KHALID SHAIKH MOHAMMED WAS 'PLANNING MORE ATTACKS' ON USA...

MSNBC ^

[DoughtyOne]

According to a Feb. 26 intelligence report obtained by NEWSWEEK, “KSM is actively involved in Al Qaeda attack planning in CONUS [continental United States]. He has directed operatives to target bridges, gas stations, and power plants in a number of locations, including New York City.” Some of this intel came from a Qaeda operative now in custody, who told investigators that at one point Mohammed had planned to blow up bridges and gas stations in New York and Washington as part of the 9-11 attacks. Though those attacks never came off, Mohammed intended to return to finish the job. His plan: Qaeda operatives would steal or hijack tanker trucks and crash them into fuel pumps at filling stations, while other terror operatives would slash the suspension cables on bridges. These threats, as well as other leads from electronic intercepts and suspicious financial transactions, led Bush-administration officials to raise the threat level to Code Orange three weeks ago. The danger signal was reduced to Code Yellow last week, the day before Mohammed was snatched, but administration officials predicted that the country would revert to Code Orange if the United States goes to war with Iraq.

The son of an Islamic preacher from Pakistan, Mohammed, 37, studied engineering at a pair of North Carolina colleges in the 1970s. He was considered smart and funny and not articularly radical, but he somehow wound up joining the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. In the ’90s, he hooked up with his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, who had organized the first WTC bombing. Living together in the Philippines, Mohammed and Yousef had big plans. They were going to try to simultaneously blow up 11 American airliners over the Pacific. The scheme was foiled when one of their co-conspirators blew himself up in his apartment in Manila. Yousef and Mohammed fled; Yousef was picked up in Pakistan, where he declared, “I’m a terrorist and proud of it.” (He is now serving a life sentence in a “supermax” prison in Colorado.)

Mohammed was harder to catch. He has used dozens of aliases; in the Philippines, he supposedly posed as a rich businessman while dating sleazy bar girls. A CIA-FBI operation was poised to snatch him in Qatar in 1997, but, tipped off by a member of the host government, Mohammed slipped away. He joined forces with Osama bin Laden and began plotting the attacks on Washington and New York.

American intelligence was slow to recognize Mohammed’s importance. It was more than a year after 9-11 that the FBI and CIA came to appreciate that Mohammed worked as bin Laden’s chief operational planner. But in recent months, as his name kept popping up as the mastermind behind a new wave of threats, the Feds went all out to track him down. He apparently  narrowly escaped arrest when the Pakistanis and FBI busted a Qaeda hideout in Karachi last September. Perhaps he got a little sloppy about using his mobile phone. According to Pakistani authorities, he was asleep at 3 a.m. when the law finally caught up with him. Investigators also seized a cache of computers, documents and other valuable intelligence. Mohammed will be sent to an undisclosed location and interrogated, very thoroughly.
 
With Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman in Washington and Ron Moreau in Islamabad

[meyer]

THEY TOOK THE BAR!!!!!! THE WHOLE F##KING BAR!!!!!

My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.

[mommadooo3]

NOPE... he's proof that darwin was RIGHT about evolution. Monkeys...baboons...gorillas, or WHATEVER 'they' claim we came from. (furry, beached whales, maybe?)

[M. Thatcher]

The son of an Islamic preacher from Pakistan, Mohammed, 37, studied engineering at a pair of North Carolina colleges in the 1970s.

37? I don't think so.

[The Great Satan]

Ramzi Yousef and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed

[ConservativeMan55]

Yeck.....

[DoughtyOne]

LOL, good catch. Maybe he got his diplomas on the internet. ; )

[Gamecock]

"Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? And it ai'nt over now!" You got that right Skippy!

[noutopia]

Turn off the pictures I can smell him thru the internet.Pee YOUU.

[M. Thatcher]

It's just that I was in college 72-76, and I'm 48. So they're ten years off. Besides, look at the guy. He's pushing 50, if he hasn't already pushed past it.

[ConservativeMan55]

Methinks this guy looks bad not because he was on the run, but because he is a lazy piece of crap! He probably always smells like that!

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!
You dumb bastard you got caught!!! HAHAHAHA!

Sorry I had to get that out.

[ConservativeMan55]

Is that a moo moo he is wearing?

[noutopia]

Those arabs are some smelly fellows,almost turn your stomach.

[DoughtyOne]

You are right of course. I realized what your were saying, but made light of the situation. It was sloppy of the reporter to be sure.

[ConservativeMan55]

Now we know why those women in Afghanistan continue to wear the Burkas...because they've got gas masks underneath them to take away the smell!!

[ConservativeMan55]

[ConservativeMan55]

[noutopia]

Hey a culture that doesn't use toilet paper is sort of kind of smelly.

[rintense]

Yikes! Looks like the old game of 'you scratch my back, I'll shave yours' might actually be a good idea.

[The Great Satan]

It's just that I was in college 72-76, and I'm 48. So they're ten years off. Besides, look at the guy. He's pushing 50, if he hasn't already pushed past it.

Good point. The FBI "Most Wanted" site gives his date of birth as April 14, 1965, so he should be 38 next month. Those sideburns do look kind of grey for a 38 year-old, although I'm not sure what the variation in the population is there. The individual named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who studied in North Carolina was there from 1982-1986, which is consistent with the 1965 birth date. But if this guy wasn't born in 1965, or anywhere close, then is he really the same guy? This is all the more germane since very similar questions arise concerning Ramzi Yousef's supposedly "real," Kuwaiti identity, Abdul Basit. See: The World Trade Center Bomb: Who is Ramzi Yousef? And Why it Matters by Laurie Mylroie.