Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Said To Have Plotted 9/11 Attacks

Col. Rodolfo Mendoza, the former intelligence chief of the Philippine National Police, watched in horror, as we all did, when two airliners destroyed the World Trade Center Sept. 11, 2001.

"They've done it," Mendoza said to himself.

"They" were a small group of Islamic extremists who hated America and Jews, a group that had tried to blow up New York's World Trade Center in 1993 and two years later had come up with the idea of using hijacked airplanes as guided bombs.

Mendoza knew because Philippine police had foiled a plan by the terrorists, called "Project Bojinka," to blow up 12 American-bound airliners from Manila's Nino Aquoy International Airport (right) over the Pacific. They caught one of the plotters, a hapless Pakistani pilot and bomb maker named Abdul Hakim Murad, trying to sneak into a Manila apartment to retrieve a Toshiba laptop computer loaded with incriminating plans.

All but one of the terrorists behind that series of foiled or abandoned plans are in prison now. But their leader, a shadowy Pakistani named Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, eluded capture, first in Manila and later in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. He made his way to Afghanistan, carrying with him the idea of turning jetliners into smart bombs.

Osama bin Laden and his top aides, Egyptian doctor Ayman al Zawahiri and former Egyptian policeman Mohammed Atef, bin Laden's military chief, liked Mohammed's idea.

The End Of The Line

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (right) was captured by Pakistani and American intelligence operatives over the weekend. He's now being interrogated in an undisclosed foreign country.

The top priority during the questioning will be to find out whether other attacks are in the works, information vital to stopping the terrorists, American counterterrorism officials said.

But such information is just what Mohammed will probably to try to keep secret. Still, terrorists who learn of Mohammed's capture may alter their plans, abandon safe houses or make hurried telephone calls - actions that could expose them to detection.

The only Al Qaeda capture that even comes close to this magnitude was that of Abu Zubaydah last March. Zubaydah more than once provided information that sent American security officials scurrying to provide warnings to cities and sectors of the economy, knowing all the while that he could be lying.

But Zubaydah has provided some information that was later verified through other sources, officials said. That included intelligence that led to the detention of Jose Padilla, the American federal officials say was plotting to use a radiological weapon - a "dirty bomb" somewhere in the USA.

American Leaders "Elated" By Capture

U.S. officials were elated by Mohammed's capture. "This is equal to the liberation of Paris in the second World War," said GOP Rep. Porter Goss of Florida, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, on ABC's "This Week."

"This is a giant step backward for the Al Qaeda," Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told "Fox News Sunday." "Now their operations commander is simply out of operations."

Officials aren't saying anything about Mohammed's detention. Previous high-level Al Qaeda captives have not been brought to America; they would have rights not afforded on foreign soil, U.S. officials say. Where they are, however, has not been disclosed.

As his interrogation moves away from the immediate, Mohammed can provide counterterrorism officials with a deeper understanding of Al Qaeda and its history.

Officials believe he can detail how Sept. 11 was put together, answering long-standing questions about the plot's origins: Who chose the World Trade Center and Pentagon as targets? Who picked Sept. 11 as the date?

How Mohammed Fit Into Al-Qaeda

American officials say Mohammed, who was born in Kuwait and has both Pakistani citizenship and ancestry, planned and coordinated key aspects of the Sept. 11 operation.

His information can be cross-checked with Ramzi Binalshibh's, his former aide who was captured in September. Binalshibh was a part of the cell that included Mohamed Atta, chief among the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Abu Zubaydah, the highest-ranking al-Qaida leader now in custody, has told American officials Mohammed was the brains behind the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as well as the first Trade Center bombing in 1993 and the failed 1995 "Bojinka" plot in Manila.

At least one scrap of evidence suggests that Zubaydah may be telling the truth about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Intelligence officials said Mohamed Atta (right), the commander of the suicide hijackers, called Mohammed on Sept. 10.

The conversation was monitored by the National Security Agency but translated from Arabic only after the attacks that killed more than 3,000 persons. Intelligence officials believe that Mohammed, using coded language, gave Atta final approval for the four teams of hijackers to proceed.

"Bin Laden is unquestionably the leader, the symbol and the recruiting poster," the official said. "But it's looking more and more like Khalid actually makes things happen."

Roland Jacquard, a French terrorism expert and U.N. Security Council consultant, said, "He is probably the only man who knows all the pieces of the puzzle."

Where Atta and the other Sept 11 hijackers were stealthy, Mohammed was flamboyant. Atta, his main foot soldier, was thin and disciplined; Mohammed was neither. The hijackers slipped in and out of Econo Lodges; Mohammed preferred five-star hotels.

Colonel Mendoza knew Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as Abdul Majid, a Saudi businessman who lived in the top floor of Manila's Josefa Apartments with Ramzi Yousef, who was later convicted in the first World Trade Center blast, which killed six and injured around 1,000. Some officials say Yousef is Mohammed's nephew; others aren't sure.

Mohammed used other names: Salim Ali, Ashrai Refaat, Nabith Renin, Khalid Abdul Waddod and Fahd Bin Abdullah Bin Khalid, maybe a dozen pseudonyms in all. He isn't a Saudi or Qatari businessman, as he claimed in Manila, but a Kuwaiti-born and U.S.-educated Pakistani with a vast network of contacts and covers.

"He behaves like he's an intelligence officer," Mendoza said. "He appears and disappears. He has safe houses. He is very, very clever."

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