5.2 THE "PLANES OPERATION"
According to KSM, he started to think about attacking the United States after
Yousef returned to Pakistan following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Like
Yousef, KSM reasoned he could best influence U.S. policy by targeting the
country's economy. KSM and Yousef reportedly brainstormed together about what
drove the U.S. economy. New York, which KSM considered the economic capital of
the United States, therefore became the primary target. For similar reasons,
California also became a target for KSM.32
KSM claims that the earlier bombing of the World Trade Center taught him that
bombs and explosives could be problematic, and that he needed to graduate to a
more novel form of attack. He maintains that he and Yousef began thinking about
using aircraft as weapons while working on the Manila air/Bojinka plot, and
speculated about striking the World Trade Center and CIA headquarters as early
as 1995.33
Certainly KSM was not alone in contemplating new kinds of terrorist
operations.A study reportedly conducted by Atef, while he and Bin Ladin were
still in Sudan, concluded that traditional terrorist hijacking operations did
not fit the needs of al Qaeda, because such hijackings were used to negotiate
the release of prisoners rather than to inflict mass casualties. The study is
said to have considered the feasibility of hijacking planes and blowing them up
in flight, paralleling the Bojinka concept. Such a study, if it actually
existed, yields significant insight into the thinking of al Qaeda's leaders: (1)
they rejected hijackings aimed at gaining the release of imprisoned comrades as
too complex, because al Qaeda had no friendly countries in which to land a plane
and then negotiate; (2) they considered the bombing of commercial flights in
midair-as carried out against Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland- a
promising means to inflict massive casualties; and (3) they did not yet consider
using hijacked aircraft as weapons against other targets.34
KSM has insisted to his interrogators that he always contemplated hijacking
and crashing large commercial aircraft. Indeed, KSM describes a grandiose
original plan: a total of ten aircraft to be hijacked, nine of which would crash
into targets on both coasts-they included those eventually hit on September 11
plus CIA and FBI headquarters, nuclear power plants, and the tallest buildings
in California and the state of Washington. KSM himself was to land the tenth
plane at a U.S. airport and, after killing all adult male passengers on board
and alerting the media, deliver a speech excoriating U.S. support for Israel,
the Philippines, and repressive governments in the Arab world. Beyond KSM's
rationalizations about targeting the U.S. economy, this vision gives a better
glimpse of his true ambitions. This is theater, a spectacle of destruction with
KSM as the self-cast star-the superterrorist.35
KSM concedes that this proposal received a lukewarm response from al Qaeda
leaders skeptical of its scale and complexity. Although Bin Ladin listened to
KSM's proposal, he was not convinced that it was practical. As mentioned
earlier, Bin Ladin was receiving numerous ideas for potential operations- KSM's
proposal to attack U.S. targets with commercial airplanes was only one of many.36
KSM presents himself as an entrepreneur seeking venture capital and people.
He simply wanted al Qaeda to supply the money and operatives needed for the
attack while retaining his independence. It is easy to question such a
statement. Money is one thing; supplying a cadre of trained operatives willing
to die is much more. Thus, although KSM contends he would have been just as
likely to consider working with any comparable terrorist organization, he gives
no indication of what other groups he thought could supply such exceptional
commodities.37
KSM acknowledges formally joining al Qaeda, in late 1998 or 1999, and states
that soon afterward, Bin Ladin also made the decision to support his proposal to
attack the United States using commercial airplanes as weapons. Though KSM
speculates about how Bin Ladin came to share his preoccupation with attacking
America, Bin Ladin in fact had long been an opponent of the United States. KSM
thinks that Atef may have persuaded Bin Ladin to approve this specific proposal.
Atef's role in the entire operation is unquestionably very significant but tends
to fade into the background, in part because Atef himself is not available to
describe it. He was killed in November 2001 by an American air strike in
Afghanistan.38
Bin Ladin summoned KSM to Kandahar in March or April 1999 to tell him that al
Qaeda would support his proposal. The plot was now referred to within al Qaeda
as the "planes operation."39
