Experts in Terror

The defense attorneys had heard something about terrorism expert Evan Kohlmann. He was young and inexperienced, he spoke little Arabic and he would say whatever the government prosecutors wanted him to say. Now they saw him stepping into the witness box, snaggletoothed, pale, with a shock of brown hair combed boyishly over his forehead.

"Do you think he still lives with his parents?" one attorney joked to another. By the time Kohlmann finished testifying, they were no longer laughing.

When he was a college freshman and just starting out in the terrorism-expert business, Kohlmann earned the nickname "the Doogie Howser of terrorism," a reference to the '90s sitcom character, a child prodigy doctor. These days Kohlmann earns part of his living and much of his renown in federal court as the prosecution's star expert witness in terrorism trials. The Doogie Howser of terrorism is extremely effective at what he does. In the seven cases in the United States in which he has taken the stand since 2004, the jury has seven times voted the defendants guilty. (In one of those cases, the jury found the defendant guilty in a second trial where Kohlmann again testified.) At least five additional trials in which he has served as background consultant for the government ended in guilty verdicts. At the age of 29, Kohlmann can claim a hand in meting out at least one life sentence and more than 100 cumulative years of hard prison time in the "war on terror."

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