“Some readers may have noticed an icy little missive from Noam Chomsky ["Letters," December 3], repudiating the very idea that he and I had disagreed on the "roots" of September 11. I rush to agree. Here is what he told his audience at MIT on October 11:Clever of him to have spotted that (his favorite put-down is the preface 'Turning to the facts...') and brave of him to have taken such a lonely position. As he rightly insists, our disagreements are not really political.”

British and American author and journalist

Christopher Eric Hitchens was a British and American author and journalist. He was a public intellectual of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, known for his work as a columnist and speaker, and for his role among the so-called “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism. He became widely noticed for sharp, argumentative writing and for the principle often linked to him that claims without evidence need not be accepted. That idea, sometimes called Hitchens’s razor, is cited in philosophy and law, and it reflects the evidential style associated with his work.