Although stopping future attacks was our prime mission, once the detainees became compliant, we did obtain intelligence about past atrocities that was valuable. Here is an example from one of our post-debriefing chats.
“You looked uncomfortable during parts of your conversation with the lady,” Bruce said, referring to KSM’s just-completed debriefing with a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) subject matter expert.
In these chats we would discuss a detainee’s actions and body language during an interrogation or debriefing that had just ended. We would say to the detainee, “Now that the questioning is over, let’s take a few minutes to relax, put aside any friction between us, and discuss what that was like for you.”
Then we would have a direct and sometimes surprisingly open and intimate discussion with the detainee about what he thought and felt while being questioned. If we thought it would help nudge him toward being more compliant the next time he was questioned, Bruce and I would share our reactions to what he said and how he acted during questioning.
The chat was also helpful in getting additional information. Detainees often elaborated on something they had said or provided additional details they forgot to include when initially questioned. It wasn’t really a chat, of course; it was part of our interrogation process.
“We noticed that several times when you were talking to the lady, you seemed about to say something and then decided not to. You would glance down and look away. Sometimes when she asked you questions, you were lost in thought. You know the hard times are over; there’s nothing that you can say that will offend us. What’s bothering you?”
“Go get the lady who asks the questions so she can take notes,” KSM said. He sounded nervous.
While Bruce stayed with KSM, I ran to the communications center where the WMD subject matter expert was writing up her report for the day.
“KSM says he has something important to say and he would like you there,” I said.
When the two of us got back to the briefing room and settled into our chairs, KSM launched into a gory and detailed description of how he beheaded the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in February 2002. Although some suspected his involvement, up to that moment we had no idea that he had committed that horrendous murder personally.
This was not the first time this topic had come up while KSM was in CIA custody. Soon after capture, while he was still in Pakistan, a CIA officer had asked him what he knew about the Pearl killing, but KSM had simply replied, “Not yet.”
I don’t recall the exact words KSM used when the debriefer, Bruce, and I questioned him that day, but the picture they painted in my head caused me to tear up. At first, KSM’s hands shook and his voice was hesitant. I think he expected us to punish him. But then, as he got into the story, it was obvious he enjoyed the telling and experienced pleasure reliving parts of it. At one point he got out of his chair and used hand gestures to illustrate how he cut Pearl’s throat.
One of us asked him “Was it hard to do?” meaning, “Was it emotionally difficult?”
KSM misunderstood the question. “Oh, no,” he said, hardly pausing, “No problem. I had very sharp knives. Just like slaughtering sheep. The only hard part was cutting through the neck bone.” He then went into an ugly matter-of-fact description of the technique he used to decapitate his victim.
I was disgusted and horrified. We all were. Each of us struggled to hide his or her outrage. We wanted him to complete the story and needed him to continue cooperating in debriefings, and so we let him talk, asking questions when he glossed over important details. The creepiest part for me was that he kept referring to Pearl as “Daniel” in a tone of voice that suggested they were good friends.
KSM told us how the British-born radical Pakistani cleric Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh arranged for the kidnapping and later turned Pearl over to al-Qa’ida after discovering Pearl was Jewish. KSM walked us through the grisly details: where he took Pearl, how he killed him, how he dismembered the body and stacked the pieces in a narrow hole in the frozen ground. I will not describe it further, but it is the stuff of nightmares.
When we mentioned to KSM that there were some in Washington who wouldn’t believe him, he seemed taken aback. He pointed to his hairy arms and hands as if their appearance should make identification obvious. “You can’t see my face in the video that we released, but you can see my arms and hands,” he said, running his right hand over his left forearm. He then made a slashing motion and stopped midway, posing to show us how his arms and hands would be visible in the video.
Later, after KSM was returned to his cell, one of the guards who had overheard his gleeful confession said, “That guy needs to die. Real bad!” I knew what he meant. It wasn’t a threat. The guard meant that the world would be a safer place if monsters like KSM were not among us.
The report went back to CIA headquarters and immediately generated controversy. As predicted, some were skeptical. A rumor subsequently spread that KSM had confessed to cutting Pearl’s throat during waterboarding. That’s not remotely true. This conversation about Pearl took place weeks or months after he was subjected to enhanced interrogations for the last time.
Headquarters wanted definitive proof that it was KSM who had cut Pearl’s throat. They needed to be sure it wasn’t a false confession. Therefore, Bruce, the COB, and KSM reenacted the beheading, careful to re-create KSM’s arm and hand positions exactly as they were in the video. They used a pillowcase stuffed with bags of sugar to approximate the size and weight of Pearl’s head. KSM got into the task, providing direction, correcting camera angles, and arranging and rearranging his hands and arms around the stuffed pillowcase until he had the position just right. Throughout the reenactment, KSM smiled and mugged for the camera. Sometimes he preened.
CIA and FBI officials compared the pattern of veins and other morphological features of KSM’s forearms and hands to those of the person murdering Pearl in the video. They matched. It was definitely KSM.
When the news came back, KSM was in good spirits. “See, I told you,” he said. “I cut Daniel’s throat with these blessed hands.”
KSM was a diva, and when new debriefers came on board, he inevitably would test them. He would listen to the questions they asked, and if he concluded that they were not familiar with what he had said previously on the topic, he would complain, “Why do you send these people to question me when it is obvious they don’t know what I said before? How can we advance our discussions if I have to start at the beginning every time?”
Fortunately, this seldom happened. Most debriefers were very well prepared, sometimes too well prepared. Once, in an effort to put KSM on notice, a newly arrived debriefer warned at the beginning of his first debriefing with him, “I’ve been studying you for so long that I know more about you than you do.”
KSM immediately replied with a twinkle that became a glare: “Then you should be able to answer your own questions and I can go back to my prayers.” KSM then sat there, acting like offended royalty, until I leaned in to reframe what the debriefer had said.
“KSM, I think my friend meant that as a compliment. What he’s saying is that you are so important to him and he has studied you for so long that he feels like he knows you even though you two have never met.”
KSM was not fooled by this bit of flattering verbal hocus-pocus. He looked at us and made a face that said, “Oh, really? Come on, now!”
At the same time, however, KSM liked to see people go out of their way to flatter him, especially when they were forced to do so to keep him talking. That bit of awkwardness was in itself flattering to him. Accepting the pretense that it was a compliment and knowing that it galled the debriefer to go along with it allowed KSM to save face and continue with the debriefing with less friction.
There was often friction. For example, one debriefer was hot to show KSM that he wasn’t going to take any guff from him. He started interrupting KSM with assertions about what he was thinking during the incident about which the debriefer was asking.
KSM finally said, “Why do you waste your time talking to me when you think you already know the answer?”
After that, KSM, who was normally quite talkative, answered the questions exactly as asked without elaborating or offering any details that were not requested. It was a missed opportunity, an example of why establishing rapport and tailoring the questions to the specific detainee’s temperament was so important during debriefings. Later, a different debriefer would have to readdress the topic to fill in the details that I think KSM would have provided if the first debriefer had been less abrasive.
KSM could be difficult to debrief even when he was being cooperative. At one point, he announced to the COB of the black site where he was being held that he once again was going to travel the true path of Sufism, a mystical branch of his faith that its adherents consider the true original path of Islam. Going forward, he said he was devoting his life to this Islamic mysticism and therefore needed to establish “office hours” so that he had uninterrupted time to immerse himself in the required chanting, contemplation, prayer, and study. He posted his office hours on his cell door and flipped a hand-scrawled sign to “Open” or “Closed” to indicate when he was available for his “CIA work.”
As you might imagine, this didn’t go over well at the black site. Bruce and I were dispatched to sort things out. Everyone except the guards, who found it amusing, was in a snit. KSM was slowing down the debriefings, and the COB was on the verge of stripping away his amenities to pressure him to abandon the idea of office hours.
We knew from the chief interrogator’s past experience with KSM that when you drew a line in the sand with him, he would dig in and out of spite refuse to budge. We could force him to sit in a room with a debriefer, but the level of cooperation he had been showing, the level that headquarters had come to expect, probably would suffer. However, the COB was in charge of running the site, and the idea that a captured terrorist could dictate his own office hours was unacceptable to him. There was a new interrogator already on-site, and some were pressing him to consider requesting the resumption of EITs to force compliance, something that Bruce and I would have recommended against and refused to participate in and that headquarters never would have approved.
Like ombudsmen or marriage counselors, we listened to both sides.
The COB’s position was easy to understand. He was in charge, and KSM would do what he was told when he was told to do it. Period, full stop, end of discussion.
KSM’s position was a little more nuanced. It had two main components: one religious and one practical. Regarding the religious aspect, KSM told us that his obligation to Allah in pursuing Sufism required that he immerse himself, praying and contemplating the deeper meaning of the Koran and Islamic mystical texts throughout the day. He said that if he capitulated to the COB’s demands and gave up on this path without a fight, he would be turning his back on what Allah expected of him and placing his soul at risk. On the practical side, KSM said that he had lots of time during the day for prayer and contemplation but couldn’t use it. He couldn’t take advantage of the downtime he had available because the guards would pull him out of his cell, seemingly without warning, for debriefings, bathing, medical checkups, and the like, interrupting his devotions and not allowing him to finish his meditations or prayers.
“Often,” he said, “when they pull me out of my cell, I sit in the chair for a long time waiting for the CIA person to arrive, only to have them show me a single photograph or ask me a single question and then leave. It wastes my time.”
KSM also complained that debriefings tended to start sometime around midday, interrupting or forcing him to miss important obligatory midday prayers. He said this wasn’t what it was like at the other black sites where he had been held before, and he didn’t like it.
During this first meeting with KSM, Bruce and I reminded him that although we encouraged his spiritual devotion and understood why it was important to him, the CIA was not running a religious retreat for Sufis and headquarters would not allow him to quit cooperating. We asked him to work with us until we could find a solution. We told him we weren’t going to make any recommendations right away because we wanted to see what he was talking about. He agreed to continue cooperating with the debriefers until we resolved it.
We told the COB that we wanted to get a better sense of what was going on and that we needed to observe for a while before we made any recommendations. Then we watched.
Sure enough, events during the day played out almost exactly as KSM had described them. The debriefers, who had been up late the night before writing reports, would arrive in the control center where the terminals were situated in late morning. They would either begin a new report or return to writing the one they had started the night before. In addition, some were working on bigger projects that required many days and much research to finish. It was not uncommon for one of the debriefers to say to the chief of security, “I want to talk to KSM in a little while.” The guards, among the most proactive and dependable force I’ve ever encountered, would pull KSM from his cell, move him to the meeting room, and prepare him for debriefing.
Sometimes KSM would sit waiting for an hour or more while the debriefer finished a report or got to the point in a report at which she needed to query KSM for clarification. Most debriefers would include the follow-up query in their main session, the one in which they planned to pursue whatever issues the folks back at headquarters had decided were the most important to focus on that day. But some debriefers, intent on completing an important report, would pop into the meeting room long enough to ask a couple of follow-up questions about a photo from the day before or some al-Qa’ida operative he had mentioned or some other needed detail and then leave. KSM would be moved back to his cell. He’d then be pulled out again around noon for a full debriefing. Once we saw the debriefer pop in after KSM had been waiting long enough to become irritated, ask a question, and then tell the guards, “I’ll be back in a little while to do my debriefing.” Meanwhile KSM remained there hooded, chained, sitting in a chair, and waiting.
The other thing we noticed that was consistent with KSM’s complaint and unique to this site was that the debriefers tended to start debriefing in earnest about the same time midday prayers rolled around. This was not deliberate but a natural consequence of starting late, finishing reports, reviewing new intelligence requirements sent by headquarters the night before, and researching the background required to service them. Meanwhile KSM, knowing they were going to debrief him that day, would be wandering around his cell, looking up at the cameras, and making “what gives?” gestures with his hands the closer it got to prayer time. More often than not, KSM would give up waiting and settle into prayer, and a few minutes later the guards would enter to escort him to the debriefing room. None of it was deliberate, but all of it was irritating to KSM.
After we understood what was going on, Bruce and I made our recommendations to the COB. Those recommendations were among the reasons some people at the CIA thought we were soft on terrorists. We recommended that the COB add structure and predictability to KSM’s day. Although KSM should not be allowed to dictate office hours per se, personnel at the site could accommodate his need for time for prayer and mystic contemplation with just a few procedural changes.
To add structure to KSM’s day, we recommended that each morning the interrogator on-site get together with the debriefers and anyone else who would need to see KSM and figure out a daily schedule that was tailored to whatever the unique demands of that day were. After that, the interrogator would stop by KSM’s cell and tell him what to expect.
For example, the interrogator might tell KSM, “There’s going to be three debriefings today: one in the morning and two in the afternoon. Unless there is an urgent requirement, you should have from now until ten a.m. for prayer and contemplation. You’ll be back in time for midday prayers, but after that you’ll be busy from one p.m. until late afternoon.”
The schedule was still driven by the needs of the debriefers, but it was more predictable because KSM was told ahead of time what to expect.
We recommended a couple of other changes as well. We recommended that rather than pull KSM out of his cell for a brief question or clarification, the guards should escort the debriefers to the cell, where they could ask their questions through the bars. This would still interrupt his prayers or reading, but not for as long as the time required to escort him to the debriefing room and force him to wait for the debriefers to show up.
We sold this to KSM by telling him that the only way headquarters would let us cut back on how long he sometimes had to wait was for him to be open to debriefers who briefly interrupted his nonobligatory prayers or contemplation to ask a quick question and then left. We also told him that the site would try to respect his obligatory prayer schedule, but sometimes it wouldn’t work out that way. We said, “As you have told us, Allah will know what is in your heart. He will know that it is us, not you, that prevents you from praying.”
Using what KSM and Abu Zubaydah had taught us about radical Islam, we told KSM that sometimes he might have to wait longer than he liked for the debriefing to start. “But rather than just sitting there waiting,” we said, “that might be a good time to pray or chant or contemplate the deeper meaning of Allah’s presence in everything, including your current situation. Your god will know how much more difficult it is to pray or meditate while hooded and chained to a chair rather than sitting comfortably on a prayer rug. There is no dishonor in that.” Afterward KSM continued to tease us about having office hours for months, but it was in jest.
Although our recommendations were implemented at the site and appreciated by the COB, not everyone there initially liked them. Some thought any accommodation of KSM’s request for more predictable time to pray and contemplate the mysteries of Islam represented capitulation. They said he should be forced, with physical coercion if necessary, to do whatever he was told whenever he was told to do it; after all, KSM was a captured killer.
Bruce and I reminded them that the CIA was in the business of obtaining intelligence, not running a prison where the primary focus was to punish detainees. As long as it was possible to make minor accommodations for a cooperating detainee and as a result elicit answers to our questions that were more full and complete, that was what we should be doing. We reminded them that EITs were not authorized for use to punish detainees for acting out or to force compliance with administrative rules.
Bruce and I, along with some of the other interrogators, did a lot of this sort of dispute resolution between detainees and black site managers or other personnel, and oddly, I often found myself taking KSM’s or some other detainee’s side.
Here’s another example. Just after moving to a new site, KSM started refusing to answer questions. I think Bruce and I were sent to the site because headquarters was expecting a new capture. We were asked to sort out the slowdown while we were there. We discovered that KSM had been promised he could fast during the day. However, the new COB was forcing him to take a multivitamin each morning after daybreak. Bruce and I immediately understood the problem: taking the vitamin after first light invalidated the religious value of the fast.
Bruce and I asked the COB why he was so insistent on forcing KSM to take the vitamin during daylight hours, since it would work just as well medicinally if he took it after sunset with his evening meal. It was another one of those “because I said so” standoffs combined with “What’s the big deal? It’s just a little vitamin.”
Black site personnel already had taken KSM’s mattress and were getting ready to take his clothes. Bruce and I suggested that they hold off. We explained the religious significance of non-Ramadan fasting during daylight hours to a Sufi as a means of demonstrating additional sacrifice and devotion to Allah and pointed out that deliberately taking anything by mouth between first light and last invalidated the fast. Thus, by forcing KSM to take that vitamin, as small as it was, we were reneging without good reason on a promise made by the CIA. It was a problem, we said, not because KSM needed to get right with his god but because it slowed down intelligence collection. The COB initially argued with us, but he could see it was a self-inflicted wound and eventually relented. Because this guy was smart and wanted the best for intelligence collection, he became one of the best COBs Bruce and I ever worked with.
Once KSM got comfortable in his role as a CIA collaborator, he began to view himself not just as “the brain” but also as “the professor.” At one of the sites, a forward-thinking COB let KSM establish what he called a “training camp” where he lectured on Islamic jihadist ideology, terrorist recruiting, attack planning, target reconnaissance, and fund-raising for terror attacks. Since part of what we were there to do was keep KSM busy between debriefings to lessen the effects of isolation, a variety of people attended those seminars, including the COB, interrogators, debriefers, targeters, and security personnel. Often something of intelligence value would come out of them.
KSM would waddle over to the whiteboard, pick up an alcohol marker, and begin lecturing. He ran a pretty strict class. He would scowl good-naturedly and wag his finger at you if you asked a question that suggested you weren’t paying attention. He would tease us about tests and term projects. He even playfully suggested that I could get “extra credit” if I helped him with an “after-school project.” It was just talk.
I liked all the lessons, but I really enjoyed discussing radical Islam with him. I did not understand their brand of militant Islam with clarity until he and other high-value detainees explained it to me from their perspective. I had read about it and studied it from afar, and even though the writings used some of the same words to describe the beliefs that the detainees employed, the depth of their conviction and their absolute adherence to their faith did not come through on the printed page. That depth of conviction is one of the reasons they are so dangerous.
I don’t claim to be an expert on Islam, but I have spent thousands of hours with captive senior al-Qa’ida leaders such as KSM, talking about a variety of topics, including the religious reasons they assert underlie their terror attacks. Thus, although I don’t know everything there is to know about radical Islamists from an academic perspective, I do have practical knowledge of what terrorists said inspired them to attack us.
Let me share a little of what KSM and the others collectively told me. I have to warn you that their views are not politically correct. They are the beliefs of the Islamic terrorists who are trying to kill us and destroy our way of life, not mine.
KSM said that Allah has given True Muslims (their brand of Islam) dominion over the world and a holy mandate to invite infidels to convert to Islam or submit to subjugation. If the infidels refuse, True Muslims are mandated by Allah to fight an unending war until all unbelievers have been converted, subjugated, or slaughtered. We’ve seen ISIS trying to do this very thing in Iraq and Syria in recent years.
KSM said that America may not be in a religious war with him, but he and other True Muslims are in a religious war with America. He described it as a battle of civilizations, with the House of Islam (Dar al-Islam) on one side and the House of War (Dar al-Harb) on the other. He said that our culture, with its liberties and freedoms and decadent indulgences, is unclean and that our efforts to live our lives as we choose and to protect our way of life are an offensive attack against True Islam.
KSM and the others said that offensive jihad is actually defensive jihad, because that is the only way to protect True Muslims from the spread of our unclean culture and the seductive way of life led by infidels.
KSM insisted that violent jihad is the religious duty of every True Muslim in response to the spread of Western culture and American influence. It is the only hope of redressing injustices. True Muslims, he said, are more important than other people because they were chosen by Allah to rule the world. This justifies the use of any means necessary to assume their rightful dominion, including terror attacks. Because they have been chosen by Allah, True Muslims are entitled to freedoms and liberties that others are not. It is the duty of True Muslims to determine the destiny of infidels.
KSM said that those who do not believe as they do (Non–True Muslims) harbor harmful intentions toward True Muslims and therefore cannot be trusted. They see modern events involving America and Western democracies as a continuation of the medieval crusades to destroy them and believe that attacking others with acts of violent terror is a preemptive defensive necessity.
KSM said that American culture is a direct attack against Islam because Allah dictates how people should be governed. It is not up for a vote. Anything that questions complete subservience to the Koran and Sharia law is a threat to Islam and must be destroyed. Western democracy and freedom of thought and true Sharia law cannot coexist because Western democracy postulates that men and women have a say in how they live their lives, whereas Sharia dictates how lives are to be led according to Allah’s will and as reflected in the perfect Prophet’s deeds and words.
KSM said the United States is the only major obstacle to True Islam assuming its rightful place of dominion over the world and imposing Sharia law. To him and the others it does not matter that we do not want to fight them. It does not matter that we believe in religious freedom. There are no innocent bystanders. No one in the West, especially in America, is innocent. Killing women and men who are not actively fighting Islam is permissible because they pay taxes that fund those who do. It is permissible to kill babies and children because they bring comfort to infidels who resist True Islam by refusing to convert or surrender. Allowing your enemy’s children to live replenishes their ranks, he said. Killing children is a weapon Allah has provided to attack and undermine the will of their parents to continue resisting True Islam.
Once, during a conversation with Abu Zubaydah about freedom, he said that Salafist Islam was the ultimate freedom. I asked how that was possible since every aspect of a person’s life had to be lived according to rigid Sharia laws that were established centuries ago. He said, “Yes, exactly. I am free because I am not burdened by choices. The true path was laid out in the perfect life and deeds of the Prophet, may peace be upon him.”
I asked KSM one time how come, since his brand of Islam is so violent, he calls it the religion of peace. He told me that my problem was that I interpreted the word peace the way Americans always do. He explained that according to his brand of Islam, peace would exist when the entire world was under Sharia law and ruled by a Muslim caliphate. He said Islam is the religion of peace because its aim is to impose Sharia law everywhere and in doing so bring peace to the world.
KSM said that to make peace with one’s enemies is to convert, subjugate, or enslave them. He told me we also use the word truce differently. In America most people think of a truce almost the same way they think of peace: as a cessation of hostilities, living in harmony. KSM told me that when the word truce is used in their brand of Islam, it refers to a cessation of hostilities only until the jihadi brothers can get strong enough to attack again. It’s less about working out your differences and living in harmony and more about licking your wounds, getting stronger, and preparing for the next attack.
We also talked about al-Taqiyya: the use of deception to disguise one’s true beliefs. KSM, Abu Zubaydah, and the other detainees told me it was permitted, even expected, in their brand of Islam to lie, especially to infidels, to deceive Allah’s enemies and promote his will in the world. They told me there are four kinds of jihad: jihad by the heart, jihad by the tongue, jihad by the hand, and jihad by the sword. KSM and others told me that al-Taqiyya, or deception, had a role in each kind. They said that each True Muslim man was obliged to take up the sword to defend Islam and that deception to distract one’s enemies or put them off guard or gain some other fighting advantage was permissible.
They said that those who cannot take up the sword are obliged to promote Allah’s will through jihad by the hand. Usually this refers to acts other than fighting. Again deception is acceptable. One could, for example, conduct jihad by the hand by using money collected for charity to fund jihadist terror attacks or by establishing outreach programs that are intended to promote Islam but also radicalize fighters. A third example would be establishing mosques that promote their brand of Islam in infidel territory.
Deception in jihad by the tongue can entail pretending to promote acculturation into Western democracies while behind the scenes promoting the establishment of Sharia law. KSM told me he could see Muslim brothers after 9/11 condemning the terror attacks in the media while celebrating in their hearts.
Finally, KSM said, deception also has a place in jihad of the heart. Individuals who because of adverse circumstances must say and do things that are contrary to their true beliefs and cannot engage in any of the other forms of jihad can practice jihad of the heart by struggling to keep faith with Allah while surrounded by enemies of faith.
KSM’s discussions often included his thoughts about various kinds of terror attacks. He said that although the leadership of al-Qa’ida still favored large-scale catastrophic attacks, he was beginning to see the value of small-scale, low-tech attacks carried out by one or two shahids (martyrs). He took note of how the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks by John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo created havoc and panic in the Washington, DC, area and along Interstate 95. In KSM’s mind, relatively few victims had died during Muhammad and Malvo’s shooting spree (seventeen dead and ten injured), but the fear and paralysis caused by the seemingly random killing of people going about their own business brought home to him the asymmetrical utility of what we now call lone wolf terror attacks.
He sat there and calmly discussed issues such as the economy of scale and cost versus impact on his enemies in the West. He was particularly pleased with the idea that those carrying out the attacks need not be official members of al-Qa’ida or funded by them; they only needed to share militant Islam’s radical ideology and goals.
He said that the al-Qa’ida leaders “dreamed” of crippling America with sophisticated large-scale catastrophic attacks, but that from his perspective, large-scale attacks were “nice but not necessary.” He said sufficient numbers of brothers acting alone to launch low-tech attacks could bring down America the same way “enough disease-infected fleas can fell an elephant…a small bite here, a small bite there. The elephant is big and powerful, but a single flea is too small for it to stop. The elephant will eventually get sick and die.”
KSM then provided an example of a low-tech terror attack that could be carried out by a single jihadist, an attack that would produce devastating consequences in any city where it occurred. His idea was to have these low-tech attacks timed to occur during rush hour. I don’t want to share the specifics of his idea with our enemies, and so I won’t provide the details here. I will say this much: I believe his idea could be employed with devastating effect.
I realize KSM needs to be able to talk to his legal team in private, but if we ever allow him to communicate unmonitored with the outside world, we will do ourselves a grave disservice. He could easily spread his deviously simple but potentially deadly ideas.
After I spent thousands of hours with KSM discussing the nuts and bolts of his brand of Islamic jihad, KSM kiddingly told me that I should be on the FBI’s Most Wanted List because I am now a “known associate” of KSM and a “graduate” of his training camp. I wasn’t the only person he said this to; I know he said it to Bruce and to others, such as the COB who initiated his lecture series. It was in jest, of course, but it also served as a reminder that he was carrying that information inside his head and could impart it as easily to others as he did to us if he had an opportunity.
I once asked KSM to explain to me why if martyrdom was one of the greatest acts of worship for Allah, he had not martyred himself. For example, I said, even though you had an automatic weapon, you didn’t try to shoot it out with the Pakistani police when they came to arrest you, as Abu Zubaydah had. Recognizing that I wasn’t trying to be offensive, KSM said, “Allah has chosen me to arrange for others with less talent for planning attacks to martyr themselves. I serve Allah better by arranging for many shahids to sacrifice themselves as weapons against Allah’s enemies than I ever could by giving my one and only life.”
KSM and I spent many hours discussing his allegiance to jihad and his commitment to establishing a worldwide Islamic caliphate. He suggested that I commit the Koran to memory and read Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri’s Reliance of the Traveller, a fourteenth-century manual of strict Islamic law (Sharia) that codifies how Muslims should live every aspect of their lives down to which foot one should lead with when entering a room. He said his brothers will not stop until the entire world lives under Sharia law. He says they cannot—they have been commanded by Allah to kill, convert, or enslave everyone, to create a global caliphate.
KSM explained that his commitment to spreading Islam through violence went deeper than his commitment to al-Qa’ida as an organization; after all, when he orchestrated al-Qa’ida’s 9/11 attacks against the United States, he had not yet sworn bayat (allegiance) to bin Ladin. He said he worked with al-Qa’ida because they had the same enemies and goals but he was technically not an al-Qa’ida member at the time of the attack.
He explained that he came from a religious family of Balochis with a long history of “mischief making” in support of Balochistan’s independence directed at the governments surrounding that providence in southwestern Pakistan.
KSM said that the terror activities of his nephew Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and his brother, who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, inspired him to become involved in planning and carrying out attacks against the United States. KSM said he visited Afghanistan while his brother was there for jihad. He stayed, received military training, and fought the Soviets for several months. Eventually he was summoned from the front to take up administrative duties and discovered that he was good at planning.
Later, in 1994, KSM and Yousef met in the Philippines to plan simultaneous bombings of a dozen U.S.-flagged commercial airliners, intent on crashing them into the Pacific, creating massive loss of life. We know it as the Bojinka plot. KSM said that although they weren’t able to pull off the bombings because of an apartment fire that exposed the scheme to the authorities, the plotting he did with Yousef while in the Philippines served as the genesis for his idea to crash hijacked aircraft into buildings in the United States.
KSM told me he wanted to destroy our civilization. He said his 9/11 plan was to decapitate the United States by simultaneously attacking our most important financial center, our military leadership, and our center of government, the Capitol Building.
Al-Qa’ida successfully struck two of the three targets and would have taken out the Capitol Building, killing the innocent people and legislators inside, if it hadn’t been for the brave passengers on United Flight 93 who sacrificed their lives to save the lives of other Americans.
KSM told me that no one in al-Qa’ida expected the World Trade Center buildings to collapse. When the buildings fell down, KSM thought about the thousands of infidels he was sacrificing for Allah and rejoiced, praising Allah and dancing with others in the street. The mujahideen, the women and the children, all rejoiced. Many sheep were sacrificed for feasts, and they celebrated with mutton and treats and strong tea. Surely it was a sign that Allah was truly on their side. He had knocked down those buildings to show how powerful he was, to call all Muslims to jihad, and to make the infidels cower.
KSM said that with time, however, he realized they would be lucky to survive. He said al-Qa’ida should have had more terror attacks ready to hit us while we were down, but KSM and al-Qa’ida leaders believed they would have more time.
KSM said, “And why not?”
Al-Qa’ida expected the United States to respond as he believed Reagan had after the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 241 military personnel. KSM said that America turned tail and ran, pulling U.S. troops out of Lebanon. He noted that Clinton had done the same thing after al-Qa’ida bombed two U.S. embassies in East Africa and attacked the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen. Clinton fired a few missiles at abandoned training camps, and al-Qa’ida was essentially unharmed, free to advance KSM’s deadly plan for the 9/11 attacks.
KSM told me he assumed that the United States would treat the attacks of 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, as they had the embassy attacks and the Cole bombing. He thought the FBI would investigate by focusing on past crimes. Eventually the United States would ask the Taliban government controlling Afghanistan to extradite al-Qa’ida members, the Taliban would refuse, and al-Qa’ida would have time to launch the next wave of attacks on the U.S. homeland.
Then he looked at me and said, “How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?” KSM was referring to comments President Bush had made on September 17, 2001, while talking to reporters at the Pentagon. He acted as if he thought President Bush’s reaction to the 9/11 attacks was the last thing he had expected.
KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks. Those attacks were already in the early stages of preparation, and he would have had his people on the ground in the United States ready with follow-up attacks to harass and distract law enforcement until the larger attack could be launched. But they weren’t ready. KSM said al-Qa’ida was stunned by the destruction caused by their attacks and by the ferocity and swiftness of George Bush’s response.
One of the terror attacks KSM had in mind for the United States was to contaminate or poison water reservoirs serving heavily populated areas. Almost immediately upon that becoming known, some in the U.S. media ridiculed the idea, saying that it was impractical because the large volume of water in the typical reservoir would dilute the chemicals so much that it would take an extraordinarily large amount of poison to contaminate it.
During one of my “how are things going?” visits, I told KSM in conversation that there were those in the U.S. media who thought what he was saying about poisoning reservoirs was just empty talk intended to scare Americans and mislead the CIA. He looked at me as if I had two heads. He said dumping chemicals into the main reservoir would be foolish. That wasn’t his plan. He said that he had a degree in mechanical engineering from a university in North Carolina and had worked as an engineer in a water-treatment plant in Qatar. He said he knew how to poison water coming from a reservoir and it wouldn’t be by pouring chemicals into the main body of water. He described what he would do, based on his experience working as an engineer on water treatment systems. Again, I’m not going to describe it here. I’m not interested in spreading terror attack how-to tips. But it seemed plausible.
Off and on we talked with KSM about his enhanced interrogation. During one discussion with me and Bruce, KSM said that he understood why we had been rough with him during his initial interrogations. He said that if our positions were reversed, he would do the same thing to protect his way of life.
He said that among the brothers (i.e., the Islamic jihadists), Americans are seen as militarily strong but weak in resolve and spirit. KSM insisted that the brothers eventually will defeat the United States because Americans don’t have the will or stomach to do what must be done to stop them.
KSM said the desire of Americans to have the world “like them,” plus things such as our Bill of Rights and adherence to civil liberties, are defects, weapons that Allah has provided to help his jihadist brothers defeat the United States by turning our weak human nature and our country’s laws and freedoms against us.
Then KSM wagged his finger professorially at us and warned, “Soon they will turn on you.” He prophetically predicted that the press and some members of my own government would turn on me and Bruce and others like us who took aggressive action to prevent the next 9/11 attack and save American lives.
Warming to the topic, KSM smiled and said the media, either on purpose or without realizing it, would promote Islam’s cause and champion tearing down the measures put in place to protect the American people after 9/11. He said the media would promote al-Qa’ida’s cause by framing the war against Islam (his characterization, not mine) as morally wrong, impossible to win, and fraught with unacceptable losses. He said the media’s response was one of Allah’s “gifts,” one of the ways Allah preordained for Americans to set aside those things which kept us safe and prevented attacks in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
KSM said, “Your own government will turn on you. Your leaders will turn on you. They will turn on you to save themselves. It will play out in the media and strengthen the hearts of the brothers. It will recruit more to Allah’s cause because the press coverage will make the U.S. look weak and divided.”
KSM said that the “real war” is fought in the minds of the American people, not on the battlefields, where America’s military power could easily defeat them. “We will win,” he said, “because Americans don’t realize this. We do not need to defeat you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.”
“It would be nice,” he said, if al-Qa’ida or like-minded Islamists could bring America to its knees with catastrophic attacks, but that was unlikely to happen; “not practical” is the wording he used. From his perspective, the long war for Islamic domination wasn’t going to be won in the streets with bombs and bullets and bloodshed. No, it would be won in the minds of the American people.
He said the terror attacks were good, but the “practical” way to defeat America was through immigration and by outbreeding non-Muslims. He said jihadi-minded brothers would immigrate into the United States, taking advantage of the welfare system to support themselves while they spread their jihadi message. They will wrap themselves in America’s rights and laws for protection, ratchet up acceptance of Sharia law, and then, only when they were strong enough, rise up and violently impose Sharia from within. He said the brothers would relentlessly continue their attacks and the American people eventually would become so tired, so frightened, and so weary of war that they would just want it to end.
“Eventually,” KSM said, “America will expose her neck to us for slaughter.”