Here’s a special offer for my fellow Cornerites: You can get a free chapter of my new book Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, by going to: www.courtingdisasterbook.com.
This chapter tells the previously untold story of how the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed helped disrupt the biggest al-Qaeda attack since 9/11: the plot to hijack seven airplanes taking off from London’s Heathrow airport, and blow them up en route to cities across north America. It’s the reason you can’t take liquids in your cabin luggage any more.
The plot was just weeks away from execution. If the planes had exploded over the Atlantic, some 1,500 people would have perished. If they had exploded over their destination cities (they way the Christmas Day bomber tried to explode his plane on arrival in Detroit) untold thousands more could have died. And it was information from KSM that helped intelligence officials connect the dots and figure out what the terrorists were up to.