The search inside Room 603 at the Dona Josefa went on until 10:30 P . M . the night after the fire. Forty-nine separate pieces of evidence were recovered, including the chemicals, Casios, Bibles, and the map of the pope’s parade route. 1 At the moment of his capture, Murad had repeated the firecracker story to Capt. Aida Fariscal and insisted that his name was Saeed Ahmed. 2 But the discovery of the lab full of explosives and the ingenious collection of wires and timers told the PNP intelligence operatives that they had stumbled onto a much broader conspiracy. The pontiff was due to arrive in five days, so whatever it took to open up this Pakistani, they would do it.
Back-cuffed and blindfolded, Murad was led downstairs and into the car of Col. Avelino “Sonny” Razon, deputy commander of the Presidential Security Group (PSG).3 In the backseat he was wedged in between two PNP generals and driven three miles across the Pasig River to PSG headquarters at Malacanang Park, adjacent to the palace of President Fidel Ramos, a former general, who had come to power in 1992. Given the potential of this threat to the pope, the PNP wasn’t taking any chances on the debriefing being botched in some local police precinct.
Later, at trial in the U.S., Murad’s lawyers would allege that after his arrest he was tortured. He was forced to drink urine, they claimed, and electrodes were placed on his genitals.4 Though transcripts of Murad’s interrogation suggest that he was denied water and force-fed liquids, the allegations of outright torture were never proven. Still, there’s little doubt that early on his interrogation was harsh. Murad was held a total of sixty-seven days without being charged or brought before a magistrate.
PNP officials testified at his subsequent U.S. trial that on the morning of January 7, he was brought to Camp Crame, the headquarters of the Philippines Intelligence Group.5 There he was held in an empty office inside a one-story bungalow. During most of his questioning Murad was cuffed and blindfolded. But whatever the severity of treatment may have been in those first few days, the suspect said nothing that would have led the PNP to Ramzi Yousef.
The transcript of his questioning on January 7 reveals that Murad first denied that there had been a plot against the pope, but soon relented and described the plan to put pipe bombs in the road along the pontiff’s motorcade and detonate them by remote control.6 He discussed the chemistry of making nitrocellulose, and the use of Casio watches as timers. At one point he even boasted, “Nobody in the world can make this timer except us.”
He also described the structure of the Bojinka plot, saying that the goal had been “killing Americans.” He disclosed an affiliation with a “Liberation Army,” but never mentioned Yousef by name. In fact, Murad falsely identified his bomb-making partner as one “Nasser Ali.” Whatever his interrogators may have done to him, he said nothing about the third plot to hijack airliners and fly them into buildings.
Still, the PNP officials sensed that he knew much more. It was clear from his fingerprints on the bomb-making material in Room 603 that Murad was a member of the conspiracy, but they couldn’t get any more out of him with the methods they were using. So they decided to change interrogators.
Col. Rodolfo “Boogie” Mendoza was group commander of the Special Investigations Group for the PNP. A former intelligence specialist, he’d made his bones pursuing guerillas in the Communist New People’s Army. Mendoza had been running Blue Marlin, a PNP operation designed to penetrate Islamic terror cells operating in the Philippines.7
At that point in early 1995 the colonel was years ahead of the FBI in identifying Osama bin Laden and his brother-in-law Mohammed Jamal Khalifa as the money men behind Muslim groups like the Abu Sayyaf and the MNLF.8 He also had a unique approach to interrogation, preferring trickery and guile to the cattle prod.
The other PNP interrogators had pretty much given up on Murad by the time Colonel Mendoza took over. Before he was done, Yousef’s lifelong friend would not only give him up, but would spill the details of the terrifying plot that would culminate on September 11 six years later. In retrospect, the only thing more shocking than the revelation of the plot itself is the fact that the critical intelligence Mendoza gathered was provided to the U.S. government years before 9/11.
Now, for the first time, in an interview for this book, Colonel Mendoza reveals in depth the startling details of that interrogation. It was a line of questioning, he said, that began with a Big Mac, fries, and a Coke.
A Virtual Blueprint for 9/11
Before he got into a room with Murad, Colonel Mendoza wanted to make sure his prisoner was hungry, so the PNP handlers at Camp Crame kept the terrorist from eating. Murad was lying on a cot in the bungalow room where he’d been questioned earlier. Mendoza came into the room and placed a burger and fries from McDonalds on a table near the bed. Though he was blindfolded, Murad could smell the food and began to salivate. He got up and sat at the table, though he was still cuffed and chained to the bed. The colonel introduced himself.
“My name is Mendoza,” he said. “People call me Boogie.” He nodded to the Philippine equivalent of a Value Meal and said, “Are you going to eat that?” Murad was wary. Some of the harshest interrogators had started out friendly.
“What is it?” he answered in English.
“It is a Big Mac, my friend,” said the colonel. “One hundred percent all beef. There is no pork, I assure you.”9 Mendoza nodded for his assistant, Maj. Alberto Ferro, to lift Murad’s blindfold. The terrorist’s eyes went wide as soon as they adjusted to the light.
He started to lunge for the burger, but Mendoza stopped him. “No. If you want it, you have to give me something first.”
“Like what?” asked Murad wearily. “I have told the others everything.”
Mendoza, who had a baby face and a soft disposition, smiled.
“You don’t understand, sir. That is why I am here. I am your last, best hope. If you have nothing else to say, then the only decision I have is whether or not to turn you over to the Americans or the Mossad.”
Suddenly, Murad pulled back. The prospect of going to Israel terrified him. “What do you want me to say?”
“Just what you know,” said the colonel. “We captured your brother Wali on Singalong Street. He almost escaped. He had your passport. He had several of them, in fact. I see that you have been to America. You were in Washington in 1991 and you stayed seven months. You left out of New York. You are a bomber. Tell me something now or I will call Tel Aviv.”
Murad eyed him defiantly. Then Mendoza nodded to Major Ferro, who grabbed the burger and fries. Both of them started to leave the room, when Murad blurted out. “The Trade Center…I—”
“What?” said the colonel, turning on his heel.
“I’m involved in it,” said Murad. “The ones who did it—Salameh, Abouhalima—I know them.”
“Those names you could have read in the paper,” said Mendoza. He was about to take off again.
“I am telling you,” Murad exclaimed, “they are using fuel oil and nitric acid. It is ignited with an improvised det cord—gunpowder rolled in cloth. They cover it in plastic to keep down the smoke.”
Mendoza was intrigued, but cautious. He moved up and leaned over the table.
“The name of the one who lit the fuses!”
Murad hesitated. Mendoza slammed the table and turned to Major Ferro.
“Call Israel.”
“No. Wait!” said Murad. “I will tell you. I know him….It was—Abdul Basit.”
“That name means nothing to me,” said Mendoza.
“That is his real name, I swear by Allah.”
“What name does he go by?” demanded the colonel.
Murad hesitated again, then spoke the name in a muffled voice.
“What?”
“Ramzi Yousef.”
“Yousef?” said Mendoza, wide-eyed. “The terrorist the Americans are after?” Murad nodded sadly and turned away.
Col. Rodolfo Mendoza had just made the investigative break of the decade. Ramzi Yousef was the suspected mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, the person Newsweek had called the most wanted man on earth. The colonel leaned forward and nodded to Ferro, who handed Murad the burger, Coke, and fries.
“We were really shocked,” Mendoza reflected later. “Remember, at this time Yousef [was] one of the biggest fugitives in the world. After some time Murad told me that he would cooperate, provided that he not be brought to Israel, and we untied his handcuffs and blindfold.”
Over the days that followed, as he loosened up with Mendoza, Murad revealed the intimate details of the Bojinka and pope plots: how he had gone to America to study flying, how he’d been to schools in Texas, North Carolina, California, and upstate New York, and how he’d even come up with a plan to fly a small plane into CIA headquarters. Throughout the questioning—as in the following exchange, from one of the few transcripts made public—he continued to refer to Yousef as “Basit.”
MURAD: I told Basit that there is a planning what about we dive to CIA building.
MENDOZA:CIA building?
MURAD: Yes. He told me O.K.
MENDOZA: And you are willing to die for Allah or for Islamic—
MURAD: Yes.
MENDOZA: Really?
MURAD:Yes.
When Mendoza first wrote the debriefing memo for that session on January 20, he didn’t take the CIA plot very seriously. “With regards to their plan to dive-crash a commercial aircraft at the CIA Headquarters,” he wrote, “subject alleged that the idea of doing same came out during his casual conversation with ABDUL BASIT and there is no specific plan yet for its execution.”10
For months after 9/11, U.S. intelligence officials pointed to the almost casual uncertainty of that memo to suggest that Murad had said very little that would be a precursor to September 11. “It’s a big leap from stealing a Cessna to commandeering a 767,” one former senior CIA official told the Washington Post.11
In his book Breakdown, an analysis of the prior intelligence warnings leading up to 9/11, Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz quoted Bob Blitzer, assistant section chief for the Counterterrorism and Middle East Section of the FBI from 1991 to 1995: “Murad, during debriefings, indicated that he had it in his head to personally fly a small plane loaded with fuel or explosives into CIA headquarters in Langley. I remember that. I don’t ever remember seeing anything about Yousef talking about that or any other members of the cell saying, ‘We’re working on trying to put plans together to use passenger aircraft as bombs.’ I remember this one guy talking about the small plane attack, but that was it.”12
The reference to Murad’s plan of flying a small plane into the CIA has been widely reported.13 But what happened in the days that followed has not.
As Murad became more relaxed with Mendoza, he got considerably more specific. In fact, he disclosed a virtual blueprint of the 9/11 attacks— a more elaborate description than ever previously revealed.
“One day he is kind of cocky,” Mendoza recalled in an interview for this book.14 “Murad is saying, ‘You don’t know something that I do.’ And I asked him what it was, and he started discussing the plan to hijack commercial airliners. He told me airliners, not airplanes. So I asked him, ‘What is the specific plan?’ And he hesitated, so I turned to Major Ferro and said, ‘Call the Mossad.’ And he picked up a phone. We had one of our people in the other room on the line and he is making an Israeli accent. And this got Murad worried.”
Finally the terrorist blurted it out.
“Okay. The plan is to hijack commercial airliners.”
“And you are the guy who will execute the hijacking?” responded Mendoza.
“Yes,” said Murad. “Yousef asked me if I can do that and I told him that, offering a supreme sacrifice, I can do that.”
The colonel then asked him if other pilots were involved.
“Who are these people?”
Murad eyed him coyly. “You have to find out,” he said. “You have to work for it.”15
This cat and mouse game went on for days, with Murad holding back and Colonel Mendoza threatening to send him to Israel. At one point Mendoza even resorted to the good cop–bad cop ploy, allowing one of his cohorts to rush into the room claiming to be a local police official threatening to kill Murad. Suddenly, Mendoza became protective of his witness and forced the “cop” out of the room.
“I said, ‘Goddamn you, get out,’ to the guy,” recalled Mendoza. “I then told the subject [Murad] that we would have the Red Cross there soon to guarantee his human rights and safety. Of course, these are our people. But over time the subject came to trust us more and more.”
And little by little, Yousef’s oldest confidant coughed up the details of this third plot.
“He discussed with me,” said Mendoza, “even without me mentioning, that there is really formal training [going on] of suicide bombers. He said that there were other Middle Eastern pilots training and he discussed with me the names and flight training schools they went to. This is in February of 1995.”
Finally, Murad revealed some of the targets.
“CIA headquarters,” Mendoza recalled, “the Pentagon, and an unidentified nuclear facility.” Mendoza asked Murad where he had discussed the targets with Yousef and he said, “Quetta, Pakistan,” Yousef’s hometown.
“Murad is talking about a plan that is separate from Bojinka,” Mendoza said. “Murad is talking about pilot training in the U.S. and Murad is talking about the expertise of Yousef. Not only was this a parallel plot to Bojinka, but what is the motive of Murad to have flight training in the U.S., and who are the other pilots met by Murad in the U.S.? That is an enormous question.”16
Further evidence collected since 9/11 suggests that the intent of Yousef’s original scheme with Murad was even deadlier than what took place that day. One of the first reporters to talk to Colonel Mendoza about this third plot was Maria Ressa, the Manila bureau chief for CNN. On September 18, 2001, she conducted a related interview with Philippines Secretary Rigoberto Bobby Tiglao, the spokesman for President Fidel Ramos.
In addition to the CIA, the Pentagon, and the nuclear facility, Tiglao said, Murad confessed that other targets of the airliner hijacking scheme would include the Transamerica Tower in San Francisco, the Sears Tower in Chicago, and—as Ronnie Bucca had suspected—the World Trade Center.17
Murad was handed over to the FBI on April 13, more than two months after his arrival at Camp Crame. Agents Frank Pellegrino and Thomas Donlon were there to receive him at Ninoy Aquino International Airport along with members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. During the flight home, with Murad’s consent, the two agents questioned him for more than five hours. On May 11, 1995, they put the details of that debriefing into a seventeen-page single-spaced FBI 302, an official Bureau memo prepared by agents in anticipation of trial.18
Prior to publication in this book, the full contents of the Murad 302 have never been made public. According to the document, Murad revealed minute specifics of the aborted Bojinka and pope plots. He discussed his longtime relationship with Ramzi Yousef and gave up extraordinary details about the bomb maker’s background, including the fact, unknown to the Feds at the time, that Yousef was married and had two daughters.
The memo also documented Murad’s detailed description of Yousef’s PAL Flight 434 bomb and revealed that Yousef intended to allow the Abu Sayyaf (ASG) Philippine terror group to take credit for the pope’s murder so that it might “enhance their stature.”
This was an important admission by Murad that gave the FBI another hint of the link between Yousef and Osama bin Laden, since PNP documents handed over to the U.S. by Colonel Mendoza showed that bin Laden’s brother-in-law Khalifa had been a financial backer of the ASG.19
But the most remarkable line in the 302 came on pp. 12–13. In response to a question from the agents about Yousef’s intent, the 302 said, “MURAD advised that RAMZI wanted to return to the United States in the future to bomb the World Trade Center a second time.” A composite portion of the 302 is reproduced opposite. A copy of the entire memo can be found on pp. 499–517.
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
Date of trancription 5/11/95
FD -302 (Rev. 3-10-32)
On 4/13/95, SA's Francis J. Pellegrin conducted an interview of ABDUL HAKIM A HASHEM MURAD. MURAD was interviewed a ted from Manila, philippines to New Yor ndictment issued by the United Stated r the Southern District of New York.
MURAD advised that RAMZI wanted to return to the United State World Trade Center a second time.
Investigation on 4/12-13/95 at Aircraft in Flight File
SA FRANCIS J. PELLEGRINO, FBI by
SA THOMAS G. DONLON, FBI Date diclared 4/19/95
Murad’s extraordinary revelation, now confirmed in black and white and documented by the FBI, was a vindication of what Ronnie Bucca had suggested for years—that Yousef was coming back to finish off the Trade Center.
Still, even though the memo discussed Murad’s U.S. flight training in detail, it contained not a word about Ramzi’s third plot, in which commercial jets would be used as flying missiles to destroy the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and/or other U.S. buildings. This despite the fact that, only days before his rendition back to the States, Murad had told Colonel Mendoza that “there were pilot trainings going on in the U.S.”
In his interview for this book, Mendoza said he believed that Yousef and Murad came up with the airliner hijacking–flying missile plot after failing to topple the Twin Towers the first time.
“Murad is a dedicated man,” said Mendoza. “He provided the structural analysis of the World Trade Center. This may be speculation. But when the truck-bombing scheme did not work [in 1993] they decided that the only way to take down a symbolic target like the World Trade Center would be to steal a plane. He went to the United States and trained in flight training schools, and he told us about taking a plane and hitting the CIA, a nuclear facility, and the Pentagon.”
Colonel Mendoza insists that he turned over all his briefing tapes, transcripts, and reports on the Murad interrogation to the U.S. Embassy in Manila. When asked which U.S. officials specifically received the files he declined to name names to avoid embarrassing them.
However, when asked whether the U.S. government got the intelligence on the “third plot,” Mendoza said, “I am very sure of it.”20
Capt. Aida Fariscal, the woman who foiled the Bojinka and pope plots, said that she was certain the FBI got the information. In fact, the events of 9/11 have embittered her on the subject.
“It’s so chilling,” she told a reporter for the Washington Post. “Those kamikaze pilots trained in America just like Murad. The FBI knew all about Yousef’s plans. They’d seen the files; been inside [Room] 603. This [9/11] should never ever been allowed to happen. All those poor people dead.”21
Sonny Razon, the former colonel who transported Murad from the Dona Josefa Apartments, was later promoted to general in the PNP after he supervised the Bojinka investigation. In the aftermath of 9/11, he was equally shocked at the failure of the FBI to heed the warnings from Murad’s interrogation.
“We told the Americans about the plans to turn planes into flying bombs as far back as 1995,” he said. “Why didn’t they pay attention?”22
Of all the dots on the chart of negligence leading up to September 11, the FBI’s failure to understand the significance of Yousef’s “third plot” was the most glaring misstep to date.*
There would be others.