9/11 Mastermind Admits To Multiple Plots

(CBS)  This report was written by CBS Evening News producer Phil Hirshkorn.

The self-described "operational director" of the September 11, 2001, attack on America, is claiming a role in more than 30 planned or attempted terrorist attacks.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a written statement that was read to a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon on Wednesday.

The Khalid Sheikh Mohammed statement was read at the military hearing by a member of the U.S. military who is serving as the tribunal's Personal Representative for Mohammed, who the transcript says was present and was asked by the presiding officer about the authenticity of the statement.

"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the statement that was just read by the Personal Representative, were those your words?" asked the presiding officer, according to the transcript, which says Mohammed replied: "Yes."

Later in the hearing, the transcript says, Mohammed spoke directly to the court, in a final statement in which he describes himself as an enemy combatant, compared the fighters in the jihad against America to George Washington, and makes a plea on behalf of "many" Guantanamo Bay detainees he says were "unjustly arrested."

The secret proceeding last Saturday was closed to news media. The detainee spoke in English to a four-officer panel during a proceeding that lasted one hour and fifteen minutes.

"I'm not making myself hero when I said I was responsible for this or that," said. The brazen list of attacks, read by his Personal Representative, ranged from the 1993 World Trade Center truck bombing led by his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, who is serving a life sentence in the U.S., to the 2002 bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, which killed more than 200 people.

"This so-called confession probably dooms him [Muhammed] to a future death sentence," says CBS News legal consultant Andrew Cohen. "There are some close cases down there, some false charges, but this isn't one of them. It's only if he somehow makes it into federal court that his statements could be successfully challenged."

Mohammed's confession also refers to many plots not previously made public: potential attacks on the Panama Canal, Big Ben in London, NATO headquarters in Brussels, an assassination of former President Jimmy Carter, and the destruction of an Indonesian oil company purportedly owned by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

The confession also talks of plots against U.S. and U.K. targets in Turkey, nightclubs frequented by Americans and Brits in Thailand, U.S. embassies in Indonesia, Australia, and Japan, Israeli embassies in India and the Philippines, and the Israeli resort of Eilat.

Mohammed furthermore claims credit for training the nineteen Sept. 11 homicidal hijackers and would-be "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid, who was tackled by passengers on a 2001 Paris to Miami airline flight. He took responsibility for a 2002 attack that killed a pair of U.S. soldiers on a Kuwaiti island and a shoulder-fired missile that missed an Israeli passenger plane taking off from Mombassa, Kenya.

Mohammed's role as the lead actor in the Sep. 11 plot, which he proposed to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 1996 and bin Laden set in motion in 1999, has long been established. It was described in detail in the 9/11 Commission report published in 2004 and in a written substitution for his testimony in last year's trial of al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, who Mohammed says was tapped only for a "second wave" of post-9/11 attacks.

Among his new revelations, Mohammed said potential targets for a second wave of attacks using planes as missiles were the Empire State Building in New York and the Plaza Bank Building in Seattle.

The government had previously disclosed that the tallest building on the West Coast, the Library Tower in Los Angeles (now known as U.S. Bank Tower) and the tallest building in North America, the Sears Tower in Chicago, were in al Qaeda's sights. Mohammed, in the statement read to the tribunal, also described an alternative plan to set off oil tankers at the Sears Tower base, and said he oversaw efforts to deploy anthrax and nuclear-laced "dirty" bombs in the U.S.

The Guantanamo Bay hearing, known as a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, is a formality allowing the military to certify a detainee as an "enemy combatant" who warrants further detention and can be prosecuted by a military tribunal. In Mohammed's case, the prisoner made matters quite simple. "For sure, I'm American enemies," he said. "I don't have anything to say that I'm not enemy."

But at one point the self-proclaimed jihadist seemed to express some remorse for the 2,973 people killed after three hijacked planes rammed the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and a fourth hijacked plane targeting the Capitol crashed in rural Pennsylvania. "I'm not happy that three thousand been killed in America. I feel sorry, even. I don't like to kill children," he said.

When he wasn't pointing to Islam to defend his actions, Mohammed went so far as to liken bin Laden to the first American President. "He is just fighting. He needs his independence," he said. "If now we were living in the Revolutionary War, George Washington, he being arrested through Britian, for sure he - they would consider him enemy combatant. But America, they consider him a hero," KSM said.

"This is why the language of war is killing. I mean the language of war is victims," Mohammed continued, turning philosophical. "War will never stop. War start from Adam when Cain he killed Abel – until now. It's never gonna stop – killing of people."

Mohammed argued on behalf of fellow detainees, saying some of the nearly 400 men still incarcerated in Guantanamo were "unjustly arrested." He said, "I'm asking you to be fair with other people."

After Mohammed's statement, the panel led by an unnamed U.S. Navy captain asked him no follow-up questions. It had rejected his request to call two fellow Guantanamo detainees as witnesses – Sept. 11 plot coordinator Ramzi Binalshibh and hijacker facilitator Mustafa al-Hawsawi.

The government's unclassified evidence summary revealed that a computer hard drive seized from the safe house in Karachi, Pakistan, where Mohammed was captured in March 2003 contained names and photos of the nineteen Sept. 11 hijackers, a list of airliners and targets, three letters from Osama bin Laden, and a spreadsheet apparently detailing payments to al Qaeda families living in Pakistan.

With no defense lawyer present, Mohammed denied through his assigned Personal Representative that the seized computer was his and suggested that it belonged to al-Hawsawi, who was captured with him. Mohammed also denied that he had received funding for his operations from Islamic fundamentalists in Kuwait.

Mohammed's connections to the first World Trade Center bombing – the first crime mentioned in his statement to the tribunal at Gitmo - have not been considered more than wiring several hundred dollars to the Yousef cell.

Mohammed, who earned an engineering degree at a North Carolina college in the 1980s, remains under federal indictment in New York, accused in connection with a foiled mid-1990s plot with Yousef to detonate bombs on a dozen U.S.-bound airliners over the Pacific. Yousef and two other conspirators were convicted by a jury for the terror conspiracy, which included plans to assassinate President Clinton and Pope John Paul II on visits to the Philippines.

The Guantanamo hearing was the most extensive public statement by Mohammed since a 2002 interview he gave to the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera.

The Moussaoui trial jury heard that Mohammed told his original interrogators the purpose of Sep. 11 was to "wake the American people up." Last September, Mohammed and 13 other prisoners the government describes as "high value" were transferred from secret CIA-run overseas jails to Guantanamo.

The first two from this group to be reviewed were Binalshibh and Abu Faraj al-Libi, once a supervisor of al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

Hearings for Binalshibh and al-Libi were both held on March 9, as the government began hearings on whether 14 alleged terror leaders should be declared "enemy combatants."

Binalshibh's hearing, which lasted 33 minutes and he did not attend, revealed that the Pakistan safe house where he was captured in 2002 held explosives, training manuals, bin Laden family passports, and identification cards for al Qaeda members. According to the government's unclassified evidence summary, a diary belonging to an al Qaeda leader and found in Saudi Arabia corroborated details of Binalshibh's role aiding the hijacker-pilots with whom he lived in Hamburg, Germany.

Al-Libi, who has been in custody two years, skipped his hearing, which lasted only 19 minutes.

But he complained, through his assigned military tribunal Personal Representative, that the process was "incomplete" in depriving him of a lawyer.

"I am extremely keen to exercise my rights full according to the law of the United States," said al-Libi.
By Phil Hirschkorn

[warvet4]

he'll walk just like osama

[baldfrog-2009]

To ALL you Republican Bush Hit War Iraq Kissers being paid by Rove more than likely to publish his cockroach fecal matter on here. Yes being paid to go through the net, the press and publish articles in papers and the media you rotten pastie faced Rovian Young Turks.I am not buying it and trust me I know Roves tactics from the Committee to Reelect the President in 1972.He will stoop to anything. Ask perhaps John Dean and others of that era. I suspect that's you do is go through press articles,the net and call Rush Bimbas, call in show over and over again masturbating him with Republican accolades,yet another turk probably on the Republican payroll.
Hop on over to the recruiters office and Join UP Chicken Poop or if you're to scared check out Joe Bidon's comments on this Bush Hit War over on Keith Olbermann's then join up and go bleed for your beliefs.Otherwise get off the payroll and shut up.

[bm6005]

30 days into the troop buildup in Baghdad and violence is down sharply. The build up is working and the LIBS are still trying to call for DEFEAT. Thank you U.S. military. Keep up the good work!
Posted by mbcsmith

Hey everybody we're winning, we're winning! Another comment from a mindless shill of Bush II. Wait a couple of weeks!

[itsamazing-2009]

Is it just me or does this dude look like Ron Jeremy?

[long_rider]

If this guy is the master mind of 9/11, then Barbra Walters is a man.

The master mind for the 9/11 crimes resides in the white house, and in NYC.

The story being pushed by the chimp, and presented by the news media, is weak, and cannot be true.

I wonder why CBS is so reluctant to look into some of the questions that we have about 9/11. That would make for a real story.

[newegg2]

Try to torture Bush to see if he confess as the mastermind.

[wmmcmartin]

The prisoners need better treatment and legal protection, not that they deserve it, but to improve America's image before the rest of the world. Whoever claims to be just should act justly to preserve the right image.

I suspect the man invented at least some of his claims to boost his image or to cover for the real perpetrators.

[jn122736]

This is the problem with the use of torture; even if the confessions are true no honest person can really believe it.

The past and obviously continuing lies and deceit of this administration just adds to the mistrust exhibited here.

Previously, it would have been ridiculous to believe any administration would ever deceive the people on the scale this one has.

It also would be ridiculous think the sun will no rise tomorrow, but if it fails to rise a couple of times one would start to doubt it

[annabanana-1]

Khalid Sheik Mohammed is a bad guy, and an actual al Qadea leader, not lackey, like so many of the other "enemy conbatants" have turned out to be. But unfortunately, his confession will be tained by the fact that:

he was subject to "extraordinary rendition" (Bush-speak for kidnapping and extradition to countries practiced in the art of torture);
he was subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" (torture), most famously by "water-boarding" (Bush parlance for similated drowning); and
the 9/11 Commission has found that he is prone to delusions of grandeur.
Recalling Moussaoui, an al Qaeda flunky who exagerrated his role so that he could achieve martyrdom via the death penalty, the 9/11 Commission described KSM as envisioning

a spectacle of destruction with KSM as the self-cast star--the superterrorist.
Ufortuantely (because KSM could have been a great candidate for a good, old-fashioned civilian trial--remember, the U.S. Attorney obtained an indictment against him in January 1996), this is a pattern of the Bush Administration when it's under attack--most recently for the U.S Attorney massacre. Raise the terror threat level, trot out some of the bad guys, and give grandiose descriptions of the evil they planned or perpetrated. Unlike Lindh, Hamdan, Moussaoui, Hamdi, and others who turned out to be nobodies, KSM is a somebody.

[karlimhof]

But, don't let me prevent you from engaging in the fantasy that Americans will somehow rise up and ... I'm not sure what you would have Americans do since we already have a system that provides for the peaceful overthrow of the government.
Posted by tuckerndfw

I think you've misunderstood me. I am not promoting the violent overthrow of the government.
What I said was that the 2nd amendment is there to allow us to protect ourselves from all enemies foreign and domestic.

Naturally, elections, do a better job - just look around!