Khalid Sheik Mohammed, shown shortly after his capture in March, said he first discussed the Sept. 11, 2001, plot with Osama bin Laden in 1996.
9/11 Planner Tells of Plot's Origins
Mohammed Says He and Bin Laden Discussed Hijacking Five Planes on Each Coast
By John Solomon
Associated Press
Monday, September 22, 2003; Page A02
Khalid Sheik Mohammed, mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has told U.S. 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 Qaeda allies in southeast Asia, according to the reports.
Over time, bin Laden scrapped 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.
Addressing one of the questions raised by congressional investigators in their Sept. 11 review, Mohammed said he never heard of Omar Bayoumi, a Saudi who provided 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 denies. The FBI has also cast doubt on the congressional theory after extensive investigation and several interviews with Bayoumi.
In fact, Mohammed says he did not arrange for anyone on U.S. soil to assist hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi 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 states.
Almihdhar and Alhazmi 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 Mohamed Atta, initially identified by Americans as the likely hijacking ringleader.
Mohammed said he communicated with Alhazmi and Almihdhar while they were in the United States by using Internet chat software, the reports states.
Mohammed said Alhazmi and Almihdhar were among the four original operatives bin Laden assigned to him for the plot, a significant revelation because they were the only two hijackers whom U.S. authorities were frantically seeking for terrorist ties in the final days before Sept. 11, 2001.
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 that the hijacking teams were originally made up of members from different countries where al Qaeda 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 that "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 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 says he told Americans that 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, Pakistan. 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 clear that Mohammed and al Qaeda were still actively looking to strike U.S., Western and Israeli targets across the world as of this year.
