'Sears Tower was next on Qaeda list'
The Times of India ^ | March 30 2004
WASHINGTON: Chicago's Sears Tower and Los Angeles' Library Tower were to be the next targets after the terrorist attacks on World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, Al-Qaeda's puported operations chief Khalid Shiekh Mohammed now in detention, has told US interrogators, media reports said on Tuesday.
The plan for Chicago and Los Angeles were aborted because of the decisive US response to the New York and Washington attacks, Sheikh reportedly told the investigators, the Washington Times said quoting a British newspaper.
The US response disrupted the terrorist organisations' plans so thoroughly that it could not proceed, he said.
Al-Qa'ida 9/11 chief reveals US got off lightly
The Australian, From The Sunday Times ^ | March 29, 2004 | Sunday Times sources
IT makes a chilling picture. The mastermind behind the September 11 attacks has told interrogators that he and his terrorist nephew leafed through almanacs of US skyscrapers when planning the operation.
Sears Tower in Chicago and Library Tower in Los Angeles – which was "blown up" in the film Independence Day – were both potential targets, according to transcripts of interrogations of al-Qa'ida operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. "We were looking for symbols of economic might," he told his captors.
He recounted sitting looking at the books with Ramzi Yusuf, his nephew by marriage, who was the man behind the first World Trade Centre bombing in 1993. In that attack Yusuf succeeded only in ripping a crater into the foundations with a van bomb.
"We knew from that experience that explosives could be problematic," Khalid said, "so we started thinking about using planes."
When he was captured last March in the house of a microbiologist in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the paunchy 37-year-old was unshaven and wearing a baggy vest. He looked more like a down-and-out than one of the most dangerous men in the world.
The interrogation reports make clear, however, that he was not only the chief planner for September 11 but also introduced Osama bin Laden to Hambali, the Indonesian militant accused of orchestrating the Bali bombing 13 months later.
To date, Khalid is the most senior al-Qa'ida member to have been caught. Until now there has been no word of where he is being held or what, if anything, he is saying.
Although the interrogation transcripts are prefaced with the warning that "the detainee has been known to withhold information or deliberately mislead", it is clear that he is talking – and that the September 11 conspiracy was much more extensive than has previously been revealed.
The confessions reveal planning for the atrocity started much earlier than anyone had realised and was intended to be even more devastating. "The original plan was for a two-pronged attack with five targets on the east coast of America and five on the west coast," he told interrogators. "We talked about hitting California as it was America's richest state and bin Laden had talked about economic targets."
Bin Laden, who like Khalid had studied engineering, vetoed simultaneous coast-to-coast attacks, arguing that "it would be too difficult to synchronise".
Khalid switched to two waves: hitting the east coast first and following up with a second attack. "Osama had said the second wave should focus on the west coast," he said.
Zacarias Moussaoui, a French-Moroccan who had lived in London, was sent to the Pan Am international flight school in Minnesota to train for the west coast attack, according to Khalid. His instructor alerted the FBI, however, after the Moroccan showed no interest in landing planes – only in steering them. He was arrested in August 2001.
Until now it had been widely believed that Moussaoui was meant to have been the 20th hijacker on September 11. The revelation by Khalid that he was part of a "second wave" is lent weight by the FBI's recent arrest of two other men who were allegedly part of the west coast conspiracy. ... {/snip}