An American intelligence official based in South Asia recently told me, “It has been a long time since we captured a senior al Qaeda leader.” His point was transparent: Without detaining and interrogating terrorists who know what is going on inside the clandestine al Qaeda network, American officials are blind to much of the terrorists’ designs. It is an important point that Marc Thiessen has correctly and repeatedly made.

Now, this doesn’t mean that the U.S. must subject newly captured al Qaeda terrorists to harsh interrogation methods (e.g. waterboarding), as the CIA has in the past. But without any unilateral questioning whatsoever the U.S. finds itself at the mercy of foreign intelligence services, which have their own interests and are oftentimes duplicitous in the fight against terrorism. (Think Pakistan.)