Plan for Sept. 11 attacks took years

WASHINGTON — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has told American interrogators that he first discussed the plot with Osama bin Laden in 1996 and that the original plan called for hijacking five commercial jets on each U.S. coast before it was modified several times, according to interrogation reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

Mohammed, who was captured in a raid March 1, also divulged that in its final stages the hijacking plan called for as many as 22 terrorists and four planes in a first wave, followed by a second wave of suicide hijackings that were to be aided possibly by al-Qaida allies in southeast Asia, according to the reports.

Over time, bin Laden scrapped various parts of the Sept. 11 plan, including attacks on both coasts and hijacking or bombing some planes in East Asia, Mohammed is quoted as saying in reports that shed new light on the origins and evolution of the plot of Sept. 11, 2001.

Addressing one of the questions raised by congressional investigators in their Sept. 11 review, Mohammed said he never heard of a Saudi man named Omar al-Bayoumi, who provided some rent money and assistance to two hijackers when they arrived in California.

In fact, Mohammed claims he did not arrange for anyone on U.S. soil to assist hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi when they arrived in California. Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were on the plane that was flown into the Pentagon.

Mohammed portrays those two hijackers as central to the plot, and even more important than Mohammed Atta, initially identified by Americans as the likely hijacking ringleader.

Mohammed said al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were among the four original operatives bin Laden assigned to him for the plot, a significant revelation because those were the only two hijackers whom U.S. authorities were frantically seeking for terrorist ties in the final days before Sept. 11.

Mohammed, who is being interrogated by the CIA at an undisclosed location, said the hijacking teams were originally made up of members from different countries where al-Qaida had recruited, but that in the final stages bin Laden chose instead to use a large group of young Saudi men for the hijacking teams.

Mohammed’s interrogation report states he told Americans some of the original operatives assigned to the plot did not make it because they had trouble getting into the United States.

He told interrogators about other terror plots that were in various stages of planning or had been temporarily disrupted when he was captured, including one planned for Singapore.

Mohammed told his interrogators he had worked in 1994 and 1995 in the Philippines on a foiled plot to blow up 12 Western airliners simultaneously in Asia.

After two of the suspects in that case were captured, foiling the plot in its final stages, Mohammed began to devise a new plot that focused on hijackings on U.S. soil.

In 1996, Mohammed went to meet bin Laden to persuade the al-Qaida leader "to give him money and operatives so he could hijack 10 planes in the United States and fly them into targets," one of the interrogation reports state.

Mohammed told interrogators his initial thought was to pick five targets on each coast, but bin Laden was not convinced such a plan was practical, the reports stated.

The plot, he said, eventually evolved into hijacking a small number of planes in the United States and East Asia and either having them explode or crash into targets simultaneously, the reports stated.

By 1999, the four original operatives picked for the plot had all traveled to Afghanistan to train at one of bin Laden’s camps.

The interrogation reports state bin Laden further trimmed Mohammed’s plans in spring 2000 when he canceled the idea for hijackings 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 report quotes Mohammed as saying.