Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, the former CIA analyst dubbed the "Queen of Torture" and widely seen as the inspiration for Jessica Chastain's character in Zero Dark Thirty, has reportedly reinvented herself as a life coach in rural Virginia. Now 61 and going by the name Freda Scheuer, she lives quietly in the Shenandoah Valley with her husband, retired CIA officer Michael Scheuer, five years after leaving clandestine service, and declined to discuss her past with the Daily Mail. The story matters because it revisits unresolved criticism of her role in intelligence failures before 9/11 and her defence of harsh interrogation methods used in the war on terror.

Bikowsky joined the CIA in the 1990s and rose to lead the unit hunting Osama bin Laden by 2003, but government reports found she failed to alert colleagues that two future 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, had entered the United States, information the CIA never passed to the FBI or State Department; the 9/11 Commission later disputed her account that she had shared it. She has also faced accusations of misreading intelligence, defending brutal interrogations of sometimes-innocent suspects, and misleading Congress. Neighbours near the couple's Georgian-style home said she keeps to herself and expressed scepticism about her new role as a self-help guru, given her controversial history.