WASHINGTON — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, mastermind of theSept. 11 attacks, has told American interrogators that he firstdiscussed the plot with Osama bin Laden in 1996 and that theoriginal plan called for hijacking five commercial jets on eachU.S. coast before it was modified several times, according tointerrogation reports reviewed by The Associated Press.
Mohammed also divulged that, in its final stages, the hijackingplan called for as many as 22 terrorists and four planes in a firstwave, followed by a second wave of suicide hijackings that were tobe aided possibly by al-Qaida allies in southeast Asia, accordingto the reports.
Over time, bin Laden scrapped various parts of the Sept. 11plan, including attacks on both coasts and hijacking or bombingsome planes in East Asia, Mohammed is quoted as saying in reportsthat shed new light on the origins and evolution of the plot ofSept. 11, 2001.
Addressing one of the questions raised by congressionalinvestigators in their Sept. 11 review, Mohammed said he neverheard of a Saudi man named Omar al-Bayoumi who provided some rentmoney and assistance to two hijackers when they arrived inCalifornia.
Congressional investigators have suggested Bayoumi could haveaided the hijackers or been a Saudi intelligence agent, charges theSaudi government vehemently deny. The FBI has also cast doubt onthe congressional theory after extensive investigation and severalinterviews with al-Bayoumi.
In fact, Mohammed claims he did not arrange for anyone on U.S.soil to assist hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi whenthey arrived in California. Mohammed said there ''were no al-Qaidaoperatives or facilitators in the United States to help al-Mihdharor al-Hazmi settle in the United States,'' one of the reportsstate.
Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were on the plane that was flown intothe Pentagon.
Mohammed portrays those two hijackers as central to the plot,and even more important than Mohammed Atta, initially identified byAmericans as the likely hijacking ringleader. Mohammed said hecommunicated with al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar while they were in theUnited States by using Internet chat software, the reportsstates.
Mohammed said al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were among the fouroriginal operatives bin Laden assigned to him for the plot, asignificant revelation because those were the only two hijackerswhom U.S. authorities were frantically seeking for terrorist tiesin the final days before Sept. 11.
U.S. authorities continue to investigate the many statementsthat Mohammed has made in interrogations, seeking to eliminatedeliberate misinformation. But they have been able to corroboratewith other captives and evidence much of his account of the Sept.11 planning.
Mohammed told his interrogators the hijacking teams wereoriginally made up of members from different countries whereal-Qaida had recruited, but that in the final stages bin Ladenchose instead to use a large group of young Saudi men to populatethe hijacking teams.
As the plot came closer to fruition, Mohammed learned ''therewas a large group of Saudi operatives that would be available toparticipate as the muscle in the plot to hijack planes in theUnited States,'' one report says Mohammed told his captors.
Saudi Arabia was bin Laden's home, though it revoked hiscitizenship in the 1990s, and he reviled its alliance with theUnited States during the Gulf War and beyond. Saudis have suggestedfor months that bin Laden has been trying to drive a wedge betweenthe United States and their kingdom, hoping to fracture thealliance.
U.S. intelligence has suggested that Saudis were chosen,instead, because there were large numbers willing to follow binLaden and they could more easily get into the United States becauseof the countries' friendly relations.
Mohammed's interrogation report states he told Americans some ofthe original operatives assigned to the plot did not make itbecause they had trouble getting into the United States.
Mohammed was captured in a March 1 raid by Pakistani forces andCIA operatives in Rawalpindi. He is being interrogated by the CIAat an undisclosed location.
He told interrogators about other terror plots that were invarious stages of planning or had been temporarily disrupted whenhe was captured, including one planned for Singapore.
The sources who allowed AP to review the reports insisted thatspecific details not be divulged about those operations becauseU.S. intelligence continues to investigate some of the methods andsearch for some of the operatives.
The interrogation reports make dramatically clear that Mohammedand al-Qaida were still actively looking to strike U.S., Westernand Israeli targets across the world as of this year.
Mohammed told his interrogators he had worked in 1994 and 1995in the Philippines with Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad and WaliKhan Amin Shah on the foiled Bojinka plot to blow up 12 Westernairliners simultaneously in Asia.
After Yousef and Murad were captured, foiling the plot in itsfinal stages, Mohammed began to devise a new plot that focused onhijackings on U.S. soil.
In 1996, he went to meet bin Laden to persuade the al-Qaidaleader ''to give him money and operatives so he could hijack 10planes in the United States and fly them into targets,'' one of theinterrogation reports state.
Mohammed told interrogators his initial thought was to pick fivetargets on each coast, but bin Laden was not convinced such a planwas practical, the reports stated.
Mohammed said bin Laden offered him four operatives to beginwith -- al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi as well as two Yemenis, WalidMuhammed bin Attash and Abu Bara al-Yemeni.
''All four operatives only knew that they had volunteered for amartyrdom operation involving planes,'' one report stated.
Mohammed said the first major change to the plans occurred in1999 when the two Yemeni operatives could not get U.S. visas. BinLaden then offered him additional operatives, including a member ofhis personal security detail. The original two Yemenis wereinstructed to focus on hijacking planes in East Asia.
Mohammed said through the various iterations of the plot, heconsidered using a scaled-down version of the Bojinka plan thatwould have bombed commercial airliners, and that he even''contemplated attempting to down the planes using shoes bombs,''one report said.
The plot, he said, eventually evolved into hijacking a smallnumber of planes in the United States and East Asia and eitherhaving them explode or crash into targets simultaneously, thereports stated.
By 1999, the four original operatives picked for the plottraveled to Afghanistan to train at one of bin Laden's camps. Thefocus, Mohammed said, was on specialized commando training, notpiloting jets.
Mohammed's interrogations have revealed the planning andtraining of operatives was extraordinarily meticulous, includinghow to blend into American society, read telephone yellow pages,and research airline schedules.
A key event in the plot, Mohammed told his interrogators, was ameeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000, that includedal-Mihdhar, al-Hazmi and other al-Qaida operatives. The CIA learnedof the meeting beforehand and had it monitored by Malaysiansecurity, but it did not realize the significance of the twoeventual hijackers until just before the attacks.
The interrogation reports state bin Laden further trimmedMohammed's plans in spring 2000 when he canceled the idea forhijackings in East Asia, thus narrowing it to the United States.Bin Laden thought ''it would be too difficult to synchronize''attacks in the United States and Asia, one interrogation reportquotes Mohammed as saying.
Mohammed said around that time he reached out to an al-Qaidalinked group in southeast Asia known as Jemaah Islamiyah. He began''recruiting JI operatives for inclusion in the hijacking plot aspart of his second wave of hijacking attacks to occur after Sept.11,'' one summary said.
Jemaah Islamiyah's operations chief, Riduan Isamuddin Hambali,had attended part of the January 2000 meeting in Kuala Lumpur butMohammed said he was there at that time only because ''as a rule hehad to be informed'' of events in his region. Later, Hambali'soperative began training possible recruits for the second wave,according to the interrogation report.
One of those who received training in Malaysia before coming tothe United States was Zacarias Moussaoui, the Frenchman accused ofconspiring with the Sept. 11 attacks. Moussaoui has denied beingpart of the Sept. 11 plot, and U.S. and foreign intelligenceofficials have said he could have been set for hijacking a plane ina later wave of attacks.
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