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American Morning

Portrait of Key 9/11 Planner

Aired June 05, 2002 - 08:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Up front this morning, U.S. officials say a Kuwaiti lieutenant of Osama bin Laden is one of the key players of the September 11 attacks. But there is more: They say that man has longstanding links with terrorists who actually established a base in the Philippines in 1995.

Now, one of their plans back then was to hijack commercial planes and crash them into U.S. buildings.

CNN's Maria Ressa has the details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARIA RESSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): U.S. investigators say this man, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti lieutenant of Osama bin Laden's, is one of the key planners of the September 11 attacks. Long on the FBI's Most Wanted list for his role in a 1995 plot to bomb U.S. airliners in Asia, Pakistani investigators say he is the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of that plot. Both men were key figures in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Although they failed to bring the buildings down then, they didn't stop trying.

Two years later, Yousef had another plan, outlined in this 1995 Philippine intelligence report obtained by CNN. He will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters. There will be no bomb. It is simply a suicidal mission.

Other targets named -- the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

The information is from Abdul Hakim Murad, who said he did structural studies for Yousef of the World Trade Center. He is also a pilot trained in four U.S. flight schools, among the first recruited for that suicide mission.

He wasn't the last. Arrested by Philippine police in 1995, Murad talked about other friends training in U.S. flight schools in transcripts of his interrogation obtained by CNN. All this information and more, says the Philippine president at that time, was handed over to the FBI.

(on camera): Could U.S. authorities have done more to prevent September 11 with the information from the Philippine authorities? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I think they should have done some more.

RESSA (voice-over): The FBI did investigate the flight schools named in the documents, but said it found no evidence of other planned attacks. Still, Philippine intelligence sources tell CNN the 1995 Yousef plot may have been the blueprint for the September 11 attacks -- more so if one of the leaders then, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was a key planner for September 11.

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