The Supreme Court confronts the CIA’s worst-kept secret

Can America’s legacy of torture be a “state secret” if it isn’t even a secret?

United States v. Zubaydah, which the Supreme Court will hear on Wednesday, is a case about a man who was tortured by the CIA over an intelligence failure. It’s also a case about one of the US intelligence community’s worst-kept secrets.

Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn (often referred to as “Abu Zubaydah”) is a Palestinian man who is currently held at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After he was captured in Pakistan in 2002,...