Jason Reed / Reuters U.S. Central Intelligence Agency lobby

Alfreda is a 50-year-old, top-level CIA official who allegedly played a key role in failing to give the FBI critical information that could have led to the capture of the 9/11 hijackers before they attacked; pushed successfully to keep an innocent man in a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan; and went to watch torture sessions, according to published reports and sources. She was dubbed the the “Unidentified Queen of Torture” by The New Yorker Magazine and was reportedly an inspiration for the female CIA agent in the Hollywood movie Zero Dark Thirty. (Her last name has been published by various news outlets, but BuzzFeed News is not using it because of the CIA’s concerns for her safety, especially in light of the rise of ISIS.) Michael Scheuer is a 63-year-old former CIA official who back in the 1990s was Alfreda’s boss. He once headed the agency’s anti-Osama Bin Laden Unit and now stays in the public eye, pushing controversial theories. On his website, he calls for “a regional Sunni-Shia war in which our enemies will merrily kill each other until well after the cows come home.” In an interview with BuzzFeed News he confirmed that he advocates inciting war between the Shiites and Sunnis in the Middle East. He called Senator Dianne Feinstein, who headed the Senate Intelligence Committee during its torture investigation, “an old hag from California.”

David Levenson / Getty Images Michael Scheuer, a former CIA official who believes the US should inflame tensions between Shiites and Sunnis, has married a top current CIA counterterrorism official.

He lost his job as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University after publishing comments on his website that were interpreted as a call for a violent overthrow of President Obama. A school official says Scheuer wasn't fired but that his course simply wasn't needed anymore, while Scheuer said he believes he was fired for his criticism of Israel. What was unknown outside intelligence circles is that the two have been married for more then a year, as Scheuer told BuzzFeed News, and others have confirmed. Some intelligence sources argue that the marriage, which Scheuer says took place in December 2014, is a purely private matter, but others say it is noteworthy because the pair are so steeped in controversy and because of Scheuer’s outspoken views. In a phone call with BuzzFeed News last week, Scheuer initially denied being married to Alfreda. But later he called back. “Yes, I’m married to Alfreda,” he said. His earlier denial, he said, was because he’d been surprised by the call. He declined to say if they had been involved romantically in the 1990s when he was her supervisor at the agency. The CIA declined to make Alfreda available for comment, and attempts to reach her through Scheuer were unsuccessful. The agency also declined to comment about specifics, but spokesman Ryan Trapani sent an email to BuzzFeed News, with the subject line “Buzzfeed/Roston/Journalistic Perdition.” “Gossip is not news,” he wrote, “and it is not the job of the Office of Public Affairs to engage in it.” Alfreda emerged as a divisive figure most notably last year after the publication of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s torture program. In the report, she is referred to as the “deputy chief of Alec Station.” NBC News’s Matthew Cole wrote a lengthy story about her, though he did not name her. So did Jane Mayer in The New Yorker. In 2000, while she was at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, the agency blocked the FBI from learning that suspected terrorist Khalid Al-Midhar had a U.S. visa, according to the 9/11 commission report, and it has been reported that she played a role in the incident. Al-Midhar came to the U.S. and stayed under his own name with another terrorist, and the two men joined the hijacking team aboard American flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon. A former senior intelligence officer told BuzzFeed News that Alfreda and her colleagues “conspired to not tell the FBI” about the intelligence, and some investigators have said that the 9/11 plot could have been thwarted if the FBI had been told.

Johannes Simon / Getty Images Khaled el-Masri, December 10, 2007. El-Masri was held by the CIA in Afghanistan although he was innocent.