HE REALLY WAS A COLONEL IN THE Egyptian army. Cairo records confirm it. But everything else about Emad Salem is disputed or highly mysterious.
He says he was a member of assassinated President Anwar Sadat's bodyguard. But the commander of the guard does not remember him.
While serving as an aide to Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, Salem insisted to American reporters that Islam is a religion of mercy. Then he showed them photographs of people with cigarette burns and other marks of torture. Some journalists got the idea he was boasting of his own handiwork.
FBI agents were in touch with...