GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — I first saw Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 10 years ago here in a courtroom on a remote part of this remote Navy base. He was being arraigned on charges of conspiring to murder 2,977 people. I was struck by his almost comic appearance.
He had gone completely gray but for his startlingly dark eyebrows and his long bushy beard, now dyed bright orange. He wore a fancy hat. He looked more like a movie villain than the confessed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States.
By then, I had been chasing Mohammed’s trail for a decade. The arraignment was my first opportunity to match the flesh-and-blood man with the paper trail I had compiled.
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