Al Qaeda In America: The Enemy Within

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed looked more like a loser in a T shirt than a modern-day Mephistopheles. But "KSM," as he is always referred to in FBI documents, held the key to unlock the biggest mystery of the war on terror: is Al Qaeda operating inside America?

The answer, according to KSM's confessions and the intense U.S. investigation that followed, is yes. It is not known where the authorities took KSM after he was captured, looking paunchy and pouty, in a 3 a.m. raid in Pakistan on March 1. As Al Qaeda's director of global operations, KSM was by far the most valuable prize yet captured by American intelligence and its various allies in the post-9-11 manhunt. He probably now resides in an exceedingly spartan jail cell in some friendly Arab country, perhaps Jordan.

He has probably not been tortured, at least in the traditional sense. Interrogation methods, usually involving sleep deprivation, have become much more refined. He probably did not tell all he knew. Qaeda chieftains are schooled in resisting interrogation, and informed sources said that at first KSM offered up nothing but evasions and disinformation. But confronted by the contents of his computer and his cell-phone records, he began speaking more truthfully. According to intelligence documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, many of the names, places and plots he revealed have checked out. After 9-11, Osama bin Laden's terror network "was clearly here," a top U.S. law-enforcement official told NEWSWEEK. "It was organized, it was being directed by the leaders of Al Qaeda." Though rumors of sleeper cells have floated about for months, it is a startling revelation that Al Qaeda's chief of operations was directly running operatives inside the United States. Thanks to some real breakthroughs by the Feds, the Qaeda plots do not appear to have made it past the planning stage. The inside story of the war at home on Al Qaeda, reconstructed by NEWSWEEK reporters from intelligence documents and interviews with top officials, has been marked by good luck and good work. Still, no one in the intelligence community is declaring victory.

KSM revealed an overhaul of Al Qaeda's approach to penetrating America. The 9-11 hijackers were all foreign nationals--mostly Saudis, led by an Egyptian--who infiltrated the United States by obtaining student or tourist visas. To foil the heightened security after 9-11, Al Qaeda began to rely on operatives who would be harder to detect. They recruited U.S. citizens or people with legitimate Western passports who could move freely in the United States. They used women and family members as "support personnel." And they made an effort to find African-American Muslims who would be sympathetic to Islamic extremism. Using "mosques, prisons and universities throughout the United States," according to the documents, KSM reached deep into the heartland, lining up agents in Baltimore, Columbus, Ohio, and Peoria, Ill. The Feds have uncovered at least one KSM-run cell that could have done grave damage to the United States.

It is somewhat reassuring that, so far, at least, the FBI has not uncovered any plots to use chemical or biological or nuclear weapons against America. Al Qaeda chiefs, especially bin Laden's ghoulish No. 2, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, have shown a strong interest in the past in obtaining weapons of mass destruction. The terror network allegedly dispatched a Brooklyn-born Hispanic Catholic who converted to Islam, Jose Padilla, to scout out the possibility of building a radiological device, a so-called dirty bomb (arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport in early 2002, he is being held as an "enemy combatant" in a military jail). But none of the operatives caught up in the web spun by KSM appears to have been working on a weapon that could wipe out an entire city.

On the other hand, the plotters were apparently scheming to take down the Brooklyn Bridge, destroy an airliner, derail a train and blow up a whole series of gas stations. Fortunately, American law enforcement has been able to nip these plots in the bud. The methods used by the G-men to crack the Qaeda cells, while effective and understandable under the circumstances, raise uncomfortable questions about legal means and ends.