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IS KHALID SHAIKH MOHAMMED (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) AN IRAQI AGENT?

J. Adams
Author of The Persian Gulf Deception
Post Date: March 18th, 2003

"When Iraq occupied Kuwait in 1990 and 1991, it used some Kuwaiti files to create false identities for key agents. It tampered with those files. It tampered with Abdul Basit Karim's files to create a false identity for Ramzi Yousef."

"Questions also exist about Abdul Hakim Murad, who was convicted with Yousef in the plane bombing plot [Ed. Note: a plan to bomb 12 U.S. airplanes in the Philippines] and also claims to be born in Kuwait. Questions also exist about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), also involved in the plane bombing, a fugitive who also claims to be born in Kuwait. People should check those files to see if they've been tampered with."

- Quote from Dr. Laurie Mylroie in an interview with Frontline for the episode dubbed "Gunning For Saddam". Dr. Mylroie is an Adjunct Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute which originally published her book "The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks"

"What little is known about the sister (of Khalid) includes one compelling piece of information: She is thought to be the mother of Abdul Karim Basit, better known as Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the man convicted of masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York."

-The Plots and Designs of Al Qaeda's Engineer: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), Los Angeles Times, December 22, 2002

"After September 11 many, including myself, believe that the attacks may be the result of a partnership between the terrorists and a state with a sophisticated intelligence service and a program of biological warfare. If this proves to be true and Iraq is shown to be the terrorists' partners, there is no reason for anyone to ask, 'Why didn't someone warn us?' because Laurie Mylroie did."

-R. James Woolsey, former CIA Director

"In this man's heart (Osama bin Laden) you'll find an insistence,
a strange determination that he will reach one day the tunnels of the White House
and will bomb it with everything that is in it.....with the seriousness of the Bedouin
of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House.
...the revolutionary bin Laden is insisting very convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is already hurting.
That the man....will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs."
(A reference to Sinatra's "New York, New York"?)

- From the Iraqi publication Al-Nasiriya: July 21, 2001
(Also noted in the Wall Street Journal, "Saddam and the Next 9/11", 2/14/03)

Does this man look 38?

Is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), the mastermind of 9/11 who was captured March 1st in Pakistan, an Iraqi agent?

There is reason to suspect he is and, what's more, since he is now in custody, it should be possible for authorities to verify whether or not he is who people think he is. And should Khalid Mohammed NOT be the real Khalid Mohammed, then the smoking gun has been found that establishes Iraqi complicity in the terrorist attacks on the U.S. in September 2001.

On the tenth anniversary of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, President George W. Bush gave a key speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washingtonian think tank, concerning Iraq and the seemingly inevitable war to come. The Presidential address focused on the direct threat Iraq poses to the United States and her allies:

"...We're opposing the greatest danger in the war on terror, outlaw regimes arming with weapons of mass destruction. In Iraq, a dictator is building and hiding weapons that could enable him to dominate the Middle East and intimidate the civilized world and we will not allow it. This same tyrant has close ties to terrorist organizations and could supply them with the terrible means to strike this country, and America will not permit it. The danger posed by Saddam Hussein and his weapons cannot be ignored or wished away. The danger must be confronted. We hope that the Iraqi regime will meet the demands of the United Nations and disarm fully and peacefully. If it does not we are prepared to disarm Iraq by force. Either way, this danger will be removed."

-President George W. Bush, 2/26/03

On September 11th of 2001, terrorists achieved what was unsuccessully attempted in 1993: the destruction of the Twin Towers,the ultimate symbol of American power. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks and subsequent Anthrax mailings, Washington awoke to the potential threat posed to America by Saddam's Iraq. In his speech on February 26th, the President highlighted that Saddam's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and his apparent willingness to work with radical terrorist networks like al Qaeda constitutes a clear and present danger to the American people. Consequently, the United States is on a path to war intended to remove Saddam Hussein from power and eliminate the Iraqi threat.

But is, in fact, Saddam Hussein's Iraq a terrorist state as branded by the President Bush? This is the key question in the wake of 9/11. Clearly if Saddam was involved in 9/11, then George Bush's concern is warranted and war against Iraq is seemingly justified.

None of what occurred in September of 2001 came as a surprise to Dr. Laurie Mylroie. For years she has been telling the world that Saddam Hussein is likely behind the spectacular acts of terrorism against U.S. interests the world has been witnessing since Iraq's seeming defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. Following the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein continued to wage the Mother of All Battles covertly through terrorism. While Western intelligence agencies have been easily fooled into blaming "false flags" of moslem extremists that were witting or unwitting stooges of Iraqi operatives, Dr. Mylroie has managed to uncover the true story which has very serious implications for what may come next.

In her book, "The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks", Dr. Mylroie judiciously reexamines the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and shows how the mastermind of the terrorist plot, Ramzi Yousef, is in fact an Iraqi intelligence operative. This is mainly established by the fact that Yousef fled the U.S. using the false identity of Abdul Basit Karim, a Kuwaiti who disappeared when Iraq occupied Kuwait in August 1990. In a November 2001 interview, Dr. Mylroie summarized her case as follows:

Mylroie: Well, the first thing is, people should understand the general context. New York F-B-I, particularly its director, Jim Fox, believed that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was an Iraqi intelligence operation. There are Iraqis all around the fringe of the plot, including one who is an indicted fugitive who came from Baghdad before the bombing [and] returned to Baghdad afterwards. But I think the key piece of evidence is the identity of Ramzi Yousef. He came on an Iraqi passport in the name of Ramzi Yousef, which is how he’s known, and fled the night of the bombing on a Pakistani passport in the name of Abdul Basit Karim. There really was an individual, Abdul Basit Karim, born and raised in Kuwait. He graduated from high school in Kuwait at the age of eighteen; studied for three years in Britain; got his degree in the summer of 1989; returned to Kuwait, where he got a job in the planning ministry; and was in Kuwait when Iraq invaded.

Host: And you’ve argued that Iraqi intelligence assumed that man’s identity and gave it to their agent, Ramzi Yousef.

Mylroie: Iraqi intelligence doctored the file of Abdul Basit Karim to create a false identity for Ramzi Yousef.

Host: Now, do you have hard evidence of that, or is this your best surmise from the evidence you’ve looked at?

Mylroie: The file in Kuwait was doctored with. There should have been copies of the passport of Abdul Basit Karim, with the information on the first page -- the picture, the signature -- those were taken out. Information was put in that should not be there: above all, the information that Abdul Basit and his family left Kuwait on August 26th, 1990, traveling from Kuwait to Iraq, crossing from Iraq to Iran at Salamchah which was the border-crossing point, on the way to Pakistani Baluchistan where they live now.

Ramzi Yousef was captured in 1995 after his next major plot was foiled in the Phillipines. This "Project Bojinka" plot would have involved bombing 11 U.S. airliners and driving an explosive-laden airplane into the CIA headquarters or Pentagon in a single day of infamy. Clearly this plot, in combination with the first attempt to take down the Twin Towers in 1993, was a forerunner of what eventually was successfully hatched on 9-11. Notably, Yousef's partner in the Bojinka plot was ostensibly a Kuwaiti pilot named Abdul Hakim Murad who claimed to have grown up with Abdul Basit. Of course, if Abdul Basit was not really Ramzi Yousef, then Abdul Murad would recognize this, suggesting that Murad's Kuwaiti identity was false as well.

The operational planner of Project Bojinka was Khalid Mohammed, who was accordingly indicted in 1996 in the Southern District of New York. Khalid is also believed to have worked with Ramzi Yousef in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Time and time again there have been reports in the media about how Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) is Ramzi Yousef's uncle. This, however, is slightly off the mark. Khalid Mohammed is, in fact, the uncle of Abdul Basit. In an article entitled, "The Plots and Designs of Al Qaeda's Engineer: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed)", the Los Angeles Times uncovered the following ciritical piece of information:

The implication of this point can not be overstated.

Given that Ramzi Yousef, as judiciously examined in Laurie Mylroie's "The War Against America", is not Abdul Basit, obviously Khalid Mohammed would have noticed the man he was working with in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 Project Bojinka plot was not his nephew.

The logical explanation is that Khalid Mohammed, like Abdul Basit and Hakim Murad, is a stolen Kuwaiti identity. As with Basit, since this identity was undoubtedly stolen when Iraq occupied Kuwait in August 1990, the implication is that Mohammed's identity was stolen by Iraqi intelligence for Saddam's sake. Thus, the family of Khalid Mohammed and Abdul Basit, as well as Abdul Murad who grew up with Basit and was the son of a Kuwait pilot, were likely among the 600+ Kuwaitis that disappeared when Iraq took over the emirate in 1990. These identities were then handed over to Iraqi agents that became key operational planners in al Qaeda and carried out Saddam's revenge in the form of brazen terrorist plots against the United States including 9/11.

NEXT - the Baluchistan connection.

The Baluch Connection:
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed tied to Baghdad?
BY LAURIE MYLROIE

The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, is a Pakistani Baluch. So is Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In 1995, together with a third Baluch, Abdul Hakam Murad, the two collaborated in an unsuccessful plot to bomb 12 U.S. airplanes. Years later, as head of al Qaeda's military committee, Mohammed reportedly planned the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings, as well as the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

Why should the Baluch seek to kill Americans? Sunni Muslims, they live in the desert regions of eastern Iran and western Pakistan. The U.S. has little to do with them; there is no evident motive for this murderous obsession. The Baluch do, however, have longstanding ties to Iraqi intelligence, reflecting their militant opposition to the Shiite regime in Tehran. Wafiq Samarrai, former chief of Iraqi military intelligence, explains that Iraqi intelligence worked with the Baluch during the Iran-Iraq war. According to Mr. Samarrai, Iraqi intelligence has well-established contacts with the Baluch in both Iran and Pakistan.

Mohammed, Yousef and Murad, supposedly born and raised in Kuwait, are part of a tight circle. Mohammed is said to be Yousef's maternal uncle; Murad is supposed to be Yousef's childhood friend. And U.S. authorities have identified as major al Qaeda figures three other Baluch: two brothers of Yousef and a cousin. The official position is thus that a single family is at the center of almost all the major terrorist attacks against U.S. targets since 1993. The existence of intelligence ties between Iraq and the Baluch is scarcely noted. Indeed, these Baluch terrorists began attacking the U.S. long before al Qaeda did.

Notably, this Baluch "family" is from Kuwait. Their identities are based on documents from Kuwaiti files that predate Kuwait's liberation from Iraqi occupation, and which are therefore unreliable. While in Kuwait, Iraqi intelligence could have tampered with files to create false identities (or "legends") for its agents. So, rather than one family, these terrorists are, quite plausibly, elements of Iraq's Baluch network, given legends by Iraqi intelligence.

SOMEONE NAMED Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was born in Kuwait to Pakistani parents on April 19, 1965. After high school in Kuwait, he enrolled at Chowan College in North Carolina in January 1984, before transferring to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where he received his degree in December 1986. Is the Sept. 11 mastermind the same person as the student? He need not be. Perhaps the real Mohammed died (possibly during Iraq's occupation of Kuwait), and a terrorist assumed his identity.

Mohammed should now be just under 38, but the terrorist's arrest photo, showing graying sideburns and heavy jowls, seems to suggest an older man (admittedly, a subjective judgment). Yet this question can be pursued more reliably. Three sets of information exist regarding Mohammed: information from U.S. sources from the 1980s (INS and college documents, as well as individuals who may remember him); Kuwaiti documents; and information since the liberation of Kuwait (from his arrest, the interrogation of other al Qaeda prisoners, and the investigation into the 1995 plane-bombing plot).

The Kuwaiti documents should be scrutinized for irregularities that suggest tampering. The information about Mohammed from the '80s needs to be compared with the information that has emerged since Kuwait's liberation. The terrorist may prove to be taller (or shorter) than the student. Interrogators might ask him what he remembers of the colleges he is claimed to have attended. Acquaintances--like Gaith Faile, who taught Mohammed at Chowan and who told the Journal, "He wasn't a radical"--should be asked to provide a positive identification.

Along these lines, Kuwait's file on Yousef is telling. Yousef entered the U.S. on an Iraqi passport in the name of Ramzi Yousef, but fled on a passport in the name of Mohammed's supposed nephew, Abdul Basit Karim. But Kuwait's file on Karim was tampered with. The file should contain copies of the front pages of his passport, including picture and signature. They are missing. Extraneous information was inserted--a notation that he and his family left Kuwait on Aug. 26, 1990, traveling from Kuwait to Iraq, entering Iran at Salamcheh on their way to Pakistani Baluchistan. But people do not provide authorities an itinerary when crossing a border. Moreover, there was no Kuwaiti government then. Iraq occupied Kuwait and would have had to put that information into the file.

KARIM ATTENDED college in Britain. His teachers there strongly doubted that their student was the terrorist mastermind. Most notably, Karim was short, at most 5-foot-8; Yousef is 6 feet tall. Nevertheless, Yousef's fingerprints are in Karim's file. Probably, the fingerprint card in Karim's file was switched, the original replaced by one with Yousef's prints on it. James Fox, who headed the FBI investigation into the 1993 WTC bombing, has been quoted as affirming that Iraqi involvement was the theory "accepted by most of the veteran investigators." Pakistani investigators were likewise convinced that Yousef had close links with the MKO, an anti-Iranian terrorist group run by Iraq, and conducted a bomb attack in Mashhad, Iran, in 1994.

U.S. authorities may unravel the story very quickly if they pursue the question of Mohammed's identity, instead of assuming they know who their captive really is. As for the larger issue of these murderously anti-American Baluch, that matter may become clear soon, once U.S. forces take Baghdad--and take possession of Iraq's intelligence files.

Ms. Mylroie is the author of "The War Against America" (HarperCollins, 2001). A related editorial appears here.

ALSO SEE: IRAQI LINKS TO TERRORISM AGAINST AMERICA