This is a longish Washington Post article on KSM -- well worth a read
On the eve of his capture last weekend, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, al Qaeda's deadliest operator, took a commercial flight from the Pakistani city of Quetta to Islamabad, the capital, according to Pakistani investigators. Even with the breath of his enemy on his neck, Mohammed couldn't tolerate an arduous trek by car. With signature audacity, he hopped a plane.
| Hope he enjoyed his flight to Bagram... |
The self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was apparently convinced that the groomed man with a receding hairline pictured on FBI wanted posters bore no resemblance to the overweight, tangle-haired man he had become. But Mohammed had been under 24-hour surveillance for several days, according to Pakistani intelligence sources, and as he made the 430-mile flight to Islamabad, four agents of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency sat elsewhere on the plane.
This section describes how we fumbled a chance to capture him in 1996. The writers seem to think that KSM wasn't directly a part of al-Q. at that time. However, he was already a terrorist and was on the run from an op gone bad in the Phillipines
Mohammed fled to Qatar in 1996. The FBI soon learned of his presence there, and the Clinton administration sought to arrange an operation to arrest Mohammed and fly him to prison in the United States. When the CIA reported that it did not have the necessary officers or agents in Qatar, a Pentagon plan involving U.S. Special Forces was put before a meeting of the National Security Council's Deputies Committee, a panel of officials just below Cabinet rank, according to former officials involved in the discussions.
At the time, however, Bahrain and Qatar had been feuding over disputed islands in the Persian Gulf. Because the Pentagon plan involved sending a small attack force by helicopter from Bahrain into Qatar, administration officials feared the Qataris might mistake the U.S operation for a Bahraini attack. Officials decided that the risk of triggering a war between the two countries — and of scuttling an important defense basing agreement being negotiated with Qatar — was too great. As a result, the administration asked Qatar's foreign minister to have Mohammed turned over to the United States. According to former officials of the U.S. and Qatari governments, the foreign minister informed Interior Minister Abdullah bin Khalida Thani, a member of the Qatari royal family and an Islamic fundamentalist who allowed Mohammed and a group of Arabs traveling with him to stay at his large farm outside Doha. Thani, sources said, tipped off Mohammed and his group and helped them flee. The FBI and U.S. diplomats protested, but they lost their chance to get Mohammed.
| That's one of those favors we'll remember for a long time. |
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