3. Author interview with senior NSC official.
4. Author interviews, 2002, 2010.
5. Melissa Mahle, author interview, 2011.
6. Author copy.
7. FBI internal memorandum, author copy.
8. Author interview with senior Justice Department official, 2011.
9. Author interview, 2011.
10. Author interview, 2010.
11. Internal 1997 FBI memorandum, author copy. The same memo indicated that KSM might have had more contacts with al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya. When authorities raided an al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya cell in Milan, Italy, they found an address book that contained KSM’s Doha telephone number.
12. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission), Staff Statement 16 (Twelfth Public Hearing), June 16, 2004. The Congressional Joint Inquiry final report, December 2003, page 30, contained the first official confirmation of the sequence of events that brought Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the airliner plot to Al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission elaborated on this in much greater detail.
CHAPTER 8—Thin Air
1. Mike Garcia, author interview, 2011.
2. George Tenet, “Written Statement for the Record of the Director of Central Intelligence before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,” March 24, 2004, author copy.
CHAPTER 9—The Plot
1. FBI internal memorandum, 1999, quoting CIA reporting.
2. Central Intelligence Agency, “Khalid Shaykh Muhammad: Preeminent Source on Al-Qa’ida,” July 13, 2004, author copy.
3. Author interview, 2001.
4. CIA, “Khalid Sheikh Mohammad Revelations,” undated analysis, author copy.
5. Jack Roche, author telephone interview, 2011.
6. Author interview, 2002.
7. Author interview, 2010.
8. Author copy.
9. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission), Staff Statement 16 (Twelfth Public Hearing), June 16, 2004.
10. Author interview, 2011.
CHAPTER 10—September 11
1. George Tenet, “Written Statement for the Record of the Director of Central Intelligence before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,” March 24, 2004, author copy.
2. Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire (New York: Free Press, 2006), 240.
3. Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding, Masterminds of Terror: The Truth Behind the Most Devastating Terrorist Attack the World Has Ever Seen (London: Arcade Publishing, 2003), 159.
CHAPTER 11—Panic
1. Flight manifest, United Airlines flight 93, FBI investigative record, author copy. The manifests for all four doomed flights were later offered in evidence in United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui, 2006. There has been considerable debate among 9/11 conspiracy theorists as to whether the hijackers were actually on board that day. The manifests, which were obtained independently, are evidence that they were.
2. FBI investigative record, author copy. Atta’s rental car was caught on camera entering the parking garage just fifteen minutes before the scheduled departure of the commuter flight. The trip to Maine beggars explanation; Atta nearly wrecked the whole plot by going. The best explanation law enforcement has been able to devise for the trip was that Atta somehow thought it would lessen his exposure to airport security. In fact, he doubled his exposure because he had to go through a separate security check upon arrival and transfer at Logan.
3. Author interview, 2011.
4. Author copy, obtained from John Berger at Intelwire: http://intelwire.egoplex.com/2006_11_21_exclusives.html.
5. Pickard had been acting director of the Bureau before Mueller was appointed. He was everything Mueller was not—a known quantity, a career FBI man, a one-time undercover agent on the ABSCAM sting. For more on the insularity of FBI culture, see Garrett M. Graff’s The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War in the Age of Global Terror (New York: Little, Brown, 2011), which is an excellent guide to the history and administrative workings of the contemporary FBI.
6. Dennis Lormel, author interview, 2011.
7. Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006). Suskind’s book is excellent throughout.
8. Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine. Jane Mayer also includes a detailed description of Black’s proposals in The Dark Side (28–43).
9. E-mail from Moussaoui to Pan Am International Flight Academy, May 23, 2001, offered as evidence in Moussaoui.
10. Author interview, 2011.
11. Testimony before the National Commission on Terrorism Attacks Upon the United States, April 13, 2004.
CHAPTER 12—KSM Ascendant
1. KSM’s role in organizing the retreat from Afghanistan was detailed by captured jihadis. These accounts are memorialized in various Joint Task Force Guantánamo Detainee Assessment Briefs (author copies).
2. For more on the history of these sorts of groups, see Stephen Tankel, “Lash-kar-e-Taiba: Past Operations and Future Prospects” (Washington, D.C.: New America Foundation, April 2011). Lashkar-e-Taiba later became infamous for staging the deadly attacks in Mumbai, India, in 2008. Tankel’s book, Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), incorporates this paper and provides a definitive account of Lashkar-e-Taiba’s founding, growth, and operations.
3. KSM family members, author interviews, 2002, 2003, 2010.
4. The Pearl Project, The Truth Left Behind: Inside the Kidnapping and Murder of Daniel Pearl (Washington, D.C.: The Center for Public Integrity, 2011).
5. Department of Defense, “Summary of José Padilla’s Activities with Al Qaeda,” contained in correspondence with the Department of Justice, May 28, 2004, author copy.
6. Joint Task Force Guantánamo, Detainee Assessment Brief, December 8, 2006.
7. http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch5.htm.
8. Transcripts of the interrogation of Mohammed Jabarah.
9. Jack Roche, author telephone interview, 2011.
10. Joint Task Force Guantánamo Combatant Status Review Tribunal for Saifullah Paracha, December 24, 2004, author copy.
11. Stipulation of Fact, USA v. Majid Shoukat Khan, February 13, 2012.
12. Senior Sindh provincial police official, author interview.
13. Knowledgeable American intelligence source, author interview. This account is different from some others, notably in identifying KSM’s accomplices, but rings true given the more general descriptions offered otherwise and KSM’s heavy reliance on his relatives for sensitive work. The Pearl Project, for example, identifies the accomplices as Baluchi—the ethnicity of KSM’s nephews.
14. Pearl Project, The Truth Left Behind.
CHAPTER 13—In Plain Sight
1. Memo sent to all FBI offices by the New York bin Laden unit, April 13, 2001, author copy.
2. Ty Fairman, author interview, 2011.
3. Hussain Baloch, KSM’s uncle, author interview.
4. Don Van Natta, Jr., and Desmond Butler, “How Tiny Swiss Cellphone Chips Helped Track Global Terror Web,” New York Times, March 4, 2004. The Times originally broke this story. It has been elaborated upon since then, and details of the surveillance were revealed in European courts.
5. Participants in the interrogation and Department of Justice documents, author copies.
6. Joint Task Force Guantánamo, Detainee Assessment Briefs.
7. Author interview, 2002.
8. Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding, Masterminds of Terror: The Truth Behind the Most Devastating Terrorist Attack the World Has Ever Seen (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2003), 22–27; 105–10.
9. Fouda and Fielding, Masterminds of Terror, 114.
10. Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine, 139.
11. Senior Sindh provincial police official, author interview.
12. Joint Task Force Guantánamo, Combatant Status Review Tribu
nal, summary of evidence.
CHAPTER 14—Betrayal
1. Author interview, Pakistan, November 2002.
2. Senior intelligence operative, author interview, Washington, D.C., 2011.
3. The Limburg was saved by its modern, double-hull design. A tanker with a capacity of more than 500,000 barrels, the ship stayed afloat and leaked just 90,000 barrels of oil as a result of the attack by bomb-laden speedboats. Al-Nashiri, at his tribunal at Guantánamo, said almost comically that he knew the men involved in both attacks and might have given them money that originated with Osama bin Laden, but he thought he was investing in fishing boats—or perhaps it was a wedding gift; Joint Task Force Guantánamo Combatant Status Review Tribunal, March 14, 2007, author copy.
4. Senior UAE official, 2003, author interview.
5. Author copy.
6. Abdul Aziz Ali (Ali Abdul Aziz Ali’s father), author interviews, Kuwait, 2002, 2010.
7. Most of the account of Ali’s activities is drawn from his 2006 Detainee Assessment Brief and his 2008 Combatant Status Review Tribunal, both conducted by the Joint Task Force Guantánamo. Corroborating details were obtained from other Detainee Assessment Briefs.
8. Except for small amounts provided by the families of the hijackers, virtually all the money spent by the hijackers in preparation for the 9/11 plot was funneled to them by electronic transfers from Ali and al-Hawsawi in the United Arab Emirates. The total was less than $300,000, according to the financial investigation conducted by the FBI. Almost all that was spent on flight training and living expenses.
9. Joint Task Force Guantánamo Combatant Status Review Tribunal, November 26, 2004. Paracha said later that the money was an investment in a proposed production deal that was never realized.
10. FBI FD-302s on the interview with Abdul Hakim Murad, May 1995, author copy. The housing was usually for the associates, not Basit, who preferred to stay at hotels. He told his Manila Air accomplice, Abdul Hakim Murad, that he didn’t get along with Abdul Karim and preferred not to spend time with him. Another brother, a schoolteacher who lived in Quetta, also provided lodging for Basit’s associates upon request.
11. A senior ISI officer said that almost everyone they arrested seemed to know Mukhtar, even though most of them didn’t know one another; author interview, November 2002.
12. Senior U.S. government official, author interview, August 2011.
13. Author interviews, Pakistan, 2002.
14. Joint Task Force Guantánamo Detainee Assessment Brief, 2006. A letter he had written advising others on preparations for bombing hotels in Karachi was found at the safe house where his children had been taken into custody. No one had a clear idea what it said until he translated his personal code after he was captured.
15. Senior intelligence operative, author interview, Washington, D.C., 2011.
16. Author interview, Pakistan, 2002.
17. The name of and other details about the informant have been withheld at the CIA’s request. The agency says that he has been targeted by Al Qaeda and that if his real name was revealed he and his family would be put at risk and they would have to be relocated again. This account is drawn from multiple author interviews with KSM’s relatives during 2010 and 2011, and from interviews with a senior American intelligence officer and an American intelligence operative, both during 2011. Key aspects of this account were further corroborated by author interviews with senior government officials.
18. Senior CIA official, author interview, 2011.
19. George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 251.
20. Senior government official, author interview, August 2011.
21. Joint Task Force Guantánamo Combatant Status Review Tribunal for Mustafa al-Hawsawi, March 21, 2007.
22. Ibid.
23. Senior Pakistani government official, author interview, May 2011.
24. Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, 252.
CHAPTER 15—In Captivity
1. Christina Lamb, “Was Khalid Arrested Where the FBI Said He Was?” Sunday Times (London), March 9, 2003.
2. The man, Adil Qadoos, was later court-martialed and sentenced to ten years in prison.
3. CIA senior official, background briefing, July 21, 2004.
4. Author copy.
5. Author interview, 2003.
6. Author interview, Washington, D.C., 2010.
7. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, “A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantánamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq,” May 2008.
8. A copy of the video was later obtained by 60 Minutes producer Ira Rosen, who graciously shared it with us.
9. Central Intelligence Agency, “Detainee Reporting Pivotal for the War Against Al-Qa’ida,” June 2005, author copy.
10. Department of Defense, Detainee Biographies, accessed at http://www.defense.gov/pdf/detaineebiographies1.pdf.
11. Senior FBI official, author interview, 2011.
12. Author interview, 2010.
13. Ibid.
CHAPTER 16—The Black Sites and Beyond
1. An exquisitely detailed set of memos from the Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, authorized the use of the specific methods as well as the conditions under which they could be employed. The first memo, signed by Jay S. Bybee, an assistant attorney general, was written in August of 2002. It specifically cites the origin of the interrogation procedures in army torture-resistance manuals.
2. Author interview, 2011.
3. International Committee of the Red Cross, “ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen ‘High Value Detainees’ in CIA Custody,” February 2007. This remarkable document, first brought to light by Mark Danner writing in the New York Review of Books, is based on interviews conducted with the fourteen residents of the black sites who were sent to Guantánamo in 2006. In summary, the ICRC said: “The ICRC wishes to underscore that the consistency of the detailed allegations provided separately by each of the fourteen adds particular weight to the information provided below. The general term ‘ill-treatment’ has been used throughout the following section; however, it should in no way be understood as minimizing the severity of the conditions and treatment to which the detainees were subjected. Indeed . . . the ICRC clearly considers that the allegations of the fourteen include descriptions of treatment and interrogation techniques—singly or in combination—that amounted to torture and/or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
4. Central Intelligence Agency, “Detainee Reporting Pivotal for the War Against Al-Qa’ida,” June 2005, author copy.
5. Ibid.
6. Forty seconds, according to the Office of Legal Counsel memos.
7. Two senior intelligence operatives, author interviews, 2011. The female officer routinely visited the black sites. She was not well liked by many of those who worked with her.
8. Senior intelligence operative, author interview, 2011.
9. International Committee of the Red Cross, “ICRC Report.”
10. Author interview, 2011.
11. Joint Task Force Guantánamo Combatant Status Review Tribunal for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, March 10, 2007, author copy. A verbatim transcript of the tribunal is included in the appendix.
12. Author copy.
13. Author interview, 2006.
14. Author interview, 2011.
15. Senior Department of Defense prosecutor, author interview, 2011.
16. Author copies.
17. Joint Task Force Guantánamo Combatant Status Review Tribunal for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, March 10, 2007, author copy.
18. Ibid.
19. Former attorney general Michael Mukasey complained in a 2011 speech that the exercise room next door to KSM’s cell had the same elliptical machine as did his gym when he was attorney general.
20. Michael Isikoff, “How Profile of bin Laden Courier Led CIA to Its Target,” MSNBC.com, May 4, 2011. There are numerous accounts of the CI
A’s interest in al-Kuwaiti that were confirmed by author interviews. Isikoff’s is among the best.
21. Scott Shane and Charlie Savage, “Bin Laden Raid Revives Debate on Value of Torture,” New York Times, May 3, 2011.
22. Isikoff, “How Profile of bin Laden Courier Led CIA.”
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bergen, Peter L. The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and Al-Qaeda. New York: Free Press, 2011.
Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. New York: Penguin Press, 2004.
Fouda, Yosri, and Nick Fielding. Masterminds of Terror: The Truth Behind the Most Devastating Terrorist Attack the World Has Ever Seen. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2003.
Graff, Garrett M. The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War in the Age of Global Terror. New York: Little, Brown, 2011.
Gunaratna, Rohan, and Khuram Iqbal. Pakistan: Terrorism Ground Zero. London: Reaktion Books, 2011.
Kessler, Ronald. The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2008.
Kiriakou, John, with Michael Ruby. The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror. New York: Bantam Books, 2010.
Lance, Peter. Triple Cross: How bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI—and Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him. New York: Regan Books, 2006.
Lieven, Anatol. Pakistan: A Hard Country. New York: Public Affairs, 2011.
Mayer, Jane. The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. New York: Doubleday, 2008.
McDermott, Terry. Perfect Soldiers: The Hijackers—Who They Were, Why They Did It. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.
Al-Mdaires, Falah Abdullah. Islamic Extremism in Kuwait: From the Muslim Brotherhood to al-Qaeda and Other Islamist Political Groups. London: Routledge, 2010.
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