Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks that leveled the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, has been in a CIA prison, tortured, and now held at Guantanamo Bay. But according to an AP report, he has kept himself busy on the inside. Some people polish rocks, work on the tunnel behind their Raquel Welch poster, or set the warden up for a takedown.

KSM has been designing a vacuum cleaner.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed received a Bachelor of Science (BS) in mechanical engineering from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1986. In 1992, he got his Masters degree from Punjab University in Pakistan. He later took a position as project engineer with the Qatari Ministry of Electricity and Water. It is his engineering background that KSM is exercising his brain with while in Gitmo.

The agency officer in charge of Guantanamo prison got approval from the CIA to allow KSM to work on the project. They agreed for a very important reason: they need KSM sane and sharp.

When a person is being tortured for information, the point of that torture is to psychologically “dislocate” the person. Some terrorists who have been subjected to such torture in the past have serious problems with panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disorder, and schizophrenia.

“Any type of prolonged isolation in custody — much less the settings described in the press — have been known to have a severe impact on the mental condition of the detainee,” said one former attorney for a terrorist that was interrogated the same time as KSM.

While the CIA thinks that is is done with KSM for the time being, he has not yet been tried for his crimes. And they may be able to glean further information from him in the future. They want him healthy.

His vacuum cleaner design project is based on schematics he found on the Internet. CIA officials have kept a close eye on what he is doing, and they do not feel there is anything amiss in what he is doing.