Author: John Solomon, AP
Publication: Newsday.com
Date: September 21, 2003
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, mastermind
of the Sept. 11 attacks, has told American interrogators that he first
discussed the plot with Osama bin Laden in 1996 and that the original plan
called for hijacking five commercial jets on each U.S. coast before it
was modified several times, according to interrogation reports reviewed
by The Associated Press.
Mohammed also divulged that, in
its final stages, the hijacking plan called for as many as 22 terrorists
and four planes in a first wave, followed by a second wave of suicide hijackings
that were to be aided possibly by al- Qaida allies in southeast Asia, according
to the reports.
Over time, bin Laden scrapped various
parts of the Sept. 11 plan, including attacks on both coasts and hijacking
or bombing some planes in East Asia, Mohammed is quoted as saying in reports
that shed new light on the origins and evolution of the plot of Sept. 11,
2001.
Addressing one of the questions
raised by congressional investigators in their Sept. 11 review, Mohammed
said he never heard of a Saudi man named Omar al-Bayoumi who provided some
rent money and assistance to two hijackers when they arrived in California.
Congressional investigators have
suggested Bayoumi could have aided the hijackers or been a Saudi intelligence
agent, charges the Saudi government vehemently deny. The FBI has also cast
doubt on the congressional theory after extensive investigation and several
interviews with al-Bayoumi.
In fact, Mohammed claims he did
not arrange for anyone on U.S. soil to assist hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar
and Nawaf al-Hazmi when they arrived in California. Mohammed said there
"were no al-Qaida operatives or facilitators in the United States to help
al-Mihdhar or al-Hazmi settle in the United States," one of the reports
state.
Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were on
the plane that was flown into the Pentagon.
Mohammed portrays those two hijackers
as central to the plot, and even more important than Mohammed Atta, initially
identified by Americans as the likely hijacking ringleader. Mohammed said
he communicated with al-Hazmi and al- Mihdhar while they were in the United
States by using Internet chat software, the reports states.
Mohammed said al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar
were among the four original operatives bin Laden assigned to him for the
plot, a significant revelation because those were the only two hijackers
whom U.S. authorities were frantically seeking for terrorist ties in the
final days before Sept. 11.
U.S. authorities continue to investigate
the many statements that Mohammed has made in interrogations, seeking to
eliminate deliberate misinformation. But they have been able to corroborate
with other captives and evidence much of his account of the Sept. 11 planning.
Mohammed told his interrogators
the hijacking teams were originally made up of members from different countries
where al-Qaida had recruited, but that in the final stages bin Laden chose
instead to use a large group of young Saudi men to populate the hijacking
teams.
As the plot came closer to fruition,
Mohammed learned "there was a large group of Saudi operatives that would
be available to participate as the muscle in the plot to hijack planes
in the United States," one report says Mohammed told his captors.
Saudi Arabia was bin Laden's home,
though it revoked his citizenship in the 1990s, and he reviled its alliance
with the United States during the Gulf War and beyond. Saudis have suggested
for months that bin Laden has been trying to drive a wedge between the
United States and their kingdom, hoping to fracture the alliance.
U.S. intelligence has suggested
that Saudis were chosen, instead, because there were large numbers willing
to follow bin Laden and they could more easily get into the United States
because of the countries' friendly relations.
Mohammed's interrogation report
states he told Americans some of the original operatives assigned to the
plot did not make it because they had trouble getting into the United States.
Mohammed was captured in a March
1 raid by Pakistani forces and CIA operatives in Rawalpindi. He is being
interrogated by the CIA at an undisclosed location.
He told interrogators about other
terror plots that were in various stages of planning or had been temporarily
disrupted when he was captured, including one planned for Singapore.
The sources who allowed AP to review
the reports insisted that specific details not be divulged about those
operations because U.S. intelligence continues to investigate some of the
methods and search for some of the operatives.
The interrogation reports make dramatically
clear that Mohammed and al-Qaida were still actively looking to strike
U.S., Western and Israeli targets across the world as of this year.
Mohammed told his interrogators
he had worked in 1994 and 1995 in the Philippines with Ramzi Yousef, Abdul
Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah on the foiled Bojinka plot to blow
up 12 Western airliners simultaneously in Asia.
After Yousef and Murad were captured,
foiling the plot in its final stages, Mohammed began to devise a new plot
that focused on hijackings on U.S. soil.
In 1996, he went to meet bin Laden
to persuade the al-Qaida leader "to give him money and operatives so he
could hijack 10 planes in the United States and fly them into targets,"
one of the interrogation reports state.
Mohammed told interrogators his
initial thought was to pick five targets on each coast, but bin Laden was
not convinced such a plan was practical, the reports stated.
Mohammed said bin Laden offered
him four operatives to begin with -- al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi as well as
two Yemenis, Walid Muhammed bin Attash and Abu Bara al-Yemeni.
"All four operatives only knew that
they had volunteered for a martyrdom operation involving planes," one report
stated.
Mohammed said the first major change
to the plans occurred in 1999 when the two Yemeni operatives could not
get U.S. visas. Bin Laden then offered him additional operatives, including
a member of his personal security detail. The original two Yemenis were
instructed to focus on hijacking planes in East Asia.
Mohammed said through the various
iterations of the plot, he considered using a scaled-down version of the
Bojinka plan that would have bombed commercial airliners, and that he even
"contemplated attempting to down the planes using shoes bombs," one report
said.
The plot, he said, eventually evolved
into hijacking a small number of planes in the United States and East Asia
and either having them explode or crash into targets simultaneously, the
reports stated.
By 1999, the four original operatives
picked for the plot traveled to Afghanistan to train at one of bin Laden's
camps. The focus, Mohammed said, was on specialized commando training,
not piloting jets.
Mohammed's interrogations have revealed
the planning and training of operatives was extraordinarily meticulous,
including how to blend into American society, read telephone yellow pages,
and research airline schedules.
A key event in the plot, Mohammed
told his interrogators, was a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January
2000, that included al-Mihdhar, al-Hazmi and other al-Qaida operatives.
The CIA learned of the meeting beforehand and had it monitored by Malaysian
security, but it did not realize the significance of the two eventual hijackers
until just before the attacks.
The interrogation reports state
bin Laden further trimmed Mohammed's plans in spring 2000 when he canceled
the idea for hijackings in East Asia, thus narrowing it to the United States.
Bin Laden thought "it would be too difficult to synchronize" attacks in
the United States and Asia, one interrogation report quotes Mohammed as
saying.
Mohammed said around that time he
reached out to an al-Qaida linked group in southeast Asia known as Jemaah
Islamiyah. He began "recruiting JI operatives for inclusion in the hijacking
plot as part of his second wave of hijacking attacks to occur after Sept.
11," one summary said.
Jemaah Islamiyah's operations chief,
Riduan Isamuddin Hambali, had attended part of the January 2000 meeting
in Kuala Lumpur but Mohammed said he was there at that time only because
"as a rule had had to be informed" of events in his region. Later, Hambali's
operative began training possible recruits for the second wave, according
to the interrogation report.
One of those who received training
in Malaysia before coming to the United States was Zacarias Moussaoui,
the Frenchman accused of conspiring with the Sept. 11 attacks. Moussaoui
has denied being part of the Sept. 11 plot, and U.S. and foreign intelligence
officials have said he could have been set for hijacking a plane in a later
wave of attacks.