 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
BODY
BLOW KSM's capture brings his international terror career full circle. It started, after going to college in North Carolina and then fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, with the 1993 World Trade Center attack led by his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the Blind Sheikh. It ended after authorities arrested the Blind Sheikh's son, Muhammed Abdel Rahman, and traced KSM to the home of a senior Pakistani Islamist based in part on Rahman Jr.'s interrogation. Along with KSM, authorities captured Mustafa Ahmed al Hawsawi, who served as KSM's financial intermediary funding the 9/11 hijackers and receiving unspent funds just hours before the attacks. According to the Financial Times, al-Hawsawi held a supplemental Visa cash card in the name of Abdullah al-Fakasi al-Ghamdi. Authorities identified the photo from the Visa-card application as KSM. KEY
NODE IN THE AL QAEDA MATRIX Authorities stumbled on the apartment Yousef and his associates were using to mix the components for their bombs when their chemistry experiments started a small fire. Investigators searching the apartment discovered the terrorists were also behind the bombing of Philippine Airlines flight PR434 in December 1994 and planned to assassinate the pope during his visit to Manila. They also discussed crashing an airplane into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, a technique KSM would later employ in his second strike against the Twin Towers. Police also found a note in the Manila apartment which was signed "Khaled Sheikh Bojinka." Investigation later determined that KSM spent time in Manila with the cell led by Yousef, proactively involving himself in the plot's planning and oversight just as he later would for the 9/11 Hamburg cell led by Mohammad Atta. In fact, KSM and Hambali were both present at the January 2000 planning meeting in Malaysia at which the final touches were put on the plot to bomb the USS Cole (a plot to bomb the USS Sullivans had just failed) and the decision was made to carry out the 9/11 attacks in the United States. Also in attendance at this key meeting were two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almidhar, Cole planner Tawfiq bin Attash, and others. KSM is said to have personal connections to terrorists across the globe. The names of people in the United States were said to be found on his person at the time of his capture, his business travels for his front companies took him from Malaysia to Brazil, and in between he even spent time as a Qatari civil servant. Officials note that hundreds of al Qaeda operatives caught since 9/11 admitted under interrogation to having had recent conversations with KSM. In one conversation intercepted by German authorities, Nizar ben Mohammed Nawar, the suicide bomber in the April 2002 Djerba synagogue bombing in Tunisia, called KSM three hours before the bombing with a final status update on the operation. A captured al Qaeda affiliate tied to the kidnapping and assassination of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl implicated KSM in that attack as well. ONGOING
THREAT KSM was also actively plotting attacks outside the U.S. According to a Canadian Secret Intelligence Service interrogation report obtained by the New York Times and Discovery Channel, Muhammad Mansur Jabarah, the KSM lieutenant and Jemaah Islamiya liaison, confessed that it was KSM who gave him money and instructions for attacks in Southeast Asia targeting "soft" targets frequented by Americans. According to Filipino authorities, "Jabara himself admitted that he was introduced by Osama personally to Mohammed to oversee some terrorist operations in Southeast Asia." FIGHTING
MULTIPLE WARS — Matthew Levitt is a senior fellow in terrorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. |
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
he
capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaeda's operational commander and
9/11 mastermind, demonstrates that the United States can, in fact, walk
and chew gum at the same time. The fact that the greatest success to date
in the war on terrorism occurred well into the planning stages of the
war to liberate Iraq should give pause to critics who said these two wars
could not be fought at once. Indeed, the information investigators are
already collecting — from his interrogation and the materials seized
when he was captured, including his laptop, cell phones, "pocket
litter," and other documents, to the sudden surge in international
phone and e-mail "chatter" officials are monitoring — strongly
suggests there will be more such successes in the war on terror in the
near future.
