They're trying to answer questions about upward mobility in America.

The military strategist, it was profiled brilliantly by somebody.

So I think if you could, you know, find a subculture of people.

With a kind of form of life on this planet that we haven't really seen before.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production

of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

I'm David Remnick.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

A cornerstone of Donald Trump's campaign for president in 2016 was the promise of protecting Americans from people coming to our shores that he deemed dangerous, particularly refugees from the civil war in Syria.

And that country has consistently been part of his immigration orders that are being fought out in the courts.

Syria's refugees have been fleeing ISIS, but they're also fleeing the brutal regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Assad has framed the revolution in his country as a conspiracy fueled entirely by foreign powers.

His security forces have killed hundreds of thousands and displaced possibly half of the country. The tragedies that

we've seen in places like Aleppo are unfathomable. In April, the Trump administration turned

its attention to Syria with a single missile attack to punish Assad for using chemical weapons.

But since then, the president's attention has been elsewhere.

This is, without a doubt, a tragic, hugely consequential, and seemingly hopeless situation.

But not everyone is giving up entirely. Ben Tab spent months reporting on a group of investigators

gathering evidence of the Assad regime's crimes

should Assad or his henchman ever go to trial. He brought this story to the radio hour in

April of last year. Now, this is a very difficult story. We're going to hear some accounts of

torture that are incredibly upsetting. And we'll give you that warning before that happens. Here's Ben Taub.

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