Mastermind

by Richard Miniter

8 “Linked by Little but N.C., Islam,” by Craig Jarvis and Christina Headrick, The News & Observer (North Carolina), March 8, 2003, page A2.

  9 According to Ali, Denver, Worchester, Massachusetts, and Still Springs, Oklahoma, were the other hot spots of Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi activity at the time. Author interview, Greensboro, North Carolina, July 2010.

  10 Joseph Contreras and Ed Caram, “A North Carolina Cell?,” Newsweek (online), December 19, 2002.

  11 Author interview with Clayton Lewis, Charlotte, North Carolina, August 2010.

  12 The application has a number of strange anomalies. He spelled his name “Mohammed Khaled Al-Shaikh” and listed his address as “Fintass, Kuwait.” He listed his date of birth as March 24, 1965. Question 16 asked, “Who or what influenced you to apply to Chowan College?” He answered: “My friend.” He said, in answer to question 17, that he planned to major in English. His signature reads: “Altini.”

  13 Author interview with Chowan spokesman Joshua E. Barker via e-mail, March 30, 2010.

  14 “The Plots and Designs of Al Qaeda’s Engineer,” by Terry McDermott, Josh Meyer, and Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, December 22, 2002.

  15 “September 11 ‘Mastermind’ Was Class Cutup in Carolina College,” by Chad Roberts and James Gordon Meek, Daily News (N.Y.), August 3, 2004.

  16 Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding, Masterminds of Terror (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2003), page 90.

  17 “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Isolated U.S. College Days,” Temple-Raston, November 18, 2009.

  18 Author interview with Joshua E. Barker via e-mail, March 30, 2010.

  19 Ibid.

  20 “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Isolated U.S. College Days,” Temple-Raston, November 18, 2009.

  21 Author interview, August 2010.

  22 “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Isolated U.S. College Days,” Temple-Raston, November 18, 2009.

  23 Author interview, March 2010. Also, see his book My Year Inside Radical Islam (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin Group, 2007).

  24 Descriptions of KSM’s life in North Carolina are based primarily on research and interviews conducted there by the author as well as an account in Terry McDermott, Perfect Soldiers: The 9/11 Hijackers, Who They Were, Why They Did It (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), page 113.

  25 Author interview with Joshua E. Barker via e-mail, March 30, 2010.

  26 Ibid.

  27 Author interview with Chowan spokesman Josh Barker, July 2010.

  28 Author interview, August 2010.

  29 1984–1985 Bulletin of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, July 1984, page 16.

  30 “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Isolated U.S. College Days,” Temple-Raston, November 18, 2009.

  31 Joseph Contreras and Ed Caram, “A North Carolina Qaeda Cell?; One of Osama Bin Laden’s Most Trusted Lieutenants Was Once a Student in the Tarheel State. Now Local Muslims Fear Their Community Is Being Targeted for Special Investigation,” Newsweek, December 19, 2002.

  32 Unfortunately, Burke County purged its 1985 traffic citation records some time ago, so a copy of the physical citation is not available.

  33 “Suspected Mastermind Graduated from U.S. University,” by Susan Candiotti, et al., CNN, December 19, 2002.

  34 “Professor Recalls Now Notorious A&T Student,” by John Newsom, News & Record (Greensboro, N.C.), March 4, 2003.

  35 “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Isolated U.S. College Days,” Temple-Raston, November 18, 2009.

  36 Bill Saporito and Tim McGirk, “Architect of Terror; Pakistani Authorities Nab Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda Bigwig Who Helped Mastermind the Sept. 11 Attacks. Can He Help the U.S. Locate Bin Laden?,” Time, March 10, 2003.

  37 McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, page 114.

  38 “Suspected Terrorist Captured in Pakistan Was Student at North Carolina College,” by Rah Bickley, News & Observer, March 3, 2003.

  39 Ibid.

  40 Waleed M. Qimlass, interview by Patrick McDonnell, Kuwait City, November 2002.

  41 McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, page 115.

  42 “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Isolated U.S. College Days,” Temple-Raston, November 18, 2009.

  43 Author interview with Gutbi al-Mahdi, former head of intelligence for the government of Sudan, in 2003 in Khartoum.

  44 Sammy Zitawi, telephone interview by Terry McDermott, September 2002.

  45 McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, page 114.

  46 “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Isolated U.S. College Days,” Temple-Raston, November 18, 2009.

  47 Ibid.

  48 “Fiend Mulled Pre-9/11 Kill; Wanted Rabbi Dead in ’80s,” by Chad Roberts and James Gordon Meek, Daily News (N.Y.), August 1, 2004, page 28.

  49 Author interview.

  50 “Taint of Terrorism Marks North Carolina University Campus,” by Dahleen Glanton, Chattanooga Times Free Press, April 8, 2007.

  51 “Is Osama’s Aide a Former Aggie?” by Jim McNally, Carolina Peacemaker, December 26, 2002.

  52 McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, page 115.

  53 Mahmood Zubaid, interview by Patrick McDonnell, Kuwait City, November 2002.

  54 UAE official, interview by Terry McDermott, United Arab Emirates, August 2003.

  55 Mohammed Zubaid, interview by Terry McDermott, Kuwait City, August 2003.

  56 McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, page 116.

  57 Kuwaiti official, interview by Terry McDermott, August 2003.

  58 McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, page 117.

  59 The 9/11 Commission Report says that KSM’s first trip to Pakistan was in 1987, which would seem to rule out a summer vacation trip in 1985 or 1986. However, the 9/11 Commission Report is likely to be mistaken.

  60 “The Angry Rabbi,” by Josh Friedman and David Firestone, Newsday (N.Y.), November 7, 1990, part II, page 4.

  61 “Sept. 11 ‘Mastermind’ was Class Cutup,” Roberts and Meek.

  62 “Jewish Defense League Leader Meir Kahane Shot,” by Leslie Wines, United Press International, November 5, 1990.

  63 Michael B. Mukasey, How Obama Has Mishandled the War on Terror , Encounter Broadside no. 9 (New York: Encounter Books, 2010), page 3.

  64 Ibid.

  65 “Man Accused in Terror Plot Bombed Gay Bar, U.S. Says,” by James C. McKinley, Jr., New York Times, January 14, 1995.

  66 “The CIA and the Sheikh,” by Robert I. Friedman, Village Voice, March 30, 1993, page 22.

  67 Chitra Ragaran et al., “Tracing Terror’s Roots,” U.S. News & World Report, February 24, 2003.

  68 Testimony of Oliver “Buck” Revell, Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, October 3, 2001.

  69 Ragavan et al., “Tracing Terror’s Roots,” February 24, 2003.

  70 “The CIA’s Jihad,” by Robert I. Friedman, New York, March 27, 1995, page 44.

  71 Steven Emerson, American Jihad: The Terrorists Among Us. (New York: Free Press, 2002), page 56.

  72 Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), page 177.

  73 Ibid.

  74 “Terror Plots, Informer Links Mosque to Threats,” by David Kocieniewski and Peg Tyre, Newsday (N.Y.), March 21, 1993.

  75 Author interview with Israeli source, April 2010.

  76 “The Plots and Designs,” McDermott, Meyer, and McDonnell, December 22, 2002.

  77 “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Isolated U.S. College Days,” Temple-Raston, November 18, 2009.

  CHAPTER 3 : SEARCHING FOR WAR

  1 Terry McDermott, “The Mastermind,” The New Yorker, September 13, 2010, page 32.

  2 Terry McDermott, Perfect Soldiers: The 9/11 Hijackers, Who They Were, Why They Did It (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), page 128.

  3 Author interview with Bill Peikneg and Milton Bearden, Reston, Virginia, July 2003.

  4 Author interview with Marc Sageman, May 2010.

  5 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, August 2004, page 14
6.

  6 Jean-Charles Brisard and Damien Martinez, Zarqawi: The New Face of Al-Qaeda (New York: Other Press, 2005), pages 24–25.

  7 Omar Nasiri,Inside the Jihad (New York: Basic Books, 2006), page 133.

  8 McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, page 128.

  9 Ibid.

  10 Simon Reeve, The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden, and the Future of Terrorism (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002), page 96.

  11 McDermott, “The Mastermind,” page 43.

  12 Ibid.

  13 For a fuller discussion of bin Laden’s moves, please see Losing bin Laden, by Richard Miniter (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2003).

  14 John R. Schindler, Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa’ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad (St. Paul, Minn.: Zenith Press, 2007), page 280.

  15 Ibid.

  16 Ibid.

  17 Ibid., pages 8–9.

  18 Ibid., page 281.

  19 Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), page 133.

  20 McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, page 131.

  CHAPTER 4: TRADEBOM

  1 “A New Strain of Terrorism; Groups Are Fast, Loose, Hard to Find,” by Pierre Thomas, Washington Post, August 3, 1993, page A1.

  2 Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding, Masterminds of Terror (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2003), page 95.

  3 “Inspector Testifies She Urged No Asylum for Blast Suspect,” by Richard Bernstein, New York Times, November 16, 1993.

  4 “A New Strain of Terrorism,” Thomas, page A1.

  5 Bill Turque with Christopher Dickey et al., “The Trail to the Jihad Office,” Newsweek, March 29, 1993, page 38.

  6 “The CIA’s Jihad,” by Robert I. Friedman, New York, March 27, 1995, page 38.

  7 Ibid., page 40.

  8 Simon Reeve, The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden, and the Future of Terrorism (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002).

  9 Transcript; the Yasin interview, 60 Minutes, June 6, 2002.

  10 “Trail Left by Phone Calls May Link Bomb Suspects,” by Richard Bernstein, New York Times, January 14, 1994.

  11 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, August 2004, page 147.

  12 Christopher Dickey, “America’s Most Wanted,” Newsweek, July 4, 1994, page 46.

  13 “The Lesson: Incident at the Towers, 1993” by Tom Robbins, Daily News (N.Y.), December 9, 1998.

  14 Reeve, The New Jackals, page 36.

  15 “The Lesson,” Robbins.

  16 Ian O. Lesser, et al., Countering the New Terrorism (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1999), page 24.

  17 “Suspect Is Said to Be Longtime Friend of Bombing Mastermind,” by James C. McKinley, Jr., New York Times, August 4, 1995.

  18 “The World Trade Center Bombing: A Tragic Wake-Up Call,” New York State Senate report, Committee on Investigations, Taxation and Government Operations, August 3, 1993, page 9. See the testimony of Port Authority director Stanley Brezenoff.

  19 Reeve, The New Jackals, page 21.

  20 Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), page 177.

  21 This account is adapted from court documents and Simon Reeve’s book, The New Jackals.

  22 Lesser et al., Countering the New Terrorism, page 23.

  23 The officer spoke with the author on the condition of anonymity in July 2010. Fox died in the mid-1990s.

  24 Author interview with a senior FBI official, Washington, D.C., July 2010.

  25 “Indeed, much as the ‘inept’ World Trade Center bombers were derided for their inability to avoid arrest, their modus operandi arguably points to a pattern of future terrorist activities elsewhere. For example, as previously noted, terrorist groups were once recognizable as distinct organizational entities. The four convicted World Trade Center bombers shattered this stereotype. Instead, they were like-minded individuals who shared a common religion, worshipped at the same religious institution, had the same friends and frustrations, and were linked by family ties as well, who simply gravitated toward one another for a specific, perhaps even one-time operation.” Lesser et al., Countering the New Terrorism, page 22.

  26 “Weaving a Wide Web of Terror,” by Charles P. Wallace, Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1995.

  27 “The Road to Ground Zero,” The Sunday Times (of London), January 7, 2002.

  28 Mark E. Rondeau, “Clinton Did Little Substantive to Fight Terror, Says Former FBI Agent,” The Advocate, October 31, 2001.

  29 Transcript, “Special Edition,” Nightline, August 20, 1998.

  30 Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), page 30.

  31 The 9/11 Commission Report, August 2004, page 153.

  32 Ibid.

  33 “Early Scheme to Turn Jets into Weapons,” by Terry McDermott, Los Angeles Times, June 24, 2002.

  34 Reeve, The New Jackals, page 64.

  35 Ibid.

  36 “Musharraf Rival Linked to bin Laden,” by Maddy Sauer, ABC News, November 30, 2007.

  37 “The CEO of al Qaeda,” by Farhan Bokhari et al., Financial Times, February 15, 2003.

  38 “Bhutto Says Trade Center Suspect Also Targeted Her—Pakistan: Prime Minister Says Bomb Went Off Prematurely in 1993, Injuring Plotter Instead,” by John-Thor Dahlburg, Los Angeles Times, March 19, 1995.

  39 “Womaniser, Joker, Scuba Diver: The Other Face of Al-Qaida’s No 3,” by Rohan Gunaratna, Guardian, March 3, 2003.

  40 “Bhutto Says Trade Center Suspect Also Targeted Her,” Dahlburg, March 19, 1995.

  41 Ibid.

  42 Ibid.

  43 “A Former Pakistani Prime Minister Weighs In,” by Benazir Bhutto, Slate, September 21, 2001.

  CHAPTER 5: THE PLOT TO KILL THE POPE, THE PRESIDENT, AND FOUR THOUSAND AMERICANS

  1 Philippines Secret Intelligence report, November 5, 2002.

  2 “Bust and Boom,” by Matthew Brzezinski, Washington Post Magazine, December 30, 2001. A truly excellent piece of reporting.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Ibid.

  5 “Early Scheme to Turn Jets into Weapons,” by Terry McDermott, Los Angeles Times, June 24, 2002.

  6 Azmiri, whose real name is Wali Khan Amin Shah, is also known by the names Azmarai, Asmari, Asmurai, and Osmurai.

  7 Jean-Charles Brisard and Damien Martinez, Zarqawi: The New Face of Al-Qaeda (New York: Other Press, 2005), page 20.

  8 Ibid., pages 20–21.

  9 “Khalifa: I Don’t Know Gemma; I’m Upset,” by Christine Herrera, Philippine Daily Inquirer, August 11, 2000, page 1.

  10 “Suspect’s Role in ’95 Plot Detailed; Inquiry: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Alleged Sept. 11 Mastermind, Was a Financial Conduit in the Plan to Blow Up U.S. Jets, Philippine Official Says,” by Richard C. Paddock and Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times, June 7, 2002.

  11 “Weaving a Wide Web of Terror,” by Charles P. Wallace, Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1995.

  12 “Revelations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” classified U.S. intelligence document, April 2003.

  13 “Hambali Used RM2 Million Collected from Donations to Fund His Extremist Operations,” by Wong Chun Wai and Lourdes Charles, The Star (Malaysia), January 1, 2003.

  14 KSM later told interrogators that “Bojinka” was a nonsense word he had heard in Afghanistan or Bosnia.

  15 “Bust and Boom,” Brzezinski.

  16 Maria A. Ressa, Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia (New York: Free Press, 2003), page 29.

  17 Ibid.

  18 Ibid.

  19 Ibid., page 30.

  20 Some accounts say the plane landed in Guam, but this appears to be mistaken.

  21 “Weaving a Wide Web,” Wallace, May 28, 1995.

  22 “Bust and Boom,” Brzezinski.

  23 “Weaving a Wide Web,” Wallace.

  24 “Bust and Boom,” Brzezinski.


  25 Simon Reeve, The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden, and the Future of Terrorism (London: André Deutsch, 1999), page 78.

  26 “Weaving a Wide Web,” Wallace.

  27 Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding, Masterminds of Terror (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2003), page 98.

  28 Ibid., page 100.

  29 “Weaving a Wide Web,” Wallace.

  30 Ibid.

  31 Melissa Boyle Mahle, Denial and Deception: An Insider’s View of the CIA (New York: Nation Books, 2006), page 159.

  CHAPTER 6: LOSING RAMZI

  1 Author interview with Richard A. Clarke, July 2003.

  2 This conversation is drawn from Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), page 202.

  3 Wright, The Looming Tower, page 204.

  4 “Fingerprints Being Studied in Bomb Case,” by Alison Mitchell, New York Times, May 20, 1993.

  5 Wright, The Looming Tower, page 203.

  6 Ibid.

  7 Ibid., page 204.

  8 “The Road to Ground Zero,” The Sunday Times (of London), January 6, 2002. This account is also in Simon Reeve’s The New Jackals, page 105.

  9 “Report: Police Arrest Friend of Yousef,” by Greg Myre, Associated Press, February 10, 1995.

  10 Richard Miniter, Losing bin Laden: How Clinton’s Failures Unleashed Global Terror (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2003), page 84.

  11 “Interview of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef,” FBI report, February 7, 1995. Taken from Peter Bergen’s The Osama bin Laden I Know (New York: Free Press, 2006), pages 144–46.

  12 “Early Scheme to Turn Jets into Weapons,” by Terry McDermott, Los Angeles Times, June 24, 2002.

  13 “Interview of Abdul Basit Mahmoud Abdul Karim,” FBI report, February 7–8, 1995. Taken from Bergen’s The Osama bin Laden I Know, pages 146–48.

  14 Mary Anne Weaver, “Children of Jihad,” The New Yorker, June 12, 1995, page 47.

  15 According to an interview with a Sudanese intelligence source in Khartoum, March 2002.

  16 Author interview with Janet McElligott, a former lobbyist for the government of Sudan who maintains close ties with its intelligence and political services.

  17 Melissa Boyle Mahle, Denial and Deception: An Insider’s View of the CIA (New York: Nation Books, 2006), page 247.