How the US Captured the Real 9/11 Mastermind
…Although Osama bin Laden was the public face of the September 11 massacre, McDermott and Meyer persuasively argue that KSM was the real mastermind behind 9/11, as the subtitle says. In one video, bin Laden himself praised KSM (by a code name, Mukhtar) as the architect of the attacks. Bin Laden had the funding, but it was KSM who thought to use planes as weapons against the United States, KSM who screened and trained the hijackers, and KSM who monitored everything connected to the attacks. As McDermott and Meyer write, “He oversaw the 9/11 plot.”
So why did bin Laden become the icon of terror? Largely because the US government and media knew far more about him. One of the fascinating themes throughout The Hunt for KSM is how little was known about Mohammed before the 9/11 attacks. Those that did understand the threat he posed were marginalized. They include three FBI agents who are the heroes of this book: Ali Soufan, Stephen Gaudin, and Frank Pelligrino. The men clearly provided much of McDermott and Meyer’s material, and at times their portrayal seems a little self-serving. But there is no doubt that they knew far more about KSM than did virtually anybody else in the government.
Instead, most counterterrorism efforts were devoted specifically to bin Laden and Al Qaeda—of which KSM wasn’t a member. He had refused to pledge an oath to the organization before 9/11, and found Osama meddlesome. KSM shunned publicity, but bin Laden gave interviews to western journalists and formally declared war against the United States. Almost as soon as the planes hit—and in some cases before—the press was reporting on the hijackers’ affiliation with Al Qaeda. But bin Laden only supplied the men (and some of them weren’t any good). KSM trained them and coordinated their efforts. Even had bin Laden been killed before 9/11, it is still possible the attacks would have occurred (though probably not on that date).