Mastermind

by Richard Miniter

  1984

  ■ January 10: KSM attends Chowan College, in Murfreesboro, North Carolina.

  ■ Summer: KSM transfers to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, in Greensboro, North Carolina.

  1986

  ■ December 18: After attending NC A&T with Ramzi Yousef’s brother, KSM graduates with a degree in mechanical engineering.

  1987

  ■ Mid-1987: KSM trainsat Sada training camp, in Afghanistan.

  1988

  ■ Zahid, KSM’s brother, is head of the Pakistani branch of Mercy International, which supports Muslim militants fighting in Bosnia and Afghanistan.

  ■ July: Ramzi Yousef first visits Peshawar on a summer break from college.

  ■ August 20: Al Qaeda (“The Base”) is formed by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

  ■ September 10: The work of Al Qaeda commences, with a group of fifteen “brothers.”

  1989

  ■ By 1989: KSM works at Abdul Rasul Sayyaf’s University of Dawa al-Jihad and helps recruit fighters in Afghanistan for Sayyaf’s faction.

  ■ February 15: Soviet army retreats from Afghanistan.

  ■ Spring: KSM’s brother Abed is killed by a bomb.

  ■ November 24: Abdullah Azzam is assassinated.

  ■ Osama bin Laden returns to Saudi Arabia.

  1991

  ■ Yousef returns to Peshawar.

  ■ April: Bin Laden flees Saudi Arabia for Sudan.

  ■ Summer: Yousef makes the first of several trips to the Philippines.

  ■ KSM goes to the Philippines, where he trains members of the militant groups Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in bomb making and assassination. KSM’s work is discovered, and he’s forced to run.

  1992

  ■ KSM helps run nonprofit that is assisting in terror operations in Peshawar and Jalalabad.

  ■ While fighting alongside mujahideen in Bosnia, KSM works for Egypitska Pomoc, an Egyptian aid group in Zenica, Bosnia, later becoming one of its directors in 1995.

  ■ September 1: Yousef arrives at JFK airport in U.S., seeking political asylum.

  ■ November 3: KSM wires money to Mohammed Salameh to help fund Yousef’s bombing of World Trade Center.

  1993

  ■ January 25: A lone gunman, Pakistani Mir Aimal Kasi, attacks CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

  ■ February 26: World Trade Center is bombed by Ramzi Yousef.

  ■ March 31: Yousef is indicted for his participation in the World Trade Center bombing.

  ■ Twice in 1993: KSM summons U.S.-trained Kuwaiti pilot Abdul Hakim Murad to Pakistan; Murad suggests that jumbo jets be used to destroy landmark buildings.

  ■ Spring: U.S. investigators raid Zahid Shaikh Mohammed’s house in search of Yousef, finding evidence linking Zahid, bin Laden, KSM, and government officials close to Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

  ■ July: KSM funds assassination attempt against Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto; Yousef and Murad attempt to carry out the plan, but the bomb detonates too early, injuring Yousef.

  ■ September: Yousef taken to emergency room in Karachi, Pakistan, due to injuries from liquid bombs.

  1994

  ■ Yousef and KSM test airport security on separate flights in the Philippines and across East Asia.

  ■ Spring: Yousef moves to Thailand, where he plots to blow up Israeli embassy.

  ■ June: Yousef, with his father and younger brother (Abdul Muneim), bomb the shrine of the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson, Reza, in Mashad, close to the Afghan border in eastern Iran, to punish Shia Muslims.

  ■ August: KSM arrives in the Philippines on a Pakistani passport issued in Abu Dhabi on July 21, under his full name, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Ali Dustin al-Balushi; he lives at the Tiffany Mansion Condominiums with Yousef.

  ■ October: KSM begins to build a cell to carry out plan to destroy key buildings; recruits Murad and Yousef; chooses to base cell in Malate district of Manila.

  ■ December 1: In a test run, Yousef bombs the Greenbelt Theater, in the Philippines.

  ■ December 8: KSM and Yousef move into Dona Josefa apartments in Malate, metro Manila; the planning for the Manila Air plot begins.

  ■ December 11: Yousef boards Philippine Airlines flight 434, assembles bomb in bathroom, and deplanes in Cebu; bomb detonates on last leg of flight to Tokyo, killing one and injuring eleven others.

  ■ December 26: Abdul Hakim Murad arrives in Manila; he’s arrested at the Dona Josefa apartments two weeks later.

  1995

  ■ January 7: Manila Air plot, a plot to blow up eleven U.S. airplanes, is uncovered by officials when a fire breaks out in Manila’s Josefa apartments.

  ■ January: Yousef flees to Islamabad, possibly with KSM.

  ■ January 12–16: KSM had planned to assassinate Pope John Paul II, President Bill Clinton, and Philippine president Fidel Ramos in this period; instead, he is on the run.

  ■ February 7: Ramzi Yousef is arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan, at the Su-Casa Guest House; KSM boldly gives interview to the press, claiming to be an eyewitness.

  ■ October: KSM is cornered in apartment building in Qatar; FBI has to wait for valid extradition order; meanwhile, KSM gets away because Qatar’s minister of religious affairs tips him off.

  ■ October 20: KSM possibly helps with the revenge bombing of a police station in Rijeka, Croatia. The timing device of the bomb, a modified Casio watch, closely resembled those used by KSM and Yousef in the Philippines.

  ■ KSM visits Yemen, Malaysia, and Sudan—where he fails to meet bin Laden; in Sudan he meets Mohammed Atef, Al Qaeda’s chief military official.

  ■ December: KSM spends twenty days in Brazil, for mysterious reasons.

  1996

  ■ January: KSM indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York for his role in the Manila Air plot.

  ■ Early 1996: FBI and Philippine authorities attempt to arrest KSM at Bandido’s restaurant, in Manila, but the operation fails due to visibility of FBI and other agents; KSM again flees to Qatar.

  ■ May: Sudan expels bin Laden; he returns to Afghanistan.

  ■ Mid-1996: KSM outlines a plan to bin Laden that would become the 9/11 hijackings.

  ■ August 23: Bin Laden declares war on U.S.

  ■ Late fall: CIA receives reports that KSM is traveling in South America.

  ■ The Taliban conquers Jalalabad and Kabul and ultimately takes control of Afghanistan.

  1997

  ■ January: KSM moves with his family from Iran to Karachi, Pakistan.

  ■ KSM lives in Prague throughout much of 1997; takes identity of “Mustaf Nasir.”

  1998

  ■ January 8: Mary Jo White, the U.S. attorney for New York’s Southern District, unseals an indictment against KSM.

  ■ February 23: Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri reunite and declare war on the United States again.

  ■ June: KSM returns to Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, supposedly to promote Konsojaya, a Malaysian company that funded Muslim rebels in Southeast Asia.

  ■ Bin Laden requests that KSM move his family to Kandahar and formally join Al Qaeda.

  ■ August 7: U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi kill 224 people, including twelve Americans.

  1999

  ■ April: Bin Laden summons KSM to Kandahar to tell him that Al Qaeda would support his proposal, which would henceforth be referred to as the “planes operation” within Al Qaeda.

  ■ Fall: Hazmi, Mihdhar, Tawfiq bin Attash, and Abu Barra participate in elite training course at the Mes Aynak camp in Afghanistan. KSM teaches three of these men basic English words and phrases and how to read a phone book, make travel reservations, use the Internet, and encode communications.

  ■ November: Bin Laden orders Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar to go to the U.S. and learn how to fly planes.

  ■ November: Mohammed Atta, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad
al-Jarrah arrive in the Khaldan camp for a preliminary training course.

  ■ December: Bin Attash tells KSM that on his reconnaissance mission, airline security checked him thoroughly.

  ■ KSM plans another attack on the pope in Africa; this attack is thwarted only when the visit is canceled due to John Paul II’s ill health.

  ■ December 3–31: Millennium plot to attack U.S. and Israeli targets during millennium celebrations in Jordan.

  ■ Late 1999: KSM sends Moussaoui to Malaysia for flight training.

  ■ Ahmed Ressam captured while entering U.S. on a mission to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.

  2000

  ■ Early 2000: Al-Shehhi, Atta, and bin al-Shibh meet with KSM in Karachi for training.

  ■ January 5–8: KSM and four key 9/11 hijackers meet in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

  ■ January 15: Al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar arrive in Los Angeles and decamp to San Diego. They are the first of the 9/11 terrorists to arrive in the U.S.

  ■ April: Bin Laden cancels East Asia portion of 9/11 operation.

  ■ Spring: Bin Laden pressures KSM to launch the planes operation earlier than planned.

  ■ June: Mihdhar abruptly returns to his family in Yemen, apparently without permission; KSM is very displeased and wants to remove him from the operation, but bin Laden intercedes and Mihdhar remains part of the plot.

  ■ September: KSM meets Hani Hanjour, a future 9/11 hijacker, for the first time.

  ■ October 12: USS Cole bombed in Aden, Yemen.

  ■ October: Bin Laden appoints KSM to head all media operations for Al Qaeda.

  ■ December 2000–January 2001: Abu Turab al-Urduni trains the ten “muscle” hijackers prior to their departure to the U. S.

  2001

  ■ May 12: Bin Laden pressures KSM to launch the planes operation on this date, exactly seven months after the Cole bombing in Yemen. KSM refuses.

  ■ Summer: Faruq al-Tunisi, a pilot candidate for the second wave of attacks after 9/11, contacts KSM from Canada to back out of the operation.

  ■ June: Mohammed Atef asks José Padilla to blow up apartment buildings in a major city using natural gas (this information would be revealed by KSM in 2003).

  ■ June: KSM calls a cell phone held by a Belgian, Saber Mohammed, three times, believing he was acting as a messenger for Mosa Zi Zemmori and Driss Elatellah, two terror operatives.

  ■ June 12: CIA report states that KSM is recruiting for bin Laden. The agency doesn’t yet realize KSM’s full role inside Al Qaeda.

  ■ June or July: Bin Laden again pressures KSM to launch the attacks early, after he learns that Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon would be visiting the White House then.

  ■ July: Mohammed Atta meets Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Spain; Atta informs him of 9/11 targets, and bin al-Shibh tells KSM.

  ■ July 23: KSM uses a travel agency to acquire a U.S. visa in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, using an alias.

  ■ August: KSM receives a courier from Germany, Zakariya Essabar, who gives him a letter advising him of the date of the 9/11 attacks. The information originated with Mohammed Atta.

  ■ August: KSM advises bin al-Shibh to break contact with Moussaoui.

  ■ September 4: Bush’s National Security Council approves new presidential directive to disrupt Al Qaeda, including attacks inside Afghanistan.

  ■ September 10: Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley orders CIA Director George Tenet to draft new authorities for covert action against Al Qaeda.

  ■ September 11: Attacks on World Trade Center and Pentagon.

  ■ September 11–April 2003: The CIA produces more than three thousand intelligence reports from detainees.

  ■ October 6: American and British bombers launch their first attacks on Taliban positions.

  ■ October 7: Bin Laden releases a prerecorded videotape boasting of Al Qaeda’s successful operation.

  ■ Late 2001: KSM becomes chief of operations for Al Qaeda; KSM hatches a plot to crash a hijacked airliner into Library Tower, in L.A.

  ■ December 3: American bombers strike a cave complex at Tora Bora, and Afghan ground troops uncover more than a hundred bodies, eighteen of which are identified as top Al Qaeda lieutenants.

  ■ December 17: Bin Laden writes about how he feels betrayed by the Muslims who fled in the battle of Tora Bora, a crushing loss for Al Qaeda.

  ■ December 22: Richard Reid attempts to detonate a shoe bomb on Flight 63 from Paris to Miami.

  ■ December 28: United Press International reports that the Singapore government, acting on intelligence gathered during U.S. special operations in Afghanistan, has arrested members of a terrorist cell with plans to attack Singapore’s port.

  2002

  ■ January 28: Eric Holder, in an interview with CNN’s Paula Zahn, says, “They [the 9/11 terrorists] are not entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war,” but criminals.

  ■ Early 2002: KSM devises a plan to send José Padilla to set off bombs in high-rise apartment buildings in Chicago.

  ■ February 1: KSM beheads Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Pakistan.

  ■ February: CIA gets a lead on an Al Qaeda terrorist named Abu Zubaydah, a key KSM lieutenant.

  ■ March 2: Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan begins. KSM escapes.

  ■ March 28: Teams of Pakistani commandos simultaneously raid fourteen separate addresses that Zubaydah reportedly used; they find him in Faisalabad.

  ■ March–June: The FBI’s Ali Soufan interrogates Zubaydah.

  ■ April 11: Al Qaeda bombs Djerba synagogue, in Tunisia, an attack that KSM planned.

  ■ May: FBI access to high-value-detainee interrogations ends.

  ■ June: KSM tells Al Jazeera that he heads Al Qaeda’s military committee, a claim he later denies.

  ■ June: A group of Al Qaeda operatives suspected of plotting raids on American and British ships and tankers passing through the Strait of Gibraltar is arrested by the Moroccan government.

  ■ September: Pakistani police raid Karachi apartment, just missing KSM; Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency seizes KSM’s two sons, Abed al-Khalid (age seven) and Yousef al-Khalid (nine).

  ■ September: Al Qaeda operatives launch a KSM-planned attack on U.S. soldiers at Kuwait’s Filka Island, killing one and injuring a second.

  ■ September 11: Ramzi bin al-Shibh is captured in Karachi, Pakistan. At the time, he is in final stages of KSM’s plot to bomb London’s Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf.

  ■ September 14: Bin al-Shibh is turned over to U.S.

  ■ KSM plans to hijack planes from mostly former communist countries to crash-dive into Heathrow.

  ■ Fall: Bin al-Shibh tells interrogators that an attack on London was “planned for the same time period.”

  ■ October 12: Bali nightclub bombings kill 202 people.

  ■ December: Bin Laden decrees in writing that KSM has been promoted to “chief of external operations.”

  2003

  ■ Early 2003: KSM develops a plan to employ network of Pakistanis (including Iyman Faris and Majid Khan) to target gas stations, railroad tracks, and the Brooklyn Bridge, in New York.

  ■ March 1: KSM captured and arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in a joint raid by Pakistani ISI and CIA Special Activities Division.

  ■ Before the end of March: KSM is waterboarded. KSM gives information on the plot to fly planes into Heathrow.

  ■ April 29: Ammar al-Baluchi captured (based on information from KSM), as well as others.

  ■ May: Iyman Faris pleads guilty to plotting to destroy New York’s Brooklyn Bridge.

  ■ August: Hambali is captured.

  ■ September: Rusman Gunawan (Hambali’s brother) is captured in Pakistan.

  ■ Mohammed Mansour Jabarah is captured and interrogated in Oman; he indicates that both he and Richard Reid reported to KSM.

  ■ November: A second shoe bomber, Sajid Badat, is arrested.

  2004
<
br />   ■ August 6: Daniel Levin, a Bush administration official, writes to the CIA that waterboarding wouldn’t violate the U.S. Constitution or treaty obligations.

  ■ October 12: Human Rights Watch reports that eleven suspects, including KSM, have “disappeared” to a semi-secret prison in Jordan, and might have been tortured there under the direction of the CIA.

  2005

  ■ May 2: Abu Faraj al-Libbi—Al Qaeda’s operational commander after KSM—captured and taken into CIA custody.

  ■ May 10: Justice Department issues two memos declaring that the CIA’s interrogation techniques complied with the federal prohibition against torture. Critics call these “the torture memos.”

  ■ May 30: Justice Department issues another memo finding enhanced interrogation techniques are consistent with U.S. obligations under the Convention Against Torture.

  ■ June 3: CIA report “Detainee Reporting Pivotal for War Against al-Qa’ida” is created.

  ■ December 30: Detainee Treatment Act is approved by the U.S. House and Senate and signed by President Bush.

  2006

  ■ June 29: Supreme Court issues Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision, requiring that president seek congressional authorization for military commissions to proceed.

  ■ September: KSM transferred to Guantánamo; International Committee of the Red Cross report about treatment of KSM and other terrorists is leaked.

  ■ September 6: President Bush delivers a televised address confirming that the CIA held high-value detainees, including KSM, in secret interrogation centers.

  ■ Mid-September: A “clean team” of senior officials from several agencies begins interviewing KSM to gather voluntary disclosures to avoid problems associated with information obtained using the CIA’s interrogation approach.

  ■ September 27: In a speech on the floor of the Senate, Barack Obama says: “Someone like KSM is gonna basically get a full military trial with all the bells and whistles.”

  ■ September 29: President Bush delivers a speech in which he reveals that high-value detainees provided information that stopped future attacks.

  2007

  ■ March 10: At Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, KSM (known as ISN 10024) confesses to 9/11 attacks, one of thirty-one terror plots he admits to attempting or executing.