al-Qaeda decided not to hit nuclear plants 2002-09-09 16:51:56
IslamOnline & News Agencies
9 September 2002
Key Al-Qaeda operatives told a well-known Arab investigative reporter they initially planned to hit U.S. nuclear power stations, before deciding instead to go ahead with September 11 strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Writing in the Sunday Times newspaper, Yosri Fuda of Al-Jazeera television also claimed he was told that the fourth target of the September 11 attacks was supposed to be Capitol Hill in Washington - and not the White House, as has been presumed.
Fuda’s revelations were based on two days of interviews he conducted inside Pakistan in June with two senior aides of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden - Khaled Sheikh Mohammad and Ramzi bin al-Shaiba.
U.S. authorities want both men for alleged connections with the September 11 attacks.
News agencies report Mohammed is one of the highest-ranking al-Qaeda leaders still at large whom U.S. officials believe is planning further attacks against U.S. interests. Binalshibh belonged to a Hamburg-based cell led by Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian suspected of leading the September 11 hijackers, U.S. officials believe.
Fouda said he also learned that Atta had been a sleeper operative in Germany since 1992 and started detailed planning with a 1999 meeting in Afghanistan with other sleepers, reports news agencies.
Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, said last Friday, September 6, that the interview represented "the first direct confession" by al-Qaeda of its responsibility for the attacks.
The Sunday Times in Britain said the interview would be aired on Thursday, September 12, with English subtitles, though it added that only voice recordings - and not images - were available.
Fuda said he has waited until now to air the interview because he wanted to include it in a documentary marking the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, reports news agencies.
Fuda, who hosts the Al-Jazeera program "Top Secret," said he met Mohammad and Shaiba in an apartment in a Pakistani city - he thinks it was Karachi - to which he had been driven while blindfolded.
Fuda quotes Mohammed as saying, "I am the head of the al-Qaeda military committee and Ramzi [Binalshibh] is the coordinator of the ‘Holy Tuesday’ operation." September 11, 2001 fell on a Tuesday.
He quoted Mohammad as telling him: "The attacks were designed to cause as many deaths as possible, and havoc, and to be a big slap for America on American soil."
U.S. counter terrorism officials believe many of Mohammed’s purported statements about the origins of the September 11 attacks are plausible. However, no information exists to verify those claims.
Fuda claimed he was told that Al-Qaeda initially thought of striking "a couple of U.S. nuclear facilities," but decided against the idea out of fears that it might "go out of control."
"You do not need to know more than that at this stage, and anyway it was eventually decided to leave our nuclear targets for now," he quoted Mohammad as saying.
The fourth target on September 11 was Capitol Hill, the seat of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and not the White House as widely presumed, Fuda said he was told. That attack failed when a United Airlines plane crashed in Pennsylvania as passengers tried to overcome its hijackers.
He claimed he was also told that the decision to carry out "a martyrdom operation inside America" was made in early 1999 by Al-Qaeda’s military committee, of which Mohammad - who appears on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list - is chief.
Fuda was also told that Mohammad Atta, who led the September 11 hijackers, and other participants travelled to Kandahar, Afghanistan in mid-1999. He later communicated with Shaiba by Internet posing as a student in the United States.
Code names were given to the targets: the World Trade Center was the "faculty of town planning," the Pentagon "the faculty of fine arts," and Capitol Hill "the faculty of law."
Fuda said that he was informed that Shaiba was supposed to have been the 20th hijacker on September 11, but could not get into the United States. Fuda said he still keeps "souvenirs" such as Boeing flying manuals and air charts.
Fuda said the interview was arranged by a go-between who, shortly after his arrival in Karachi, told him that Bin Laden was "not dead," but who also refused to say where the al-Qaeda leader was. Fuda was told not to bring any electronic equipment to the interview, and utilized equipment provided by the go-betweens.
After two days with Mohammad and Shaiba, Fuda was told to leave his videotapes behind so that their faces could be blanked out. In what Fuda speculated was "some sort of disruption", the videotapes were never returned as promised. But he did, however, eventually get audio tracks from the tapes.