Mastermind
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O’Neill, John––Was America’s top anti-terrorism expert. While with the FBI, he was deeply involved with the tracking and capture of Ramzi Yousef and was one of the loud early warning voices trying to focus government attention on Al Qaeda, its people, methods, and goals. He was killed trying to help rescue victims at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Padilla, José—The man who plotted to detonate a “dirty bomb” at KSM’s request is now in a U.S. government supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
Pearl, Mariane—The widow of Daniel Pearl now lives in Paris. She has not married again.
Rahman, Sheikh Omar Abdel—Known universally to the tabloid press as the “Blind Sheikh,” the Egyptian cleric has juvenile diabetes that has left him blind since his first year. The spiritual guide to two noteworthy Egyptian terrorist outfits, the Jihad Group and Gamma Islamiyya (Egyptian Islamic Jihad), he is now serving a life sentence in an American prison following his conviction for plotting to blow up the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the United Nations headquarters, and several other New York landmarks.
Revell, Oliver “Buck”—The former FBI counterterrorism chief currently serves as the president of the Revell Group International, Inc., global business and security consultants, in Texas.
Salameh, Mohammed—The driver of the Ryder truck for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who later tried to claim back the rental deposit is now in a U.S. government supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
Sheikh, Ahmed Omar Saeed—The British-Pakistani kidnapper of Daniel Pearl, Omar Sheikh soon found that his hope for a light sentence, given his service to Pakistan intelligence services, was a false hope. Sentenced to death in 2002, he has filed an appeal. His last chapter shows that history likes to follow tragedy with farce. Shortly after the hotel bombings in Bombay, Omar Sheikh phoned Pakistani President Zadari, pretending to be the prime minister of India. As “India’s Prime Minister,” he threatened war—forcing Pakistan to scramble military jets and put its ground forces on high alert. Omar Sheikh hoped to provoke war, and possibly a nuclear exchange, between India and Pakistan. When the hoax was discovered, Omar Sheikh’s cell phone was taken away by his guards. Critics wondered why the kidnapper enjoyed so many unusual privileges, such as cell phones, in the first place.
Shibh, Ramzi bin al-—KSM’s henchman was captured in Karachi, Pakistan, on September 11, 2002, and is now in American custody at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Soufan, Ali—A former FBI interrogator who interviewed KSM, he is now CEO of The Soufan Group, in New York.
Turabi, Hassan al-—The former speaker of the Sudanese parliament who welcomed bin Laden to Sudan in 1991 was arrested in Khartoum in mid-May 2010 but released on July 1, 2010. The joke in Khartoum: “Turabi’s prison cell has a revolving door.”
Turki al-Faisal, Prince—Former head of Saudi intelligence. Also served as the Saudi ambassador to the United Kingdom and, later, to the United States. Now with the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, in Riyadh.
White, Mary Jo—The no-nonsense federal prosecutor is now a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP.
Yasin, Abdul Rahman—The 1993 World Trade Center bomber who fled to Iraq. He died under mysterious circumstances in 2003.
Yoo, John—The primary author of the so-called torture memos is now a professor of law at the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law.
Yousef, Ramzi—The 1993 bomber of the World Trade Center lives in a U.S. government supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. In the one hour of human contact he is permitted every day, he is often allowed within ten feet of the Unabomber—close enough to shout a conversation .2 No one has revealed what these mass murderers say to each other, but guards confirmed that they do talk in short bursts.
Yusufzai, Rahimullah—The Pakistani journalist is a senior editor and Peshawar bureau chief with The News.
Zitawi, Sammy—Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s Kuwait-born classmate at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University now owns the Great American Food Store on Patterson Avenue in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Zubaydah, Abu—KSM’s right-hand man in the September 11 attacks, he is now in an American detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, awaiting trial.
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the help and encouragement of many dedicated and thoughtful people.
Without the ceaseless effort of my agent, Richard Pine, of Inkwell Management, this book would not have been published. I would also like to thank Nathaniel Jacks and Jenny Witherell at Inkwell.
At Sentinel, my publisher, I would like to thank Adrian Zackheim, who saw the importance of this project immediately and was immensely supportive throughout the writing and editing process. I’d also like to thank Jillian Gray, Will Weisser, and Amanda Pritzker.
Lisa Downey Merriam, who swooped in at the last minute to save the day, spent many hours with LexisNexis.
My researcher, Martin Morse Wooster, who spent countless hours in the special-collection rooms of libraries finding documents and foreign-news accounts that are not on LexisNexis.
My interview booker, Heather L. Smith, who used her well-honed skills as a radio and television producer to track down and schedule countless interviews for me.
I am also indebted to Duke Cheston, who managed to pry old documents out of two North Carolina courthouses, and Daniel Davis, who provided valuable intelligence on the inner workings of North Carolina A&T, where KSM studied engineering.
I’d also like to thank Janet Hamlin for supplying illustrations she made of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed during his 2008 trial in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and also for her recollections of those events. She can be reached at janet.hamlin@gmail.com.
I’d also like to thank Nina Rosenwald, for her constant encouragement and many lunches and dinners.
I’d also like to thank Daniel Pipes and the rest of the Middle East Forum for generous grants that enabled me to complete my reporting.
In North Carolina, I’d like to thank John Taylor and Josh Barker at Chowan University, and Mable Springfield Scott at North Carolina A&T.
In Paris, I’d like to thank Jean-Charles Brisard, who shared a treasure trove of documents. I’d also like to thank Jean-Louis Bruguière, who prosecuted most of the major terrorism cases in France over the past two decades, including cases related to KSM.
Additionally, I would like to thank Debra Burlingame, Michael Shulan, and Katie Edgerton at the September 11 Memorial Museum Foundation.
I would also like to thank Richard Perle, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Gawain Towler (who introduced me to a very helpful source in London), Taiseer Saleh (Yemen’s military attaché in Washington, D.C.), Ahmed Charai in Casablanca, Joseph Braude (whose knowledge of the Arabic language and Islamic literature is peerless), Kate Brewster (for finding KSM’s defense attorney and other helpful leads), Stephen Grey (the former head of the Sunday Times of London’s investigative team, who shared many leads and contacts), Jeremy Slater (an indispensable help in Brussels), Rachel Ehrenfeld (who supplied an excellent source in Afghanistan), Stefan Jacobs, Keya Dashtara, Sue Saadawi, Jacki Pick (who knows her way around Capitol Hill), Joseph Szlavik (for his help with French and U.S. intelligence sources), Jim Robbins (for his encyclopedic knowledge of all things Pentagon), Philip Zelikow (the former staff director of the 9/11 Commission), Heather Higgins, and Aylana Meisel, an expert in terror financing, who knew where many of the bodies were buried.
A Note on Sources and Methods
Inevitably, when writing about a terrorist mastermind, there are two large difficulties. First, access to the subject, his comrades, and his close relatives (many of whom are themselves either wanted men or in the custody of some military or intelligence agency) is impossible, and many of those who will talk (intelligence operatives, military officers, presidential appointees) say things that cannot be independently verified. In addition, many sources insist on being anonymous, for professional or personal reasons.
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br /> Add a controversial trial and an increasingly bitter divide between our nation’s two major political parties—a zigzagging fault line that runs through Washington and the minds of many of the participants in the events that I have covered here—and the reader soon sees how daunting researching and reporting a book like this one can be.
It may be decades before key documents are declassified and telling memoirs from retired government officials are written. So much of this book remains subject to revision.
Fortunately, many people agreed to sit for interviews and to supply documents—ranging from official reports to private notes—that enabled me to add tiles to this mosaic, to assemble a portrait of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. I appreciate their time and trust.
My approach was to search out everyone who met, worked with, captured, interrogated, prosecuted, or made decisions about KSM or investigated his terrorist strikes. That produced a list of hundreds of potential sources—prisoners, police, soldiers, spies, diplomats, analysts, agents, operatives, bureaucrats, lawyers, prosecutors, judges, princes, kings, prime ministers, and presidential appointees—stretching over four continents. I talked to as many of them as I could.
I also interviewed experts who could provide perspective, analysis, and insight into events and participants. These professional observers include historians, man hunters, money trackers, intelligence analysts, and foreign correspondents. They, too, were spread across the globe—from Baghdad, Casablanca, and Paris to Brussels, London, and Washington.
“If you don’t go, you don’t know.” It is an old saying in shoe-leather journalism. So, in the course of my interviews with police and other participants, I went to many of the places where KSM plotted. While I did go to Guantánamo Bay a few years ago, I was not able to see KSM there. I did not attempt to go back, given U.S. government restrictions. I did, however, talk to the civilian and military lawyers representing KSM and other Al Qaeda personnel, as well as some of the 9/11 family members who visited Guantánamo Bay.
While the bibliography contains an extensive list of primary source documents and books that I relied on, readers seeking more information should also consult (as I did) the CIA-run Open-Source Center (formerly the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, or FBIS) and the BBC Monitoring Service, which records and translates many radio and television reports from around the world.
I also wish to thank officials at the following embassies for assisting me in locating and contacting the appropriate persons in their countries.
Afghanistan: Adrienne Ross and Abuljalil Ghafoory, Media and Public Relations Department
Algeria: Nassima Holcine, Second Secretary
Bosnia and Herzegovina: Emin Cohodarevic, Attaché
Czech Republic: Daniel Novy, Press Secretary
France: Emmanuel Lenain, Press Counselor
Germany: Karl-Matthias Klause, Head of Press Section
India: Rahul Chhabra, Minister of Press, Information, and Culture
Indonesia: Devdy Risa, Third Secretary
Kuwait: Jasem al-Budaiwi
Pakistan: Nadeem Haider Kiani, Press Attaché and Media Spokesperson
Philippines: Gines Gallaga, Second Secretary and Consul
Qatar: Mohamed Kabir, Media Inquiries
Saudi Arabia: Nail Al-Jubeir, Director of Information
Spain: Almudena Rodriguez, Press Office
Syria: Ahmed Salkini, Press Secretary
Yemen: Taiseer Saleh, Defense Attaché
A number of current intelligence and military personnel—in the United States, Western Europe, the Middle East, central Asia, and Southeast Asia—were also interviewed but not listed here. They are not listed because they were interviewed on a not-for-attribution basis.
Any work of this kind naturally has to rely on such sources. Without anonymity, these sources would simply not talk to a reporter at all.
One major source of research material about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is the Web site History Commons (historycommons.org). This crowd-sourced research tool is an invaluable source of citations about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi Yousef, and other key figures in the global war on terror—though it should be used with caution.
History Commons, however, could use an editor. Titles and authors of stories are routinely misattributed. For example, Robert I. Friedman wrote a very interesting account of the groups responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which appeared in New York magazine in 1995. History Commons repeatedly says that this article appeared in The New Yorker (not New York), making it very hard to track down.
The New York Times also maintains an important online database of documents, including Department of Justice memos on interrogation practices.
LexisNexis and Factiva are the key databases to search. Factiva is generally better than Lexis, as it includes the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. But both need to be searched carefully. Either one, for example, will tell the reader that fewer than a dozen English-language articles mentioned Khalid Shaikh Mohammed prior to September 11, 2001, and none made the connection that KSM was the uncle of Ramzi Yousef. One must search under all variant spellings—and combinations of spellings—of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s name. In some news accounts before 2003, he is known as simply “Khalid Shaikh.”
The World News Connection is less well known than Lexis or Factiva but is nonetheless invaluable. Produced by the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, World News Connection includes many translations of articles from foreign newspapers, radio shows, and television shows. It is the primary source of translated articles from the Arab press. It’s only available, in limited release, in some university libraries, such as the University of Maryland–College Park.
Most of the translations, however, are rough. Researchers need to search both under “Khalid” and “Khaled,” and “Sheik,” “Sheikh,” “Shaykh,” and “Shaikh”—and that’s just for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s first two names. The search engine for World News Connection is a strange beast. Sometimes identical search terms produce different results. Nonetheless, the World News Connection is the primary vehicle for the English-language reader to see what the Arab press is writing about terrorism.
The best source for documents about terrorists imprisoned at Guantánamo is the Torture Archive, established by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (gwu.edu/~nsarchiv). It currently comprises more than eighty thousand pages of documents about the war on terror. All of the publicly available documents about KSM’s stay in Guantánamo are available from this site.
Trial transcripts are only partially available. Some of the documents from the trials related to the 1998 bombing of the embassies in Tanzania and Kenya are available on the Findlaw Web site (news .findlaw.com/cnn/docs/binladen). But the 1996 indictment of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, issued as part of this trial, does not appear to be publicly available.
Zacarias Moussaoui was tried in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. That court has placed many nonclassified documents and trial transcripts online, including the numerous FAA bulletins and warnings issued after the collapse of Project Bojinka and testimonies of key government officials. Its Web site is vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/index.htm.
A larger compilation of related documents can be found on my Web site: www.richardminiter.com.
List of Aliases Used by KSM
Over the years, KSM adopted dozens of false identities.
Based on reports from the FBI, the CIA, Philippine intelligence, Afghan intelligence, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, France’s Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, Britain’s MI-6, and the governments of Bosnia, the Czech Republic, Indonesia, and Malaysia, as well as published reports, here is perhaps the most complete list of his aliases:Abdul Majid
Abdullah al-Fak’asi al-Ghamdior
Abdulrahman A. A. Alghamdi
Abu Khalid
Adam Ali
Ashraf Ahmed
Ashraf Refaat Nabith Henin
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Babu Hamza
Fahd bin Abdallah bin Khalid
Hafiz
Hashim Abdulrahman
Hashim Ahmed
Khalid Abdul Wadood
Khalid al-Shaykh al-Ballushi
Khalid the Kuwaiti
Meer Akram
Mohammed Khalia al-Mana
Mohammed the Pakistani
Muk
Mukhtar al Baluchi
Mustaf Nasir
Salem Ali
Time Line
1965
■ April 24: KSM born to Halema and Shaikh Mohammed Ali Dustin al-Balushi, an Islamist preacher. He grows up in Fahaheel, Kuwait.
1969
■ KSM’s father dies.
1979
■ February 1: The first radical Islamic terror state, Iran, is born.
■ February 14: Jihadi extremists kidnap and kill Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. There is no U.S. military response.
■ November 4: Ayatollah Khomeini declares war on the United States and seizes hostages in Tehran. There is no U.S. military response.
■ November 20: Islamist fundamentalists seize the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
■ December 25: The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan.
1981
■ KSM joins Muslim Brotherhood.
1982
■ December 6: KSM’s first passport issued, at the Pakistani embassy in Kuwait City.
1983
■ KSM graduates from all-boys high school in Fahaheel.