Free Republic

<p>Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, has told American interrogators that he first discussed the plot with Osama bin Laden in 1996 and that the original plan called for hijacking five commercial jets on each U.S. coast before it was modified several times, according to interrogation reports reviewed by The Associated Press.</p>

WASHINGTON - An FBI informant knew two of the Sept. 11 hijackers but never suspected they were terrorists, according to a congressional report that nonetheless concludes no single piece of information could have prevented the attacks. The unidentified informant was with Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi in San Diego during the summer of 2000, although the nature of their relationship was unclear. Almihdhar and Alhazmi recently had been linked by U.S. intelligence officials to possible terrorist activity, but that information apparently had not been shared with the FBI, the report said. Nothing the two men said or did in the...

Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condollezza Rice said Sunday that they had no evidence directly tying Saddam Hussein to the 9-11 kamikaze attacks on the U.S. But the top Bush administration officials were not asked about, and did not raise the subject of, persistent reports that the Iraqi dictator ran a hijacking school just south of Baghdad know as Salman Pak, where al Qaeda terrorists trained aboard a parked Boeing 707 to take over U.S. airliners using the exact same methods employed on 9-11. "I'm not here today to make a specific...