as a few specks of DNA discreetly sprinkled in the rubble of Tora Bora, or, like The Brain, youve a choice between hunkering down in a safe house or staying on the move, never knowing, even when youre motoring through the emptiness of the Yemeni desert, if some unmanned CIA Predator will drop the big one on you. Of course, many al-Qaeda operatives are hoping to be on a fast track to martyrdom and the 72 virgins. But you gotta have a couple of guys who stay alive long enough to instruct the neophytes in how to kill themselves, and right now al-Qaedas management structure is looking severely hobbled.