Testimony lends insight into 9/11 mastermind

WASHINGTON -- The most revealing aspect of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's military tribunal testimony wasn't the detail about the many Al Qaeda plots he claims to have orchestrated, but the insight it offered into the suspected Sept. 11 mastermind himself.

In an hourlong written and oral presentation to his military captors Saturday, Mohammed showed himself to be ambitious, boastful, and, when given the chance, quite talkative and even thoughtful about his cause and his craft.

It was the first public glimpse of the man who has taken credit for not only the deadliest terrorist attacks in US history, but several dozen other plots .

But was Mohammed revealing the truth about himself and his deeds or just playing to the jury?

By framing his life as an underdog militant in terms Americans might understand, and by expressing occasional regret and remorse, Mohammed could have been seizing the opportunity to make his best and most palatable case to the public about why he and Al Qaeda have waged war against the United States, US officials and specialists reviewing his words suggested.

"It is designed to have an American audience understand that there is another way of looking at the conflict between the West and radical Islam under [Osama] bin Laden's leadership, and that is quite striking," said Jerrold Post, former chief personality profiler for the CIA.

Post, author of the forthcoming book "The Mind of the Terrorist," described the "performance" by Al Qaeda's former chief of operations as part psychological warfare and part artfully crafted courtroom argument.

"This does not reflect someone who was brainwashed" by radical Islamic fundamentalists or US interrogators since his capture in Pakistan in March 2003, Post said. "I take it as confirmation of the significance of his position, that, despite his thuggish appearance, this is a very shrewd and rather precise individual whose attention to detail and careful planning went into his being promoted to such a high position within Al Qaeda."

In many ways, Mohammed appeared to be a different and more complex personality than most other Al Qaeda leaders the American public has seen in videotapes, Web postings, and interrogation reports.

His lengthy exposition -- several typewritten pages, single-spaced -- wasn't the usual diatribe against the godless enemy.

Mohammed likened himself to an Islamic George Washington, fighting to free his people from the tyranny of an oppressive foreign government.

He sought to place Al Qaeda and the United States on equal footing, in terms of fighting a war in which some innocent lives must be lost.

"Killing, as in the Christianity, Jews, and Islam, are prohibited. But there are exception of rule when you are killing people in Iraq," Mohammed told his captors in broken English.

"You said, we have to do it. Same language you use, I use."

At times, Mohammed sounded like the ruthless killer US officials have portrayed him to be, such as when he boasted of beheading "the American Jew, Daniel Pearl," after The Wall Street Journal reporter was kidnapped in Pakistan in 2002.

At other times, he appeared contrite and even downright folksy.

Asked whether he had any questions about the tribunal process, the US college-educated Mohammed replied, "OK by me."

Mohammed prepared a list of 28 Al Qaeda attacks for which he said he was "responsible" and three more that he supported.

Those included plots -- some previously undisclosed -- to blow up US and Israeli government targets, such as embassies and warships, as well as soft civilian targets, including nightclubs and commercial airliners.

US intelligence and counterterrorism officials cautioned yesterday that Mohammed is often viewed as a megalomaniac and might have been exaggerating his role in Al Qaeda's operations, in part because he knew the proceedings at Guantanamo ultimately would be made public.

He might have done so to preserve his place in history or to pull off a counterintelligence feint designed to divert attention from other Al Qaeda operatives at large and planning attacks, they said.

For those reasons, they cautioned, everything he said -- from the number of attacks in which he was involved to the rationale for the attacks -- should be taken with a heavy dose of skepticism.

"Clearly he is responsible for some of the attacks, but I believe he is taking credit for things he did not have direct involvement in," said one recently retired senior FBI counterterrorism official.

Federal authorities have viewed some of Mohammed's claims to interrogators in recent years with skepticism.

They say the alleged plot against the Library Tower in Los Angeles, for example, was one of several that never got past the drawing board.

But a US counterterrorism official cautioned that at least some of the claims made by Mohammed during interrogations over the past four years had been corroborated by extensive investigation by US authorities.

"He was their operational guy," the official said. "The view [even] before his tribunal was that he was a barbaric killer, a ruthless terrorist -- and this is an admission of that in his own volition. He was a killer bent on inflicting as much harm as possible."