| Last
week Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) admitted to having been
responsible for planning no fewer than 28 acts of terrorism,
including the horrific September 11 attacks, from "A to
Z."
The sensational confession, made during a military hearing
at Guantanamo Bay, raises a number of serious questions
-- most pointedly about the decision of the 9/11 Commission
to rely on the CIA for information about this terrorist
leader, who was captured in 2003.
Although
the 9/11 Commission identified KSM as a key witness in the
World Trade Center and Pentagon, it never was allowed to
question him or his CIA interrogators. Instead, the staff
received briefings from a CIA "project manager" -- who was
himself briefed by other CIA case officers on what KSM had
putatively revealed during his interrogation. As the 9/11
Commission chairmen noted, this was "third-hand" information;
but it allowed the CIA to fill in critical gaps in the commission's
investigation. Now KSM's claims throw this reliance on the
CIA into question.
Consider
the Feb. 26, 1993, attack on the north tower of the World
Trade Center. A 1,500 pound truck bomb was exploded by Islamist
terrorists, intending to topple the building. Over 1,000
people were injured, and eventually five of the perpetrators,
including the bomb-builder, Ramzi Yousef, were caught and
sentenced to life imprisonment.
Yousef
is a relative of KSM, and was involved with him in a subsequent
plot to blow up U.S. airliners. Nevertheless, the 9/11 Commission
concluded that KSM had played at most a "cameo role" in
the 1993 attack, limited to providing Yousef with $600 and
having a few phone conversations with him. And it based
this conclusion largely on the CIA briefings of what KSM
had said during his interrogation.
According
to the CIA, for example, KSM had maintained that "Yousef
never divulged to him the target of the attack." The 1993
WTC bombing, therefore, appeared unrelated to the 9/11 attack
-- and so the 9/11 Commission had no need to investigate
it, or the conspirators involved in it.
In
his confession, however, KSM says that he was
responsible for the WTC bombing. If so, both it and 9/11
are the work of the same mastermind -- and the planning,
financing and support network that KSM used in the 1993
attack may be relevant to the 9/11 attack. Of especial interest
are the escape routes used by Abdul Rahman Yasin and Ramzi
Yousef, both of whom helped prepare the bomb and then fled
America.
Yasin
(who is not even mentioned in the 9/11 report) came to the
U.S. from Iraq in 1992, at about the same time as Yousef,
and then returned to Iraq via Jordan. Despite being indicted
for the World Trade Center bombing, and put on the FBI's
list of the most-wanted terrorist fugitives with a $5 million
price on his head (increased to $25 million after 9/11),
Iraqi authorities allowed Yasin to remain in Baghdad for
10 years (In 2003, after the U.S. invasion, he disappeared.)
His
co-conspirator Yousef, who entered the U.S. under an alias
on an Iraqi passport (switching passports to his Pakistani
identity), escaped after the 1993 WTC bombing to Pakistan,
where, after being involved in another bombing plot with
KSM, he was arrested and is currently in a U.S. prison.
But if indeed KSM had been behind the 1993 bombing -- and
the 9/11 Commission had not been told the opposite by the
CIA -- the question of what support KSM had in recruiting
the conspirators and organizing the escape routes of the
bomb makers would have become a far more pressing investigative
issue for the commission.
Of
course, KSM's credibility is a very big "if." He might have
lied in his confession about his role in the 1993 WTC bombing;
he might have lied to his CIA captors (which itself would
say something about the effectiveness of their aggressive
interrogation); or, in selecting bits and pieces out of
their full context, the CIA project officer may have accidentally
mis-briefed the 9/11 Commission staff.
But
at the root of the problem is the failure of the commission
itself to question KSM. This was not for lack of trying.
The commission chairmen fully recognized the need to gain
access to the author of 9/11, and took note that their staff
was becoming "frustrated" at their inability to get information
from KSM and other detainees. On Dec. 22, 2003 -- with less
than seven months remaining before they had to deliver their
report -- they brought the problem up with George Tenet,
then CIA director. He told them, point blank, "You are not
going to get access to these detainees."
The
commission considered using its subpoena power, but was
advised by its general counsel that since KSM was being
held in a secret prison on foreign soil, it was unlikely
that any court would enforce a subpoena. The commission
also decided against taking the issue public, believing
it could not win in a battle with the administration, at
least in the time it had left. So, lacking any viable alternatives,
it allowed the CIA to control the information it needed
from KSM and other detainees.
The
result is that basic issues concerning KSM's interrogation
-- and the dozens of crucial citations in the 9/11 Report
-- are now in such doubt that 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey
suggested last Sunday, in his Daily News column,
that KSM be put on trial in New York, where presumably he
could be properly cross-examined. While that remedy may
be far-fetched, some resolution of this investigative failure
is necessary.
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