Fouda

There was little or no difference between the account that KSM and Binalshibh had freely volunteered to Fouda in the spring of 2002 and the version the commission published in its 2004 report.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

Fouda, a secular journalist ideologically far removed from the militant Islamists of al-Qaeda, would then accomplish what it would take another year for the CIA to do: track down the man who more than any other was the operational commander of 9/11.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

Fouda recalls, I counted four floors as I was walking upstairs.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

Before he was captured, KSM and his colleague Ramzi Binalshibh had laid out in great detail the entire 9/11 operation in a 2002 interview with Yosri Fouda, an Al Jazeera correspondent.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

Fouda made his way to Karachi and was met there on April 20, 2002, by an intermediary and driven around the city at night, blindfolded, until they arrived at an apartment block.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

Much of what KSM and Binalshibh freely volunteered to Fouda was later confirmed by the 9/11 Commission.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

Fouda remembered, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed asked me, have you recognized us yet?

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

Fouda, an urbane Egyptian based in London not averse to a pint or two in his local pub, remembers his phone ringing in early 2002 and the man on the other end of the line making him an unusual offer: He asked me if I was thinking of preparing something special with my program, Top Secret, for the first anniversary of September 11th.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

Fouda remembers that KSM said he had originally contemplated targeting American nuclear power plants with the hijacked planes, “and he said that later they decided to take it off the list because they were not sure if they could control the operation.”

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011

The two al-Qaeda operatives told Fouda every detail of how they managed the operation; what codes they had used when communicating with the hijackers in the United States; how they had kept bin Laden in Afghanistan apprised of developments; and the kind of training they had given the hijackers about how to operate in the West.

The Longest War Peter L. Bergen 2011