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Originally Posted by stevo
So Kalid Sheik Muhammed, captured in pakistan shortly after the 9/11 whose just been transfered to gitmo is a patsy? a stooge? I understand that it could have been undertaken by no one other than the 19 hijackers, but just because it could have happened that way doesn't mean it did. For the 19 hijackers to have been the be-all and end-all in the attacks on 9/11 they would have had to have left there message somewhere? No? I would imagine there would be some evidence that points to them being independent of any other group. Instead they left it up to the survivors to tell the world why. It doesn't seem logical to me that 19 people would commit a terrorist act, kill themselves along with thousands others and not leave behind a message, but rely on an unrelated terrorist group - al qaeda to give explination and advance their own agenda.
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The reports are that Khalid was not captured until March, 2003. Please consider that you do not know what you think that you know, and that your government feeds the press bullshit, and that Mr. Cheney appears to have told "untruths" about the "camp" at "Kermal", to justify the invasion of Iraq, even though it was the US that was well documented to have take a "hands off" approach to the camp. The camp is established to have been in a Kurdish controlled area that the US had access to, not Saddam and his government.
If Cheney is still misleading us about the Saddam al-Qaeda "connection", and
Bush misled us, last week about the "value" of Zubadayah, consider that I know less than you do, about Khalid, and I think I've looked into reports about him, more vigorously than you probably have:
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http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/t...e_911_timeline
(Near the bottom of the page...)
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March 1, 2003: Mohammed Reportedly Arrested in Pakistan, But Doubts Persist
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is reportedly arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. [Associated Press, 3/1/2003] Officials claim that he is arrested in a late-night joint Pakistani and FBI raid, in which they also arrest Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the purported main financer of the 9/11 attacks. [MSNBC, 3/3/2003] However, some journalists immediately cast serious doubts about this arrest. For instance, MSNBC reports, “Some analysts questioned whether Mohammed was actually arrested Saturday, speculating that he may have been held for some time and that the news was made public when it was in the interests of the United States and Pakistan” [MSNBC, 3/3/2003] There are numerous problems surrounding the US-alleged arrest of Mohammed:
bullet Witnesses say Mohammed is not present when the raid occurs. [Guardian, 3/3/2003; Associated Press, 3/2/2003; Associated Press, 3/2/2003; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3/2/2003; New York Times, 3/3/2003]
bullet There are differing accounts about which house he is arrested in. [Los Angeles Times, 3/2/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/3/2003; Associated Press, 3/1/2003]
bullet There are differing accounts about where he was before the arrest and how authorities found him. [Washington Post, 3/2/2003; Time, 3/1/2003; New York Times, 3/4/2003; New York Times, 3/3/2003; Washington Post, 3/2/2003]
bullet Some accounts have him sleeping when the arrest occurs. [New York Times, 3/3/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/2/2003; Daily Telegraph, 3/4/2003; Reuters, 3/2/2003]
bullet Accounts differ on who arrests him—Pakistanis, Americans, or both. [CNN, 3/2/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/2/2003; New York Times, 3/2/2003; Daily Telegraph, 3/3/2003; London Times, 3/3/2003; Associated Press, 3/3/2003]
bullet There are previously published accounts that Mohammed may have been killed in September 2002. [Daily Telegraph, 9/16/2002; Christian Science Monitor, 10/29/2002; Asia Times, 10/30/2002; Los Angeles Times, 12/22/2002; Daily Telegraph, 3/4/2003; Asia Times, 3/6/2003]
bullet There are accounts that he was captured the year before. [Daily Times (Lahore), 9/9/2002; Times of India, 9/9/2002; Associated Press, 9/16/2002; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3/2/2003] These are just some of the difficulties with the arrest story. There are so many problems with it that one Guardian reporter says, “The story appears to be almost entirely fictional.” [Guardian, 3/6/2003]
Entity Tags: Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Federal Bureau of Investigation
March 10, 2003: Dubious Arrest Video Raises Question of Mohammed-ISI Connection
One week after the purported arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Pakistan, the ISI show what they claim is a video of the capture. It is openly mocked as a bad forgery by the few reporters allowed to see it. [ABC News, 3/11/2003; Reuters, 3/11/2003; Pakistan News Service (Newark, CA), 3/11/2003; Daily Times (Lahore), 3/13/2003] For instance, a Fox News reporter says, “Foreign journalists looking at it laughed and said this is baloney, this is a reconstruction.” [Fox News, 3/10/2003] Other information about the arrest also raises questions about his relationship with the ISI. At the time of Mohammed’s alleged arrest, he was staying in a neighborhood filled with ISI officials, just a short distance from ISI headquarters, leading to suspicions that he’d been doing so with ISI approval. [Lateline, 3/3/2003] One expert notes that after his arrest, “Those who think they have ISI protection will stop feeling that comfort level.” [Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3/2/2003] Journalist Robert Fisk reports, “Mohammed was an ISI asset; indeed, anyone who is ‘handed over’ by the ISI these days is almost certainly a former (or present) employee of the Pakistani agency whose control of Taliban operatives amazed even the Pakistani government during the years before 2001.” [Toronto Star, 3/3/2003]
Entity Tags: Taliban, Pakistan Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence
March 27, 2003: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Says Moussaoui Not Involved in 9/11
The Washington Post reports that information obtained from interrogations of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed further undermines the government’s case against Zacarias Moussaoui for his alleged involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Apparently, Mohammed told his interrogators that Moussaoui was not part of the 9/11 hijacker group, but was in the US for a second wave of attacks that were planned for early 2002. Details of any such plan have not been revealed. Legal experts agree that at the very least, “on the death penalty, [this information] is quite helpful to Moussaoui.” In spite of Mohammed’s revelations, the government still feels that it can convict Moussaoui of being involved in a conspiracy with al-Qaeda. [Washington Post, 3/28/2003] .....
.....June 16, 2004: 9/11 Commission Gives Account of Prisoner Interrogations
The 9/11 Commission releases a new report on how the 9/11 plot developed. Most of their information appears to come from interrogations of prisoners Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, and Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, a key member of the al-Qaeda Hamburg cell. In this account, the idea for the attacks appears to have originated with Mohammed. In mid-1996, he met bin Laden and al-Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef in Afghanistan. He presented several ideas for attacking the US, including a version of the 9/11 plot using ten planes (presumably an update of Operation Bojinka’s second phase plot (see February-April 1995).). Bin Laden does not commit himself. In 1999, bin Laden approves a scaled-back version of the idea, and provides four operatives to carry it out: Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, Khallad bin Attash, and Abu Bara al Taizi. Attash and al Taizi drop out when they fail to get US visas. Alhazmi and Almihdhar prove to be incompetent pilots, but the recruitment of Mohamed Atta and the others in the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell solves that problem. Bin Laden wants the attacks to take place between May and July 2001, but the attacks are ultimately delayed until September. [9/11 Commission, 6/16/2004] However, information such as these accounts resulting from prisoner interrogations is seriously doubted by some experts, because it appears they only began cooperating after being coerced or tortured. For instance, it is said that Mohammed was “waterboarded” (see September 11, 2002) a technique in which his head is pushed under water until he nearly drowns. Information gained under such duress often is unreliable. Additionally, there is a serious risk that the prisoners might try to intentionally deceive. [New York Times, 6/17/2004] One CIA report of his interrogations is called, “Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s Threat Reporting—Precious Truths, Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.” [Los Angeles Times, 6/23/2004] The commission itself expresses worry that Mohammed could be trying to exaggerate the role of bin Laden in the plot to boost bin Laden’s reputation in the Muslim world. [9/11 Commission, 6/16/2004] Most of what these prisoners have said is uncorroborated from other sources. [New York Times, 6/17/2004]
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Terry McDermott, Josh Meyer and Patrick J McDonnell, Tribune Newspapers Los Angeles Times
KARACHI, Pakistan
Section: News
Publication title: Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Ill.: Dec 24, 2002. pg. 4
Senior Pakistani and American intelligence officials say the operational commander of Al Qaeda, the man who planned the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, narrowly avoided capture in a raid that took his two sons into custody here.
It was one of at least half a dozen missed opportunities over eight years to seize Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who is described by intelligence analysts on three continents as the man most responsible for Al Qaeda's continuing terrorist attacks.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency has had Mohammed's two young sons in custody since September. One senior U.S. investigator said authorities came "within moments" of capturing Mohammed in the same raid.
Pakistani intelligence officials said that in recent months they have seen evidence that Mohammed, even as he has been on the run, has been aggressively directing terrorist cells.
"Despite being so much in danger, he has not gone into hibernation or [made efforts] to hide," one senior Pakistani official said. "He is trying to protect what they have. He would like to consolidate first and then rebuild on the same edifice. And he is doing that. He remains active."
Mohammed has been linked to attacks against the U.S. as far back as 1993, but his importance in the overall Al Qaeda structure became clear only after Sept. 11, U.S. officials say. Now, some officials say, stopping Mohammed is at least as important as capturing Osama bin Laden, perhaps more.
Mohammed, believed to be 37, has traveled the world as one of the chief designers of Al Qaeda, using Egyptian, Qatari, Saudi, British and Kuwaiti identities. He has used more than three dozen aliases. He is said to speak Arabic with a Kuwaiti accent and to be fluent in Urdu, the principal language of Pakistan, and English, acquired in part as he studied for a mechanical engineering degree at a college in North Carolina.
He communicates with Al Qaeda cells around the world by courier, e-mail, coded telephone conversations and shortwave radio; German intelligence agents say that when he was forced to retreat to rural hide-outs he sent messages by donkey.
Even at the height of the U.S. bombing campaign against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Mohammed planned, staffed and directed new terrorist attacks, according to intelligence documents. Mohammed planned a bombing campaign in Southeast Asia that was scheduled to occur late in 2001, according to the documents.
Mohammed the Pakistani, as the Asian bombers knew him, housed a young Canadian recruit named Jabarah for weeks in his Karachi apartment, instructing him on communication protocols--e-mail passwords, telephone codes. He then sent him to coordinate and finance the bomb squads. With just a few days' notice, Mohammed delivered $50,000 to the recruit to pay for bombmaking materials. The money was delivered in packs of $100 bills at a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, according to the intelligence documents.
That plot was foiled, but Mohammed's intimate involvement in it underscores his leadership in building the terrorist networks of that region, including the cell responsible for the recent attack in Bali, Indonesia, in which nearly 200 people died.
It is the same role U.S. investigators believe he has played around the world. If bin Laden has been the architect of Al Qaeda, they say, Mohammed has been its engineer.
Al Qaeda members in custody have told interrogators that Mohammed had operational cells in place in the U.S. after the Sept. 11 attacks and that he was the principal proponent within Al Qaeda of developing radioactive "dirty bombs," according to European intelligence officers.
The FBI acknowledges that it underestimated Mohammed's significance for years, a senior FBI agency official said. "He was under everybody's radar. We don't know how he did it. We wish we knew. He's the guy nobody ever heard of. The others had egos. He didn't."
Although born in Kuwait, Mohammed is a Pakistani national whose family is from Baluchistan, an area that straddles Pakistan's borders with Iran and Afghanistan. Mohammed was born in 1965, according to records, and raised in Fahaheel, south of Kuwait City. His oldest brother, Zahed, attended Kuwait University and was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, a militant pan-Arab organization that functioned as an underground opposition throughout the region.
A man who knew the family said a group called the Islamic Association of Palestinian Students also was formed on campus then; one of its leaders went on to become head of the political bureau of the militant Islamic group Hamas. That was the initial politicization of Mohammed, the friend said.
Mohammed attended high school in Kuwait then left for college in the United States. He enrolled first at Chowan College, a tiny Baptist school in eastern North Carolina.
Chowan did not require the English proficiency exam then widely mandated for international students. Foreign enrollees often spent a semester or two at Chowan, improved their English and then transferred to four-year universities. By 1984, Chowan had a sizable contingent of Middle Easterners.
Mohammed spent just a semester at Chowan, then transferred to North Carolina A&T, a historically black college in Greensboro. He was a part of a group of Arab students there that other Middle Easterners called the "mullahs" because of their religious zeal.
`In the mosque all the time'
Students who recall Mohammed describe him as studious and private, a devotee of the library and Allah, but friendly enough in a casual way and capable of a laugh.
"All anyone knows about him is that he was in the mosque all the time," said Faisal Al-Munifi, who studied mechanical engineering at the same time as Mohammed.
He didn't spout anti-Western or anti-American rhetoric. "Something must have happened later that caused that feeling," said Badawi Hindieh, who knew Mohammed at Chowan and Greensboro. "I never remember him saying anything like that."
Mohammed earned a degree in mechanical engineering at the end of 1986 and is believed to have left the United States for Pakistan, where he joined two older brothers active in the Afghan resistance in Peshawar. A man who knew the three brothers said Mohammed emulated Abed, who was more militant than Zahed, who ran a Kuwaiti charity organization.
Mohammed taught at a university established by an Afghan warlord and at an adjacent refugee camp, according to a friend. His brother Abed was killed in an explosion either in battle or in a jihad training camp in 1989, friends said.
Mohammed's first known involvement in terrorism occurred in 1992, when he sent money to his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, as Yousef was in New Jersey preparing to bomb the World Trade Center.
He and Yousef later teamed up on plots in the Philippines to assassinate the pope and President Bill Clinton and to place bombs aboard a dozen U.S. airliners. Those plots were foiled by authorities in 1995. Mohammed escaped and moved to the Persian Gulf, according to American investigators.
Investigators say Mohammed spent the next year building and maintaining a fundraising network in the gulf.
"Throughout the region, there was this classic sort of money collector--the guy who was hanging out at the mosque, checking out the scene, basically casing the mark, who would invariably be some old guy with lots of money. A religious guy, probably. The collector would come up alongside him, make his pitch very persistently and the mark would write him a check," said one American official who worked in the gulf region throughout the 1990s.
"Khalid Sheik Mohammed was a collector, a guy who would collect the money from the street collectors. . . . A guy in the Philippines would call a guy in Dubai who would call Khalid Sheik Mohammed. It would be a chain of telephone calls and Khalid would send the money."
Misdirected attention
U.S. understanding of Islamic terrorism then was inchoate. Al Qaeda was barely on the screen. Potential state-sponsored terrorism was deemed more dangerous, so more attention was given to Iran, which had become the chief international proponent of Islamist goals.
Mohammed lived openly in the Persian Gulf region. "He wasn't even using an alias," one official said. U.S. agents tracked him through Italy, Egypt, Singapore, Jordan, Thailand, the Philippines and Qatar. In Qatar, American officials say, he stayed as the guest of a member of the country's ruling family, Abdullah bin Khallad al- Thani, who was then the country's minister of religious affairs.
"Abdullah bin Khallad had a farm outside of [Doha]. A lot of these guys had what were basically gentlemen's truck farms. It was a hobby. Grow cabbages, raise ducks," said one U.S. official. "So he has this farm and he always had a lot of people around, the house was always overstaffed, a lot of unemployed Afghan Arabs. . . . There were always these guys hanging around and maybe a couple of Kalashnikovs in the corner."
U.S. intelligence figured out that one of the guys on the farm was Mohammed. A grand jury in New York had indicted Mohammed for the Manila airliner plot, and a debate occurred on what exactly to do about it.
FBI Director Louis Freeh met with Qatar officials seeking permission to arrest him. One FBI official said months passed without approval, even though Qatar acknowledged that Mohammed was there. At one point, according to documents, Qatar told the U.S. they feared Mohammed was constructing an explosive device. They also said he then possessed more than 20 passports; still, they delayed granting U.S. permission to seize him.
Some officials felt strongly that the U.S. should act as quickly and with as much force as necessary to capture him. Others were more wary. A meeting was called in Washington in early 1996. Caution prevailed.
"That D.C. meeting . . . struck me as one of the great lessons in politics," said a person who attended the meeting. "Here was this opportunity to get this bad guy, and we didn't do it. The Qatar government had no interest in screwing up its fragile relationship with us. If we had gone in and nabbed this guy, or just cut his head off, the Qatari government would not have complained a bit.
"Everyone around the table for their own reasons refused to go after someone who fundamentally threatened American interests. . . . The FBI can't go anywhere overseas without the CIA providing the intel, the DOD providing the logistics and military muscle in the event we have to shoot our way in. And none of that happened."
Another participant said the real obstacle was the Pentagon, which feared another "Black Hawk Down" debacle and insisted the "snatch and grab" job would require hundreds if not thousands of troops.
In the end, rather than sending a kidnap squad, Freeh sent a letter to the Qatari government. By the time permission was granted, Mohammed was gone.
He is thought to have fled to Afghanistan, where he joined Al Qaeda and eventually rose to its highest ranks.
"Look at what has happened in the last six years--you would have to assume that he played a role in everything from that point on," said Neil Herman, a former top FBI counterterrorism officer. "He is right there. He is a common denominator. If he had been caught in 1996, who knows what could have been prevented?"
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