Chapter Nine

Unleashing the Islamic Bomb

What bin Laden and al Qaeda really want

On March 1, 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (aka “KSM”)—al Qaeda’s chief of external operations and the co-mastermind with bin Laden of the 9/11 attacks—was arrested in a daring raid near Islamabad, Pakistan.

The operation was led by CIA and Pakistani operatives who had been hunting KSM for years. It constituted the capture of the highest-ranking al Qaeda leader to that point. After being interrogated extensively by U.S. officials on multiple occasions over many months, KSM was eventually brought back to the United States to face a military tribunal at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Eventually, previously classified notes of his interrogations were made available to the public.202 So was the transcript of his interrogation by military prosecutors at Gitmo.203 For me, reading both documents felt like I was actually sitting in the room with sheer evil, comparable perhaps to being in the presence of Charles Manson or Adolf Hitler, men clearly plagued by demons, spiritual or emotional or both. It was also a chilling window into the mind and heart of Osama bin Laden, who approved everything KSM did.

When I say evil, what I mean is that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed expressed absolutely no remorse for the fact that he has personally helped murder, maim, and injure well over ten thousand people in his lifetime. To the contrary, he was proud of it. He eagerly described all of the terrorist actions against innocent civilians that he planned and executed, up to and including the 9/11 attacks, as well as those following. At one point, he even boasted about cutting off the head of a Wall Street Journal reporter he had taken hostage in the months following 9/11. “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,” he told U.S. officials without shame. “For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head.”204 If this is not evil, I do not know what is.

One thing that certainly emerged from KSM’s testimony was a clear and deeply disturbing portrait of the planning process that led up to September 11, 2001, and the deaths of nearly three thousand people in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The story really begins back in 1996, around the time bin Laden issued his declaration of war against the United States. KSM said he met with the Sunni terror master in the caves of Tora Bora, Afghanistan, and laid out his dream. He wanted enough men and money to hijack ten planes inside—not en route to—the United States and unleash them on kamikaze missions of murder and terror into American cities.

Having just met the man, bin Laden was hardly convinced KSM could pull off such a mission, but he was intrigued. And the more he learned about KSM, the more he liked.

Born in Pakistan sometime in 1964 or 1965, KSM was raised in Kuwait in a devout, fundamentalist family. He became a member of the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of sixteen and, much like bin Laden, became convinced at an early age that violent jihad was the only way to restore the glory of the Muslim world. KSM had fought with the mujahadeen in Afghanistan. He had fought against the West with the jihadist forces in Bosnia. And he had helped raise money for both causes.

But there was something else about this Radical that drew bin Laden to him: he had lived in the United States and understood how to operate in an “infidel” environment. According to The 9/11 Commission Report, after graduating from high school, “KSM left Kuwait to enroll at Chowan College, a small Baptist school in Murfreesboro, North Carolina. After a semester at Chowan, KSM transferred to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro. . . . KSM earned a degree in mechanical engineering in December 1986.”205

Bin Laden also appreciated KSM’s fanatical desire to kill as many Americans as possible. KSM and his nephew, Ramzi Yousef—three years his junior—had helped plot and execute the truck bomb attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.206

So bin Laden agreed to let KSM begin researching such an operation in more detail, but only if he would help al Qaeda design and launch other high-profile terrorist attacks, an assignment KSM accepted with relish. Over the next few years, he developed “Operation Bojinka,” a plot to hijack as many as a dozen jumbo jets in the Philippines and throughout Asia and then blow them up over the Pacific en route to the United States.207 While the operation was foiled by police in Manila before it could be executed, it did give KSM extensive insight into how best to get men and weapons on board planes and how to handle many of the logistical questions that were bound to come up.

Meanwhile, he successfully masterminded the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa. This impressed bin Laden and convinced him that KSM was not only serious about killing Americans but tactically savvy enough to pull off a complex operation in multiple cities on another continent.

“I Swear Allegiance to You for Jihad”

In April of 1999, KSM—who typically operated not in Afghanistan but out of Pakistan, Kuwait, or other parts of the Middle East and Asia—was back in the caves of Tora Bora, meeting with bin Laden and trying to persuade him and Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri to embrace his audacious scenario. This time, bin Laden gave the green light, saying he believed the plot could work and that KSM had the organization’s blessing and financial backing.

Thrilled, KSM set out to recruit the right men—that is, those capable of successfully entering the United States and living there undetected, capable of keeping their mouths shut, capable of training for a mission that they would not be told the final details of until the last possible moment, and—perhaps most important—capable of murder. KSM later told interrogators that he required each man selected to pledge the following oath of loyalty to bin Laden personally: “I swear allegiance to you, to listen and obey, in good times and bad, and to accept the consequences myself; I swear allegiance to you for jihad, and to listen and obey, and to die in the cause of God.”208

By early 2001, the plot had advanced to the point where KSM was ready to review a list of targets with bin Laden. The emir, or prince, of al Qaeda insisted they hit the two World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Capitol, at a minimum. But bin Laden also gave KSM latitude to hit other targets as well, including the White House, the Sears Tower in Chicago, and a foreign embassy of his choosing in Washington, D.C. When Mohammed Atta (one of the Egyptian cell commanders who would eventually hijack American Airlines Flight 11 and fly it into one of the World Trade Center towers) suggested hitting a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, bin Laden agreed to add the target to the list.

“After the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center, I decided that explosives and bombs could be problematic, and so I focused on using airplanes as weapons,” KSM told interrogators. “The most attractive targets were high buildings, both for their relative ease of targeting as well as for the symbolic impact. Bin Laden expressed his desire to simultaneously hit the Pentagon, the White House, and the U.S. Capitol building.”209

Bin Laden personally and specifically chose the cell leaders to carry out the operation. But it was KSM whom bin Laden trusted for all the operational details. It was KSM, for example, who designed the rigorous training regime each cell member would undergo, including basic physical conditioning, English lessons, and instruction in how to conduct a hijacking, how to disarm an air marshal, and the use of explosives. The men also were required to butcher sheep and camels as practice for killing anyone who got in their way on board the planes.

It was KSM who gave the cell commanders the cash they needed for the mission. It was KSM who helped his men acquire “clean” passports without Pakistani and Afghan stamps. He told them where in the U.S. to live. He told them what to study (more English and how to fly a jumbo jet). He forbade them to speak to other Muslims while in the U.S., lest they be tempted to confide their plans to someone they might consider a kindred spirit. He told them how to communicate with headquarters.

Everything was “compartmentalized.” Only KSM, bin Laden, and a handful of other al Qaeda senior operatives knew all the details.

As the time of the operation approached, KSM said bin Laden kept pushing for faster action. Three times bin Laden pressured him to launch sooner, but KSM insisted they were not quite ready. That summer, for example, bin Laden heard that Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was heading to the White House. He urged KSM to move fast in order to kill Sharon and President Bush and their top advisors at the same time. But again KSM resisted, saying his team was close but still not ready to strike. Moreover, KSM believed the final decision on choosing a strike date should be in the hands of the senior cell commander to whom he had given this authority.

Thus, it was not until August that KSM himself finally learned of the date of the operation. He immediately informed bin Laden. But he was horrified that as the date of the attack approached, bin Laden began telling colleagues and even high-level visitors to his camp in the mountains of Afghanistan that something big was coming. KSM urged bin Laden not to say anything more or risk compromising the operation.

Eventually, of course, the 9/11 attacks were carried out and were actually far more successful than either bin Laden or KSM had imagined. “We sat down to calculate the amount of losses within the enemy and we expected the number to be those inside the plane, and for the [World Trade Center] towers, the number of people that the plane would actually hit,” bin Laden told friends at a November 2001 dinner in Kandahar that was recorded on someone’s personal video camera and later recovered by U.S. intelligence. “I was the most optimistic of all because of my expertise in this profession and in this business. I said the fuel on the plane would melt the iron and the iron would lose its properties.” Bin Laden said he had predicted that the building would be destroyed from the point of impact upward. But the total destruction of the buildings, he said, “was a lot more than we expected.”210

Bin Laden formally claimed credit for the 9/11 attacks in 2003 during an eighteen-minute video released to the Al Jazeera news network. In the tape, the al Qaeda leader said he decided “we should destroy towers in America” because “we are a free people . . . and we want to regain the freedom of our nation.”211

KSM later shed more light on his and bin Laden’s motivations. According to the notes of his interrogations, “Sheikh Mohammed said that the purpose of the attack on the Twin Towers was to ‘wake the American people up.’ Sheikh Mohammed said that if the target would have been strictly military or government, the American people would not focus on the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel against the Palestinian people and America’s self-serving foreign policy that corrupts Arab governments and leads to further exploitation of the Arab [and] Muslim peoples.”212

What Al Qaeda Really Wants

During his military tribunal at Gitmo, KSM admitted that he was not only responsible for the 9/11 attacks but also the mastermind of “second wave” attacks and other planned mega-attacks in the United States, Israel, and around the globe. In a written statement given to interrogators, KSM went on to confess to no fewer than thirty-one separate terrorist attacks. Some had already been carried out. Others were foiled by U.S. and foreign security forces or by KSM’s arrest. Each provided a sobering insight into what Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network really want:

1. I was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center Operation.

2. I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z.

3. I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl. . . .

4. I was responsible for the Shoe Bomber Operation to down two American airplanes.

5. I was responsible for the Filka Island Operation in Kuwait that killed two American soldiers.

6. I was responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, which was frequented by British and Australian nationals.

7. I was responsible for planning, training, surveying, and financing the New (or Second) Wave attacks against the following skyscrapers after 9/11:

Library Tower, California

Sears Tower, Chicago

Plaza Bank, Washington State

The Empire State Building, New York City

8. I was responsible for planning, financing, and follow-up of operations to destroy American military vessels and oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits of Gibraltar, and the Port of Singapore.

9. I was responsible for the planning, training, surveying, and financing for the operation to bomb and destroy the Panama Canal.

10. I was responsible for the surveying and financing for the assassination of several former American Presidents, including President Carter.

11. I was responsible for the surveying, planning, and financing for the bombing of suspension bridges in New York.

12. I was responsible for planning to destroy the Sears Tower by burning a few fuel or oil tanker trucks beneath it or around it.

13. I was responsible for the planning, surveying, and financing for the operation to destroy Heathrow Airport, the Canary Wharf Building, and Big Ben on British soil.

14. I was responsible for the planning, surveying, and financing for the destruction of many nightclubs frequented by American and British citizens on Thailand soil.

15. I was responsible for the surveying and financing for the destruction of the New York Stock Exchange and other financial targets after 9/11.

16. I was responsible for the planning, financing, and surveying for the destruction of buildings in the Israeli city of Elat by using airplanes leaving from Saudi Arabia.

17. I was responsible for the planning, surveying, and financing for the destruction of American embassies in Indonesia, Australia, and Japan.

18. I was responsible for the surveying and financing for the destruction of the Israeli embassy in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines, and Australia.

19. I was responsible for the surveying and financing for the destruction of an Israeli El-Al Airlines flight on Thailand soil departing from Bangkok Airport.

20. I was responsible for sending several mujahadeen into Israel to conduct surveillance to hit several strategic targets deep in Israel.

21. I was responsible for the bombing of the hotel in Mombasa that is frequented by Jewish travelers via El-Al airlines.

22. I was responsible for launching a Russian-made SA-7 surface-to-air missile on El-Al or other Jewish airliner departing from Mombasa.

23. I was responsible for planning and surveying to hit American targets in South Korea, such as American military bases and a few nightclubs frequented by American soldiers.

24. I was responsible for providing financial support to hit American, Jewish, and British targets in Turkey.

25. I was responsible for surveillance needed to hit nuclear power plants that generate electricity in several U.S. states.

26. I was responsible for planning, surveying, and financing to hit NATO headquarters in Europe.

27. I was responsible for the planning and surveying needed to execute the Bojinka Operation, which was designed to down twelve American airplanes full of passengers. I personally monitored a round-trip, Manila-to-Seoul Pan Am flight.

28. I was responsible for the assassination attempt against President Clinton during his visit to the Philippines in 1994 or 1995.

29. I shared responsibility for the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II while he was visiting the Philippines.

30. I was responsible for the training and financing for the assassination of Pakistan’s President Musharraf.

31. I was responsible for the attempt to destroy an American oil company owned by the Jewish former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, on the Island of Sumatra, Indonesia.

The Ultimate Objective

As horrifying as these operations were, they pale in comparison to what al Qaeda has been praying for and planning for at least a decade: acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)—ideally nuclear weapons—to be used against the United States to kill between four and ten million Americans.

Asked in 1998 if al Qaeda had nuclear or chemical weapons, bin Laden told Time magazine that “acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so.”213 The timing of that statement was significant, for 1998 was the year that Pakistan tested nuclear weapons.

Since then, many more disturbing details have emerged about bin Laden’s feverish hunt for WMDs and his deep-rooted belief that Allah has commanded him to use them to kill Christians and Jews. In the summer of 2002, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti-born spokesman for al Qaeda, posted the following statement on the Internet: “Al-Qa’ida has the right to kill four million Americans, including one million children, displace double that figure, and injure and cripple hundreds of thousands.”214 In May 2003, al Qaeda unveiled a fatwa from a leading Saudi cleric that sanctioned the use of nuclear weapons against the U.S. and permitted the killing of up to ten million Americans.215

In 2007, FBI director Robert Mueller made the following statement at a conference on nuclear terrorism: “By some estimates, there is enough highly enriched uranium in global stockpiles to construct thousands of nuclear weapons, and it is safe to assume that there are many individuals who would not think twice about using such weapons. The economics of supply and demand dictate that someone, somewhere, will provide nuclear material to the highest bidder, and that material will end up in the hands of terrorists. Al Qaeda has demonstrated a clear intent to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In 1993, Osama bin Laden attempted to buy uranium from a source in the Sudan. He has stated that it is Al Qaeda’s duty to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And he has made repeated recruiting pitches for experts in chemistry, physics, and explosives to join his terrorist movement.”216

Former CIA director George Tenet at first wasn’t sure just how seriously to take bin Laden’s WMD threats. But over time, he became convinced. He now believes that bin Laden’s top priority is to acquire nuclear weapons and detonate them inside the United States.

“Although we had his own statements to give us great concern, the consensus inside and outside our own government could be boiled down to this: ‘Guys in caves can’t get WMD,’” Tenet wrote in his 2007 memoirs, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA. “But this was an issue about which we could not afford to be wrong. So soon after 9/11, I directed CIA’s CTC [Counterterrorism Center] to establish a new capability to focus exclusively on terrorist WMD. . . . We began to review the historical record. We combed our files and sent teams around the world to share our leads and ask foreign intelligence services about information in their possession. We interrogated al-Qa’ida prisoners and pored over documents found in safe houses and on computers captured in Afghanistan. What we discovered stunned us all. The threats were real. Our intelligence confirmed that the most senior leaders of al-Qa’ida are still singularly focused on acquiring WMD. Bin Laden may have provided the spiritual guidance to develop WMD, but the program was personally managed at the top by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Moreover, we established beyond any reasonable doubt that al-Qa’ida had clear intent to acquire chemical, biological, and radiological/nuclear (CBRN) weapons, to possess not as a deterrent but to cause mass casualties in the United States.”217

“Of all al-Qa’ida’s efforts to obtain other forms of WMD, the main threat is the nuclear one,” Tenet stressed. “I am convinced that this is where [bin Laden] and his operatives desperately want to go. They understand that bombings by cars, trucks, trains, and planes will get them some headlines, to be sure. But if they manage to set off a mushroom cloud, they will make history. Such an event would place al-Qa’ida on a par with the superpowers and make good on bin Ladin’s threat to destroy our economy and bring death into every American household. Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, we could count on the fact that the Soviets, just like us, wanted to live. Not so with the terrorists. Al-Qa’ida boasts that while we fear death, they embrace it.”218