A SENIOR planner of the September 11 attacks said the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell was smaller than investigators believe, consisting only of him and three of the suicide pilots, a court was told today in the first public release of statements by suspects in US custody. In the eight-page US Justice Department summary of interrogations, accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed supports the contention that while the core cell members had violently anti-US discussions with other Muslims in Hamburg, they kept the plot to attack the US secret. However, the Justice Department cautioned that the interrogated captives may have wanted "to influence as well as inform" and that they may have withheld information or used "counterinterrogation techniques".
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