Foreign Policy

Nick Gillespie | From the January 2026 issue

CNN journalist Jake Tapper's latest book, Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War, tells the little-known story of an Al Qaeda operative who surrendered to Italian authorities in 2011 and claimed to have carried out attacks that killed American soldiers. With no evidence to prove the murders happened, two assistant U.S. prosecutors traveled around the world to investigate his claims and build a case. The book shows how early counterterrorism decisions shaped the broader global war on terror.

Tapper is a longtime reporter and, since 2013, the host of The Lead with Jake Tapper; his other books range from political nonfiction to historical thrillers. In October, he spoke with Reason's Nick Gillespie about Race Against Terror and why the story it tells still matters today. They also discussed threats to free speech, President Donald Trump, the shortcomings of legacy media outlets, and how the industry is adapting to a new era.

Reason: The new book takes us back 25 years almost, to 9/11, Afghanistan, and the beginning of what was called the global war on terror. What brought you back to this topic? You've already written about Afghanistan.

Tapper: I heard about it from one of the prosecutors randomly at a birthday party—at my son's birthday party, in fact—and what was interesting to me about it was the detective story, the true crime story. He and his colleagues had to prove a criminal case that would be upheld in court against a terrorist for actions on the battlefield that took place in 2003 and an attempt to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria not long after that. And all of the sleuthing and the detective work that they all had to do—it was just this incredible story about all the stuff I love from police procedurals like CSI or Cold Case.

The Al Qaeda killer, known as Spin Ghul, showed up in Italy. He was arrested by Italian authorities after bragging, "I killed American soldiers." But then they had to prove it, since that was only his assertion, right?

They had to prove it because it was the Obama years, and [President Barack] Obama had closed off [Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp] from any new terrorist suspects. Obama wanted to try terrorists in criminal court. That was really controversial at the time.

Trump is trying to do it now. Spin Ghul was the first terrorist tried like this. Trump is trying to do it with a guy named Jafar [a.k.a. Mohammad Sharifullah]. Not controversial at all—no hue and cry. This terrorist is sitting in a cell not far from where you and I are sitting, in Virginia, and nobody's acting afraid about it. But at the time, people acted as though these terrorists had superhuman powers and if you brought them to Manhattan or Brooklyn they would escape and wreak havoc.

What was so interesting to me about it was proving a case that was not just cold. People are generally not brought to court for killing people in a war. It generally doesn't happen. The sleuthing was so interesting.

I wasn't trying to give a history of the war on terror, but you had to tell it. You had to describe what was different about [President George W.] Bush to Obama to Trump, because it was part of the hurdles that these prosecutors and FBI agents had to jump over.

Are we really done with the "global war on terror" era of foreign policy?

I don't think it's done with us, is the bottom line. I think as long as there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of radicalized Islamists who are willing to kill Americans and target Westerners, the war is not done with us.

Trump, he's a complicated guy and I have a lot of complicated feelings about his foreign policy. There's a ceasefire in Gaza right now. That's empirically a good thing. People might not like what happened with the strikes against Iran's nuclear infrastructure, but I think the fact that they don't have it is a good thing.

He didn't follow it up. He said, "This is something we're gonna do but we're not gonna stick around."

Yeah. We're not. That's it. We're dropping the bombs on their facilities, and then we're out. I think [it's something] to be cautiously optimistic about. I also think he's exercising a mix of hard power and soft power. His hard power is the threats of tariffs, the threats of force.

Blowing up Venezuelan boats.

Well, that's another question. That's a different part of the war on terror powers. This is something that you guys at Reason always know, which is: Once a president establishes for himself that he has a shiny toy, good luck getting that toy ever wrested away from whoever the president is.

Bush used drones. Obama multiplied it by 100. And now Trump is using the same arguments to a) label antifa a domestic terrorist group, which I'm not sure he even has the power to do, and b) use........

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