Secret World of Detainees Grows More Public

The 14 "high value" terrorism suspects are now being held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (By Brennan Linsley -- Associated Press)

The alleged Sept. 11 conspirators in the group include Mohammed, Zubaida, lead operative Ramzi Binalshibh and financier Mustafa Ahmad Hawsawi. The list also includes Majid Khan, a Pakistani national who worked at a family gas station in Baltimore and allegedly was selected by Mohammed to blow up gas stations and participate in other plots in the United States.

The DNI documents portray the capture and intermittent interrogations of Zubaida as crucial to unraveling much of what the government knows about the Sept. 11 attacks and the internal operations of al-Qaeda. But some of the portrayal appears to be at odds with other published reports, and intelligence sources indicated yesterday that Zubaida's case is more complicated than the administration let on.

Zubaida "was wounded in the capture operation" in Pakistan in March 2002, and "likely would have died" if the CIA had not provided medical attention, according to the documents. During an initial interrogation, he provided information "that he probably viewed as nominal," but which included identifying Mohammed as the Sept. 11 mastermind who used the nickname "Mukhtar," the documents say. The information "opened up new leads" that eventually resulted in Mohammed's capture, the documents say.

But in his recent book, "The One Percent Doctrine," Ron Suskind reported that a tipster led the CIA directly to Mohammed and subsequently collected a $25 million reward. Intelligence sources said yesterday that Suskind's description is correct but that Zubaida's information was also helpful.

What the DNI documents also do not mention is that the CIA had identified Mohammed's nickname in August 2001, according to the Sept. 11 commission report. The commission found that the agency failed to connect the information with previous intelligence identifying Mukhtar as an al-Qaeda associate plotting terrorist attacks, and identified that failure as one of the crucial missed opportunities before Sept. 11.

When Zubaida refused to provide further information, the CIA designed a new interrogation program that would be "safe, effective and legal," the DNI documents say, leading to "accurate and highly actionable intelligence" that led to the capture of Binalshibh.

The DNI document outlines Mohammed's alleged role in launching a series of other plots before his capture in Rawalapindi, Pakistan, in March 2003. One involved having South Asian terrorists associated with Jemaah Islamiyah hijack an airliner over the Pacific and crash it into a West Coast skyscraper. Another was to use Pakistanis in early 2003 to smuggle explosives into New York City and hit gas stations, railroad tracks and a bridge.

Mark Lowenthal, who was a senior adviser to then-CIA Director George J. Tenet when the detention program began, said there was little thought about what would happen to the group being held in the secret prisons.

"The main concern was that these people needed to be off the street, and I don't think people thought beyond that initially," he said. "What do you do afterward and how long do you hold them for? We don't try prisoners of war. We try war criminals, and we do that at the end of a war. This one doesn't look like it's ending so fast."

Other CIA veterans who would discuss the matter only on the condition of anonymity said they thought trials were inevitable. "The question was when," said one former official. "How long are they valuable for? One year, two or three or more? It's hard to say."

Staff writers Glenn Kessler, Walter Pincus, Thomas E. Ricks, R. Jeffrey Smith and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.