Mastermind

by Richard Miniter

  Nawar’s truck barreled through the whitewashed archway of the synagogue. An accomplice, believed to be his brother, jumped from the vehicle.25 The accomplice’s role may have been to keep Nawar from losing his nerve. Whatever the accomplice’s purpose, as usual in Al Qaeda attacks, terror is a family affair.

  Seconds later, Nawar pressed a detonator button rigged to the dashboard. The electric current raced down a looping wire to the pressurized natural-gas tank. It exploded.

  An oval blot of light suddenly expanded outward from the truck in all directions and disappeared. After the blinding flash came the boom, the vibratory roar of displaced air. Nearly two dozen people were instantly on fire. As they rolled and writhed to extinguish the flames, others cried out in German and French. They had been sliced through by nearly molten metal—pieces of fuel tank—moving at bullet speeds.

  Paul Sauvage’s family was protected by the ancient synagogue’s sloping stone walls, but he was caught out in the open. He died in minutes.

  Over the next few weeks, twenty other people—German, French, and Tunisian—succumbed to their wounds and died.

  The Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites took credit for the attack.26 As in KSM’s previous attacks, the group claiming credit was fictitious. Unlike 1970s terror organizations, it did not use bombings to establish its bona fides for negotiation with governments. It only wanted to hurt those connected, if only symbolically, with the governments it opposed.

  The government of Tunisia, an Arabic-speaking country south of Sicily on the North African coast, made it clear that it did not condone the anti-Semitic attack. Tunisian intelligence worked closely with their French and German counterparts, sharing physical evidence, witness interviews, and other leads.

  The damage to the synagogue was rapidly repaired. The shattered skeleton of the truck was hauled away within hours of the attack. Synagogue president Perez Trabelsi said that the government supplied almost one hundred men who worked for fifteen days to repaint the scorched walls and repair the wounded synagogue. “We are very grateful,” Trabelsi told The Guardian.27

  Back at a secret CIA facility outside of Bangkok, Thailand, Abu Zubaydah’s interrogations continued. He knew nothing about the attack in Tunisia, but he surprised his interrogators by talking about a plot to detonate a conventional bomb wrapped in radioactive material. The so-called dirty bomb would contaminate an area for years and, Al Qaeda operatives hoped, provoke a wave of panic among the American people.

  Zubaydah was not immediately forthcoming about the dirty bomber’s name. He had been drugged and waterboarded and possibly no longer remembered it. Alternatively, since the dirty-bomb plot was an ongoing operation, the KSM lieutenant might not have wanted to endanger its success.

  Zubaydah did describe Padilla’s physical appearance and said he was a “Latin American man who went by a Muslim name.”28

  After combing through commercial, police, and intelligence databases, CIA and customs officials found a probable match: José Padilla.

  A photo of Padilla was shown to Abu Zubaydah, who confirmed that he was the dirty bomber.

  By April 2002, American intelligence officials were actively searching for Padilla under a number of different aliases. They tracked his exit from Pakistan at Karachi International Airport, through Zurich, and then on to Cairo. He stayed with his Egyptian wife and sons for more than a month. In his absence, his wife had given birth to a second son, this one named Hassan.29

  In early May, he left his wife with a stack of money and said he was going to America. As he changed planes in Zurich on May 8, 2002, he didn’t realize that American and Swiss intelligence agents were joining him on the flight.

  When he landed at O’Hare International Airport, he was met by FBI agents at the gate. He was arrested on a “material witness warrant” related to the September 11 attacks.

  As a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil, Padilla posed a considerable legal problem for the Bush administration. If he were put through the normal legal channels and tried as a criminal defendant, he would have access to a defense attorney and presumably all of the government’s evidence against him. That meant that the federal government would have to disclose what it had learned from Abu Zubaydah and other operatives and under what means that information had been gleaned. Given the rules of evidence in criminal procedures, it is likely that the account supplied by Zubaydah and other detainees would be thrown out of court on the grounds that the information used to arrest Padilla had been unlawfully gained. It would also reveal the government’s interrogation techniques. Additionally, Padilla would be entitled to bring Abu Zubaydah and others into a federal courtroom as witnesses for his defense—posing immense logistical and security problems. The resulting police overtime payments would be costly and the public might well object to blocked streets and the risks of bringing known terrorists into their midst. Foreign intelligence agencies, which often supplied information used in the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and others, could also be made to testify—most likely ending their cooperation with the U.S. government. Pakistan and various Arab governments, while covertly aiding the United States, feared the domestic political problems—including terror attacks against their government buildings and citizens—that would be caused if they were publicly seen to be helping America. All of these reasons argued against what federal officials refer to as the “law enforcement option.”

  On the other hand, as a U.S. citizen held on U.S. soil, Padilla had certain inalienable constitutional rights, including the right to trial by a jury of his peers and the right to confront witnesses and evidence brought against him. He also had a constitutional right to a speedy trial and could not be held indefinitely without charge.

  The debate over Padilla’s fate ultimately reached the White House, with President Bush designating Padilla an “enemy combatant” who could be held in a U.S. military brig in South Carolina more or less indefinitely.

  In 2004, a panel of three judges found that Padilla could be lawfully held as an enemy combatant for an indefinite period, citing the U.S. Congress resolution authorizing the war on terror following the September 11 attacks and various other federal court precedents. After years of legal wrangling, Padilla was tried in a federal court and found to be guilty of conspiring to carry out terrorist attacks against the United States.

  Meanwhile, KSM, working from his safe house in Karachi, continued to plan and plot.

  Sometime after the summer of 2002, KSM, acting at Osama bin Laden’s direction, transferred money to his old associate known as Hambali, who ran the Southeast Asian terror organization Jemaah Islamiyah, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda.

  By September 2002, the FBI had learned from a captured Al Qaeda operative, Mohammed Mansour Jadara, that Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah had shifted from targeting hotels and embassies to going after “soft targets,” including bars, restaurants, and open-air areas crowded with Western tourists.30

  Australian and American intelligence officials were anticipating an Al Qaeda–Jemaah Islamiyah attack on October 7—the one-year anniversary of the start of the Afghan war against the Taliban. That year, October 7 fell on a Monday, and nothing happened.31

  On Saturday night, October 12, the nightclubs in the Kuta district of Bali were crowded with backpackers, bikers, and tourists.

  The beach bar Paddy’s Pub was a favorite for Australians and Americans visiting Bali, a peaceful piece of paradise in the island archipelago of Indonesia. Here surfers and sunbathers gathered to watch the sun set into the Indian Ocean.

  Few noticed the young man with the heavy backpack working his way through the crowd.

  Less than a hundred yards away, a white Mitsubishi L300 van was idling outside the Sari Club, a popular nightspot. Inside the van, the mission commander, a thirty-one-year-old Sumatran known as Idris (also known as Joni Hendrawan),32 instructed the second bomber to get behind the steering wheel. The bomber had only learned to drive in a straight line, but that day he would not have to d
rive very far.

  Idris got out of the van and mounted the back of a brand-new Yamaha motorcycle driven by an accomplice. As they sped away, Idris dialed the number of a cell-phone detonator attached to a bomb hidden at the U.S. consulate. It exploded, injuring one person and damaging the consulate’s outer gates.

  By now the backpack bomber had waded deep into the crowd at Paddy’s. No one heard him say “Allahu akbar,” but hundreds heard the explosion that followed. Shrapnel from the backpack bomb raced outward at a rate of more than thirty-two feet per second, tearing into merrymakers and soaking the concrete in blood and beer.

  Panicked survivors at Paddy’s emptied into the street, unknowingly heading for the white van.

  The van lurched forward, heading toward the Sari Club. Inside, twelve filing cabinets were filled with potassium chlorate, powderized aluminum, and a sulphur-TNT concoction. It was wired together with 450 feet of detonating cord and linked to ninety-four RDX electronic detonators. The bomb weighed 1.12 tons.

  As the crowd surged toward the van, the van exploded—sending out a wave of flame and shrapnel into the crowd.

  Lives ended in midsentence.

  Two hundred and two people died immediately or quickly succumbed to their wounds, including eighty-eight Australians, thirty-eight Indonesians, twenty-four Brits, and seven Americans.

  The survivors hobbled into the nearby Bounty Hotel with glass and metal etched into their faces and bodies. Many were severely burned, with the outer layers of their skin hanging off like carbon paper.

  Local hospitals were ill equipped to treat the flood of victims and soon ran out of skin-graft material. Burn victims were put into nearby swimming pools to ease their throbbing pain, and many were flown more than a thousand miles to emergency units in Australia.

  It was the deadliest attack in the history of Indonesia.

  Three of the surviving perpetrators (including Idris) were tried, convicted, and executed by firing squad in 2008.

  Imam Samudra was the overall commander of the Bali bombing. He had fought in the Afghan war against the Soviets, where he met and grew to admire Osama bin Laden. He later named his son Osama, in honor of the archterrorist.

  When investigators seized his laptop computer, they found a wealth of evidence showing connections to Al Qaeda as well as hours of pornographic images of Barbie-doll-like women downloaded from Western Web sites. “Samudra insisted those files had been planted.”33 Another similarity between KSM and Samudra.

  At the end of the trial of one of the perpetrators, Samudra was confronted by Jan Laczynski, a Melbourne man who had lost five friends in the Sari Club bombing. He held up an Australian flag decorated with the faces of the eighty-eight Australians killed. “We are proud to be Australians. Take a look at the people who have been killed,” he said.

  Samudra, startled by the flag and the man, yelled, “Calm down, infidel!”

  “He wasn’t too happy,” Laczynski dryly told the Sydney Morning Herald.34

  Mombasa is a humid city on Kenya’s tropical southern coast. It is to the Israelis what the Caribbean is to many Americans, an affordable and exotic vacation destination that is less than four hours away by plane.

  In November 2002, KSM funded and directed an operation to turn that bit of Eden into hell.

  The traditional Kenyan dancers had just finished their welcoming routine for some two hundred mainly Israeli tourists in the lobby of the Paradise Hotel when a green sport utility vehicle crashed through the hotel’s outer gate and rushed toward the lobby. At the same time, a man with a suicide vest ran into the lobby. Then, the SUV exploded.

  Next, the suicide bomber detonated himself.

  In seconds, sixteen Israeli tourists, including three small children, lay dying. The lobby was lit by the orange glow of flames as people screamed in Hebrew and in English.

  Rescuers carried the injured out of the burning lobby and laid them gently on wooden chaise lounges near the beach.35

  Meanwhile, on the runway of Mombasa’s Moi International Airport, an Arkia Israeli Airlines jet readied for takeoff. In the weeds and scrub bush in nearby Changamwe, a team of Somali and Arab men crouched, readying their rocket launchers. As the plane climbed upward, two Strela-2 missiles were fired at the departing commercial jet. Both missed.

  The Arkia flight landed safely at Ben Gurion International Airport, in Tel Aviv.

  KSM had struck again. If the two attacks had succeeded, hundreds of Israelis and Kenyans would be dead, and KSM could celebrate another grim achievement.

  CIA and FBI agents saw a building wave of attacks launched by the terrorist mastermind throughout 2002. One question kept being asked, with increasing urgency: Where is he?

  11

  “Recognize Us Yet?”

  “Recognize us yet?” asked Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Then he laughed.

  Yosri Fouda, a senior correspondent for Al Jazeera, stood dumbstruck. His blindfold had just been removed. He blinked, suppressing disbelief, as he scanned the two men and the bare-walled apartment of a Karachi safe house.1 It was April 19, 2002.

  “They say you are terrorists,” Fouda said.

  “They are right,” KSM responded. “That is what we do for a living.”2

  Fouda recalls KSM’s tone being “firm and matter-of-fact.” He was proud of it.

  Fouda noticed that when it was time for the final prayers of the night, KSM did not lead the prayers. Usually, in circles of Arab men, the older or more experienced man leads. Instead, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, eight years younger than KSM, took charge of the prayers.3 Fouda concluded that KSM was “not a man of religion” but “very much a man of operations, a man of action, he is very restless.”4

  “He likes being on top of a certain operation, directing people here and there, thinking of targets and stuff,” Fouda writes. “It’s in a sense also a game. He puts it in a religious context.” As if to confirm Fouda’s impression, KSM told him, “We like to terrorize unbelievers.”5

  The prayer was telling, too. Bin al-Shibh said: “Our words shall remain dead, like brides made of wax, still and heartless. Only when we die for [our words] shall they resurrect and live among us.”6 In that time and place, it was a decidedly jihadi prayer.

  In the spring of 2002, Fouda was hosting a prime-time 60 Minutes–style series on Al Jazeera, called Top Secret. Just as he was starting to think about doing something special for the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the phone rang. A mysterious caller invited him to Pakistan. Without telling his superiors, he soon left for Pakistan in hopes of meeting KSM.

  In exchange for an exclusive interview, KSM insisted that he would supply the camera, the videotape, and the camera operator. Furthermore, he insisted that Fouda pledge not to reveal the location of the interview nor how KSM or Ramzi bin al-Shibh appeared. Fouda was made to swear to all conditions on a Koran. He did so.

  What exclusive would Fouda get in return? Good journalists realize that they sometimes must bargain, not just accept gifts.

  The mastermind did not disappoint—he had a scoop for Fouda.

  KSM smiled and said, “I am the head of the Al Qaeda military committee and Ramzi is the coordinator of the ‘Holy Tuesday’ [9/11] operation,” KSM said. “And yes, we did it.”7

  For the next few months, Fouda would keep his explosive secret as he waited for the videotape to arrive from KSM. While he waited, he knew he had to talk to his boss at Al Jazeera. That led to an extraordinary series of meetings inside the television network—and ultimately reached the ears of the CIA director.

  The Diplomatic Club in Doha overlooks the beach and a long line of oil tankers slowly moving down the Persian Gulf to the open sea. It was June 14, 2002, and Yosri Fouda was at lunch with his Al Jazeera boss, Mohammed Jasmin al-Ali.

  Patiently he laid out the extraordinary story, from months earlier, of the mysterious contact, the summons to Pakistan, the blindfolded trip to a safe house some five miles from the Karachi International Airport, and the strange meeting with Kha
lid Shaikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, and his lieutenant Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

  When he was done, al-Ali stared at him in wide surprise and said, “No way!”8

  After lunch, the two men worked their way up the Al Jazeera hierarchy, closing office doors and quietly relaying the incredible news. No one could believe that Al Jazeera now had the biggest scoop in the war on terror.

  Wars can make television networks. CNN vaulted into the forefront of cable news outlets with its coverage of the first Gulf War. Fox News Channel became the number-one cable news network on the back of its coverage of the September 11 attacks and the American liberation of Afghanistan in 2001. This scoop, on the one-year anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington, could make Al Jazeera the dominant Arab-language news provider in the world.

  Over tea the next morning, Fouda and al-Ali met with Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer al-Thani, who was the chairman of the satellite network. He was also the first cousin of the emir of Qatar, the ruler of that desert kingdom.

  After again telling his incredible tale, the sheikh cut Fouda off. Al-Thani was bursting with questions. “The tapes! When are you going to get ahold of them?”

  Fouda explained that KSM’s lieutenants would be sending him the tapes, perhaps through a series of dead drops.

  Dead drops, which are used by both intelligence services and terror organizations, are places, usually in public areas, where a document or a tape can be hidden. At a pre-agreed time, a courier goes to the location, retrieves the package, and takes it to yet another dead drop. Then another courier picks it up from that place and takes it to still another. Often the couriers have no idea what they are transporting, and since they do not know who taped it to the bottom of the trash bin or park bench, they don’t know who has dropped it off.