Free Republic

To hear Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed tell it, Osama bin Laden was a meddling boss whose indiscretion and poor judgment threatened to derail the terrorist attacks. He also saddled Mohammed with at least four would-be hijackers who the ringleader thought were ill-equipped for the job. And he carelessly dropped hints about the imminent attacks, violating Mohammed's cardinal rule against discussing the suicide hijacking plot. Mohammed described Al Qaeda in a written statement for his U.S. interrogators as an almost mystically efficient corporation that operates in ways Americans would never understand. "You must study these matters to know the...

THE mastermind behind September 11 was granted a visa to visit Australia one month before the al-Qa'ida strikes on New York and Washington but authorities realised their error only after the attacks. The tourist visa was granted to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed after he made an application using an alias through the Australian high commission in Islamabad in August 2001. However, at that stage Australian authorities had not entered any of the aliases used by Khalid -- al-Qa'ida figurehead Osama bin Laden's military commander -- on their alert lists. That was done only in the days following the attacks, which killed...

Six out of seven men suspected of plotting an Al Qaeda terrorist attack in Bahrain were re-arrested yesterday. New evidence reportedly revealed that they were on the verge of launching an attack when they were first arrested on June 22. An investigation of belongings seized from their homes indicated that they had planned and were ready to execute an attack, said a statement from the Interior Ministry. Chemicals taken from their homes and files seized from their computers indicated that they had completed the planning stages of their operation and were awaiting a convenient time to strike, said the statement....

British discover plan to use deadly chemical in attacks © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com A plot by terrorists to use dirty bombs laced with the deadly chemical osmium tetroxide to attack U.S. targets including the Sears Tower in Chicago was uncovered by British intelligence and law enforcement authorities, according to a report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. British police and military bomb experts passed on information to their U.S. counterparts. Traces of the chemical, as well as manuals for its use, were discovered by the British intelligence community during raids following the March Madrid attack. A number of intelligence and security agencies...

<p>LONDON — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaeda's purported operations chief, has told U.S. interrogators that the group had been planning attacks on the Library Tower in Los Angeles and the Sears Tower in Chicago on the heels of the September 11, 2001, terror strikes.</p>

<p>An al Qaeda sleeper agent "wrapped in his cloak of American citizenship" has secretly pleaded guilty to aiding Osama bin Laden by scouting out bridges and railroads for destruction in New York and Washington, Attorney General John Ashcroft said yesterday.</p>

German investigators say they have evidence that Mohamed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, and two accomplices trained at Qaeda camps in Afghanistan from late 1999 to early 2000. They have also established a clear link between Al Qaeda and a recent attack on a Tunisian synagogue, a top official said. The timing of the Afghanistan training, outlined yesterday by a senior investigator, provides the strongest evidence so far that plans for the attacks on the United States were worked out there. Less than six months after leaving Afghanistan, Mr. Atta and the other two men...

WASHINGTON, March 3 — For months, Pakistani and American intelligence had picked up clues that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was in Pakistan organizing what he hoped would be a spectacular new attack, officials of both countries said. On Feb. 13, when Pakistani authorities raided an apartment in Quetta, they got the break they needed. They had hoped to find Mr. Mohammed, but he had fled the apartment, eluding the authorities, as he had on numerous occasions. Instead, they found and arrested Muhammad Abdel Rahman, a son of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who in 1995 was convicted along...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was investigating the man who allegedly planned the Sept. 11 airplane hijackings and attacks on New York and Washington when he was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan, according to two former Central Intelligence Agency officials. Bob Baer, a former case officer in the agency's Directorate of Operations, said he provided Pearl with unpublished information about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has since been accused by American officials of being one of the masterminds of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a top aide to Osama bin Laden. Mohammed is...

WASHINGTON A secretive U.S. spy agency monitored phone calls between the suspected organizer of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings and the chief hijacker, but did not share the information with other agencies, U.S. officials said yesterday. The officials said on condition of anonymity that the conversations between Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Mohamed Atta were intercepted by the National Security Agency, which monitors and decodes foreign communications. Mohammed is a known leader of Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network and is on the FBI's Most Wanted List. He is thought to be hiding in Pakistan or Afghanistan. In addition to...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Investigators believe they have identified a Kuwaiti lieutenant of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) as the likely mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said Tuesday. Photos AP Photo Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, designated one of the FBI (news - web sites)'s most-wanted terrorists, is at large in Afghanistan (news - web sites) or nearby, the official told The Associated Press. U.S. investigators believe Mohammed planned many aspects of the Sept. 11 attacks, turning bin Laden's calls for dead Americans into reality. "There's lots of links that tie him to 9-11,"...

Kuala Lumpur, June 8, IRNA -- The Kuwait Embassy here has asserted that Khaled Sheikh Mohammad, identified as the probable mastermind behind the Sept 11 attacks by US investigators, is not a Kuwaiti national. In a statement faxed to IRNA here, Kuwait Ambassador to Malaysia Fahad Al-Metairi said recent reports by world news agencies claiming that Khaled was a Kuwaiti national or that the Kuwaiti citizenship was withdrawn from Khaled's father were "totally baseless". "He is a Pakistani national and holds a Pakistani passport. He was born in Kuwait and lived in Kuwait for a while before leaving it as...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - Investigators believe they have identified a Kuwaiti lieutenant of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) as the likely mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said Tuesday.</p> <p>Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, designated one of the FBI (news - web sites)'s most-wanted terrorists, is at large in Afghanistan (news - web sites) or nearby, the official told The Associated Press.</p>

US security services are investigating possible new links between Iraq and the September 11 attacks. They have identified a new candidate as being the possible mastermind of the atrocity. He was named as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti-born member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida organisation and a blood relative of Ramzi Yousef, the key figure behind the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Centre in 1993. The officials said they believed he was at large somewhere in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mohammed had previously been implicated in the thwarted attempt by Yousef and others to...

WASHINGTON -- The man suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11 terror attacks was well-traveled: Born in Kuwait, he went to college in North Carolina, fought Soviets in Afghanistan, plotted attacks against Americans from the Philippines. He also repeatedly visited the German city where chief hijacker Mohammed Atta lived, U.S. officials said Thursday. Officials suspect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a top lieutenant of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, met with Atta or members of his cell in Hamburg, Germany, but they have not received direct evidence of any contacts between them, one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Since...

MANILA, Philippines- The man suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks lived lavishly in the Philippines with his nephew, the 1993 World Trade Center plotter, partying, scuba-diving and renting a helicopter as they planned attacks against Americans, according to a former police official who investigated al-Qaida. U.S. counterterrorism officials have said that since Sept. 11, evidence has mounted that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was chief among Osama bin Laden lieutenants organizing the plot that sent hijacked passenger jets crashing into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing more than 3,000 people. Abu Zubaydah - a senior al-Qaida...