Initial 9/11 plot bigger, panel reports

Airliners were to crash into Capitol, White House, reactors, FBI and CIA; Bin Laden restricted attacks; Missteps might have given U.S. chance to thwart plan

By Laura Sullivan | Sun National Staff

June 17, 2004

WASHINGTON - The al-Qaida figure who planned the Sept. 11 attacks initially envisioned an even more devastating plot to hijack 10 planes and crash nine of them into nuclear power plants, FBI headquarters and buildings in California, but was overruled by Osama bin Laden, who found the plan too complex, the bipartisan commission investigating the attacks said yesterday.

Commission investigators told panel members that the Sept. 11 mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, intended to pilot the 10th plane himself, kill all the men on board and deliver an anti-American harangue upon landing at an airport.

Bin Laden gave the idea a "lukewarm response," investigators said. Instead, bin Laden provided Mohammed with four operatives to undergo pilot training and carry out a scaled-down series of attacks.

Yesterday's revelations at the final series of commission hearings on Mohammed's plans were some of the first public details to emerge from the U.S. military's interrogation of Mohammed since his capture in March 2003. They offer a compelling look into the mind of the man who imagined and coordinated the worst terrorist attacks on American soil.

Among the other targets of Mohammed's initial plan to hijack 10 planes were the Capitol, the White House and CIA headquarters, the investigators found.

But their reports, based heavily on Mohammed's accounts of the detail and preparation that went into the attacks, also show for the first time that Sept. 11 was hardly a flawless, fixed and disciplined plot from the start. Rather, it was fraught with missteps and human errors that could have provided openings for U.S. law enforcement to thwart it.

"Given the catastrophic results of the 9/11 attacks," investigators wrote, "it is tempting to depict the plot as a set plan executed to near perfection. This would be a mistake."

The reports show that al-Qaida operatives and leaders were not particularly concerned about U.S. counterterrorism efforts, foreign security initiatives or even U.S. law enforcement. In executing their plot, Mohammed and al-Qaida were most concerned about the bureaucracy of U.S. immigration, which could mean long delays, seemingly arbitrary approvals and risky border checks.

The wayward pilot

Perhaps most detrimental to the plan was Ziad Jarrah, one of the plot's lead operatives and pilots, who crashed United Airlines Flight 93 into a field in Pennsylvania. During his training in the months before the attacks, investigators found, Jarrah kept leaving the United States to fly to Germany, without permission from the plotters, to visit his girlfriend and family. In the 10 months before Sept. 11, he made five such trips, the last one in August 2001 with a one-way ticket.

According to one report, Jarrah seemed so unreliable that at one point Mohammed felt he needed to find another pilot in case Jarrah dropped out, got caught or had to be replaced. Investigators wrote that the substitute was likely Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person the United States has charged in the Sept. 11 attacks and a man the Bush administration initially labeled wrongly, the report implied, as the intended 20th hijacker.

Moussaoui, who the report says may actually have been sent to the United States to take part in a possible second wave of attacks, was arrested in Minnesota shortly before Sept. 11 on immigration charges.

Mohammed and fellow al-Qaida leader Ramzi Binalshibh, the report says, had been disappointed in Moussaoui's performance and believed he had been arrested because he wasn't "sufficiently discreet." Binalshibh, the report says, told interrogators that Moussaoui represented a blemish on bin Laden's record of picking the best operatives.

Compared with the image of single-minded zealots, the hijackers seemed beset by human failings. Mohammed's trouble with Jarrah was compounded by Jarrah's inability to get along with the alleged Sept. 11 ringleader, Mohamed Atta.

In the summer of 2001, the report says, "friction developed" between the two, leading Mohammed to instruct Binalshibh to "mediate" between them. Mohammed stressed "the importance of ensuring peace between Jarrah and Atta," the report says.

In a coded message to Binalshibh, Mohammed warned that if Jarrah "asks for a divorce, it is going to cost a lot of money." He instructed Binalshibh to send money to Moussaoui, likely to prepare him as a replacement.

Jarrah, according to the report, was far different from Atta and the other hijackers, whom Mohammed and Binalshibh referred to as "muscle hijackers."

Raised by an affluent family, Jarrah attended a Christian school in Lebanon, frequented top nightclubs in Beirut and Germany, drank beer and partied with fellow students in Germany, the report says. Jarrah had met Atta and Binalshibh while studying in Germany.

Jarrah called his family almost daily from the United States, the report says, and his relationship with his girlfriend, Aysel Senguen, went back years. It is unclear where Senguen is now, and the report offers few details about her knowledge or involvement in the plot.

Investigators said Jarrah seemed to spend most of his time in the United States alone and, according to Binalshibh, "felt isolated and excluded."