Context
From an interview with Jon Lee Anderson — one of my favorite writers — on his latest report for the The New Yorker:
One senator you spoke to was Prince Johnson, a former warlord who’s notorious for having tortured former President Samuel Doe to death. He had his men cut off Doe’s ears and made him eat one of them—his own ear. I was struck by how open and unrepentant he was when you asked him about that. It doesn’t happen often that you talk to someone who’s done that to another person. One might hesitate to ask him about it. As a journalist, do you find that it works best to be direct with someone like that?