THE WISDOM FUND: News & Views
February 11, 2008
The Wisdom Fund

9/11 'Mastermind' Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Charged

Pentagon news transcript and CNN report contradict the 9/11 Commission Report on what happened at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001

by Enver Masud

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The Pentagon today charged Khalid Sheikh Mohammed with masterminding the events of September 11, 2001 even though the Pentagon's News Transcript of September 12, 2001 contradicts the 9/11 Commission Report's claim that the Pentagon was struck by a Boeing 757 on September 11, 2001.

At the September 12, 2001, U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) briefing, Arlington County Fire Chief Ed Plaugher when asked: "Is there anything left of the aircraft at all?" said: "there are some small pieces of aircraft ... there's no fuselage sections and that sort of thing."

Victoria Clarke, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs - "presenter" of the DoD briefing to the world press, did not contradict Chief Plaugher, and CNN video of September 11, 2001 corroborates Ed Plauger's remarks at the DoD briefing.

Standing in front of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Jamie McIntyre, CNN's senior Pentagon correspondent since November 1992, reported: "From my close up inspection there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. . . . . The only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you could pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage - nothing like that anywhere around which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon. . . . It wasn't till about 45 minutes later . . . that all of the floors collapsed."

"American Airlines," "Flight 77," "Boeing," "Dulles," and "passengers" are not mentioned in the News Transcript.

I just returned from a 3-week lecture tour of South Africa where, using establishement news sources, I showed to large audiences in about a dozen cities that the primary conclusions of "The 9/11 Commission Report" are false. A television interview broadcast to Sub-Saharan Africa summarizes this evidence.

In his new book, "The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation," New York Times investigative journalist Philip Shenon writes that Philip Zelikow, the 9/11 Commission's executive director attempted to intimidate staff to avoid findings that would be damaging to President George W Bush, who was running for re-election, and Condoleezza Rice, his then National Security Adviser. (Shenon apparently accepts the major conclusions of "The 9/11 Commission Report" - we do not.)

Shenon writes (p389):

By March 2003, with the commission's staff barely in place, the two men [Philip Zelikow, Executive Director, The 9/11 Commission, and Ernest R. May, a Harvard historian] had prepared a detailed outline, complete with "chapter headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings" of the final report.

Tom Leonard of the British Telegraph wrote, "When Bob Kerrey, a Democrat member of the commission, learned the extent of Mr Zelikow's ties to the administration, he confronted Tom Kean, its Republican chairman. . . . Mr. Kerrey reportedly threatened to resign unless Mr Zelikow was sacked, but was persuaded to stay."

Sen. Max Cleland, resigned from the commission in November 2003 saying, "Bush is scamming America."

"The chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, respectively Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, assert in their book, Without Precedent, that they were 'set up to fail' and were starved of funds to do a proper investigation", reported the Guardian.

The others charged by the Pentagon are: Walid Bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, and Mohammed al-Qahtani.



[Enver Masud is an award winning author, and has consulted for the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development. He managed research programs and national studies for the U.S. Department of Energy.]

"What Really Happened on September 11, 2001," The Wisdom Fund

"9/11 'Mastermind' or Wedding Planner?," The Wisdom Fund, March 3, 2003

Michael Kane, "Simplifying the case against Dick Cheney," fromthewilderness.com, January 18, 2005

Barbara Honegger, "The Pentagon Attack Papers," physics911.net, September 6, 2006

Chaim Kupferberg, "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: The Official Legend of 9/11 is a Fabricated Setup," globalresearch.ca, March 15, 2007

Christopher Bollyn , "Terror Mastermind KSM is an Imposter - The Confession is Fake," erichufschmid.net, March 16, 2007

[There are several indicators that the KSM confession is not credible.--Christopher Bollyn , "The Absence of Justice for 9/11 Victims," bollyn.com, March 20, 2007]

Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Terrorized by 'War on Terror'," Washington Post, March 25, 2007

[The only information the commission was permitted to have about what was learned from interrogations of alleged plot ringleaders, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, came from "thirdhand" sources. The commission was not permitted to question the alleged plotters in custody or even to meet with those who interrogated the alleged plotters.--Paul Craig Roberts, "9/11: Why Were The Tapes Destroyed?," The Wisdom Fund, February 2, 2008]

Sreeram Chaulia, "The ever-changing faces of terror," Asia Times, February 8, 2008

William Fisher, "Experts Doubt Fair Trials for Gitmo Suspects," antiwar.com, February 20, 2008

Noam Chomsky, "The World's Most Wanted," antiwar.com, February 27, 2008

Eli Lake, "UN Official Calls for Study Of Neocons' Role in 9/11," NY Sun, April 10, 2008

David Eliasson, "The Events of 11 September 2001 and the Right to the Truth," aldeilis.net, April 14, 2008

[Chief military defense attorney Colonel Steven David slammed what he said was the judge's rush to hold the hearing without giving the lawyers time to win their clients' trust.

Attorneys were able to spend little time with the accused, he alleged, while the prosecution has been preparing for years.--"Criticism rages with accused 9/11 conspirators in court," AFP, June 6, 2008]

[The five defendants wanted to plead guilty, but only if it brought them their desired outcome. "If we plead guilty, can we still be sentenced to death?" Mohammed asked U.S. Army Col. Stephen Henley, the military commission judge responsible for trying the men.

No one in the courtroom knew the answer, including Col. Henley.--Jennifer Daskal, "Chaos in the 9/11 courtroom: In Guant‡namo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants don't know the rules -- and neither does the judge," salon.com, December 11, 2008]

[The documents showed waterboarding was used 183 times on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who admitted planning the 9/11 attacks, the New York Times reported today.--Matthew Weaver, "CIA waterboarded al-Qaida suspects 266 times," Guardian, April 20, 2009]

[When you waterboard someone 183 times, I can guarantee you he's brain dead-- Robert Baer, "Hardball with Chris Matthews," MSNBC, April 22, 2009]

Catherine Herridge, "Defense Experts Warn of Dangers in Trial of 9/11 Mastermind," foxnews.com, June 1, 2009

[The proposal would ease what has come to be recognized as the government's difficult task of prosecuting men who have confessed to terrorism but whose cases present challenges.

. . . American military justice law, which is the model for the military commission rules, bars members of the armed services who are facing capital charges from pleading guilty.--William Glaberson, "U.S. May Permit 9/11 Guilty Pleas in Capital Cases," nytimes.com, June 6, 2009]

[The government has released new versions of transcripts of hearings held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which show Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other accused high-ranking terror detainees saying harsh interrogation methods led them to offer false stories.--"US reveals new pieces of Gitmo hearings," Associated Press, June 15, 2009]

[At each stage of the appellate process, a higher court will countenance the cowardly decisions made by the trial judge, ennobling them with the unfortunate force of precedent. The judicial refusal to consider KSM's years of quasi-legal military detention as a violation of his right to a speedy trial will erode that already crippled constitutional concept. The denial of the venue motion will raise the bar even higher for defendants looking to escape from damning pretrial publicity. Ever deferential to the trial court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will affirm dozens of decisions that redact and restrict the disclosure of secret documents, prompting the government to be ever more expansive in invoking claims of national security and emboldening other judges to withhold critical evidence from future defendants. Finally, the twisted logic required to disentangle KSM's initial torture from his subsequent "clean team" statements will provide a blueprint for the government, giving them the prize they've been after all this time - a legal way both to torture and to prosecute.--David Feige, "The Real Price of Trying KSM," Nation, November 19, 2009]

Peter Finn and Julie Tate, "2005 destruction of interrogation tapes caused concern at CIA, e-mails show," Washington Post, April 16, 2010

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