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The Missing Third Act of |
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© Jack Cashill by Jack Cashill
In the recent military tribunal hearing on his
combatant status, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad owned up to
29 separate acts of terror in which he served, at the
very least, as “responsible participant.” Some such
acts, September 11 for instance, he claimed to have
successfully masterminded and executed.
Others he helped plan but, happily, did not manage to
pull off. These include schemes to destroy the Sears
Tower in Chicago, the New York Stock Exchange and the
Panama Canal as well as plots to assassinate Pope John
Paul II and presidents Clinton and Carter.
It is likely that KSM has inflated his role in many of
these events, but just as likely that he was at least
involved.
The Department of Defense does not edit a word out of
28 of the 29 acts that KSM listed. But one act,
number 3 in KSM’s line-up, the DOD originally redacted
entirely.
The numerical placement seems critical here. In
number 1, KSM assumes responsibility for the “1993
World Trade Center Operation,” and there is no reason
to doubt him.
In number 2, he takes credit for “the 9/11 Operation,
from A to Z.” Although KSM overstates his control of
the operation, there is little reason to question his
involvement.
In number 4, KSM admits his participation in the “Shoe
Bomber operation to down two American airplanes.”
Again, this seems like a credible claim.
Number 3, however, was originally posted as
“REDACTED.” This was before the Internet started
humming about its likely contents.
Given the placement of number 3 high among the
provable acts of terror committed against Americans on
American soil, I and others speculated that KSM may
very well have been staking claim to one of two
events.
One is the Oklahoma City bombing. As has been well
enough documented, convicted conspirator Terry Nichols
made multiple trips to the Philippines when KSM’s
“nephew,” Ramzi Yousef, was living there. Yousef was
constructing the bombs for the impending aviation
attack that KSM refers to as “the Bojinka operation.”
According to a recent House report, Nichols traveled
with the book, ''The Chemistry of Powder and
Explosives,” and just happened to show up in Cebu City
at the exact same time as master bomber Yousef.
This was November 1994, six months before the Oklahoma
City bombing. Nichols changed his itinerary
immediately after Yousef’s lab was busted by the
Manila police in January 1995 and left the county in
haste.
In "Against All Enemies," Clinton anti-terror czar
Richard Clarke has this to say about the visits of
these two terrorists to the same city in the same
country at the same time: "We do know that Nichols'
bombs did not work before his Philippine stay," writes
Clarke, "and were deadly when he returned."
The second likely suspect for the redacted terror act
was TWA Flight 800, the 747 blown out of the sky off
the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996, Saddam’s
national liberation day.
According to two separate sources within the NSA, on
the night the plane went down Yousef phoned KSM from
his New York City prison and said—in their native
Baluchi-- "What had to be done has been done, TWA 800"
(last two words unintelligible).”
The next day Yousef asked for a mistrial, arguing in
high chutzpah that the environment had turned
prejudicial in regard to accused airplane bombers like
himself.
KSM had few qualms about shooting down airplanes. “I
was responsible for launching a Russian-made SA-7
surface-to-air missile on El-Al or other Jewish
airliner departing from Mombasa,” he writes in his
declaration. This was number 22 of 29.
In addition to his role in 9/11 and Bojinka, KSM also
admitted to planning the destruction of an El-Al plane
departing Bangkok, an attack on the Israeli city of
Elat by planes from Saudi Arabia, and an aerial
assault on the CIA headquarters, using an
explosives-packed private aircraft.
Whatever KSM said at the tribunal, he was likely not
speaking out of school. “When I wrote this thing,” KSM
said of his declared 29 acts, “I mean, the PR he told
me that President may stop you at anytime and he don’t
like big mouth nor you talk too much.”
Late in the day on March 15, however, the DOD offered
a new version of the KSM transcript. In this one,
number 3 is not redacted. Instead, KSM claims, “I
decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the
American Jew, Daniel Pearl.”
The painfully incurious mainstream media were spared
the indignity of being trumped by the pajama brigades.
The DOD provided an alternative for the missing claim
that works and that sounds legitimate.
If true, KSM lethal anti-Semitism might make the
lamentable Rosie O’Donnell rethink her affections for
this poor man, whom she belies was robbed of his
“humanity” by daily torture at Gitmo.
Also in the new version, KSM no longer takes credit
for financing the assassination of Pakistan's
President Musharaf or an attempt on a company
owned by the “the Jewish former Secretary of State,
Henry Kissiner (sic).”
There are a few other intriguing tidbits in tribunal
report. KSM, for instance, talks casually about his
participation in the “Shoe Bomber operation to down two American airplanes.” Italics mine.
As is well enough known, on December 22, 2001, British
citizen Richard Reid attempted to blow up American
Airlines Flight 63 en route from Paris to Miami by
igniting explosives hidden in his shoes. Fortunately,
he was stopped in his tracks.
It is possible, however, that Reid was not the first
shoe bomber. As noted in WND and elsewhere more than
five years ago, there was “a spreading conviction
among aviation and counter-terror experts” that Reid
was, in fact, the second such bomber and that the
first took out American Airlines Flight 587 40 days
earlier over Queens, N.Y.
Nothing has happened in the interim to dispel that
possibility. KSM’s off-hand remark should
reinvigorate the discussion as to why the
Dominican-bound aircraft crashed after take-off, two
months to the day after September 11.
Of interest, too, is that KSM takes responsibility for
the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Left
unsaid is who sponsored and financed a bombing that
took place on the second anniversary of Iraq’s
humiliating withdrawal from Kuwait.
By treating it as a case for the local constabulary,
the Clinton administration ignored a dramatic signal
that war was afoot.
Osama bin Laden declared war more or less officially
in May 1998. KSM talked about this declaration at
some length. As he points out in the transcript, ABC
reporter John Miller met with bin Laden that same
month.
“The consensus among the detectives was that Ramzi
Yousef was an intelligence operative working for some
hostile foreign power,” writes Miller of the first
World Trade Center bombing.
Then, as Miller notes, investigators began turning
their attention to Osama. “But bin Laden denied to me
that he was behind the bombing,” writes Miller, “and
claimed he didn't know Ramzi Yousef.”
In his official transcript, KSM backs up that claim.
He acknowledges that in 1993 he and Yousef had yet to
hook up with bin Laden. Unsolved—unsought for that
matter—is the identity of the “hostile foreign power”
behind the first WTC bombing.
One other minor bombshell that KSM dropped in his
transcript was his avowed responsibility for managing
“the production of Biological Weapons, such as anthrax
and others, and following up on Dirty Bomb Operations
on American soil.”
Left unsaid, of course, was where those weapons were
coming from and to what end they were used.
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