Two Senators Secretly Flew to Cuba for Alleged 9/11 Mastermind's Hearing

Though he did not reveal his attendance at the hearing, Graham said in an interview yesterday on Fox News that one could question whether Mohammed tried "to embellish his role in jihadist history."

"I believe the details will be corroborated," he said.

Steven Simon, a terrorism expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, said Mohammed was involved in some of the successful and failed plots for which he claimed credit, including one to blow up airliners headed from the Philippines to the United States and another to blow up a flight en route from London. "He had this thing with crashing airplanes," Simon said.

Mohammed did not claim credit for attacks such as the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 or an attack on a U.S. consulate in Pakistan in June 2002.

In arguing that Mohammed deserves the status of enemy combatant, the Pentagon noted only his role in the death of 2,972 people on Sept. 11, 2001. Mohammed did not dispute that claim. But he tried to argue that other evidence against him, especially information on a computer at the home where he was arrested in March 2003 in Pakistan, did not belong to him. Evidence on the computer accounts for about half of the 22 findings the Pentagon presented against him at Saturday's hearing. Mohammed also disputed a report that he claimed to be an al-Qaeda military commander in a 2002 al-Jazeera interview. He asked to call two witnesses, also being held at Guantanamo Bay, to corroborate his version of events, but the panel refused.

Mohammed appeared at the hour-long hearing, speaking in Arabic and English before a panel of three officers, including a Navy captain and lieutenant colonels from the Air Force and the Marine Corps. An Air Force lieutenant colonel assigned to usher Mohammed through the tribunal process was also present, but Mohammed did not have a lawyer, was denied a request to call witnesses and was not shown classified evidence against him.

Defense officials said yesterday that it could take several weeks to rule on Mohammed's status, even though he boasted of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks and called himself an enemy combatant.

After Mohammed's status is determined, military prosecutors could decide to try him, through a military commission, for his alleged involvement in the attacks. The commissions, with rules outlined by Congress last year, are untested. Until then, he would remain in custody at Guantanamo.

Military commission charges can include the possibility of a death penalty, but the only case presented so far under the new laws -- against Australian citizen David M. Hicks -- was referred to a commission as a non-capital case. It is unclear whether military prosecutors would pursue a death-penalty case against Mohammed.

Staff researcher Julie Tate and staff writer Shailagh Murray contributed to this report.