Mastermind

by Richard Miniter

  Importantly, he also identified KSM.

  Murad also explained KSM’s idea to hijack planes and fly them into buildings in the United States, according to a January 20, 1995, Philippine police report:With respect to their plans to dive-crash a commercial aircraft at the CIA headquarters in Virginia, subject [Murad] alleged that the idea of doing same came out during his casual conversation with Abdul Basit [Ramzi Yousef] and there is no specific plan yet for its execution. What the subject have [sic] in his mind is that he will board any American commercial aircraft and pretending [sic] to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit, and dive it at the CIA headquarters. There will be no bomb or any explosive that he will use in its execution. It is simply a suicidal mission that he is very much willing to execute. That all he need [sic] is to be able to board the aircraft with a pistol so that he could execute the hijacking.

  Meanwhile, police arrested another terror-team member, Wali Amin Shah, on January 11, 1995. He, too, spoke freely to the police—perhaps in the hopes of shifting the blame. When Shah was taken into custody, he had “in his possession a detonating cord, mercury, a quartz timer, two sets of handcuffs, springs for a pistol and a firing pin. These items were to be used for the attempt on the pope’s life.”27

  Shah, too, also tipped off Philippine police to the existence of KSM.28

  In his own interrogation, Shah said he had met with a man named Adam Ali in Manila in connection with the plot to kill the pope. He recalled that he had been introduced to the same man in Karachi in 1992, under the name Abu Khalid.

  In addition to interrogations, the police had a wealth of physical evidence. Ramzi Yousef’s Toshiba laptop proved to be a gold mine. So did a handwritten notebook in Arabic: “It was like a cookbook with step-by-step instructions on how to make various bombs,” said one Philippine official, adding that the FBI later found fingerprints on the notebook matching those of Ramzi Yousef.29 Yousef was compulsive about writing out his bomb-making recipes.

  Finally, Yousef’s laptop revealed the other cell members, including clues leading to KSM. All five cell members were identified from photographs found on Yousef’s computer. Though the computer file that contained the photographs had been erased, Philippine authorities were able to easily restore it.30

  Inside the U.S. federal bureaucracy, identifying the KSM threat was a glacial process.

  “I read the cable traffic as the operation against Murad, Shah, and Yousef unfolded,” former CIA officer Melissa Boyle Mahle writes.31 “It was complicated, with pieces coming in a bit at a time, in the most confusing of patterns. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was just a blip on the screen. He would later become a major target on my screen.”

  Larry Johnson, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, got the call that finally put KSM in U.S. crosshairs from Philippine colonel Rodolfo “Boogie” Mendoza. After combing through the aliases and intricate patterns, a pointillist portrait was forming. At first, like bin Laden, KSM was seen as merely a terror financier. This is like describing a producer as simply a movie financier; some producers develop ideas, get scripts written, and bring movies into being. At the time, financial middlemen like KSM were competing to produce bigger and bigger terrorist blockbusters.

  KSM also appeared on the screen of Mary Jo White, the diminutive, no-nonsense federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York.

  Mary Jo White was in a bureaucratic tug-of-war with the deputy attorney general in Washington, Eric Holder. Both wanted the chance to prosecute the “Manila Air” plot.

  White had to phone Attorney General Janet Reno to get control of the case.

  While Mary Jo White was preparing her case, the staff of the White House’s West Wing was preparing the president.

  The CIA and the FBI briefed the National Security Council’s Richard Clarke. This was something too big to ignore. President Clinton himself had been one of the targets.

  The briefing was extensive and detailed. Ramzi Yousef was the focus, as the alleged ringleader and World Trade Center bomber. But somewhere along the way, a financier named Khalid was mentioned. He wasn’t given any special attention. Yet it was likely the first time U.S. officials outside the intelligence community had referred, even indirectly, to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

  A manhunt for Ramzi Yousef began immediately.

  6

  Losing Ramzi

  Ramzi Yousef was led by Ishiatique Parker, a South African Muslim he had met only a few months before, down Street 20 in the F-7 district of Islamabad, Pakistan. Snaking past the residence of the Iraqi ambassador, they soon came to number 31, the Su-Casa Guest House. The small structure had tacky Greek pillars, and a fake balcony loomed over the front door. Parker led the legendary fugitive into its white-marble-tiled lobby.

  It was a strange neighborhood for a hideout. The streets were crowded with uniformed policemen and military officers, and the neighborhood was home to many of Pakistan’s senior officials and diplomats. Parker explained that he lived diagonally across the street and that the neighborhood was “safe.” But it wouldn’t be safe for long: Parker was laying a trap for Yousef.

  KSM was waiting for them at the guesthouse. We do not know when he left the Philippines or how, but, by February 1995, he was happily back in Pakistan.

  With the Philippine plots in tatters, KSM was already working on his next attack, which involved placing high-tech explosives in remote-controlled toy cars.

  For thirty-two days, the FBI, the CIA, Pakistan’s ISI, and the Philippine National Police had been hunting Ramzi Yousef. Somehow, he had eluded a global dragnet.

  Neither KSM nor Ramzi Yousef knew that Murad’s interrogation in Manila had revealed that the cell’s rendezvous point after the attacks was to be Karachi, Pakistan.1 No one in the intelligence community thought that Ramzi Yousef was foolish enough to go to the “rally point” in Karachi once the operation was blown. This crucial bit of intelligence only gave investigators a place to start looking, a country and possibly a city to begin the search in. The Department of Justice distributed posters and matchbooks featuring Ramzi Yousef’s face (see photo section). Below his name and face was a reward for $2 million. It was a shot in the dark. If the FBI was lucky, one of his acquaintances would turn him in.

  KSM and Ramzi Yousef also did not know that they had acquired a powerful enemy: President Clinton’s counterterrorism czar, Richard Clarke. Even the intelligence officers who privately complained that he was a bully would, in the same breath, say that he was a devoted and surprisingly effective career counterterrorism officer. From his office in the White House’s National Security Council, in the area called the “rabbit warren,” Clarke made finding Ramzi Yousef his highest priority. In one of the oddities of history, Clarke occupied Colonel Oliver North’s former office. Indeed, Clarke made use of Colonel North’s illicit second-story loft, which had been installed to provide space for additional staff.

  Clarke relentlessly brought up Ramzi Yousef in his meetings with other intelligence officials. His favorite question was “Well, where is he?”

  On the first Sunday in February 1995, Clarke arrived at his office shortly after 6 A.M. to read the classified cable traffic from the night before. Suddenly, he stopped reading.

  Ramzi Yousef has been seen in Islamabad.

  So the World Trade Center bomber was in Pakistan. . . .

  Clarke knew enough to be cautious. There are many false dawns in a terrorist manhunt. The report could be false (the $2 million price on Yousef’s head produced a lot of useless leads) or it could be a case of mistaken identity (a Ramzi Yousef look-alike).

  The clock was ticking. The cable said Yousef was leaving in a few hours on a bus for Peshawar, on the border of Afghanistan. Clarke might not get another chance.

  He phoned the FBI’s counterterrorism section.

  “O’Neill.”

  Clarke did not recognize the name of the new section chief. “Who are you?”

  “I’m John O’Neill
. Who the fuck are you?”2

  It was the start of a remarkable partnership. O’Neill had been brought to Washington only days before, to helm the Bureau’s anti-terror efforts; he had driven all night from Chicago and come into the office on a Sunday, a day before he was supposed to start work. O’Neill’s gung-ho approach landed him a historic opportunity.

  Clarke asked him to put together a team to capture Ramzi Yousef. An overseas rendition—a kind of legal kidnapping—is a massive bureaucratic enterprise. O’Neill, operating out of the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center, had to make the bureaucratic wheels turn quickly—and on a weekend. The State Department would have to grant clearance for the FBI team to enter Pakistan and work with the Pakistanis. The CIA would have to pool its information with the FBI. The Air Force would have to supply aircraft, both a helicopter and a plane. (At Pakistan’s insistence, the USAF had to repaint its helicopter as a civilian one.3) The National Security Agency would have to greenlight the use of its satellites, and so on. The to-do list was long.

  And, on top of all that, both Clarke and O’Neill knew they would have to write themselves a bureaucratic insurance policy, in case the cable was wrong or Ramzi Yousef got away.

  Inside the FBI, O’Neill found a fingerprint expert who could conclusively match the suspect (assuming he was captured) with a print lifted from a brown bottle of sodium azide4 found in the Space Station storage unit, which had served as the New Jersey bomb-making factory for the 1993 World Trade Center attack.5 O’Neill also found and dispatched a doctor, in case Ramzi Yousef was wounded in the capture.6 The fingerprint expert and the doctor were bureaucratic insurance: if they captured the wrong man or wounded the right one, they had the capacity to mitigate the possible career damage.

  Most of all, O’Neill needed an experienced capture team from the Bureau’s New York office. Finally, O’Neill had to arrange for a midair refueling of the Air Force jet. He couldn’t risk landing the plane in a third country; he feared that Ramzi Yousef would claim asylum if it touched down anywhere in the world. The operation would end up costing the military some $12 million.7

  While one FBI team was readying to leave, O’Neill had to find federal personnel in Pakistan—right now!—to actually seize Ramzi Yousef before he fled by bus. There was only one FBI official in Islamabad at the time. O’Neill made more calls. He rounded up a strapping Drug Enforcement Agency official and several bruisers from the U.S. embassy’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. It would have to do.

  The Bureau’s source was Ishiatique Parker.8 Yousef had tried to recruit him for a future terror operation over tea months before, but the $2 million reward had made him bold enough to turn in the world’s most wanted terrorist.

  The FBI wanted Parker to knock on Room 16 of the Su-Casa Guest House and make sure Yousef was there. Parker nervously realized that he was going to have to earn that $2 million.

  Parker walked out of the door of the Su-Casa Guest House and lifted his skullcap. The capture team knew what that meant.

  At approximately 9:30 in the morning local time, Pakistani Special Forces battered down Yousef’s door. In seconds, the barefoot bomb maker was spread-eagled on the floor and handcuffed. Federal agents flooded into the small room, seizing and bagging all of Yousef’s belongings as evidence. Investigators found photographs of Osama bin Laden posing with an AK-47 (which may have been meant as a gift for a friend or family member) and a business card from KSM among Ramzi Yousef’s belongings.

  Meanwhile, KSM boldly spoke to the press, saying he was also staying in the hotel and had seen the operation go down. The Associated Press reporter referred to him as “Khalid Shaikh,” just an ordinary guest at the hotel.

  “It was like a hurricane,” KSM told the Associated Press. “They stormed in and left in less than five minutes.”

  KSM added, clearly enjoying his moment, that Ramzi had shouted, “I’m innocent, I’m innocent” as he was dragged away.9 No other account records these words of Ramzi Yousef. It may have been KSM’s feeble attempt to help Ramzi Yousef or to send him a message (assuming, of course, that he would be able to read the press coverage of his capture).

  After the police and reporters left, KSM must have been devastated.

  Ramzi Yousef was not only his closest friend, but his only friend. Since childhood, they had done nearly everything together. Even during the 1993 World Trade Center bomb plot, they were in touch several times per day. They had lived together, traveled together, risked their lives together. They were closer to each other than they were to their own wives. Now Ramzi was gone and the damage was irreversible.

  KSM, for the first time in his life, was truly alone.

  On the other side of the world, news of Ramzi Yousef’s capture produced an opposite feeling: joy.

  President Clinton’s national security adviser, Tony Lake, was alone in his kitchen when the phone rang. Lake knew that 1 A.M. calls came with the job.

  It was Clarke. He sounded excited. That was unusual. “We’ve got him.”

  Ramzi Yousef was in custody. Pinching the phone between his shoulder and his head, Lake clapped so that Clarke could hear it.

  “Going after terrorists is usually a drawn-out, sometimes ambiguous process,” Lake told me. “In brief moments of success, you get a surge of adrenaline and something like joy. And this was such a moment.”10

  After Ramzi Yousef was transferred to U.S. custody, he became talkative. FBI special agent Brad Garrett’s initial interview is vividly captured in an internal FBI report:At approximately 10:37 A.M. on 2-7-95, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, shortly after being arrested by Pakistani Military officials, was interviewed by FBI Special Agent Brad Garrett at a military station in Islamabad, Pakistan. Yousef was asked what his name is and he stated “I have many,” but he stated he is presently using Ali Baloch, DOB [Date of Birth] 2-15-66. Yousef was asked if he is Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and he stated that he was Yousef and that the individual in the FBI wanted flyer is in fact him.

  Yousef was fingerprinted at the military station with a preliminary indication that his prints match Yousef. Yousef stated that his real name is Abdul Basit, DOB: 4-27-68 and that he was born in Kuwait. Yousef was verbally advised of his [Miranda] rights and then [the] SA [Special Agent] wrote out in longhand his rights and read them to Yousef. Yousef advised he understood his rights, does not want an attorney and will voluntarily talk.

  Yousef was asked if he committed the World Trade Center (WTC) bombing and he stated, “I masterminded the explosion.” Yousef stated he purchased the materials to build the bomb from City Chemicals in Jersey City, NJ. Yousef stated the WTC bombing cost less than $20,000. Yousef stated he built the bomb used in the WTC bombing. Yousef declined to state who provided the money [he didn’t want to trap KSM] but he stated the money partly came from friends in Pakistan. Yousef said that because of a lack of funds, the WTC was not as successful as he desired. Yousef stated he was hoping for a quarter million casualties but could not obtain the funds to complete the bomb to his satisfaction.

  Yousef stated the reason for the bombings was because of the U.S. military, financial and political support of Israel. Yousef talked at length about Israel being an illegal state and that Israel is committing criminal acts against Muslims. Yousef stated that the American people would need to convince Washington of changing Israeli policy and this would happen by bombing various locations in the U.S. Yousef stated that he was most affected by a BBC report, where Israeli soldiers broke the hand of a Palestinian using a rock. Yousef stated he has no personal agenda with the U.S., only the U.S.-Israeli policy.

  Yousef stated that he was born in Kuwait and lived there for 20 years until the Iraqi war [against Kuwait] when his family moved to Pakistan. Yousef stated that his family was originally from Pakistan. He attended high school in Kuwait and from 1986 to 1989 attended the West Glamorgan Institute of Higher Learning in the United Kingdom. Yousef stated he earned a Higher National Diploma in Electronics and the course was called Computer Aided Electronics
. In 1989 he returned to Kuwait and worked as a communications engineer at the National Computer Center for the Minister of Planning. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Yousef then moved to Pakistan.

  After moving to Pakistan Yousef stated he went to various training camps in Afghanistan for a period of six months. Yousef described these camps as “a place Arabs can get training” in explosives, defensive tactics, weapons use, etc. These camps are located at various sites in Afghanistan but Yousef declined to provide their locations or any specific information about their funding or manpower. Yousef stated that after training in Afghanistan, he returned to Pakistan and continued to read about bomb building.

  Yousef stated that during World War II the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Japan to force Japan to surrender. Yousef advised the same logic applies to him setting off explosive devices at U.S. targets to force the U.S. to change their policy toward Israel. Yousef stated that this is an extreme approach but believes it is the only way to force the U.S. to withdraw its support of Israel.

  Yousef asked [the] SA [Special Agent] several questions about executions in the U.S. and asked the length of time before executions are carried out after receiving the death penalty. Yousef stated he believes that he will be executed in the U.S.11

  During the final leg of Ramzi Yousef’s transcontinental journey, he was shackled to the seat of a helicopter. He remained talkative throughout the long trip.

  The two FBI agents with him were concerned that if Yousef saw them taking notes, he would stop talking. They took turns sneaking back into the rear seats to scribble down notes from Yousef’s conversation.

  Looming large in the front windows were the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The flight plan was no accident.

  “You see that? They’re still standing,” one FBI agent said.