The old saying "politics makes strange bedfellows" certainly applies to my former line of work as well. In the counterterrorism business, you sometimes have to deal with unsavory characters to make progress in an investigation. Recent headlines reminded me of one of the strangest connections I have ever made with one of the underworld's most notorious figures. Ilich Ramirez Sanchez — better known by his nickname, "Carlos the Jackal" — went on trial March 13 to face accusations that he had conducted a decades-old assault on a Paris shopping mall. The Venezuelan-born Carlos, one of the most wanted criminals of the 1970s and '80s for a string of spectacular terrorist attacks, is already serving two life sentences in France for a series of murders and assaults he perpetrated or plotted in the country on behalf of the Palestinian cause or communist revolution.