Mastermind

by Richard Miniter

  KSM could hardly have been luckier. Perhaps his brother’s networking had paid off again. Azzam was the mentor of Osama bin Laden. The jihadi movement was small enough at the time that an ambitious and capable lad could meet everyone of importance.

  Azzam put KSM to work at Mercy International, one of Azzam’s many front groups. Working in the media office, KSM came in contact with a number of wealthy Gulf Arabs, men who would later prove useful to him in financing various bomb plots.

  KSM and Ramzi Yousef almost certainly saw each other at Sheikh Sayyaf’s remote university or in his sprawling network of camps.

  Ramzi Yousef, who had completed his education in electrical engineering at the West Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education, in Swansea, Wales, took basic training in firearms and bomb making at Sayyaf’s infamous Khaldan camp. Omar Nasiri, while working undercover for French intelligence, also trained at the Khaldan camp and described it as “an oasis among the black hills,” with a few crude buildings wedged into a steep gorge. A cold river flowing through the camp made the immediate surroundings lush in a scorched desert.7 It had a mosque, a barracks with hard dirt floors, and another ramshackle structure where meals were taken and instructions given.

  Ramzi Yousef found time to marry a Baluch girl, Latifa Abdul Aziz, paying her father a dowry of ten thousand Pakistani rupees (roughly $400).8 By 1990 he was a respected instructor in Sayyaf’s camps, teaching young terrorists how to make nitroglycerin and other explosives. He was known as “the Chemist.”9 His engineering degree had proved useful after all. But it is clear how Ramzi Yousef saw himself in the business card he had printed up. It featured his name in bold print, below which was his job title: INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST.10

  For a time, KSM was a teacher, instructing students in engineering at Sayyaf’s university.11

  He also found time to get married to a Pakistani woman who had lived in the Jalozai refugee camp, on the flatlands below Sayyaf’s hilltop university. KSM’s brother Zahid later married her sister.12 (KSM’s wife and children are now believed to be living in Iran.)

  With a new wife, KSM had to make some decisions about where his life was going.

  By 1992 the jihad was winding down in Afghanistan. The USSR had retreated in 1989 and dissolved in 1990, and the United States ended its involvement at the same time. The Northern Alliance—which was distinctly unfriendly to bin Laden and the other “Arab Afghans”—had seized power in Kabul. (The Taliban would not be created, by Pakistani intelligence, for another two years.)

  The major Arab Afghan figures had decamped to other nations. Osama bin Laden had gone home to Saudi Arabia in 1990, and when his meetings with known terrorists aroused the attention of the oil kingdom’s intelligence service, he moved to Sudan in 1992.13 The Filipino followers of Sheikh Sayyaf returned to the southern isles of the Philippines, where they formed an eponymous terror group. Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri (who later became Al Qaeda’s number two, following the merger of his Egyptian Islamic Jihad into bin Laden’s organization) moved to North Africa and later several of the former Soviet republics of central Asia.

  Finally, the money for jihad flowing in from Persian Gulf states slowed to a trickle.

  The Afghan jihad had ended before KSM or his nephew Ramzi Yousef had a chance to distinguish themselves as leading figures in the global jihad. They would have to find another way.

  Bosnia was the obvious choice. Since the role of radical Islam in the Bosnian conflict is not well known, I will outline some of it here.

  Conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1463, the Bosnian elite had converted to Islam and ruled the Christian population for nearly five hundred years.

  In those days, Christians had no legal rights. Very few could even own land. If a Muslim robbed or murdered a Christian, the Christian had no legal recourse. By law, no nonbeliever could testify against a Muslim. Only Christians and Jews were required to pay the jizya, a confiscatory tax that kept non-Muslims poor. Worse still was the annual “blood tax,” in which Christian boys were forcibly taken from their families to be made into soldiers or eunuch slaves. Girls were often taken for harems or the slave trade. These and other humiliating legal measures formed a deep and lasting resentment among Christians and a countervailing fear of reform and equality by Muslim Bosnians.

  In 1870, the Turks were compelled to turn Bosnia over to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The hopes of Christians and the fears of Muslims were soon dashed. In the name of civil peace, few reforms were made, and the Muslim landowning class was largely left in charge. While Christians could now build churches, own land, and seek higher education, the legal system—headed by Muslim judges—was still biased against them.

  Austro-Hungarian universities introduced Christians to the ideas of nationalism and self-determination, planting an idea that would become deadly in the 1990s. The end of World War I (which had begun with a shot fired by a Serbian nationalist) brought independence to Yugoslavia (including Bosnia). The much-feared retribution against Muslims never came, but economic and legal reforms at last made citizens equal under the law.

  World War II ended the hopes of a democratic Balkans. The Muslim Youth, an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, had brought radical Islamist ideas to Bosnia’s Muslim intellectuals. When the Nazis invaded, these Muslim radicals joined the side of Adolf Hitler. While the SS unit of Muslim Bosnians failed to be an effective fighting force, the plainclothes Muslim militias soon became notorious for their pogroms against Christian farmers suspected of siding with the anti-Nazi partisans. These atrocities were soon merged into the Bosnian Christian historical narrative, deepening the divisions between Christians and Muslims.

  Marshal Josip Broz Tito swept to power in 1945, at the close of World War II, with his own brand of nationalistic communism. As an avowedly atheistic force, Tito-style communism attempted to heal the social divisions by banishing all traces of religion from Balkan life in the early Cold War years.

  But the seed of jihadism in Bosnia was too hardy to die. In 1948, the communist regime put a number of Muslim Youth members on trial for plotting to overthrow the government, in hopes of replacing it with an Islamic state. Their political goals were entirely copied from the works of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, including Qutb. Its leaders convicted and imprisoned, the Muslim Youth in Bosnia went underground. Its secret meetings would continue for decades.

  Meanwhile, Tito’s Yugoslavia managed to stay out of the orbits of the Soviet and Chinese communist empires and began courting the “nonaligned” nations of the Third World. By the 1960s, the Yugoslav Communist Party officials believed that Muslim party members would be ideal to help Yugoslavia’s efforts to connect to the Arab world. Beginning in 1964, Yugoslavia allowed sectarian Muslim groups to meet and to publish. By the 1970s, the Muslim Youth, still led by the same set of old men from the 1940s, reemerged. It again tried to overthrow the government, provoking another trial for seditious conspiracy. Again, the Muslim Youth went underground.

  In 1990, Yugoslavia, racked with international debts and social payments it could no longer afford, collapsed. The Muslim Youth was waiting in the wings; its hour upon the stage had finally come.

  A new political party for Muslims, the Party of Democratic Action, was born. Despite attempts by Croatian Christians to join, the party was exclusively for Muslims and openly supported the dictatorships of Iran and Iraq. It set its sights on seizing power in an independent Bosnian Muslim state and maneuvered for civil war. At each step, it was covertly aided by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

  Torn apart by civil war (or jihad), Bosnia was an ideal place for a budding terrorist to go. KSM made his way there in 1992 and served with the El Mujahid (“the holy warriors”) Detachment of the Bosnian Muslim government.14 The Muslim government reportedly gave him a Bosnian passport.15 Again, he made valuable contacts.

  Former National Security Agency analyst John Schindler, an expert on the Balkans, notes that KSM’s time in Bosnia seems to have been “more formative of his development in A
l Qaeda than his time in Afghanistan.”16 Schindler adds: “The neglected truth is that in the 1990s, Bosnia played an identical role in the global jihad to that of Afghanistan in the 1980s, serving as a convenient place to wage war against the infidel while providing sanctuary and training for the next generation of militants.”17

  Among the contacts KSM made in Bosnia were Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two Saudi nationals who would later achieve infamy as hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77 on September 11, 2001.18 These two “muscle” hijackers helped corral the passengers on the plane that was purposely smashed into the Pentagon. As we shall see, these two hijackers were an endless source of trouble for KSM in the run-up to the 9/11 massacre. But all of that drama still lay ahead.

  Dejected, KSM returned from Bosnia in 1994 with no great victory to claim.

  After a brief stay with his extended family in Pakistan, he worked his network of Gulf Arabs. He had contacted them for funding prior operations of Azzam and Sayyaf; now he needed something for himself. Abdullah bin Khalid al-Thani, a member of Qatar’s ruling family and then minister of religious affairs, agreed to give KSM a no-show job at the Ministry of Electricity and Water and a government-sponsored apartment. Until 1996, this Qatar apartment and salary would be his safe haven and his lifeline as he traveled the world.

  KSM drifted back to Pakistan, where he reconnected with nephew Ramzi Yousef. KSM had an idea. It involved a first-class trip to New York and a walk down memory lane.

  Like many terrorist recruits, Ramzi Yousef maintained good contacts with the alumni of Khaldan camp in Afghanistan.

  At Khaldan, Ramzi Yousef had met Ahmed Mohammed Ajaj, who had worked as a pizza delivery man in Texas19 before joining the jihad. Ajaj was not a U.S. citizen and had overstayed his U.S. visa before heading to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Still, he was eager to be useful, and Ramzi Yousef had a cruel use for him.

  Ramzi Yousef bought two first-class tickets to New York. The second ticket was for Ajaj, whose luck was about to run out.20 Within hours, he would be swept up in what was then the largest terrorist plot in American history.

  BOOK II

  A TERRORIST CAREER

  4

  Tradebom

  In the first-class section of a jumbo jet roaring toward New York, Ramzi Yousef innocently asked Ajaj if he could store some of his belongings in Ajaj’s luggage. They were brothers from the camps, and, Yousef explained, his small carry-on was bursting.

  Ajaj readily agreed, sealing his fate.

  Ramzi Yousef handed Ajaj his notebooks, which U.S. Customs inspectors later realized were manuals for making bombs. It had page after page of handwritten bomb recipes, like a cookbook. If Ajaj got into the United States with bomb manuals, they would be helpful to Ramzi Yousef. If not, then the manuals would make Ajaj a target, not Yousef.

  At the John F. Kennedy International Airport immigration checkpoint, the two purposely got into separate lines. When Ajaj approached an inspector, he was immediately suspicious of Ajaj’s Swedish passport. The photograph seemed too thick. She ran her fingernail along the edge, peeling off the photo of Ajaj. Underneath was a picture of another man.

  Yousef watched calmly as Ajaj was arrested. Ajaj would spend the next six months in an American prison awaiting trial and deportation, and would later be rearrested, charged, and convicted for his transitory role in a plot to kill 250,000 Americans. But Ajaj’s arrest had provided Ramzi Yousef with a valuable distraction.

  Yousef presented himself as Azan Muhammad, a victim of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. He had a valid Iraqi passport in that name, but no visa allowing entry into the United States.1 Claiming he’d been persecuted by Iraqi soldiers during the invasion of Kuwait, he asked for political asylum.2 Immigration inspector Martha Morales did not want to admit Ramzi Yousef, but she was overruled by her supervisors.3

  He was questioned, processed, and released. Within twelve hours he was freely walking the streets of New York. Under the law, political-asylum applicants must be held in a detention center until their request is granted or they are deported. But the detention facility was already at its legal maximum occupancy, so he was asked to report back in November for a hearing.4 That suited him. He would have at least two months before anyone in the U.S. government would be looking for him.

  Ramzi Yousef had a simple plan: find the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, and the accomplices of El Sayyid Nosair, the imprisoned killer of Meir Kahane, and put a team together.

  Ramzi Yousef went to a storefront mosque at 552 Atlantic Avenue, in Brooklyn Heights, which locals called “the jihad office.”5 It was officially known as Alkifah Refugee Center6 and had been set up by Abdullah Azzam, KSM’s employer in Pakistan. Azzam had links to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim World League, the stillembryonic Al Qaeda, and Saudi intelligence. He had come to Jersey City in 1988 and, in a speech to several hundred Muslims at Al-Salam mosque (where the Blind Sheikh also preached), said, “Blood and martyrdom are the only way to create a Muslim society.... However, humanity won’t allow us to achieve this objective because all humanity is the enemy of every Muslim.”7 (Interestingly, Azzam had been accompanied on that U.S. trip by Kahane’s assassin, El Sayyid Nosair.) Azzam later sent Mustafa Shalabi to establish a permanent jihadi base, for fundraising and recruitment, in the United States in the 1980s. Above the Alkifah Refugee Center was a mosque. The Blind Sheikh preached at that mosque and the more radical Al-Salam, in Jersey City.

  Yousef soon found his team through the mosque and the “jihad office.”

  His “wheelman” would be Mohammed Salameh, who had played a role in the Kahane assassination. An illegal immigrant with eyesight so poor that he had failed his New Jersey driver’s license exam four times,8 Salameh was an odd choice. He had already spectacularly failed to remain unnoticed or effective in the Kahane murder. Yet, as with Ajaj, Ramzi Yousef had a use for Salameh. His trusting nature only made that use easier. Salameh even let Yousef share his small Jersey City apartment.

  Another accomplice would be Mahmud Abouhalima, who like Salameh had played a role in the Kahane assassination. He had abjectly failed in his duties as the driver of the getaway car.

  Others would be added along the way, including Abdul Rahman Yasin, an epileptic Muslim on welfare who lived with his mother a floor above Salameh. While Yasin’s mother cooked them Arabic food, Ramzi Yousef persuaded Yasin to join their terror operation.9

  Yousef introduced himself to all of these terror-team members by his alias, Rashid al-Iraqi (meaning Rashid the Iraqi). A key component of the “tradecraft” that KSM taught his nephew was to trust no one with your real name.

  KSM, through his phone calls to Yousef, would be the moneyman and, most likely, the operational commander. In December, Ramzi Yousef made numerous conference calls to various phone numbers in the Baluchistan province of Pakistan, where KSM was at the time. Yousef was diligent. He even made calls to KSM from his hospital bed after Salameh had gotten the two of them into a traffic accident. (Interestingly, Yousef’s bomb-making manual was left in the back of Salameh’s car, which was impounded by New Jersey police, who dutifully handed the manuals back to Yousef.) Yousef also tried to hide his electronic fingerprints through “three-way calling,” then a new phone feature.10 As agreed, KSM was never mentioned by name or alias to the other members of the terror cell. KSM would be a ghost.

  The only trace of KSM would be a single wire transfer. Transaction records show that on November 3, 1992, $660 was sent from a “Khaled Shaykh,” in Doha, Qatar (where KSM was living without an alias), to Mohammed Salameh, Nosair’s accomplice in the Kahane assassination.11 It was an unusual slipup. While presumably one of many wire transfers believed to have occurred between KSM and Ramzi Yousef, this was the only one found by Justice Department investigators.

  The next few months are a blur of false starts and careful purchases of industrial chemicals. When his accomplices were unable to buy the needed chemicals, Ramzi Yousef stepped in, coolly telling suppliers he was an “I
sraeli.”12 This convenient lie seemed to ease concerns, and with his more confident, businesslike demeanor, Ramzi Yousef won the trust of the suppliers.

  By January 1993, the men were mixing chemicals in a run-down Jersey City apartment. The noxious vapors collected on the walls, leaving telltale blue stains.13 Next, they moved their makeshift laboratory to Space Station storage locker number 4344.14 From the front door of the Space Station they could see the twin towers of the World Trade Center, gleaming in the moonlight across the Hudson River. But there was no time to gape. They had a bomb to build.

  Just before dawn on February 26, 1993, they packed a bright yellow Ford Econoline van with fifteen hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate, three long, heavy tanks of hydrogen gas, four containers of nitroglycerin, and four twenty-foot fuses.15 The explosive contraption cost less than four hundred dollars.16

  The rented van was followed by a midnight-blue Honda sedan. This was their getaway car.

  By noon, the van was heading down the ramp beneath the World Trade Center’s north tower. They stopped at a predetermined spot in the vast parking garage. Ramzi Yousef calmly lit the four fuses on the fifteen-hundred-pound bomb. He ran to the getaway car—in exactly twelve minutes the bomb would explode.

  The Honda raced up the ramp, but their escape was blocked by a truck. Abouhalima leaned on the horn. The truck didn’t move. What’s the hurry? Its driver kept looking for an opening in traffic. Five painful minutes ticked by.17

  The fuses kept burning, at one and a half inches per second.

  Abouhalima honked again. Were they going to be among the tens of thousands they hoped to murder? The truck, at last, shifted gears and inched into traffic. Finally free, the bombers drove away into the snowy afternoon.

  Minutes later, at 12:17 P.M., the Ryder rental truck exploded.