Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged number three in Al Qaeda, has confessed to planning the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, in front of the secret military tribunals being held for the top detainees in Guantánamo. But can we take his "admission of guilt" seriously? Specifically as the real "KSM" may have died in September 2002?  

At a time when Guantánamo Bay and the methodologies used by the US government in working with their terrorist suspects, it seems - of course - that the US had it right all along: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the detainees, has confessed that he did it. In fact, that he did it all!
The confession was contained in a 26-page transcript of his hearing in front of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal. According to the Pentagon transcript, he told the tribunal panel of three military officers and a government-provided representative on Saturday March 10, 2007, that he was responsible for the attacks on September 11: "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z. I was the operational director for Sheikh Usama [Osama] bin Laden for the organising, planning, follow-up and execution of the 9/11 operation." He expressed sorrow for those who died on 9/11: "When I said I'm not happy that 3,000 been killed in America, I feel sorry even. I don't like to kill children."
He allegedly also confessed to being a member of the Al Qaeda council and the "military operational commander for all foreign operations". These operations were not limited to 9/11; in fact, they included surveying the assassination of American presidents, including Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, as well as planning to bomb suspension bridges in New York. In all, he confessed to being responsible for 31 executed or planned attacks, not only in America, but across the world, including London targets such as Heathrow airport, Canary Wharf and Big Ben.

The confession definitely makes Mohammed appear like a very dangerous man. But could he be too good to be true? Or not good at all, noting that Big Ben, Canary Wharf and Heathrow Airport never say any terrorist attack and Carter and Clinton were never shot at, let alone down, while in the Oval Office. Rather bizarrely, he claims he was responsible for second wave attacks after 9/11: California; Chicago; Washington; Empire State, NY. Unfortunately, none of these attacks actually occurred and though Bush has referred to these attacks, such as in the 2007 State of the Union, FBI and everyone else agrees these plots either did not exist or never made it past the conception stage. He claims to be responsible for operations to destroy American vessels in the Hormuz, Gibraltar, and Singapore and even for planning an operation to destroy Panama canal. Again, none of these operations were very successful. Equally, his "assassination attempt on John Paul II in the Philippines" can't have been very well-executed.
But if legitimate, Mohammed is responsible for shoe bomber operations to down two US planes (including the infamous Richard Reid shoebombing, which was spoiled by fellow passengers), as well as the infamous Bali bombing. Though these three attacks would make him a formidable terrorist, it may be that the other terror attacks were indeed just plans - ideas - which he toyed with.

But looking at this long list of alleged terrorist activities, it is clear that no-one can or should take Mohammed's confessions seriously. According to BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera, his confession of involvement in a wide range of ambitious plots reflects his boastful nature and a desire to portray himself as a terrorist mastermind.
We have indeed not yet reached the end of our list. The list also involves:
- The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City that killed six people and injured more than 1,000.
- A plot targeting the New York Stock Exchange and other US financial targets after 9/11.
- A plan to destroy buildings in Elat, Israel, by using planes flying from Saudi Arabia.
- Plans to destroy US embassies in Indonesia, Australia and Japan.
- Plots to destroy Israeli embassies in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines and Australia.
- Surveying and financing an attack on an Israeli El-Al flight from Bangkok.
- The November 2002 suicide bombing of a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, frequented by Israelis. At least 14 people were killed.
- The failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet leaving Mombasa airport with a surface-to-air missile on the same day as the hotel bombing.
- Plans to attack US targets in South Korea, such as US military bases and nightclubs frequented by US soldiers.
- Surveillance of US nuclear power plants in order to attack them.
- A plot to attack Nato's headquarters in Europe.
- Plans to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
- An attempt to attack a US oil company in Sumatra, Indonesia, "owned by the Jewish former [US] Secretary of State Henry Kissinger".

Item 31 is intriguing. The item was deleted from the original transcript by the US Defense Department. The Associated Press news agency said it was the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped in Pakistan in January 2002 while researching Islamic militants. Time magazine reported in October 2006 that Mohammed had been the one to personally wield the knife that killed Pearl.
Pearl was investigating the case of Richard Reid, links between Al Qaeda and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and $100,000 wired to September 11 chief operative Mohammed Atta's account in the US by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, following instructions by Pakistani General Mahmoud Ahmad - the ISI director general at the time. Indeed, Pearl seemed to be on a trail of evidence that the Pakistani Intelligence Service might be involved in, if not responsible for, 9/11.
On January 23, 2002, on his way to an interview with a supposed terrorist leader, Pearl was kidnapped by a militant group calling itself The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty. This group claimed Pearl was a CIA agent and - using the e-mail address This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it - sent the United States a range of demands, including the freeing of all Pakistani terror detainees, and the release of a halted US shipment of F-16 fighter jets to the Pakistani government. The latter is a rather bizarre claim to make for a terrorist organisation... but no-one seems to have picked up on that.
Nine days later, Pearl was decapitated.

Three suspects were caught after the e-mail addresses that sent the ransom e-mail were traced by the FBI. On March 21, 2002, in Pakistan, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and three other suspects were charged with murder for their part in the kidnapping and murder of Pearl. They were convicted on July 15, 2002 and Sheikh was sentenced to death. Let us note that there is no mention of Mohammed throughout this investigation or trial, until later, "The New York Times" began to report this "fact". We should not blame the Times for this. It was merely quoting from the book "In the Line of Fire", by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. He claimed that Omar Sheikh was actually an agent of MI6 (British Intelligence), who at some point became a double agent. Musharraf stated that he had changed his mind about the Briton's (Sheikh's) guilt, saying he now believed that the man who beheaded the American hostage was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Though interesting, let us repeat that Mohammed was not officially linked to Pearl's murder during the Pakistani police investigations or the trial. It is only Musharraf who made this rather remarkable change of opinion, which would mean that under his watch, innocent people were jailed and sentenced to death. In the aftermath, there was no new evidence that linked Mohammed to Pearl, until he confessed to the US that "I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head." Pearl's parents said it was impossible to know whether Mohammed's claim about killing their son "has any bearing in truth", whereas all experts agree that the pictures on the Internet do not show Mohammed holding Pearl's head.

In short, his involvement in the Pearl killing is at best disputed. It is therefore remarkable that item 31 was removed from the list, then leaked, only to be added again to the list when the Pentagon released a revised transcript on March 15. Perhaps the Pentagon thought a belated inclusion might not result in the kind of discussions we have just had?
But there are other problems: Mohammed lists one of the targets as the Plaza Bank. The problem is that the bank was not founded until 2006, three years after the alleged Al Qaeda mastermind's arrest.

There is at least some evidence therefore that "KSM" may indeed be lying, or may have admitted to everything as the result of being tortured. Labelling him a liar is what former CIA field officer Robert Baer concluded: "On the face of it, KSM, as he is known inside the government, comes across as boasting, at times mentally unstable. It's also clear he is making things up. I'm told by people involved in the investigation that KSM was present during Wall Street Journal correspondent Danny Pearl's execution but was in fact not the person who killed him. There exists videotape footage of the execution that minimizes KSM's role. And if KSM did indeed exaggerate his role in the Pearl murder, it raises the question of just what else he has exaggerated, or outright fabricated," stated Baer.
On March 16, 2007, it was reported that Democratic Senator Carl Levin and his Republican colleague Lindsay Graham were the two people who witnessed the questioning of Mohammed. They urged officials to investigate his allegations of being badly treated - suggesting that KSM might have been tortured, in order to confess. There were also commentators who speculated whether the list had not merely been written up by a Pentagon official, promoting it as if it was KSM's confession. After all, KSM, without access to anything, could not comment, confirm or deny. But the senators agreed that the transcript of the proceedings, which lasted more than an hour, was accurate.
Most importantly, they confirmed that Mohammed had handed the panel a written statement "alleging mistreatment during his captivity prior to arriving at Guantánamo." At the same, they concluded: "It was apparent that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed views himself as a warrior, motivated by religious teachings, and seeks his place in history."

It should therefore not come as any surprise that a CNN online poll showed that a massive 74% disbelieve all of the claims made by KSM. Writing in Jurist, Northwestern University law professor Anthony D'Amato likened Mohammed's confession to those that emerged in Stalin's show trials of Bolshevik leaders in the 1930s. Katherine Shrader of the Associated Press reported that the Americans who extracted Mohammed's confession do not believe it either. It is exaggerated, say Mohammed's tormentors, and must be taken with a grain of salt. Humorists are having a field day with the confession: "'I'm a very dangerous mastermind,' said Mohammed, who confessed to the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, the Brink's robbery, St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and the Lincoln and McKinley assassinations. Mohammed also accepted responsibility for spreading hay fever and cold sores around the world and for rained out picnics."

KSM may thus have been tortured into a confession; alternatively, and more likely, he saw his chance to make a name for himself and went for it, making a rightful idiot of himself, and the US Government of themselves by splashing about his confession so widely. But then his confession did force the fall-out of the Scooter Libby trial and the sackings of some US Attorneys disappear from the front pages.
But the problem with Mohammed is actually much more profound than one may think: for example, does he exist - or rather: is he still alive? We have no evidence of Mohammed's existence beyond a photo taken allegedly upon his capture in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, back in 2003. But most remarkably, prior to this, Pakistan's ISI claimed to have killed Mohammed during a raid in Karachi, which resulted in the capture of Ramzi Binalshibh, dubbed the "20th hijacker" and former roommate of Mohamed Atta. Indeed, his widely announced arrest in 2003 may be of someone who is not Mohammed at all - a case of mistaken identities? Or a fabricated story by the US? In which case, the man in Guantánamo making the confession, is not KSM.

If KSM was indeed dead by March 2003, it is remarkable that Mohammed was only presented as the 9/11 mastermind in June 2002 and was reinforced during Binalshibh's choreographed arrest in September 2002 - an arrest in which, the Pakistani ISI claim, they killed KSM.
KSM's "identification" as the 9/11 mastermind came about through John J. Lumpkin of the Associated Press, courtesy of the revelations of yet another anonymous "top U.S. counterterrorism official." As reported by Lumpkin, in the same article where KSM was introduced as the new 9/11 mastermind, he was also "accused of working with Ramzi Yousef in the first bombing of the World Trade Center [in '93]" in addition to working with Yousef on a 1995 plot (code-named Bojinka) to bomb a dozen airliners headed to the United States.
As it turned out, about the same time that Lumpkin's article was making the rounds, Robert Mueller was making a statement before the Senate-House Committee, narrating the full details of the 9/11 money trail story (as set out in the Moussaoui indictment). This was, of course, the trial that Pearl had been following and a trail that did not seem to involve KSM at all. But in his statement, Mueller - out of the blue - added KSM as a key player. According to Mueller's statement, he shared a credit card with Mustafa Ahmed "Alhawsawi" - an intriguing, though highly unusual allegation to make. And even if true, it begs the question "so what?". To provide some further detail to the precarious nature of this "evidence: Mueller not only inserted Khalid into the Money Trail Story by way of a direct connection with the "Mustafa Ahmad" alias; thanks to Lumpkin, "Mustafa Ahmad" was now "identified" (based on anonymous sources, we need to remember) to be bin Laden's "financial chief". So if KSM did indeed share a credit card with this man, it seemed he was indeed a 9/11 financier. Somehow, since its first airing in 2002, the media have somehow been unable to insert the word "if" in their discussion of this most bizarre and most likely totally invented story.

Once Lumpkin's June 2002 article on KSM was out, further incriminating details were coming out fast and furious. According to CBS News, US officials now had "evidence" that KSM had met with "some of the 9/11 hijackers at their Hamburg, Germany apartment in 1999." Conveniently timed for release on the very next day - June 6, 2002 - further news followed: that, according to National Security Agency intercepts, KSM was heard talking on the telephone with hijacker Mohammed Atta. Moreover, for the very first time, authorities were now reporting that KSM was actually the uncle of Ramzi Yousef. In other words, when the nephew failed to bring down the Twin Towers in 1993, the uncle succeeded in 2001.

Actually, that he was Yousef's uncle may be one of the few true statements. Prior to KSM's June 2002 ascension to being public enemy number three, he was mentioned on the terror lists as an indicted conspirator in the 1995 Bojinka plot, masterminded by Ramzi Yousef. Of course, that does not mean he actually did it - merely that he could have been involved.
So why did KSM's status change in 2002? According to CBS News, it was senior Al Qaeda figure Abu Zubaydah (captured a few months previously) who had "fingered [Mohammed] as the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks." Abu Zubaydah was the first "big fish" captured in the War On Terror. He himself had previously - and conveniently - been fingered as a major Al Qaeda player by Ahmed Ressam. A clear pattern of "I didn't do it, but I know who really did it" is developing here: Ressam put all the blame on Zubaydah, who shifted all the blame on KSM... who seems not to have known he could shift the blame... though whose boastful nature may have decided to confess to literally everything.

It is clear that there is definitely a rewriting of history occurring. Pearl, it seems, was on a interesting trail, but his fortunate/unfortunate kidnapping stopped any revelations. Instead, a new scenario was proposed, which had to be worked back into the 9/11 timeline. Thus, James Risen's June 5, 2002 article for the New York Times reported that the authorities "had begun to suspect soon after the [9/11] attacks that [Mohammed] had some role in the hijackings. But in the next months, a detailed financial investigation of the money trail from the plot led officials to believe that he had a more prominent role than previously suspected." But KSM most certainly did not make it into the Money Trail Story as of December 2001, when pretty much all the details of the money trail were crystallized within the Moussaoui indictment... and Pearl was shadowing the official investigation with an investigation of his own.

Observers have noted that if habitual coincidence is the mother of all conspiracy theories, then one must surely raise a discerning eyebrow at the revelation that, around this time - after more than a decade of staying hidden in the shadows and for all we know, a non-entity - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed suddenly felt the urge to conduct his very first interview, with none other than Ramzi Binalshibh, the "20th hijacker", at his side. The journalist chosen for this honour was the London bureau chief of Al-Jazeera, Yosri Fouda and the interview was aired on September 9, 2002 - conveniently just before the first anniversary of the disaster, with an audience hungry to relive the timeline and open to "new revelations"... or new lies.

Only two days after the initial broadcast of Fouda's interview - on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks - Pakistani forces, accompanied by FBI agents, raided an apartment complex in Karachi. After a "four hour" gun battle involving hundreds of Pakistani soldiers and policemen, the authorities captured Ramzi Binalshibh. Their original target, however, had apparently been Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom they had been tracking for months throughout Karachi. We repeat that the Pakistani ISI claimed KSM was killed in this raid. The new version of events was that KSM had been able to slip away only a few hours before Pakistani forces arrived at his door.

With the arrest of Ramzi Binalshibh, journalist Yosri Fouda was in a bind. Only days before, he had gone on record - repeatedly - as dating his interview with Khalid and Binalshibh to June 2002, the month when KSM appeared out of nowhere, to take the bronze position in the public enemy contest.
Up to the time of Binalshibh's arrest on September 11, 2002, the official version argued that KSM's pivotal role as 9/11 mastermind was revealed to US authorities through their interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, captured in March 2002 - the man who said he had not done it, but KSM had.
Now, in the aftermath of Binalshibh's capture, word was circulating that perhaps authorities had learned of Khalid's true role from Fouda's interview. That contention, of course, would remain most plausible if Fouda's interview could definitively be dated to a time before early June 2002. The alternative scenario quite simply pointed to a conclusion that would have to be denied at all costs: that the decision to out KSM publicly as the 9/11 mastermind was coordinated with the decision to send Fouda on his interview.
Soon after the Binalshibh arrest, Fouda took the opportunity to revise the date of his interview for the record, revealing to Abdallah Schleifer of the Kamal Adham Center For Journalism that he had "lied" about the June date, adding. "I lied because I needed to lie. I'll tell you why. Because I thought, maybe even expected, that if something went wrong and I needed to get in touch with them through a website or a statement or a fax ... they would be the only ones who would know that I had met them one month earlier than I let on, and so I'd know I was talking to the right people."
Apparently, Fouda had lied again, for on March 4, 2003 (a few days after Khalid's eventual arrest), Fouda offered up his latest, up-to-date version of his 48-hour encounter to "The Guardian": "It was late afternoon, Sunday 21 April 2002, when I packed my bags before joining Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-shibh for a last prayer before saying goodbye." Fouda had impeached his own testimony through these two contradictory statements. Fouda, through this compounded lie, was now calling into question the very credibility of his entire interview with Mohammed and Binalshibh...

By now, the rat not only smells, but stinks. In conclusion, it seems that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has been carefully inserted into the 9/11 story, before being promoted to being its main plotter. Perhaps it was wise for the US never to get this man a fair hearing, for now, four years after his arrest, it is clear that his testimony is totally incredulous.
We quote Baer, stating he felt KSM's allegations should not be treated as gospel and may instead be further evidence of KSM's boastful nature. Baer should now, for Richard Sale and Anwar Iqbal reported on September 30, 2002 that "Bob Baer, a former case officer in the agency's Directorate of Operations, said he provided Pearl with unpublished information about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed." "I was working with Pearl. We had a joint project. Mohammed was the story he was working on, not Richard Reid." In Baer's book, See No Evil, Baer's brief reference to Mohammed is one of the very few public characterizations of him offered between September 2001 and June 2002. Commentators have wondered why Baer chose to wait eight months after the Pearl kidnapping before revealing this new chapter about KSM. Even more so, one must wonder why, back in June 2002, when KSM was making the headlines as the newly marketed 9/11 mastermind, he apparently did not find it newsworthy to reveal the KSM angle to the Pearl story.

Confused? That is why so many people and journalists accept the official story. But the REAL story may be that post 9/11, a money trial was being followed, which led to Pakistani ISI officials. Pearl's investigation was stopped with his kidnapping. Shortly afterwards, the "first version of the money trial" is substituted with a "new version", which is all about KSM. The story is carefully constructed by a handful of journalists, some who seem to know who to interview, others, like Baer, who "confirm" that the new version is the correct one, and that Pearl was actually always looking for KSM - a statement that is unsubstantiated at best, and at odds with the available evidence.
Remarkably, it is then that the ISI begins to follow KSM, before trying to arrest him on 9/11. The ISI initially claim KSM dies during the shoot-out, yet in March 2003, the FBI is able to arrest him, detain him, ship him to Guantánamo and in March 2007 - four years after his arrest - have him admit to 9/11, and much more.
One question remains: why, in early 2002, did KSM promote himself as an Al Qaeda mastermind? The truth may indeed merely be that he has a boastful nature. But perhaps we should also include a variation on Musharraf's scenario: was KSM a Western asset? Did they ask him to confess?
One should wonder whether the CIA or MI6 would indeed let one of their assets then rot in jail. We know both agencies have committed worse crimes. But let us not forget that according to ISI's original comments, the real KSM died on September 11, 2002.