9/11 Report Says Plotter Saw Self as Superterrorist

Yousef was captured in 1995. His uncle, on the lam from U.S. authorities, would settle in Afghanistan and turn his attention to even bigger plans.

The first meeting between Mohammed and bin Laden came in 1996 at Tora Bora, the refuge in the mountains of Afghanistan where bin Laden would elude U.S. military forces after the Sept. 11 attacks. The two had known each other from their days as Afghan mujaheddin, but, the report says, "they did not yet enjoy an especially close working relationship." The report says Mohammed "has acknowledged that Bin Ladin likely agreed to meet with him because of the renown of his nephew, Yousef."

Mohammed presented bin Laden and one of his senior lieutenants, Muhammad Atef, with a virtual menu of terrorist plots, including the Philippines jetliner scheme, a plan to bomb U.S.-bound cargo ships and a proposal "for an operation that would involve training pilots who would crash planes into buildings in the United States," the report says. This idea was the seed for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Bin Laden made no commitments but asked Mohammed to join al Qaeda. Mohammed declined. Even after joining al Qaeda several years later, "KSM states he refused to swear a formal oath of allegiance to Bin Ladin, thereby retaining a last vestige of his cherished autonomy," the report says.

Mohammed also claims that he would have worked with any terrorist group, not just al Qaeda, and that he would have gone forward with the Sept. 11 attacks even if bin Laden had canceled them.

"KSM presents himself as an entrepreneur seeking venture capital and people," the commission report says. "He simply wanted al Qaeda to supply the money and operatives needed for the attack while retaining his independence."

Mohammed began recruiting hijackers and making other preparations for the attacks in early 1999. He collected aviation magazines; information on U.S. flight schools; telephone directories for San Diego and Long Beach, Calif.; flight simulator software; and other materials. He also bought Hollywood movies depicting hijackings -- but edited the films to cover up female characters before screening them for al Qaeda trainees.

Over the next two years, Mohammed arranged travel, financing and communications as the Sept. 11 hijacking teams, headed by Mohamed Atta, came together in the United States. Although the panel concludes that bin Laden and Atef -- who was later killed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan -- were deeply involved in choosing hijackers and other major decisions, Mohammed was in charge of making sure the attacks happened and mediated conflicts among the hijackers.

In U.S. interrogations, Mohammed has claimed that it was he and his colleagues who pushed a reluctant bin Laden to attack the United States; the commission disagreed, saying Mohammed was "probably inflating his own role."

Mohammed also plays down the importance of Atef and other militants allied with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the report says. He claims that Sept. 11 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar quit commando training after a week because it was too rigorous, but other al Qaeda detainees say he completed the course. As it happens, Mohammed did not get along with Almihdhar and would have fired him if bin Laden had not intervened.

Abu Zubaida, another senior al Qaeda official now in U.S. custody, maintains that Mohammed's original plan for Sept. 11 was more humble and that it was bin Laden who urged him to expand it. "Why do you use an ax when you can use a bulldozer?" Abu Zubaida quotes bin Laden as saying. Some high-level al Qaeda detainees also portray Mohammed as an opportunist, although he was popular with the al Qaeda rank-and-file.

Throughout this period, U.S. officials had no inkling of Mohammed's importance as an al Qaeda leader and did not conclude until well after the hijackings that he was the mastermind. Mohammed is also suspected of killing kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in January 2002.

Even after the 2001 attacks, which killed 3,000 and ranked as the deadliest terrorist assaults on U.S. soil, Mohammed portrayed himself as still unsatisfied. In an interview with the al-Jazeera satellite channel after Sept. 11, he claimed that an al Qaeda reconnaissance committee had identified 30 potential targets in the United States.

But, according to the commission report, "KSM has admitted that his statement . . . was a lie designed to inflate the perceived scale of the 9/11 operation."